"When you start a company, the expectation is failure."
You can't build a great product. You can't hire great people. You'll never get good investors. You can't raise a Series A. You can't raise a Series B.
@mutinycorp CEO Jaleh Rezaei (@jalehr) had heard all of those doubts. She'd done all of it. And she started over anyway.
"It's really hard to accept that you're going to burn that to the ground for the possibility of a better future," she says.
After a year of working to add new AI capabilities to Mutiny's software, Jaleh felt she was "mashing" two different products together.
On a walk along the Hudson River in November, she told co-founder Nikhil Matthew they had to make a radical change.
Catch the full story on The Upstarts Podcast, presented by @Rippling 🫡
Salespeople have a problem: they only spend 21% of their time actually selling to customers 🤝
@mutinycorp CEO Jaleh Rezaei (@jalehr) thought she'd found a way to fix it. She worked with customers like Snowflake and Uber. Revenue reached 8-figures 📈
Which makes what happened next all the more shocking: she burned it all down 🔥
On The Upstarts Podcast, Jaleh shares why she took the tough decision to fire her customers, slash headcount and re-found her startup around an AI agent.
We go into AI's disruption of SaaS; her favorite advice from @fin's @destraynor on pivoting and from @ycombinator's @garrytan on showing the chart you don't want people to see; how to get over "Claude Spookies," and why speed is (mostly) all you need.
This season of the show is presented by @Rippling 🫡
CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 2:41 An AI agent for sales 7:04 Why an AI ‘blank canvas’ doesn’t work 10:38 Jaleh’s founder journey and Gusto lessons 17:01 Mutiny’s early software success 22:51 Jaleh’s Upstart Moment: tearing it down 24:42 Why you can’t rebuild a business halfway 27:15 Intercom’s founders share valuable advice 30:44 Focus on the business, not the optics 34:53 ‘Speed is the only thing that matters’ 37:40 ‘Claude spookies’ in the AI app layer 43:59 Second-time founder advantage
Thanks for watching!
