Abhishek Kankani - Getting into YC, $11.6M seed funding, building Dyte, a dev-friendly video SDK!

You don't need a strong personal pain point. You should understand that there is a gap. Yeah, so the gap should be there and it should be good enough for you to actually step into that. But yeah, it need not— like, most people are like, hey, we don't experience problems, so how do we find that out? I think that's where also the idea of like empathy comes in, because you don't need to experience something to understand that it's a problem or understand the, you know, difficulty.

Right. Like,

right, having that Having the ability to empathize no matter what you're solving for, it can be something like what we are doing, it can be consumer product, it can be a bunch of other things, but being able to understand someone else's problems without needing to have faced them is really important, I feel, as a founder that you need to be able to.

Hey everybody, welcome to yet another episode of the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. I'm your host, Sharad. this time with a slightly little bass voice because I'm not my true self. I'm going through some cold, but I feel like most people who I'm talking to these days, especially in the last week, they're liking my voice. But yeah, today I have an exciting guest. 2 reasons. One is he's from my home country, India. Number 2, he's one of the founders who's been killing it. And I'm excited to introduce Abhishek from Dyte. Welcome to the show. How are you feeling?

Thanks so much, Sharath, for having me here. I think this is great to be on, you know, on a call with you and actually be recording this. I think this is a great thing that you're doing. The kind of content you create is phenomenal. It definitely helps a lot of people. So I'm glad to be a part of it. And I think, yeah, you're right. People do love that deep voice. The secret is to stay sick. I think that's how it's going to work.

Absolutely. Yeah. Especially being a podcaster, you have to modulate your voices, right? So thanks to my natural cold, I'm doing better now. But yeah, enough about me. So for folks who don't know about Abhishek, let me give you guys a brief intro. Abhishek is the co-founder and CEO of this amazing company called Dyte. So what it does is it's basically a live streaming product where it'll put the live streaming product in your product with less line of codes. It's probably like I can call it no-code for live streaming, right? In a way, low-code or no-code, whatever people want to call it. But yeah, it's built for seamlessly integrating a video platform into your product. And I'm excited to actually dive in. They went to YC. They raised $11.6 million seed round, including investors from Surge, Nexus, which are like fundamentally, I think, Indian venture firms. Also shout out to Ryan Hoover for spotting Dyte and investing in them. So I'm excited to dive in a little deeper and they have some exciting news as well, which we'll cover at the end of this episode. But Abhishek, talk to me about Dyte. So why did you end up building this? Is there a personal reason or is it something that you saw an opportunity or a gap? Tell me the backstory.

Right, so we started close to end of 2020, right? This is when COVID was kind of hitting, everyone was confined to their homes for I think almost 6 months now, and in fact a little more, and video adoption was going through the roof, right? And You kind of summed up what Dyt does precisely very well, that we are a live video kind of platform where it's real-time calls, live streaming. We let you integrate everything within, you know, end-user products, applications, be it mobile, web, across the stack, right? So it was not more of a personal problem directly. So there are 2 parts to it. One is that yes, there was a huge opportunity like that. being very frank, we did see a gap. We saw that, okay, there is a lot of video-first use cases that will be created. You know, we are using a product like that right now together. So things like this definitely need a very solid infrastructure, which is seamless, which is reliable, which is scalable, but essentially also very easy to build with, right? So that was one of the things that we tried out a bunch of these SDKs or, you know, APIs that were there, and we realized that there they were built for video engineers at the core of it and not modern-day web, mobile, or, you know, any kind of application developer. And the kind of audience has changed over the years. So yes, they did a great job in building like really good infrastructure, but at the end of the day, now infrastructure is table stakes. Everyone needs to have it. So you can't use that as a defensibility, right? And all 3 of the co-founders, uh, all of us, like, you know, uh, have been coding for as long as we remember. So we understood that good dev products have a very different impact on the end user. And, you know, we wanted to build a great developer experience here, right? So even if you go through any of the products that we built, be it, you know, from our end-user SDKs to our documentation, you'll see that developer experience is at the core of it, right? So that's how we started. And I said there are 2 parts to it. The first one was this, obviously, the market opportunity and, you know, what's missing there.

Mm-hmm.

We were able to bring down, like, let's say, months of efforts to get a POC down to like a couple of hours. So now what you did was enable people to experiment quickly, build out, ship out more things, you know, test out.

So

we basically were making live video accessible at scale, right? And that's the mission right now as well. So that's how we started. And the second part to it, which I said, right, like partially personal problems that we faced were we've been using video tools forever, right, uh, in our previous jobs and all. And we felt that the kind of experience that we have today, that, okay, you're on a, you know, ABC software for a call, and then let's take interview as an example. I'm taking an interview for a person who's about to join our team. To switch between that screen, a screen share, another tool for flowchart, another tool for code, and then try to keep track of it. So we realized that video-first interactions were not essentially video-first, they were just a video interaction and then everything else. All of this should be seamless in a place together, right? So we decided to build in a manner where you could bring those collaborative experiences right within your platform, right within the call.

Interesting.

So like a podcast is happening right now, both of us are here, but now if this was on Dyte, for example, we could just share a whiteboard together, work on it together. We could share a code editor, work on it together. We could share a video together, view that in sync, right? Things like that. So being able to build any kind of collaborative experience. Because at the end of the day, you get on a call because you are trying to enable collaboration between people, right? Be it one-on-one, be it a group collaboration, or one-to-many, right? And that is what we thought was also missing on the personal front. And that's why we were like, you know what, we would want to build a product like that. And we realized there was nothing there to build products like this, which basically is something we wanted to unlock as a second stage, right? One, make video accessible. Second, make video better in terms of the kind of experiences you build around video.

I love it so much for a couple of reasons. One is, so this is slightly a different type of story I hear, which is a lot of, lot many founders I talk to, they start something of their own problem, right? They're facing a problem. And I also, you know, spoke to many founders who are like you, which is like you see an opportunity and you penetrate into the market. So my curiosity is, what was your drive? Like, how did you, especially during the COVID times, you know, end of 2020, it was like still uncertain. People are losing jobs, markets being like, you know, pretty crazy. How did you like feel like, okay, I have this conviction, or with your team, with your co-founders that let's do it. Like, this is where— So sometimes personal problem you're solving for yourself, you'll be your own customer. You'll be like understanding the problems. You have that weird conviction. But for people like you who saw a market opportunity, how did you like even take step 1 to step 2, step 3?

So, okay, some background there, right? I've known my co-founders through college. So, you know, Kushal Agarwal and Palash, I have worked with them throughout college. So Kushakri was my batchmate. We were in the same hostel together and then same technical chapter called CSI, the Computer Society of India at college. And both of us served on the board together. Palash was 2 years junior. I met him there, right? In his first year, like, you know, the first time we met during that summer break, we all actually stayed at my house for 1.5 months. We built on something which back now I look at it, I don't call it a project, but back then I would say that, okay, yeah, it was the idea of, oh, we'll start something together. So for me, I always knew the people I wanted to start up with, right? Like that was kind of set in my brain because I have worked with them throughout college, had that comfort with them. We've built a lot of products together, won hackathons, done a lot of work, right? From projects to hackathons to actually leading a chapter. So that was set, right? So one of the things was very sure there, right? The other part is this is 2020 and I think everyone was bored sitting at home and, you know, people were just kind of getting done with the kind of work and not being able to do anything else, right? And we saw this opportunity which was like a glaring problem right there. So I used to essentially call these folks every 6, 7 months, right? Hey, this is something that we can work on, right? And I think for whatever reason, you know, be it the fact that at some point Palash was still in college and, you know, Kushagra had a different set of things that he was working on, and I was also like, you know, hey, this is a cool idea, but sure how to go about it. So we never took any action on it, right? But this time what had happened was, one, we actually saw that that was genuinely a bad problem. Like, we used other products and we realized that, okay, this is so bad that we want to— inherently, the first instinct for us was that let's build a better version, right? For us to become the users as well, we wanted to build a better version.

Hmm.

If you remember, I told you, right, we wanted to bring the video experiences in one place. build something like that, you needed a video API and SDK, right? And we tried working and we were like, it's just much better if we build our own and, you know, serve ourselves. So we would have essentially become our own customers had we just launched a standalone product, but we decided that this is a better way for us to go. The other part was that we always discussed that the reasons for us to start up and the kind of things that we want to do, right, were one, we wanted to build a kick-ass product, right? Uh, we had conviction that this is something that we can do. here, right? We know that it's a hard challenge that will be fun, it will be interesting. We'll have to learn everything from scratch. None of us have a background in video, to be fair. I had a background in video, now we do, but we did not, right? And for us, it was like, it seems like a challenging problem, it's fun, it's interesting to solve for, it's something that actually will be used at scale, right?

Like, that was obvious. I mean, we are live examples of it right now. Absolutely.

we wanted to build like a place where we want to go and, you know, work every day, right? Which all these things could have only come if we started something we truly felt was one, scalable. Second, we would enjoy solving it. Third, hire the right people, right? And these were the things that felt like we can do it. And the second part for us, risk in our mind, okay, this is how I rationalize that internally, is that At the age we are, so I was I think 23 when we started, right? Back in 2020. So I was 23 when we started.

To me, you're a baby.

Exactly right. So

yeah,

I don't look young anymore because I mean, yes, startup ages. That's one thing I would give as a you know FYI to everyone who's planning to start up. But yeah, so what I was saying was that. You're 23, you probably don't have a lot of responsibilities that, you know, crush you immediately to a level where you can't take, let's say, risk for a short period, right? Now that short period can still be a couple of months, a quarter, whatever, right? So what we did was we decided that we will give ourselves ABC time and then work on this. And we have to achieve conviction by either getting customers, by getting some kind of funding, some sort of validation which is external than the fact that we believe in it.

And yeah, some sort of— right.

Yep. And that's, that's like, you know, surprise was like, okay, YC happened, right? And, uh, we'll come to that part later, I think, towards, uh, you know, as we move forward. But what happened was that that is how we started, that worst case we lose out maybe like 3 months, 4 months of Indian salary, and that's fair, and we can survive without that. And the belief that, you know, as much as the market is turbulent, we had that faith in ourselves that worst case, we can always get a job back. Like, not the same one probably, but a job, right? Might be at a lower level, might be not at the same pay, whatever that is, but we won't end up unemployed, right? That conviction we still have today, right? Worst case, what's going to happen is that we can get a job. It might not be the best job, might not be the one we want, but if we need it, we can still get it today. Like, that conviction we had in ourselves as well.

See, that's the— I feel that's the most important mindset founders should carry, which is you literally have nothing to lose. Trying is the best thing that you can do, which, you know, whatever it is, right? Whatever problem you pick. And in your case, what's fascinating to me is that, A, you know, you saw the opportunity, and even though it's kind of not troubling you, you said yourself, like, You don't have the video building background, A, and you're not your own customer, B. But I think what drove you, and which is fascinating to me, is like people, right? Like, okay, I'm getting this opportunity to work with a couple of my friends and it's fun. It's fun. And I think that too played a massive role in my opinion after like listening to you. Which I think is very unconventional. Like people right now at the stage we are in, everybody is craving for numbers, right? Like you have to make progress. You have to show like the actual gap exists and you solved it. Like, you know, all that. So that's fascinating. Also, I want to ask this, how did you go about like— So one thing before we go in there, Did you actually resign like everything or like quit all your jobs and then you moved full-time before even YC happened?

Yeah. So that's awesome. Yeah. So, okay. There's also some more context there. I'll come to that. But I do want to like also add on to what you just said that we were not our customers on day zero, but the way we built it is that we want to be proud of using our own product because as a team of developers, say in a team of 50+, we have 40+ developers today, right? So we are a heavy team because we are a pure infrastructure product and, you know, we're building a hardcore dev tool. So we want to be proud of the product that we would love to use it, right? So I wouldn't say that you're not your customer, you are, but you're essentially not solving for a pain that you face. Because I mean, let's be honest, they might have experienced some point that they wanted to have integrated video in ABC product, most of our team, but most of them don't have that. Okay, we were dying to not be able to integrate video, right? Like, that's not something you hear. But yeah, absolutely that it's something that we've had a strong conviction on based on a bunch of other factors.

Exactly. So that is my point too. Like, you don't need, uh, like a, like a strong pain point, you know, is what I'm about to convey.

You don't need a strong personal pain point. You should understand that there is a gap. Yeah. So the gap should be there and it should be good enough for you to actually step into that. But yeah, it need not Like, most people are like, hey, we don't experience problems, so how do we find that out? I think that's where also the idea of like empathy comes in, because you don't need to experience something to understand that it's a problem or understand the, you know, difficulty.

Right. Like,

right, having that— having the ability to empathize no matter what you're solving for, it can be something like what we are doing, it can be consumer product, it can be a bunch of other things, but being able to understand someone else's problems without needing to have faced them is really important. I feel as a founder that you need to be able to.

It's what I call educated guess. You don't have to have the problem, but you have an understanding and empathy towards that problem so much that you can literally see through it. Like, okay, I see, like, you know, if I solve this, there is like an intangible outcome that can happen, right? So that kind of educated guess is something founders should also encounter. When I'm telling this to you, I'm actually talking to myself as well, because, you know, sometimes I feel I've fallen into the trap of, if I get an idea, do I even have this problem? I'm like, if I don't, I'm like, you know what, I won't have that drive. Let's see, let's even not pursue it. But in your in your case, which is kind of like fascinating, that's why I'm telling this to myself. You don't have to have a problem if you have an educated understanding and guess towards like, you know, you should

have a

way to drive,

right? Like, so for us, the drive was, as I said, right, the team and the kind of product that we want to build. As I said, right, like for us, building a great product that we would be proud of using is something which I would say is still a very big driving factor for us, right? That's why we don't have to micromanage and tell people that, hey, this is what you should do. People see that, okay, this is something that can be done better, and then they do it. And then they come back that, hey, I changed this because it's needed. And that's also a reason that we were able to build a very good part of the product based on our hypothesis, building it out, and then, you know, people just loving it and picking it up from there, right? So I think that's definitely there.

Yeah. So let's switch gears a little bit. So you got the idea, you found your co-founders, you were like, you know, you've achieved that conviction, all that's good. Like, what was like the first MVP looked like and how did you go about finding the first customer or, you know, where did you find that? Okay. This is in the 4 walls we've built. Now this should go out, right? Like, when did you ship? your first ever MVP. What was like that experience?

Okay, so I think this is when we started, right? I had told you that we were thinking of building an end-user application as well to showcase the capabilities, and I think we today have that as well. So if you head over to demo.diet.io, you'll see that you can play around with our hosted version of an SDK, that how it will be if you just integrate it. right? You can play around with features. So, uh, we realized that if we build infrastructure today, no one's gonna trust a startup, obviously. Like, if I go and come to you like, hey, we are a 3-people company or 5-people company with 2 interns, use our SDK which is like a month old, no one's really going to do that. But if we create an easy-to-use video calling tool when people need video calling, make it absolutely seamless, that definitely is something people will start using, right? And for you to test scale, you need people to use it. You don't need end-paying customers to use it. You need people to just use it, right? Right. So what we did was when we applied for YC, by the way, right, and this timeline coincides that I think I— this is something that I like keep telling myself and reminding myself and the team is that if you don't try something, the answer is a 100% no, right? Like, people say that 99.99% startups fail, and I agree that they do. But you know what fails 100% of the time? Not starting a startup. I mean, there is nothing that's gonna happen. So I do strongly believe that if you can try something out, you should. And obviously there are— there's a very detailed framework on like how you go about evaluating the pros and cons, but the base idea is that it does not, you know, hurt trying, and you should like keep trying things. So what I did early on was that while we're building this out, MVP and everything, we started by building a single page which was like a one-click video tool that, hey, click to start a meeting, send an invite to a friend, they can join it. No sign-up needed, nothing.

Is it kind of like a Zoom thing?

Yeah, like think of it like a Zoom but on a web, and no sign-up needed, works across mobile browser, normal web browser. Just go to, you know, app.diet.io and start a meeting, and that's it, right? So,

right,

um, people use that as well. I think if I dig deep into our Twitter, we'll find screenshots of that as well.

But nice.

What we did was we were building that, and I started filling the YC application as well, right, in parallel. Now we knew that, okay, it's been like, what, a couple of weeks since we're building? How do we even get in? But we did, right? And that's what, like, it was, it was a great moment.

Yeah, can you elaborate that journey? Because I thought, in my opinion, a lot many founders and even startups, they get the idea, they build an MVP, they have to have some traction or achieve some traction, and they apply to YC. That's like the traditional path I usually like, you know, know. But yeah, would love to know how you went to YC from 0 to 1.

So as I was saying, like, we were building the MVP and I was filling the application together, right? Then we shipped out the first version of the video calling tool, right? And we just publicized it within our friends and circle and, you know, here and there. And people used it, right? In a— in the first week or something, we had like a couple thousand users who did meetings. And the thing is, because it was so seamless, people were just sharing links. And, you know, this network effect starts. Like, you use a meeting, you send it to someone, and then they see it, and then they use it with their friends.

And

we're like, great, that's happening. We made our entire pitch for the YC application around that, that we already in such a short span have built this thing and shipped it out. Plus we have people using. And the key highlighting part here that we wanted to make sure, like, uh, is, you know, shown across is that it's our in-house infrastructure that people are using and it's, you know, managing this load at such a short MVP. And that's what we can scale because the conviction that people needed to have in us was that these 20-year-old-somethings will be able to build a video infrastructure, which is like still one of the tough problems today,

right? So yeah, probably.

And that's the conviction that we had to do. So you have to understand that you have to know what you want to pitch, right? So our pitch to IC was never that, hey, this is a product that has so many users that, you know, it's obvious. I mean, video was a growing use case. That was obvious, right? Like, to everyone there, you saw so many tools across video.

You don't have to—

I'm not talking about how many stuff. So we didn't have to do that. New use cases coming on video was there. So enabling that was becoming like— became a part natural thing to do, right? And that's something that our application contained. us having the vision of how this can expand into things, right? Like, we've went from like a real-time video to doing a bunch of other things. We also have a few more products planned out this, you know, year. By the year end, you'll see a lot more happening there, right?

Mm-hmm.

That was there, the kind of backstory about founders knowing each other, being able to work, all of that, right? So, and plus, YC clearly says that they do give you a chance even on an idea, right? They claim to fund you on an idea. So I mean, why not try it out, right? You don't necessarily need a product. You need to have a way that you can show that you are the best fit. Because here's a fun fact, almost majority of YC startups that go in end up pivoting during the batch.

So

they were never evaluating just your idea, they were evaluating the framework, they were evaluating the team, they were evaluating the capability, right? Because let's be fair, even if I had like a couple thousand users versus having an early stage of it, for me, being very frank, that's kind of a similar stage as long as I know that the team can execute, right? Because even if let's say we had like, you know, instead of 1,000, we had 10,000 people sign up, that still is not meaningful enough as a company, you know, growth number when you have to compete with a platform like Zoom, which has like multi-million users and multi-million calls happening a day.

So

that 10,000 was not going to make a difference. It was the everything else behind it. And that's why I think we also got it. And I do always believe that there's a huge factor of luck, but as they say, right, fortune favors the brave. So you, you got to try, right? And that's what I think was also to answer your other part of the question about early customers. Got into YC, there was a Your Story article on us about, you know, hey, one of the startups that got into YC. People saw our product, they used it, and they were like, hey, you claim to have this infrastructure in-house, you have waitlist, we would like to actually sign up on that. That's how we knew that, okay, this is a genuine problem. They're using one of our competition Uh, they've been on production and they still want to use a startup which is like barely a couple months old. And people are coming that, hey, we want to be the beta customers. Like, screw it, we're not waiting till you launch a proper production-ready version. We are happy to be beta customers, right? That's how it got like accelerated, uh, you know, during and post-YC as well.

That's so fascinating, Abhishek. I think, uh, it, it kind of— I felt like it's scripted in a way that It's so authentic. It happened like naturally. I feel like most of the startups that become successful, all these problems and the explorations happen very organically. Talk to me about like when you applied for YC, what was your mindset like? You're like, like you said, 20-year-old doing this for the first time. You have like a work-in-progress MVP. Yeah, what's going on in your mind?

So, okay, um, my co-founders, to be fair, at that point were like, you know, you're wasting your time. And I was like, don't worry, I'll do it outside everything that I have to do, finish it and do it. And, and I would say, like, if I have to think from a very rational person's point of view, they were not wrong. But as I said, like, I do have a little bit more of an optimistic behavior, but like not unrealistic optimism, right? So One was that what's there to lose, right? Obviously you always have that when you're writing the application. To be fair, when you're doing filling it, it's great. You don't really worry about it. You're like, hey, I want to do this properly. Also, you know, YC application is a very good way to refine your thoughts, right? Like I do recommend this to founders who are starting. When you have an idea, go fill out that application, right? Don't, don't, you don't need to submit it, but keep filling it up every time you're thinking about the idea because The kind of questions it asks you basically are hard questions that you need to answer, uh, while you're thinking through something.

Thought-provoking questions which will keep you like, you know, iterating in your mind.

And you should, right? And that iteration definitely helps, right? Um, so that's what it is while doing it, right? Now what happens is the moment you submit the application, there's this sudden— that 1% chance is what you now get, you know, stuck on. That, hey, I'm hanging on to that 1% that I know it's not going to happen, but I really want it to happen, you know. Yeah, I mean, let's be fair. It's very easy for people to say, hey, don't expect anything and move on. But somewhere, no matter how practical you are as a person and how much you can detach yourself from the emotion of risk-reward and everything else, and, you know, you believe in that, hey, let's get— do our part and let everything flow naturally. It's human to actually worry about the results, right? And that will happen. Right. So that part was there, that was existing, and that did bug here and there. But the thing is, you can't do anything about it. So obviously you keep building, right?

So you accept it.

It is what it is, but we assume that we're gonna get in and we set deadlines internally for other parts.

Okay, right.

Because we're like, okay, uh, if we do get in, great. If we don't get in, great. I mean, we are working in a much faster pace because we have deadlines to stick to. So we put stricter deadlines, and then there was this mail that came which was like, hey, you have an interview. That's when I would say that 1% went like beamingly up. And now you actually start getting more worried because before that you had, you had just assumed it's not happening,

right?

Right. And now there's this, you know, I'm showing you like a dangling this thing that, hey, there's a carrot here at the end of the tunnel, that there's something that, that you can look forward to. And then we started doing more that we're like, hey, you know, we have to do this in a very efficient manner. And the interview is like nothing I've ever seen, right? Even till date, after doing everything, we've gone through a lot of things from, you know, hiring, team building, raising, everything. But that interview is still something that I remember very vividly. It's 10 minutes. There's not a hi, hello, how are you, what's your name, I am ABC. There's 5 people.

No small talk.

Nothing. They just— so the call started, right? Uh, we had a couple of people, uh, you know, who also eventually became our group partners, few of them. There were like 5 people. Um, our interview was at 3:30 in the night, so I mean, most people—

Wow.

Recommend that you sleep. Yeah, yeah, because it's US, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And most people are like, yeah, you should sleep through it and everything. And yeah, none of us were actually sleeping.

Of course.

Yeah, let's be fair. You start and they're just like, what are you building? And it just starts. And that's the shortest 10 minutes of your life because you don't know when it starts and when it ends. So what happens is we had a very candid interview. We had a few things that we— anyways, people believe, right? Don't bullshit. Be very open. Give to-the-point answers. Don't beat around the bush. If it's a yes, it's a yes. If it's a no, it's a no. If you don't know, say I don't. I mean, you're not God. You're not going to know everything. Right. So it's important to know what you don't know. I think like, you know, that's really important for anyone as a person to grow, not just founder, right? Uh, and that sense of clarity is important, especially if you're starting to build a company. So I think we started off like that and that went over. And somewhere during the interview, we actually had tried to— this— so this interview happens on a Zoom, which is like a link where people are waiting, and it's all set up, right? Because they have back-to-back interviews. We actually had reached out to YC and asked them that, hey, can we do this?

Like, can you use—

We did, we did.

So that's the pick, man. That's the pick.

Every demo that we do till date is always done on a Dyke platform, right? Uh, so at times we even customize it and everything, right? Every call that we do till date is done on a Dyke platform. We don't use a third party. And even if someone does send a link, we end up like just sharing a link. Exactly right. So what happened was we requested and they said, hey, our process is so set that it'll just be a logistical nightmare to do this, but you can tell them about the demo during the call. So what we did was during the call, we actually told them that we wanted to do this. The team said it's a logistical nightmare, but we have a demo here and we had analytics on a page. So what we did was we, right after the interview, waited, and then a couple minutes later, we see like 5 people visiting it from US. And we kind of knew it was them. So that's when we were like, okay, yeah, that gives some mental comfort that they did check out the product and we know that the product works and they know the timeframe that we have built it in is not, not like as much as you would expect for a product.

Yeah, right.

Um, I think then 2 of my co-founders ended up sleeping. Um, they were exhausted. Like, I, I think, yeah.

You didn't sleep?

So I, I could not, like, let's be fair, I could not. I, I think for me, uh, it's really tricky to just be like, yeah, it's done, and then like, you know, let, let it be. So I was not able to because what happens is the way it works is in the next couple of hours, like probably like the next 12 hours,

they say yes

or no. Either you get a phone call from them saying that, hey, you are selected, Or you get an email saying you're rejected with some reasons, right? So if you don't get a call, you know that, okay, you're not selected, right? And then somewhere around, I think, 7:30, 8:00 in the morning, I got a call from Michael Siebel on my phone. Uh, I was half, like, almost there. Then I picked up, it was like, you know, your heart's racing and everything. And then he's like, hey, this is Michael, how are you doing? And I'm like, great, haven't slept in the last, you know, couple of hours. And like, yeah, you should go sleep now because you're in. And Yeah, that's how it went. It was like literally out of a movie where, as you said, right, scripted. I think if I have to direct that scene, I can do that very well. And it'll be a great cinematic scene because it was a great cinematic experience.

Wow, man, I got goosebumps. You know, what are you doing this? I've never had like such an intense, like, you know, back-to-back storytelling moment in this podcast. Of course, man, that was wild. And, you know, like, kudos to you for being persistent, consistent, and, you know, trying, right? Like, I love that mindset, you know, trying to incorporate in myself as well. Winning, succeeding, you can't control. They're like, YC giving you a callback is something you can't be Michael Siebel the next day or the next hour after the demo. It's you being, giving your best and being creative at that spot, like doing the demo thing. And it's so ironic. that, you know, you're going on a video platform which you're building a better version, right? So that all gives you like so much confidence. And when you were narrating, it almost felt like the 2010, like Dhoni hitting that 6

in

the World Cup, right? I was like, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? What's going to happen? So intense. And I'm so happy. I'm so glad that, you know, You guys made it. It's, you know, you're making like a lot of other founders walk in your steps, following your curiosity and whatnot. So man, that was an intense experience. I would probably like maybe offline we'll go like deeper into the conversation, but I want to move on because of the podcast. So the YC happened and any pivotal lessons you learned from YC that you want to share?

Okay, so I'll tell you that I think the duration that we were in YC was still one of the most productive and, you know, the most fast-paced duration that we like, you know, time frame that we were in. And I feel there is a couple of things, right? One is have a circle of trust, have a peer bunch of peers that you're working together with because what YC does is they don't like mentor you. So Indians have this mindset of school mentoring, right? Where there's someone sitting on top of your head and chasing you down.

School feeding, right?

That's not there, right? And that's great. But what happens is you automatically come into that mode because you see people around you. There are people who are on ideas, there are people who are like much ahead in the journey, and all of you have that same 3 months together. And then you have this thing called Demo Day where you have to pitch and try to compete amongst each other. So there's this healthy sort of competition because everyone helps each other. And then there are people who also want to like chase more things because let's say someone who's starting out like us, very early phase, versus someone who's a little bit further ahead in the journey, there's obviously an advantage there, right? So you have to figure out how you want to tackle that, right? So that's one. Second, uh, when I said that, you know, build your circle of trust, the idea is that as founders— I think we were discussing this offline as well— that you might not have the answers to most problems that you're facing because it's an individual journey, but there are also common things that most people face, right? From how to get the first customers to like basic steps of doing cold outreach to like hiring first people, how to evaluate ABC. There are so many things that are common that people don't realize that when you have this circle, there's this help network that basically you can tap into whenever you need it. And again, when I say that, you know, it's a network you can tap into, you should also be available because that's how it works, right? It's mutually making sure that everyone is helping each other. So that's the other part that, you know, I think YC, like, you know, from that community angle, when they say there's a family, YC family. It helps with all these things, right? That's the other part of it. Third is holding yourself accountable in ways that work for you, right? So there was something called Founder Office Hours, which were purely founders talking to each other, you know, every 2 weeks where they would discuss, or, you know, every week, how frequently you wanted to do it, that, hey, this is what we had planned for last week. This is what happened. This is where we got stuck. This is where we need help. This is what worked out. This is what did not, right? Things like that definitely build a good habit of you know keeping yourself and things in check. So I think that's a good way to go about it even in the long run. And you know essentially knowing that I mean that that hard truth that most of us in that group will actually not make it, and understanding that. there are thousands of ways to kill a startup. Uh, don't do it the way someone has already done, right? So YC has this thing called dying a unique death. They're like, I mean, we see this very often where startups do the same mistakes again and again and fail the same way. And I mean, don't do that. If you're gonna die, die a unique death so that at least you become a case study for others, right? Don't, don't do the same stupid mistakes. I think that definitely helps when you're there, right? That you know that, okay, these are the things that we can avoid, these are things that we should not do. Besides that, the tag, right? I think just the YC tag puts you on the map. I mean, think about it, we had no background in the industry, we did not know people, we had no network. So for us, fundraising would have been a drastic, like, huge nightmare, you know, and a drastically uphill task. But with YC, it just leveled the playing field. Now it's going to be more product-first conversation. about everything else than, hey, who are you as well, right? So I think that definitely was a big factor, that there was this stamp of approval, if you want to call it that. Think of it like—

Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's getting that credential, right? Like, uh, it helps. It helps massively. It differentiates you from someone who's, you know, trying the same thing, uh, making to the run. So, uh, So in a way, YC became your early believers, you know, they were a set of people. Absolutely. And it's fascinating to hear that because a lot, for a lot many founders, early believers are either family or like, you know, some folks they know, like friends and, you know, some coworkers.

Friends and family were a part of like early believers before YC because if we did not have the support from family, we probably could not have just been like, yeah, it's fine, let's just quit it and everything, right? If we did not have supportive friends, we probably would have like double-guessed everything way too many times, right? Um, we would not have been able to test a lot of things. There were like so many people involved in just helping us do demo calls for that matter, right? Because how many will you do between the 3 of us? So that, yes. But when I say from an external perspective, right, like these are your close group, they'll always support you, right, and believe in you. But

yeah, I think I have to define the early believers. I feel like friends, family, they you know, some unconditionally support you no matter what you do. Sometimes it's kind of like a false signal to me, especially because they just want you to win no matter what you're doing. And if you're doing the wrong thing, that's like, you know, that's not going to help. But what I mean by early believers, in a sense that they believed in the conviction you had, right?

Yeah.

And I feel from a product standpoint on a market gap standpoint, or even like, you know, going in the long run, like, how are you going to change the game? So I feel those are, those people are like probably like, you know, the best people.

I think a better way to put it is like, if I go in the market and tell you that, hey, I am backed by my parents, my mom believes in me versus, hey, we're backed by YC, YC believes in us. That's 2 different things. So yes, yeah, that's why I said like, you know, from an external point where actual validation would matter. Right. There's support and then there's validation. There's like a strong belief and, you know, putting your money where your mouth is. All of those things. Yes. YC was the first one to do it.

So you had this video calling, like a simple one-click product. You went to YC. What happened there? Did you pivot or you still were in the same, like, mission and the same thing that you like pitch YC, or what did they suggest?

So, okay, we always knew that we do want to do infrastructure, right? That was obviously the end goal. Uh, we were building this to get more users, to get more conviction, to, you know, basically scale in a manner where we can, right? Then when we got into YC, I think that helped with the things what I told you, right? Like we got our early customers. We essentially unwrap things over a weekend which ideally were at least 6 months down the line where we were like, hey, 6 months later we're gonna make this into proper, you know, API with docs and everything out there. That all, we ended up opening up everything over a weekend because we were like, people are asking for it right now, then why wait 6 months, right? So we never were gonna do the end product as an end, like, you know, as the platform. And I don't think it's a smart move to build an end customer product as well as the infrastructure, because then you become cannibalistic in nature, right? Like, let's say tomorrow you launch something with that and we feel that, hey, it's a great feature, we like keep adding it to our platform, right?

And

it's just not healthy. It's not really comforting to know as an end customer, especially as a developer or, you know, as an early PM who you're thinking of something, you're building something, and then that just gets absorbed into the entity you're building on top of. I don't think that's a great feeling. I'm not going to name people, but— or companies, but that's a— very cannibalistic behavior. And I think that's not something that we wanted to do and even, you know, bring that into question when we had conversations. So I would say that we were sure that we wanted to do this. We had to take a call during YC, and we took that call early on because of both the conviction that, hey, decide and stick to it rather than, you know, pushing it out by, hey, once we reach this maturity, that's when we'll expose our product. Um, which is a very good advice in the early days. I think you will never find your product perfect and you will always find excuses, uh, reasons to like delay pushing it, delay shipping it. So in early days you need to keep shipping faster. I think as your company matures, as your product matures, you can't just keep shipping everything and anything. But with new features you should always ship fast, get feedback, and like iterate fast, I would say, right? So those things, I think, definitely got pushed and we were able to like move to the API-first thing very quickly rather than waiting out, you know, the next few months.

So you dropped the video thing, the video calling thing, and you quickly moved to the API. And when you got the first customers, were you building around them or were you building again with the conviction that Hey, this is probably, for example, the end user dashboard. Take that as an example, right? Some folks who didn't ask. So what are you planning? What was your mindset from a product standpoint? Like, how did you prioritize people who are asking? Of course, you have to do that as well as showing like promising features which will also move the needle.

So early on, we've always built what the customer wanted very early on, right? Because When you don't have customers, it's easy to say, hey, stick to a roadmap. I mean, you have no customers, what is the roadmap, right? And if you have a customer that's willing to use you with a few changes, you should. But there's always that call to be made about how much of a diversion is that from our actual long-term product, how we envision, right? So we obviously have a vision of how our product looks, right? At the end of the day, if it's a slight Let's say, you know, diversion, and it goes and essentially converges to the same point, great. It's a no-brainer. Yes. If it's a completely different direction, probably not the best call to do it, right? So, um, people often give you a blanket statement that, hey, you know, listen to your customer, and then customers are not always right. And, uh, there's just 2 parts, like people who believe A or B. Yeah. And I think it's never an A and B question, right? It's not a black and white situation. So you have to take that call for yourself about, one, how important that customer is for you. Second, how much of a negative impact that might have if you digress from your path that you had planned, right? And third, if you decide to stick on it, what's the drawback that you get, right? How much of a setback is it going to be? Let's say if you delay it by a couple of months, be it a go-live for a customer, be it a new feature, be whatever, right? That's how we have always evaluated, but we've been lucky that way that, as I said, right, I told you earlier on that we want to be able to use our product and be happy about it. So we know that, okay, naturally these are a bunch of things that come into it, right? So the base level was always very dev-first, was always easy to set up for us. Now when you come to features, right, there are use cases like, let's say, telehealth has a different set of use cases, edtech has a different set of use cases.

Sure.

There, yes, features got prioritized on the kind of customers we were getting. So that definitely works. But the point there is that we knew the features we should build and we would propose, and then luckily for us, it kept fitting, you know, hitting the mark every time that, hey, this is what we're thinking about it, how do you, you know, like it? So when we even do our customer calls— so the other part there is that we don't have a layer of PMs doing it, right? It was always founders doing it directly for the longest time. Still, like, 2 of us are involved actively in almost every customer convo, that major customer convo. Product is one part, but like direct customer feedback to us. Second, we did not have a middle layer of like product managers per se, and we still don't. We have our dev team directly work with customers in a manner where the feedback is so tight. So you will see our client groups have our engineers who work on the product directly, right? There's no support engineer per se who's just there for very early, hey, you know, we're looking into that. We don't do that, right? We still don't do that at our scale. And we hoping to not be like moving away from this method as long as we can. Yeah, this is obviously not scalable after a certain point, but we've been able to do processes around it that makes us— has made it last till now and hopefully will work in the future. So those kind of things, right? One, understanding your customer really well. Second, being able to have those convos where that direct feedback comes into loop. All of that definitely helped us like choose the right features. And even today, like what to launch, why to launch, You know, what are the features? What are the products that should be prioritized?

Yeah, a couple of things I want to unpack. One is the $11.6 million seed round after YC and product market fit. So let's talk about the product market fit first. Did you guys do anything different in achieving it? Or like, what were your signs? Like, okay, people are like, okay, craving for it. There is word of mouth spreading. There are more customers coming inbound, not outbound. Uh, like people are signing up naturally, organically. What was it like, the signs?

So I think, okay, there's a slightly misguided notion on product-market fit, right? And what I mean by that is people often talk about the things that you just said. Hey, there are more inbound, you know,

right?

So a couple of counterpoints there, right? Um, let's say you're building a product like us. This is not a problem statement that people are looking for at scale, right? That your inbound heavy will be on day zero. Second, for inbound to actually work, you need to have brand awareness. It's never a product-market fit thing, right? Like we have crazy inbound today, but I wouldn't say it's just because of the problem. Yes, all of that does play into role, but it's also because we put so much effort in content marketing. We have done so much, like so many activities to build brand awareness, a presence, a certain image, reputation, all of that, right? So I think all of that comes into play, right? So it's not a— never a blanket statement that, hey, um, just because people are coming inbound, um, versus if there's a product like, let's say, Calendly today, I mean, it will naturally have an inherent network effect built in because the moment I share a link to you, you experience the product, right? A product like ours is not like that. Think about it. Let's say, you know, Riverside had Dytt embedded. You as an end user would never even know that it's Dytt. So for products like ours, that natural discovery is slightly challenging and tricky, right? Second, it's not a product that every developer is looking for every single day. It's not like the search queries is not through the roof. So you have to have different ways to do it, right? And I'll cover those as well. But I think one of the things is very straightforward answer is, you know, when you know it, right? Like, you kind of know that things are working. I mean, you, you as a person know if— things are going well. And that's one good early indicator. I wouldn't say like do everything on that because then, then you're just neglecting data. But to be fair, your gut feeling is accurately right, like in, in most of these early situations where you know that, okay, things are working in the right direction versus things are not, right? Second is the kind of love that you get from customers, right? Growing customers is the second part to it. That's also a growth problem— discoverability, a branding, sales, marketing. Maybe you, you don't have enough people to serve you, um, you know, the kind of demand. But the kind of love that customers give early on, right? So for example, as I mentioned, right, there were people who were on like production with other providers for like 8 months, a year, and they wanted to move to our beta version. That kind of answered that, hey, there is a genuine problem. So before a PMF, which is your product-market fit, there is Another PMF that you should look at is like a problem market fit, that there is a problem that actually exists. And these were signs for that. And then when they used us and they stuck with us even after being a beta, and you know that when we say that it's a couple month old beta, like, you know, maybe 3, 4, whatever, few months old beta product, you know that there will be problems. And after that also, like, they retain through throughout, right? So that's great. So that's another sign that there is that strong customer love that they want you to keep getting better and they are happy to be a part of that process, right? Right. Third is understanding, like, you know, those basic things about if you remove this product, how much would their life be impacted? And, uh, again, tricky to answer in our situation, but yes, uh, that was a good sign that people would not be happy, right? Uh, fourth is willingness to pay. Uh, you should see if people are willing to pay for you, right? Uh, pricing in itself is a very different, uh, topic and it's a very, like, long topic we can talk about, but overall there should be a way for them to find value enough to be able to pay for that value, right? Right. However that is. So those signs, I would say, are good signs to look at. But then every different kind of product has a different way to evaluate a PMF versus, you know, what is it that's going to make you stick out. And I think PMF is a constant battle So early stage, you validate the idea, early adoption of it, then you add on new features, you see which one of them has like a PMF per se, and you know, then you ship out new products, you have to see which one. So I think it's always a journey that keeps happening, it's a recurring thing. It's about what stage you are at and what PMF looks at that stage, right? The kind of things you talk about, probably not PMF at an idea stage, but definitely PMF at like an MVP stage. Today, PMF would be a very different definition. It would be things like, hey, will the customer like it or not, like how much revenue becomes a part of it, things like that, right? So that is a very differential, uh, definition that keeps changing, and you have to define what actually BMF is for you, um, in a manner that you can quantify it objectively rather than just saying that, hey, yeah, we're kind of figuring it out. Yeah,

makes sense. I, I like what you said about figuring out problem-market fit first before going product-market fit. I think like And I keep hearing from founders the same thing. PMF, product market fit, is like a constant thing that happens to like, you know, for every stage of a startup, like because startups evolve and once they launch some new things, of course they have to find the fit again with their customers and whatnot. It'll be like not an uphill battle because they've done so much in the past. But it'll still be like a, like a thing you have to like figure out. So

it will be an uphill battle, to be fair, because the things that you have to face now are different. So every stage will have new challenges, right? So that is definitely like, I would never say that, hey, it'll get easier per se, but it will change. The battle will change. Depends on what you are best suited for. Maybe you are someone who comes from the kind of experience that when you're doing that growth part, it's a smooth ride for you versus let's say you are more of an innovator-first kind of person, so the ideation part becomes easy, right? Maybe you are a fast builder, the MVP part becomes easy. So depending on the kind of person and, you know, the kind of team, the kind of personalities every founder or the early team has, it might be different level of complexities for each stage. But yeah, it'll always be a new challenge for you. That's

absolutely

right.

And One more thing I want to add. I slightly disagree what you said about Dyte being not a viral product, meaning people won't discover. Because take Riverside, it's the end customer using it. I am a podcast host. I don't even know what SDK Riverside is using, for example. The reason is you can do a lot of growth hacks using your your SDK itself, like building these micro mini SaaS type products, which will help like, you know, people like get that viral effect, right? So

I think we should chat a couple months later because I think you'll like what we have in plan.

Yeah, see, that's what I'm saying. I feel like there is a lot of opportunity, people, founders, which I advise founders to focus on the growth piece using your own product. instead of doing the traditional marketing SEO type of a thing, because these products, they really help you scale, like, you know, and I think—

Absolutely. So I think I'll add to what you said, right? Like, when I said that, you know, not inherently viral product, I meant it at the stage of when we were discussing about the early, when we were trying to find PMF back then, right? Because back then, the same thing is that you have a small team, you're shipping out this, you're unwrapping everything. How do you get your focus and build a completely different product and try to market that as well, right?

Right.

When I said today, right now, you'll like it in a couple of months. Because the thing is, if you go to, for example, demo.dyed.io as well, what you'll see is that, you know, you can play around with the video calling tool, you can play around with the live streaming tool, you can play around with a bunch of other things. There's like a clone, there's a Huddle, there's a FaceTime. If you go in our blogs, you'll actually find building like a video interviewing platform with Dyed. with a guide and a sample app, right? Building ABC features with Dite, adding this to a Dite, like, you know, an experience like building a telehealth app with Dite. So absolutely what you said, building samples.

Exactly, that will help.

Do that today, and we do content around it also. But like, that's also soon we're going to ship something out which is like, kind of think of it like a marketplace or a hub where we've built out a bunch of things over, you know, the last months, like, you know, a couple of months, few months, our time of existence, and we're building more towards that. I think so. That's where, as I said, right, like, for us, dev experience matters. And like a core part, documentation is definitely the number one step, but the follow-on to that is kind of the sample apps that you have. The more variety and use cases that you'll cover, the easier you're going to make, right? So it goes back to our philosophy of making it really easy for developers and a dev-centric experience. Yeah. If you have detailed sample apps, you know, open repos, everything out there, that makes it really easy for people to try out and build more. And exactly what you said, like, now that viral effect— because a developer loving a product at one place moves to a different company and then they introduce that there—

Yeah.

Is something that we've seen happen like a bunch of times already now, right? And today we are at a stage, I think, where we can say that these things will start kicking in for our next stage of growth. So I do agree. That's why I said, like, you know, finding a PMF at every stage is very different. Today we definitely look at those hacks and we do. And as I said, right, that's happened and that's what we are really proud of, that the fact that developer moved to a different company and really loved the experience enough to bring it there. And, you know, we were like pleasantly surprised every time this happens.

Right. And that's kind of like a PMF signal because even taking superhuman terms, right, like the PMF guide they built The same thing, like if your customer's taking the product with them wherever they're going, that's, I think, you know, biggest signal you can get. Let's switch gears a little bit, man. First thing I have to acknowledge this, you never sounded like a developer in the last 50+ minutes of this conversation. Like you sounded more of like, you know, not labeling or anything, but you have this Wide spectrum of doing things in a startup, right? Which I feel is very impressive. I have to acknowledge that you were thinking from a growth standpoint, you're thinking from like true, true product standpoint. Sometimes like, you know, builders, they just get into their own bubble and they didn't like think about all the other things, right? So I think I appreciate, you know, you for sharing all your thoughts, your insights. how you went through the whole journey. And, you know, appreciate that. Just before we move on to the funding piece.

Thank you so much. And if it even gives you some comfort, I've probably not coded in, I don't know, 2+ years now. So yeah, I am actually no longer a developer per se. And to be fair, my co-founders are like way, way better at it. I mean, today I probably— most of my team is better at it than me, but I think Even back then, my co-founders were way better at me and they still are. So

good. If you're hiring people who are better than you, that means that's a great sign.

I guess.

Cool. So let's talk about the funding base before we dive into the big ticket item, which is by this time the episode goes live, Dyett is going to launch an exciting thing which I feel Abhishek should talk about. But yeah, let's talk about the funding piece. How did you end up being close to raising like $12 million. That's a massive round.

So I think I started this right, like, um, when you asked this question that how did you know BMF, uh, early adoption or whatever, uh, you know, that love. This is how we knew it, because we had inbound interest because our customers who use the product loved it so much that they went and boasted about it to their investors, and that's how everything caught up together, right? So That's one. Second, I mean, timing, right? Fundraising is also a lot about how well you are able to engage someone in the story and the vision. Because frankly, at the stage we were at, you don't have a lot to show in terms of as a company, you're early, right? So you need to be able to bring conviction to people. It's the same when you're hiring the team, you have to convince them that they are a part of a rocket ship, which we truly believe, yes, they are.

Right.

That's what everyone else should feel like when they associate with you. And I think that played a very important part, being able to run a tight process, right? We were— we knew when we were going to market, we knew we're not going to engage before that, and we knew that we'll put a timeline to it and stop it there, right? Or not get into the loop of, hey, keep doing on. Because think about it, at the numbers we're raising, we might as well get stuck into the loop. What if slightly more? You know, how about make that 11.6 around about 12? How about make that 12 around out, whatever, 15, right? And there's this deadly process that you get stuck into. Uh, so those couple of things definitely helped, right? But the biggest part was that our customers became such strong advocates that that was a natural thing. Second, as I said, right, like the fact that people were moving out months of production products to a new thing out of people with zero network, right? Like it was not a, you know, hey, I know this person, so try it out. It was purely that we saw this, we liked it, and we're loving the experience, right? That was the other part, that natural inclination of using it showed that there's genuinely a problem there. We were able to bring like, you know, a massive delta in the experience, right? If you go to competition even today, most of them have like thousands of lines of code for setting up a basic sample, 2 people calling up. And with us, it's like less than 10 lines or 5 lines, you know, however you want to define lines for that matter. Forgetting the marketing bit. But yeah, it's like genuinely, you know, drastically, drastically low effort today. The kind of things that we've shipped out, we were— and the kind of plan that we had. And I'm happy to tell you that we've been able to execute a lot of the vision that we had about how we'll be and where we'll be in that journey in terms of the product, the experience, and the kind of dev experience overall over the next, let's say, 2 years when we were raising, right? That's how actually all of it played out. And then I think goes back to my initial point that we had discussed, that luck definitely plays a big factor, right?

Hmm.

Right place, right time. So there are things that you can do, which I just told you, like run the process well, know when to go, don't get lured into that, you know, loop of continuous raising, don't overglamorize it and all of that. And then after that, get back to work because There's only so much you can do, right? And then leave the rest to it. And that's how it worked. And I think the other part for us has always been that we were never chasing fundraising.

We never— I was about to ask that because when you say it's pure timing and you're heads down building this, I was about to ask like, does that— the fundraising isn't even part of your strategy? Right, you're so focused on this.

It is, but when we say there's a difference between chasing— okay, so when I say chasing, I mean things like we want to raise like an X amount of dollars at this high valuation so that we can do a PR around it. Um, to be fair, we had raised that amount that you heard about long back. We announced that amount much later because that's when we wanted to launch Dyte to the world, and TechCrunch definitely gives a very good platform for visibility, right? So for us, it was never about chasing that number and that valuation, right? To be fair, we had one of the largest seed rounds in our batch, and I think by an Indian VC company till then, right? So those things do play into, uh, like come into picture when you look at things like this. But what happened was that for us, it was never that glamour chase. And I think, um, some companies do need to keep raising drastically to stay in business. They're kind of that businesses that you need— it's a winner-takes-all. And There are companies like us which can work with certain amount but longer time cycle, which work with like more amount and be able to reduce the time cycle because you can hire more people, you can build a better team, you can do 20 more things, right? And for us, it was always that we knew that we would continue building if we raise $1 million, if we raise $10 million, if we don't raise, right? So we had like— there's this thing internally, YC has this ABC plan. I mean, we had that pre-VC itself, that there's about how if we have to build it for a year, can we do it? If we have to build it without anyone ever backing us, can we do it? So things like that, right? The decision, you should be able to have a path with all of those. So that's why I think that for us, that timing, the way the product feedback was, knowing when you're strongest in the market right now, being able to closing quickly, not getting stuck in that loop. All of these play a picture into it. And yeah, those things definitely helped us raise the seed round that we did.

Awesome. And how did you get Ryan Hoover on the board? I have to ask this as someone who I really admire him and closely worked with him when I was at Product Hunt. I have to ask, how did you get him?

So the true answer is it was, I think, old email where I'll tell you what had happened was there's Demo Day, right? So, okay, we had actually gotten investors prior to Demo Day. We had kind of like closed everything, so we were not raising on Demo Day. So what we did was we converted our Demo Day into more of a product showcase pitch because the idea was that people watch Demo Day, they might have customers, they might have companies, whoever, right? Like in the circle.

This is YC Demo Day, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did that. And then we got an inbound, I think, interest about a meeting or something from Ryan. Hmm. And that's how we started about like, you know, I think— sorry, we got that inbound interest from a bunch of other angels. Sorry about that. Like, I— and then one of the angels was like, hey, do you want other angels on the cap table? And we were like, yeah, one of, you know, one of the angels that we would love to have is Ryan. And he's like, I can shoot an intro. Uh, so it was a cold outreach intro where he's like, hey, this is the company, do you think you want to talk? And we ended up chatting. Nice. And yeah, that, that's how we got it. Like, one of our angels who saw us on Demo Day, uh, came on the cap table, uh, introduced us to Ryan. And that was just like— so Ryan actually wanted to come on from like a fund perspective. By then he was running Weekend Fund. But as I said, we had closed a round to like a proper this thing. So we only had certain allocation for angels, and we were like, um, the only way we can get you on the cap table is as an individual person because your fund won't meet the targets of both the amount and ownership, right? As an angel, you can like reduce that amount because for us the problem was we didn't want to raise more. It was the other problem, which is a good problem to have. But yeah, that we didn't want to raise beyond a certain level because we'd already said things, right? So that's how we ended up raising from Ryan.

Nice. Yeah, Ryan's a great guy, and you know Oh, he is. Glad he's on the team. So one thing I want to ask, which is like kind of like a typical question, but I want to also like see how you think about it before we talk about the upcoming launch Dyte is doing. How do you handle competition? Like in this space, you said, you know, there are so many opportunities that popping up given post-COVID, there are like tons of— even I pitched you an idea before even this call, right? So these things like keep on chiming in and we all crave for a simplified SDK, right? In this space, I feel it's a hard space. How do you keep up with competition and what do you do differently?

So there's 2 types of competition, right? There's one that is like existing companies, right? The massive ones which are already there. For them, we know that they're not companies like who can change everything today. I mean, you build a product, you have a base of customers, you have like certain revenue numbers, everything is there. It's really hard for you to just build a new product and ship everything out because by that logic everything could have been built by Google or Amazon. So that's definitely not happening, right? There we know that, okay, they try to take inspiration from things, for the lack of a better word, I'm going to call it inspiration, and, you know, put things there, but At the core of it, I mentioned, right, like when these companies were built, they were built around the idea of video-first engineering, right? And today, changing that drastically to a way we have done, right, making it simplified, for them they'll have to just keep adding layers on it. But at the end of the day, the core product is still that complex, right? So essentially, that becomes a challenge for them. For the new age ones, right, we actually have defined a lot of things for the way things should be built, and we've seen people have actually taken inspiration from that, adopt to that, So for us, we've always believed that whatever you build can probably be mimicked in a span of 3 to 6 months. Because I mean, if we can do it, so can anyone else, right? We're not like special creatures who, who can do so drastically different things. Probably it's just about a matter of time, right? Right. So for you as a company, you keep innovating further on the things that you're doing, right? You can't control the competition. And as I said, right, like people talk about this idea of defensibility moot. I think everything is built over time. Um, when you start, you frankly have a different approach to a problem. You work on that, build some conviction around it. By the time people reach that stage, you're already like, you know, a couple steps ahead, like further in the journey. So that is where you have to have that innovator's mindset continuously, where you keep innovating, you keep adding on to what you've built, and that over time builds defensibility. Like today, if someone has to start, they have to think about things like, you know, the kind of documentation we have, the kind of UI kit approach we have, the the, you know, simplified SDK, everything. And it's really hard for copying everything. But when we started this, people could have ripped off things, and that happened. Like, we did have things that people just copied and put up there. And I'm talking about things like font colors and, you know, the kind of messaging— integrate in 3 steps, like the most developer-friendly SDK. But that doesn't matter because at the end of the day, as I said, right, like, if people are copying you, that's good because you're going to define what they're going to copy next. So you keep focusing on that. And as I said, it takes some time to get over it because when you start building, right, you get this really frustrating moment internally that, hey, this is what I thought of and someone's just ripping it off. It's okay, it's gonna happen, right? I mean, it's also a lot to remember that a lot of it will depend on the way you execute rather than what you're thinking. And, you know, ideas have never become billion-dollar companies. It's the execution that follows. So That's what something like that, I think we keep coming back to that. We know that that's going to happen and it's good. At least we are being able to define how the industry moves forward. That was something that we wanted to do eventually. If we're able to do it early on by making people follow it, great for us, right? So I think that's something that definitely is a good factor for us where we don't really worry about it too much.

That's so different. That's a different answer I got from you about competition. I feel accepting competition itself is the way you do it, right? Like, you know, in your words, you basically accept it. But the key piece, and you don't, you know, shake or stumble, they will rip off you. whoever it is, but at that point you will be on the next level.

Yeah.

So that means it's just they catching up to you, right? Like, so as long as you have that conviction and confidence that, okay, I'm going to keep innovating. I think people who don't have that conviction worry about competition, right? So I love that a lot. And that's a very different answer. I feel like, you know, I have to practice and preach as well inside my mind. And whenever I talk to like founders, That's a great answer, by the way. Love it. Let's talk about what you're building next, right? Like the amazing thing which I am so proud to, like, you know, introduce to Product Hunt in a week. Talk about like the live SDK, live streaming SDK.

So as I said, right, we started with video calling, purely 2 people calls like this. as we realized over time that overall, like, you know, we'll keep expanding. So on 18th July, we're launching a live video streaming SDK, right? Uh, which brings interactive live streaming at scale. Think of, you know, 1 to 2 million kind of use cases where what it makes, like, you know, better today is that with one SDK you can get live calling as well as live streaming. Plus it's scalable, it's— you can, you know, play around with it, customize it. with ease. Again, a couple of hours and you're done and you can deploy a prod-ready product. And, you know, it has the ability to switch between things like live call to a live stream to get people on the stage.

Right.

All of the complex edge cases that you had to like think through, build about, everything is already inbuilt. And, you know, as I said initially, like stability is not something, it's not a feature, it's a bare minimum that you're supposed to do. Similarly, the other part of that for us has always been observability and analytics. I mean, the whole point of embedding things like this in your product is that you are owning the experience. And truly owning the experience is not just about how it looks, feels, but also being able to get the kind of data that's relevant. So all of that is done there out of the box. Don't have to do anything custom, you know, just go ahead, go to Product Hunt, check out, use the code, you'll get extra minutes. Come, you know, upvote us if you like the experience and you can get live.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to like— so do you have like anything on the roadmap for non-technical folks to adapt Dyte? Because I have to ask this, I want to like use Dyte for some of the side projects I want to work on. So just curious about that.

So we actually do have a Bubble plugin already, right? Where it's like one of the, you know, widely used no-code platforms. We do plan to ship out a few more, you know, no-code tools, no-code platform plugins where you can just create an account, use the API key, and everything else is already set up there. So essentially we'll do that for both the live streaming as well. We'll be shipping that. And if you have recommendations for the platforms that you'd like to have this on, you know, I'd be happy to hear that and we can plan specific plugins for those as well. But yeah, Bubble we already have right now as well.

That's great to hear, man. Like, that's sweet news for non-technical folks who are listening who want wants like all set up video SDK. And I'm so excited, Abhishek. I feel like, you know, Diet is here to stay and you guys are really passionate about solving the problem, which is making the video better, right? And given the age we live in, remote has become so popular. Everybody's moving. Nobody's living in SF, by the way. Everybody's moving in different cities. And, you know, I live in Atlanta and I've had so many calls with so many people just because this thing is enabling it and that thing you're making it better and improving on top of it, right? So I'm excited for Dyed and I'm so bullish on you guys and you seem very clear. very conviction-oriented person, like as a founder. So any closing thoughts and any tips for founders who are listening? Like any, not general, but anything that you want to say, hey, do this in the right way, or you've done something wrong and you want to pass it on to others?

I think one of the things is definitely that, you know, when you start doing something, give it time so that, you know, don't, don't be extremely impatient. But I'm also not saying that keep slogging at it for, you know, like if you're trying to push a wall single-handedly, it's not gonna happen. But give it enough time for things to play out. And besides that, see, anything I say will be a very generic statement, so I think it's not like very useful. But if, you know, people want feedback, I'm happy to, you know, help with specific custom feedback. I usually also review IC applications every now and then whenever I can get time because we had help and that's why we are where we are. And as I said right early on as well, that you— that's one way to give back, that you give time.

Yeah, pay it forward.

I mean, yeah, and you should. And happy to do that. Uh, one last thing I would say is that like If you do believe in something, if you have conviction, don't go out looking for reasons not to because you'll find like hundreds of them.

Hmm.

Try to work through better. I mean, you know, people always say that you should know why it will fail. Yes, you should know. But, you know, I think a lot of people end up getting into that trap that they think of an idea and then they think like, hey, I don't feel this problem on a personal level, what you mentioned yourself, you know, early on that. Or hey, I feel that people say that this is like a half-hearted thing. And because at the end of the day, you have to give your time and, you know, your opportunity cost. So as long as you have conviction, I would say that yes, you should give it a shot because it's better to do it and regret, in my opinion, than always regretting the what-if part of it.

Yep.

Right. And lastly, just probably apply for, you know, I mean, not apply, but like fill up the YC application. It will give you a great sense of clarity, especially if you're in early days. And I think it's something that you can do at any stage of the company, especially the kind of questions are very relevant till date. And probably, I'm sure they'll probably be relevant like when we are 10x from here as well.

Right. Yeah, that's, that's great advice. I, I, I never heard of that before, you know, fill up YC application no matter what, you apply or not. I think it's the clarity is really important than getting into IC, right? So if you have that clarity, you will get clarity.

Exactly. The core idea is get clarity. It's not about getting into IC, but essentially wherever you are, clarity of thought is really important.

I love that. Well, I think we can go for another hour or 2, but I want to like stop it because of— I want to also give you time to like, you know, Take some rest. You had like a long day, I can assume. But this has been a great insightful conversation and I love the story. And, you know, I had like so many goosebumps moments in this, you know, last 1 hour or 20 minutes. But yeah, this was fun, Abhishek. And guys, please go check out Live Streaming SDK from Dyte. It's about to launch, you know, when this podcast goes live. And I'm so honored and, you know, so proud to actually present that, this product to the Product Hunt community. And yep, that's it. And see you guys for the next episode. Till then, you know, stay healthy, stay hungry, and stay foolish. All right. Cheers.

Bye.