Founder & CEO @InkleHQ
San Francisco, CA
Joined December 2016
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Station F might be the most staggering thing I've seen in tech. World's largest startup campus, in an actual former Paris train station: 50k square metres, 1k+ startups under one roof, €8bn raised between them, and 47k jobs. @Xavier75 built a small city for founders.
"In five years, the thing we will rediscover is the human being, being human." - @guillaumgrallet, closing the Paris Open Source AI Summit. He's interviewed most of the tech tycoons for his book on the frontiers of AI. Worth sitting with that line.
The unlock in agents right now isn't raw IQ, but prepackaged skills you drop in and run. Daniel Colaianni's skill files has GTM workflows live in seconds - A/B tests, churn prevention, prospecting - inside @DustHQ. The edge has always been integration, not the model.
In Paris for @RaiseSummit and struck by how many US founders are here. Several dozen @inklehq customers already on the ground. The France <> US startup corridor is growing faster than people realise, worth being early to it.
"If your idea doesn't feel stupid, it's not a big enough idea." @theo said this at AI Engineer last week and I took it personally. Ours: build the next Big 4 accounting and tax firm in the US at one-hundredth of the headcount. Powered by AI. Feels stupid enough.
1/ A quarter of @ycombinator's W'25 batch shipped codebases 95% AI-generated, and it became the fastest-growing, most profitable batch in YC history. @garrytan's read on why, which got him torn apart online: one person can now do what used to take a thousand.
My biggest takeaway from @gdb at the @databricks AI Summit: data is the flour in the cake. Everyone's obsessing over model IQ. The under-rated ROI is clean data, and one clean way to ship agents that do real work inside a company. Integration, not intelligence, is the moat.
Anand Krishna retweeted
You can work 5 days a week and succeed as a startup.
Mercury has done that from day 0 and we are valued @ $5.2bn 7 years after launch.
I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years and raised 3 kids while doing it.
The point of success is to have a great life not just a startup 😊
"If you are not working 7 days per week, you are going to lose".
Corgi Insurance is the most intense workplace culture in startups.
- The company works 7 days per week.
- Founder (@nico_laqua) lives and sleeps in the office.
- He built a cafe in the office because there was no local cafe that was open 24/7.
- 2/3 of the first 30 team members have the Corgi logo as a tattoo.
Today I went behind the scenes with Nico, who has used this culture to scale the company to a $2.6BN valuation in just two years.
My condensed notes below:
1. If You Are Not Working 7 Days Per Week, You Are Going to Lose:
Whatever you can get done in 5 days, you'll get more done in 6 and 7. If you are trying to solve the world’s hardest problems, a standard 5-day workweek will not cut it.
2. Work Trials Repel the Mediocre:
Corgi forces candidates into mock work trials over the weekend. If seeing a full office on a Saturday scares them, they don't belong. True intensity acts as a natural filter to attract killers and repel clock-watchers.
3. Lead from the Front Lines
You can’t demand 7-day weeks while sitting on a yacht. Nico sleeps 3–4 hours a night on a mattress inside the office. If you want your troops to bleed, you have to be in the trenches with them.
4. Culture Only Means One Thing: Winning
Forget superficial jargon like "hackers" or "ex-founders." Strip away the corporate fluff. A great startup culture is aggressively optimized around one single word: Winning.
5. Lifespan vs. Victories
Building something world-historic requires radical sacrifice. When asked if he'd rather build a trillion-dollar company and die at 50, or fail and live to 80, the answer was easy. "I would rather measure my lifespan in victories."
6. Reject the Comfort of "Quiet Quitting."
If you are operating in a hyper-growth environment and your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every single week, you are quiet quitting. To win, you must deliberately bypass the off-ramps of personal comfort and low volatility.
Corgi isn't for everyone—and that’s exactly the point.
Check out my latest article: Day 120 of the Singularity: Notes from the Stripe Sessions Closing Fireside Chat linkedin.com/pulse/day-120-s…
Check out my latest article: Sam Altman at Stripe Sessions: notes from a conversation with Patrick Collison linkedin.com/pulse/sam-altma… via @LinkedIn
This. If you're thinking of starting up or have started up, just read this. The doubters aren't always wrong, but if everyone listened to them, then no new companies would start or break out. At pre-seed especially, find people who will think of reasons why it might work, instead of people who just tell you reasons why it won't.
Amazing inspiration from @willahmed of @WHOOP (one of my favourite products of all time).
You have no experience.
You’ve never started a company.
You’ve never had a full time job.
Nike is going to kill you.
You’re a kid.
You don’t have technical skills.
You shouldn’t build hardware.
Apple is going to kill you.
You can’t build hardware.
You can’t measure heart rate non-invasively.
Athletes don’t care about recovery.
Under Armour is going to kill you.
It won’t be accurate.
You don’t listen.
You’re an ineffective leader.
You can’t recruit great talent.
You’re going to have to pay every athlete.
You can’t measure sleep non-invasively.
It’s too expensive to research.
Athletes are a small market.
The product costs too much to make.
The product costs too much to sell.
Your valuation is too high.
Consumers aren’t going to want it.
Hardware is too hard.
You should measure steps.
Fitbit is going to kill you.
You can’t build a marketing engine.
You can’t raise enough money.
You need a real CEO.
Google is going to kill you.
You can’t be a subscription.
You can’t build a brand.
You can’t do consumer in Boston.
Your valuation is too high.
You shouldn’t make accessories.
You shouldn’t make apparel.
Lululemon is going to kill you.
You can’t predict Covid.
Stay in your niche.
You are going to run out of money.
You can’t build a health platform.
Amazon is going to kill you.
You can’t measure blood pressure.
You can’t get medical approvals.
The market is too small.
You don’t understand AI.
The market is too competitive.
It won’t work internationally.
The supply chain is too complicated.
You can’t build an AI.
You can’t raise enough money.
It’s too competitive.
Healthcare isn’t going to want it.
…
Just keep going ✌️
Attending @AIBoomi's Annual Conference in Chennai last week was such a blast! Love flying in with my @inklehq team for this annual gathering of the world’s largest community of AI and SaaS founders.
Huge thanks to all the AIBoomi team and volunteers. This is the most "pay it forward" org I have seen in my career. Hard to mention all, but the mastermind is @avinashraghava. Thanks Avinash and team for an incredible event! 🥳 Aneesh Reddy, Shruti Kapoor, @mtripathi, @sureshsambandam, Keerthi Madhu, Neha Arya, @SeharDabur and so many more!
My favourite bits:
- billionaire founder of @Persistentsys founder @anandesh's masterclass on what 4 tech waves taught him about building a lasting organisation.
- still wondering how @gohighlevel got to 🚀 $500mm and 1mm companies in 8 years, whilst being relatively under the radar... amazing talk from co-founder @varun_vairavan.
- an incredible session on rebuilding your SaaS company as an AI company by Naga Subramanya B B, who changes his role like a chameleon from CFO to Head of AI Transformation at @sprintoHQ.
- @Google India MD @shalureddy's playbook for AI-first growth engine scaling.
- super panel featuring Denada Ramnishta (@efficient_labs), @KaranMohla (@BCapitalGroup) and @avpuri (@BessemerVP) on fundraising trends for AI startups.
- @databricks (Dilip Krishna), @LightspeedIndia (@) and @stripe (Lauren Teo, @ChunmunGupta6) hosted an amazing panel featuring Databricks India Head Kamalkanth Tummala, @FreshworksInc VP @sreedhargade and Stripe Head of Platforms Kunal Parekh covering AI margin compression, consumption pricing, and crossboder GTM.
- @OpenAI's Harshit M. and Arjun Gupta presenting on building complex systems with Codex.
- the live demos from 5 top AI startups, my favourite was @NivVenkatesh from @pageloopai (The AI Agent for Help Center Ops)!
- and of course Sangeeta Bavi easily out-planking everyone during the Awards ceremony!
So many learnings, peers, partners, customers, friends and more! See you next year!
Last week I was in Chennai for @AIBoomi's spectacular Annual Conference 2026 with my team (Ananya Srivastava and Rohan Madappa Venkatesh).
We attended a highly informative panel hosted by @databricks (Dilip Krishna), @LightspeedIndia (@AbhiramTarimala) and @stripe (Lauren Teo, @ChunmunGupta6).
The panel featured Databricks India Head Kamalkanth Tummala, @FreshworksInc VP @sreedhargade and Stripe Head of Enterprise Platforms Kunal Parekh and covered AI margin compression, consumption-based pricing, and crossboder GTM for SaaS/AI companies.
I found it super insightful - here are some of the most useful takeaways that I noted down - hope this is useful to startup founders and operators facing these topics.
🔹 Moats are evolving (and shrinking fast)
AI models alone are not defensible anymore. What used to be a moat is now table stakes. Real defensibility is shifting towards:
• Proprietary data
• Deep workflow integration
• Speed of execution
• Continuous innovation
If you build something great, expect competitors to catch up quickly.
🔹 Value is the only thing customers pay for
Customers don’t care about your stack, models, or infra — only outcomes.
If you don’t deliver sustained value, you’ll become just another cost line item.
🔹 Workflows > features
The opportunity isn’t building features — it’s owning workflows.
Winners will:
• Auto-discover workflows
• Automate them end-to-end
• Continuously improve them
This is where domain expertise becomes a moat.
🔹 Start broad, then go deep
Frontier models get you 60–70% there using public data.
Real differentiation comes from:
• Proprietary data
• Domain context
• Edge-case handling
🔹 AI business models are changing
We’re moving from SaaS pricing → hybrid models:
• Subscription + usage
• Credits, top-ups, real-time billing
Billing is now a product decision, not just finance.
🔹 Cost vs scale vs use-case tradeoffs
Model choice depends on:
• Value of the use case
• Cost sensitivity
• Scale
Most companies are already running hybrid stacks.
🔹 Don’t do free POCs
Even early-stage founders should avoid free work.
If not money, get:
• Testimonials
• Case studies
• Referrals
Free POCs rarely convert.
🔹 GTM fundamentals still win
• Founder-led sales matters
• Qualify deals early
• Be creative in closing
Great products don’t sell themselves.
🔹 Enterprise AI = massive opportunity
Enterprises are adopting AI, but:
• Core problems remain unsolved
• Domain use cases are underserved
This gap is where startups win.
🔹 Unit economics matter more than ever
AI has real variable costs (every API call counts).
You can’t hide bad economics behind growth.
🔹 Speed is the ultimate advantage
👉 It’s not about the best model — it’s about who learns and ships fastest.
The shift is clear: from “build once, scale forever” → “adapt continuously or fall behind.”
Super proud of what the @InkleHQ team achieved in the last twelve months despite a difficult market: the number of paying companies was up 272% 🚀 , revenue was up 316% 🌟 , the number of SaaS subscriptions was up 963% 🔥, and the number of filings was up 303% 🎇.
But the bit I love most is that we brought down the unit cost of bookkeeping by more than a third 💰 and the annual average filing package cost down by a quarter 💸 on a like-for-like basis.
Something is clearly working: we also maintained an NPS score of above 70% and reached a 4.9* Capterra rating. And through a singular focus on top-notch customer success, word-of-mouth referrals bloomed. The vast majority of our growth came through customer referrals - we had no sales team.
The more customers 😇 succeeded in our product, the more efficient and successful we became. With the compounding of small product improvements being shipped every 12-24 hours, I’m excited about what we’ll do for customers in 2024.
And to support customer needs; we doubled our strength; established new Bengaluru and San Francisco offices 🏤 ; implemented multiple customer-focused non-product initiatives; held dozens of events; launched a new generation bookkeeping software, global transfers tool, accountant workspace product and much more.
Often founders like me and @ranvirsingh1114 take too much of the limelight. 2023 was my first year of learning to just step back and let others granularly define the vision and execute it.
Feeling pumped to be working with the stellar team who built all this quietly in the background (we’re hiring). I was travelling during Xmas, here is them enjoying a well-earned festive party. 🎉
Keen to help US companies with scaleable, on-demand accounting, tax and compliance automation - DM me.
Big thanks to our customers, our VCs & angels, our partners and our well-wishers. Wishing a super year ahead to all 🛫 !
@picuscap @SaisonCapital
Cross-border money transfers! This is big! 🚀
As the accounting, tax and compliance platform for hundreds of US cross-border companies, we at Inkle noticed hundreds of millions of dollars of group intercompany transfers. We asked founders, finance lead…lnkd.in/gjHpwcZU
