Building something new. Prev co-founded HockeyStack when I was 20. Raised $50M from Bessemer & YC. Closed 300 customers in 3 years.
San Francisco
Joined July 2020
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I have left my role as Co-founder and CRO of HockeyStack.
I co-founded the company with Arda and Bugra almost 4 years ago when I was 20, and we grew it to 100 amazing people. I have the logo tattooed on my wrist.
When we first started the company, my only goals were to make $10K/month and have fun with people I love.
In a short amount of time, we closed 300+ customers, raised $50M from top VCs, worked with multiple public companies every month, and built one of the best teams I’ve seen.
I’m also super proud of the marketing/brand work we’ve done, including HockeyStack Labs, Lazy CRO commercials, taking over LinkedIn for years, and more. Hundreds of people reached out to say how much they loved our brand. Every single one of those messages made my day.
This was the first and only job I've had in my life. What surprised me the most was the impact the people I worked with had on me. I'm a completely different person than when we started. A better founder, seller, and marketer. But most importantly, I’m a better human being.
I never took a single day off the whole time I was at HockeyStack. Not because I couldn’t. But because I loved the work and loved the people I got to do it with so much that I didn’t even want to miss a single day of it!
What’s next: I’ll talk more about this chapter, launch a documentary series about my unusual journey, and most importantly, launch my new company very soon 😉
A HUGE thank you to my co-founders, our amazing team, customers, and investors. Can’t wait to share more.
🗑️
I'm going to say something that everyone else in Silicon Valley is too scared to say:
YC is a giant ripoff.
It's absurd to me that naive Founders give away 7% of their company for just $125k in this day and age.
It's a super boomer offering:
- apply, wait, hope you get in
- thrown into a 300 person cohort where you are one tiny cog in their mass portfolio bet
- 3 months of 'education' that you can now get completely for free online
- A few minutes at the end to hope a VC picks you amidst the cattle room
Was YC worth it 10 years ago when knowledge wasn't freely available and you couldn't build distribution for yourself via the internet? Yes.
Is it worth SEVEN percent of your company in today's age when you can go from $0 to $1M in weeks with just content and AI?
No.
Emir Atli retweeted
Lionel Messi’s letter for his father. ❤️🩹
Dad, I still can’t believe that you’ve gone. I don’t fall, or rather, I don’t want to fall. It’s very hard for me to imagine that I’m not going to see you anymore, that we’re not going to talk anymore. I know you were suffering and that it’s for the best, but you left too soon. We still had a lot left to enjoy together.
You asked me so much to play in the last World Cup, and it was in the days just before it started that you got the worst. It was the first time you weren’t going to be at a tournament, but Mom told me that you were going to get better and that you’d be well enough to travel. I told you we were going to reach the final so you could travel.
Every time a match ended I waited for and missed your message. That’s when I realized the situation was really bad. Even so, I didn’t stop thinking about going as far as possible, to buy you time and so you could see a match. We reached the final and you couldn’t be there.
I wanted to win it to bring it to you and show you a new one. I couldn’t; my legs wouldn’t give any more. This time I tried to go against my body, but I couldn’t. I never managed to feel good.
When I arrived you thought we had lost the final on penalties. We couldn’t talk about any of everything that happened. You couldn’t enjoy anything.
We weren’t champions, but you have no idea how much we enjoyed every single match. Once again, you were right: I had to be there and play it.
I’m telling you this because it was the only thing we couldn’t talk about, since you already know everything else. We talked every day and saw each other whenever we could, given my commitments.
I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, I don’t know how to go on. I only played football and now I have quite a few doubts about whether I’ll keep doing it for much longer.
You were by my side from the beginning; there was so little left until the end. Why couldn’t you hold on that little bit more so we could finish together?
I know your happiness was seeing your family well, your wife, your children, and above all, without the others finding out, watching me play…
It was always like that since I was little. You would take me to all the training sessions as soon as you got home from work. For many of them Mum took me because you were working.
Obviously you never missed a single match. How you suffered watching me and how you enjoyed it, even though you never gave me many compliments.
You were dad, friend and representative.
You were always the person you needed to be in every moment and you never got anything wrong. Beyond a few reproaches or arguments, you were always right. In the end it always turned out the way you said.
I’m going to miss you a lot, but you’ll always be present, and especially in the upbringing of my children, because I teach them and raise them the way you both did with me.
Rest in peace and look after us from above the way you did down here. Thank you for everything.
I love you, Dad. ❤️
Yes
If you want one take-away from the Airtable deal
It isn't:
- Don't Raise Too Much (Last round investors get 1x back)
- Embrace AI (Airtable did)
- Move faster (Airtable stepped it up)
- VCs are evil (They agreed to the deal)
- Get profitable (Important, but didn't help per se when Airtable got there)
It is:
- Grow or Die. That's 2026.
20% growth (and presumably, not accelerating) at $500m ARR = 2.5x-4x ARR
That's it
If someone tells me they are a VP of Sales, I know they are making 20% of their top AEs, drive worse cars, and own worse homes.
Title doesn't mean anything anymore.
This is every enterprise deal cycle I’ve been a part of.
With a heavy heart, I have to share some difficult news.Last night I lost my wallet, and with it, one share of Anthropic Series D. Now accepting replacements. DM me.
Raising the wrong Series A kills hundreds of great startups every year. If you have a term sheet on the table, make sure you’re not making one of these 5 mistakes:
1. Raising Series A pre-empted
It’s a great feeling to have an investor already on your cap table to give you a term sheet and pre-empt you. But this is actually a trap because there is a big chance that:
- You actually don’t need the money
- Price is too low
- You are not ready to run a good process fast
So you actually end up raising at a lower valuation and without proper process/story.
2. Raising before true PMF
Series A is the loudest external validation founders see at the early stages. Most seed-stage founders are dreaming of the day they announce this round. But most don't think about what being a Series A company actually means:
- A board member in every major decision
- Board-level numbers you have to hit
- P&L, CAC, LTV, payback, all of it
All of these mean that you cannot focus on hitting PMF and you cannot pivot easily. It’s all about scaling as quickly as possible.
If you don’t 100% believe you have true product-market fit, you should not raise a Series A.
3. You are tired of being a seed-stage company/founder
A lot of founders want to raise a Series A because they don’t want to be a “seed stage” company. You think enterprise buyers won't take a seed company seriously. That’s not true anymore. Enterprise appetite for early-stage tools is the highest I've seen.
I closed multiple 6-figure deals as a seed-stage founder in 2024. If you have PMF and good demand gen, they will buy.
4. Raising without thinking about board control/dynamics
The decisions you make at Series A is determine future rounds. You need a very good company-side counsel before going into negotiations, and the founders need to align on what they want in board dynamics to be able to maximize control. Too many founders think they can just change things later in future rounds and end up getting bad terms, the wrong control, and hate their lives at their own companies.
5. Optimizing for the highest valuation
Raise too much at too high a price and you spend the next 18 months growing into an realistic number. Miss it and your next round is flat or down, which kills momentum and morale.
TAKEAWAY
The term sheet is the start of the race, not the end.
Every decision you make at this stage is mission critical, especially the timing.
Series A sets the stage for the future rounds. Board seats, control, the people in the room when it gets hard.
Get those right, and the money is the easy part.
Get them wrong and you'll have to raise again just to fix them.
Parents: "Move out"
Girlfriend: “Quit being such a loser”
Boss: "Work harder"
ChatGPT: "You're absolutely right!"
Just chatted with a founder friend
He has a huge problem
3 months ago, he told his team to spend whatever they wanted on AI
No limit or budget
He just got the bill
$575,000 for last month alone
His company only does $50k in MRR
He's panicking
I told him to relax
"Spend 10x more," I said
He looked at me like I was crazy
"Look, if you owe the AI company $500k, that's your problem. But if you owe them $50 million, that's their problem."
