Pritika Mehta - How you can build a dream website using a simple prompt with Butternut AI in 20secs!

See, ultimately the goal of a business is how do you create something people will use? Uh, and my motto has always been how do I create something that could go into millions of homes? And definitely if you build something useful or something that people want, uh, yeah, you just have to make it easy for them to get it. So that's all tech behind it.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs Podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game, take action with a chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives. And yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today, I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor, acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once, selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product. Acquired customers and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing for, for whatever reason— lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest— and you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés, and start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different for every founder facing this crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the business becomes less valuable or worse. Worthless. If you find yourself here or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. Do you know you can build a fully functional, aesthetically beautiful website with a single prompt using AI? Well, my next guest is a founder who's building Butternut AI, a website builder that does exactly what I said, but to perfection. Pritika Mehta is an ex-YC founder, TEDx speaker, angel investor, venture partner at Pioneer Fund, and advisor to many startups. Previously, she built SOC, Soho, which is backed by YC, which went from zero to millions in ARR in 18 months, which has changed the way men rock socks. So I love custom socks. So I can empathize with like, you know, fellow people who love socks, but she's a computational physicist turned AI entrepreneur. She's a founder of Buttonet AI, like I mentioned. And I'm so stoked to welcome her to the podcast. Kritika, welcome to the show. How are you feeling?

Hi, Sharma. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm feeling great and looking forward.

Absolutely. So first of all, I saw you mentioned a lot of times about, you know, founder mentality in your tweets, be it on LinkedIn, on Twitter. What is it like to be being a founder coming to the US, you know, from India? You know, I'm a fellow immigrant as well. So what is it like? You came to do master's, if I'm not wrong, and this was 2016. you were doing, already exploring AI. This was way before AI is a thing, like a wave, right? So talk to me about the roots, why you came to the US, like, you know, what is your endgame? Like, what's something that drives you as a founder? I wanna hear like, you know, some of your backstory.

Yeah, so I think as a kid, I've always been very intrigued by maths. art. Like I used to paint a lot and I started coding very early in my life. And I think the euphoria that came from building stuff, that was magical. Like how you could, you know, on an empty canvas, how you could create something or with code, how you could create a game that didn't exist earlier. I think that feeling of creating something from scratch that you can use or people can use really, I think that kind of inspired me. And in my mind, I always knew I'll build something that could go into millions of homes. So I was driven. since childhood to do that. And I made my first dollar on the internet when I was a teenager. And I think that really changed the spectrum of, you know, what will come forward. And yeah, after that, it led to me pursuing computer science since I was interested in coding and maths was my core. And because maths was my core, I started exploring machine learning. I started— I remember even in those days I used to watch Andrew Ng YouTube videos. They were like 1 hour long and with these heavy calculators and, you know, we used to code on MATLAB and Python and I became really intrigued. Like, that was like, I felt like I have found my home. Like, this is what I want to do. And I really, yeah, maths and coding. I think the combination was killer for me. And that, so I worked for 2 startups back in India and in one of the startups we were actually doing this. We started It was a patent invalidator tool that we built and we, you know, started doing machine learning. It like, it was a huge amount of text and we did, we started doing natural language processing and machine learning on that using Python libraries. And it became, now it's doing millions of dollars in revenue. So I think that was my first exposure. And when we started building that, it was, you know, when I joined the company and we started incorporating machine learning, it was then. I was just like, okay, this is gonna be my future. This is gonna be the future. And I want to be the part of this future. And that led me to pursue my master's in AI in New York. And after which I worked with TripAdvisor. But yeah, in my heart, it's always been like, what can I create? Even since college, I think I've been experimenting with my friends. Like in college, we started this one company, BookMyPresent. It was more of a, yeah. project kind of a thing that we did where we used to deliver custom gifts to people at their homes. So

nice.

I think the bug was always there and with time it kept on evolving. I, you know, I was shaping myself as an entrepreneur and definitely you keep on learning things. So that's been my journey. Yeah.

I think one thing, one common thing that I keep on hearing from people like you, me, like, you know, I've spoken to like thousands of founders, we all share one incredible thing that actually kind of drives us, which is the itch to do something or create something, right? That is like, even though you scratch it, it never goes away. It never fades away. You just— the itch keeps on coming back and you just keep on doing it. That is something that I feel people, we should remember. We often like kind of forget about it and go after like building businesses, which is very important. I'm not saying that it's not important, but I think it's fundamentally we should rely on the curiosity, the itch. And, um,

I think building a business— sorry to cut you down there— but I think building a business in itself is like you are scratching many surfaces and learning so many things. So I think, uh, yeah, creating something and then building, you know, having people pay you for that, like, that's, I think, what a real startup or a business is, where, uh, definitely you have you're creating something that millions of people will use and definitely, you know, you get a revenue stream as well. So I think that's a solid business if somebody knows how to create and sell.

That's like the ultimate dream, you know, doing something you love and getting paid for it, right? We all are in the process of chasing that. So talk to me about Socksoho. It's a D2C type of a thing. It's not like tech-heavy, tech-oriented, like, you know, software-dominant startup. It's very combination of— I know you have like a product and there is the other side which is manufacturing, like, you know, you get into all those. So what is that like? Like, what was that like going from you being very passionate about building software, which is like you said, creating something out of thin air, like you know, painting on a canvas to like getting into physical world, like doing manufacturing, handling orders, e-commerce, like, yeah, why Sock Soho? Like what made you build that?

Yeah, so everybody thought I'll build a SaaS company and I ended up building a sock company. And yeah, so, you know, when you look at D2C companies on the front, you definitely see it as a brand, you know, all that physical product, but the backend, you know, what drives it, what brings growth, what, you know, the marketing, everything, that's all tech. And I think what we did was we were the early companies that started doing e-commerce on WhatsApp. So that was our hack, like where, you know, people, instead of bringing people onto our website from our ads, we started bringing people on our WhatsApp and we built a bot that could give you an experience like you're shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. So I think that is what led to our success. And yes, ultimately, you know, we are like, okay, what should we start with? Like, so what we read, we read a report by Bain that was like, you know, after this 3G, the Jio revolution that happened in India, the men fashion category was growing like anything. It was the fastest growing segment. So we tapped into it and we're like, okay, how do we get into it? And how do we become winners? So we made a list of 50 different products we could enter with. And surprisingly socks came on the top. It was. To ship, there was you know you get what you see, no sizing issues, and there was no other brand in India that was known for socks. And just like women wear jewelry, men started wearing socks as and what's it as as something to show off. So we're like we started it as an experiment, and we're like okay let's build something that we would wear ourselves. And we started with startup socks. We launched it, and it was oh like as Paul Graham says do things that do not scale. Initial sales strategy was you know going to all Facebook groups or A list of like 200 top Indian CEOs who would, who might be interested to buy it as a swag for their team or for their clients and messaging all of them. And yeah, we made a ton of sales in the first week and then we were like, okay, this experiment will work. And then we sat down and, you know, it was like, we knew you can't just sell on design. It has to be quality. Like, and how do you make the best quality? I didn't come from any garment or any background. No. So it was like, how do I learn from it? So what I did was I ordered like socks from across the world from 500 different brands. And we tried socks like every 3 hours we were changing socks on one foot. We were putting the other foot. Yeah. Just to try, you know, what is good, what is not good so that we have our analysis. And then we found out manufacturers who were ready to work with us to actually teach us as well. So I remember I spent like, there was a time when I spent 72 hours straight in a factory. Just to learn the art of sock making, like, and they really could not understand my obsession with making the perfect sock, like for the Indian man, for the Indian weather. And ऐसा ही तो होता है आपको और क्यों चाहिए? And I'm like, no, no, no. Amazing customer journey where somebody comes onto your store, whether it's a website or on WhatsApp, and how do you automate it in such a way that somebody, you know, sees your ad or just goes and search on Google? How do you create that customer journey that somebody lands onto your website and goes and checks out in just under a few minutes? That's what tech is. How do you do that? So I think, yeah, I've always been utilizing tech stuff to do anything. And see, ultimately the goal of a business is how do you create something people will use? And my motto has always been, how do I create something that could go into millions of homes? And definitely if you build something useful or something that people want, Yeah, you just have to make it easy for them to get it. So that's all tech behind it.

I think, yeah, that's all tech. I think I can sense after you make a product, how you sell the product. I feel in this particular case, it's all, you know, the credit goes to tech. I want to cover the first part. I'm just even incredibly curious that it's so unknown territory for you getting into manufacturing, especially like clothing. And it's, and it's also such a— I wouldn't call it messy, but it's such a crowded space, right? Uh, especially clothing as in general. What kind of self-doubts that you kind of destroyed along the way? Like, I can, I still can do it. Like, I don't have the credential, but I still can pursue it. I want to understand that, you know, that phase.

Yeah, I think we try to make things easier for us. So we did not open up a manufacturing unit. We nailed down the research, like the R&D part we did in-house, and then we found the right partners to build on those, you know, with our, what's that, with our composition, with our R&D, you know, we found design partners. So I think, yeah, we didn't take the entire load of doing that. We did that smart part of not taking that headache of getting into manufacturing because that's a different world. And if you get, yeah. Thing was how do we build the best product? And then how do we, you know, get it to millions of people in India? So that was one part. And when it comes to self-doubt, I don't think so. I ever had self-doubt. Oh, I can't do it. It was always like, how do I reverse engineer it? Like, I mean, you know, as an engineer, you're always like hacking things. You're always finding easier ways or not easier, or you're just trying to break bigger problems into smaller problems and solving each part of it. So it was, I think it was more of curiosity rather than self-doubt. I don't— if I recall, I never thought, oh, you know, I can't make the best sock or I can't make the best product. It was like, yeah, if I am getting into something, I need to be the best at it because there's no point being the third best or the fourth best. So you have to be the best at what you do. That's how people remember you and that's how people speak about you. So now if you see some of the biggest Bollywood celebrities, you know, they are often spotted wearing Sock Soho. Some of the biggest top CEOs in India. They are our clients. So it's like, yeah, I— so as an entrepreneur, you need to be really, really optimist. I think you should not self-doubt yourself, rather believe more in yourself that you can do it. And you just need to break a bigger problem into smaller problems and just solve them.

Talk to me about the validation piece, right? You said you approached— I think you literally did like cold outreach, the do things that don't scale way to, you know, What did you sell? Did you sell the idea of a quality sock or did you actually send socks? Because I'm curious that if it is a SaaS product, we would have built like a shitty MVP, showed like some sort of impact in a very small way. So this is like slightly different. So I'm curious about how did you take those? Is that pre-orders you made the sales in?

What was like— Yeah, it was before we started manufacturing. So when you get into fashion and retail, you know, first of all, you see that The first purchase, especially online, is on the design. People do read the composition and everything. The first thing is the design, and but the second purchase from the same customer is when your quality is great. So I think the first thing that worked for us were definitely our you know nice like in India everybody was wearing those thick black blue gray socks which were not meant for Indian weather, and yeah so we brought some you know we were a breath of fresh air, and it was something like. Uh, I remember like a lot of my cousins who used to travel abroad, they used to get these nice socks from US and always flaunt them. So it was like, okay, how do you build something that is so high quality and that is so, uh, good looking? Um, and it's, you know, it's different. So I think we started there. Uh, but over time it was like, okay, we start, as I mentioned, WhatsApp was our big channel. It also helped us understand our customer needs. So we started WhatsApp as our customer support, but then, you know, once you start talking to people, you understand what they need and why are they— if they're not buying, what is making them not buying? Like what do they need? So I think that's how the product evolution happened. Like what people need, what should be the next thing we should be going after. And it's all analyzing the data and seeing what's happening, what's happening in your funnel.

And you went to YC using Socksoho, if I'm not wrong. When did that happen? Is it like Why did you think that you're already pretty much getting into the flow, right? So why you need, why you thought about like getting backed by VC? I'm curious.

Yeah. So when it comes to SOC, I, you know, as I mentioned, there was this big WhatsApp component to it. And I think when it comes to YC, I'm a big fan of Paul Graham. I've been reading his essays since like 2016. So it's like, I think all the businesses I've built all have been built on the principles that Paul Graham taught. So it was more for the Paul Graham, for being in the ecosystem of like-minded people. And yeah, that's, that was the thought process of applying to YC. And yes, I am very glad we got in. And, you know, I think the kind of ecosystem that YC provides is just amazing. So, and it stays with you for life. So

it's, I think that's what I hear. I have this other podcast called YC Founder Stories. I just interview people like you who went to YC and share their experience. And everybody— and I, you know, worked with YC founders before— everybody like you, they realize the power of the community. If they're, if they're after like venture, they then realize that it's not about like the $500K or $250K or whatever it is they invest. It's really about, you know, the community of founders coming together to become better one phase after the other. So what was like the impact? Like you, you got into YC, what was it like the journey?

I think, you know, it's a 3-month program and it's like, they're always pushing you to aim higher and build for the world. And, you know, and I think deadlines play a very, very important role, like every week. And since you have, you know, in your group, you have your peers as well and you're like, oh my God, you know, they're making amazing progress. We need to do the same. And that really pushes you forward. And that's one part, that's part of what you get in those 3 months. But I think after that, it's like definitely the ecosystem, the community. It's like, you feel like nobody's too far. Everybody's either 1 or 2 connections away. And, you know, just like, okay, in America, if you meet a desi, there's an instant connection, right? You're like, oh, you— the same way, if you meet a YC founder, I feel like it's so easy to bond. It's so easy to become friends and definitely being surrounded by like-minded people who are building startups. day in, day out. So I think that's the ecosystem every startup founder wants to be in. And that's what YC provides to you for life. It doesn't end with 3 months. It stays with you for the entire life.

Right. Let's talk about Butternut. I think you've sold Socksoho and, you know, are you still with Socksoho? Like, what's the story there?

Yeah. So with Socksoho, it's going strong in India and it's still growing well. I started working on Butternut. It was more of an idea and then it became a company. So I'm working full-time on Buttonut now.

But still strong going in India. And I think I have so many cousins who crave for, like you said, like, you know, they sometimes ask for, hey, you want these fancy socks from India? I'll definitely refer. They pretty much know by now. Yeah. Talk to me about Buttonut AI. Why do you think? So it's so interesting now that you're actually building AI. This is what you meant for, if I'm not wrong, because you came to the US to explore, to push yourself. Now you're actually doing it. The boundaries, like how far do you think AI will go and what are you trying to do with Butternut, especially with this idea?

So 2 questions, 2 answers. How far will AI go? It's gonna go as far as we can't even imagine. So, you know what, like You know, I saw, like you mentioned that, yes, I was doing my master's in AI and what we all envisioned in 2015, '16. You know, while I was doing this, this was the reality that everybody was envisioning. Like, this is what AI is going to do. This is what all the math behind this stuff is gonna do. Right. And I think that has become a reality after the launch of these transformers, all these LLMs, and things have become much easier. You know, you're not building those models on MATLAB or like with small Python libraries anymore. So a lot more powerful tools have come up and now the world has been exposed to it. And living in SF, I could see how things are moving so fast in every domain. I think the world is gonna see a drastic change in the next 5 years. And yeah, I mean, I could see things getting built every day in SF and with Butternut, it's like, yeah. So the journey was like, I, you know, when When this AI revolution came in, it was like, okay, yeah, you know, I've been learning about transformers. I've been doing different stuff. So I was experimenting with different, different ideas. So what happened was I made a list of 50 different ideas I'd like to work on and, you know, what has a big market, what is something that I would like to work on. So out of all those 50 ideas, I think this one really stood out. This was something I just believed that I could crack the market because I understood it being a software developer. You know, I have built so many websites and it's never been a delightful experience for me. And I've also seen back home, the city I'm in, uh, I'm from, I've seen so many of my friends running these services, like business where they're building like from very simple websites to very complex websites. And that's still a huge industry because it's very intimidating for a non-tech person to actually build a website. So I'm like, okay, now we have so much intelligence available. Right. How do we build a model in such a way that it helps people to build a website with just natural language and just the way you talk to a developer. Can we build a system where you can build a website or a complex system like Uber or Airbnb, an app like that, with just you talking to the AI agent and telling what you want and it does that for you? So the lowest hanging fruit was definitely the website because every business when you start it or if you have an offline business, you always want an online presence. So it started with an experiment and we built an MVP. We launched it on Twitter. I just put up a small tweet saying, hey, you know, I built this. Would you like to just try it and give me feedback? So I never had any good following on Twitter. And most of the people were like my friends or family. So I was expecting like 30, 40 people might just try it and give me feedback. But what ended up happening was the tweet went viral. People started building so many things, so many different types of websites on ButtonArt AI. And I think that's when it hit me, like, this is something real, like the direction we are going in is right. And in 48 hours, we launched on Product Hunt and it blew up there as well. Since then, we have grown to more than 200,000 users and it's all organic.

Wow. 200,000 users. That's, that's massive. What's your favorite website that's built on Butternut?

So a lot of YC founders, they build their website on Butternut. Yeah, I think every website is so special. And definitely when somebody's, you know, people who have existing building business and they are building, that's one part. But when I see somebody like building a new business, launching a new business and building their website, I think those websites are so special because I'm equally excited as they are that they're launching their business. So I think all websites are quite special.

Special. Talk to me about the— I'm not technical, but I would love to, if you can explain to me in layman's terms about what happens behind the scenes of Butternut. Like, it's magic, I would say. That's what I will define. The things that I see using AI, you just write a prompt like how we are talking and you get this incredible output, which was not even possible like, you know, a few years ago. So it's so magical is what I would explain. But I want to also understand what happens behind the scenes, like how you take a natural language prompt to build the whole thing. Like such a— like it's a complex thing.

Yeah. So it's like we have built our own model by parsing millions of websites across the internet, and we also use some existing LLMs on top of it and fine-tune them. So it's like, so the input and output is like, okay, you tell us your business name, you give us a little idea about what your business is and the model, our AI model, it tries to understand that business category and your target audience, you know, where, like, is it an online business? Is it an offline business? It tries to understand everything. What is the kind of brand colors your website, you know, your brand should be having? What is the kind of tone it should be? What's the content? What should be the relevant images for it? What should be like the layout of it? So that is what our AI, you know, the model that we have built tries to understand and then it gives you an output. And then you can always— it's not going to be like perfect. There could be something you want to make better, you know, maybe add pages or do anything. So instead of doing things on a blank template, you know, you get this amazing website and then you can customize it. Either like if you want an image, you don't like the image you see and you want something better, you either regenerate it or you tell our AI what you want on that image. AI will give it to you. The same with the content. If you say sound it like Elon Musk, you know, you can just give that.

Wow.

And it'll do it for you. So it's like, yeah, many things happening under the hood. All those things put together to give you a website that is fully functional in just 20 seconds. Like it's wild. We take care of all the SEO optimizations. Everything is happening behind the hood and you just go on, carry on with your business and we'll take care of this for you.

Is it strictly like websites, meaning like landing pages, or are you, are you kind of getting into solving functionality like login pages, membership? You kind of get into these particular specific nuances of an idea, for example, right? Is that what you're doing? Or is it just the landing page that you are stopping?

Yeah. So initially when we launched the MVP, it was more of a landing page, a one-pager, but recently we launched a new version where you can build a full-fledged website on it. And yeah, every week we are launching new features where you can add many, like you can embed your own code, you can integrate your, like if you're a coder, you know, you get this website and you want to integrate certain APIs. So you'll be able to do anything and everything. And yes. I would say like in next 2 years, you'll be able to build a complex app, Airbnb or Uber or anything that requires a lot of like customizations on ButtonArt with prompts. As long as you know what you want, you want login page, you know what should be the flow. As long as you can tell that to our system, you'll be able to build the entire app with frontend, backend, database, everything working.

Wow. So I'm a non-technical maker and what you're telling to me is a dream because like if you asked me 5 years ago, I had, I don't know shit about like writing code because I don't know how to write code. And then I kind of embarked on this movement called no-code, like 2018, 2019. I used tools like Zapier, Airtable, you know, so on and so forth, like Webflow, so on, you know, that actually help me bring my ideas to life. But there are some limitations, like take Bubble as an idea builder. There are still some limitations that you kind of encounter and you have to either hire a CTO, find a co-founder who's technical. But it seems like Butternut is going to pretty much solve everything. You are, I think, going back to Sam Altman's incredible take on building one-person billion-dollar businesses. I think you might be opening that door because all people need is clarity of what they want or expressing their idea. And I feel I have a sense that Buttonet is a solution that makes it possible. Is that your vision? First of all, what is that? What is your ultimate vision for Buttonet AI?

So the ultimate vision is Definitely, you know, with ButtonArt in 5 years, like you won't need as many developers or dev shops as you have right now, or people who are, you know, building it for their clients. It will be much easier, much quicker. Like even though, you know, a lot of these platforms, Wix, Squarespace, they exist, but ask any non-tech person, like there's a huge learning curve, you know? Yes. You, yeah, you do need some coding experience to build something very like customizable. So. It's like, okay, how do we build a world where you'll be able to build complex stuff, complex apps with just natural language? And how— yeah, just to enable everybody to become a software developer. And just by communicating in natural language, you'll be able to— you don't even need to no-code. That's the future, right? From no-code to you telling your AI agent everything in English and it building it. So that's the future. How can you make software development, like natural language to software development is the future. And that's what we are envisioning with Butternut. Like, how do you give this tool or this power to everyone, every business owner or anybody who dreams of doing it,

right?

Such a powerful app and just launch it in just a few minutes.

That's so fascinating. I think I think the future is going to be wild. If you just know how to talk, I think you can build. That is to me is like wild.

I think, yes, you need to be— yes, building and all these things are going to get automated. They're gonna be much, much simpler in next few years. So now the question is you need to be very creative, you know, because everybody will be able to build things. Now, what do you do differently?

Correct.

So that's going to be the future.

And in your previous answer, you mentioned that there are certain domains that AI is going to revolutionize. I think this particular domain is more about entrepreneurship. Yeah. I'm curious, what are the things, what are the domains that are untouched as of now?

I don't think so. There's going to be anything that is going to be untouched by AI. Like, as I mentioned, like, I see You know, when it comes to Hollywood, when it comes to software development, shopping, video editing, like anything and everything. It's just like when internet came, how everything changed. Like

everything went bonkers.

Yeah. It's not like you, you know, it's— yeah, I mean, there are still going to be these industries that are going to exist 10 years down the line as well, but the way they work and the efficiency, everything is going to change. So I think AI is going to be there in every part of every domain. So, yes.

Also curious about the 50 ideas you wrote. I'm just curious if you were to not pick Butternut and if you're okay to expose them, you know, for our listeners, even myself. I always find, I always crave for like, you know, what else can I do? What else can I do? So I'm just curious, like, what are the things that excites you apart from revolutionizing, you know, what prompt to a product is what I'm thinking. If I, if someone asks me what is Buttonet is, I would just say a prompt to a product, like in 20 seconds, like super fast. So what are the ideas you're not yet touched, but you're excited about, like, you know, you want to explore in the future?

Yeah, I think education, education is a big, big part of what we really need to still work on because, you know, every child is different, every person is different. So you need very personalized way of teaching something to somebody. So I think I was really— as I mentioned, I'm very passionate about maths and coding. So, but I still feel like, why is it so tough? Why is it so boring? Why, why can't anybody learn anything? And why don't we build something that is very tailored? for that particular kid or, you know, person. So I think I'm very passionate about that area. Like, how do we make this entire experience of schooling or college so interesting for anybody and everybody? Like, so that was the other area actually. How do we teach maths in such a way that people feel like, I'm just playing a game and, you know, that is tailored. It's Not just one module that 50 students are going through. It's like every kid is seeing a module depending on their own progress. So it's like their personalized teacher.

So

yeah, that was, that's what I'm really passionate about as well. And I would love to see somebody building in that space. And yeah.

I think, yeah, I feel it's such a big, big, big industry and especially big market when, you know, people like us who came from India, We know how broken the education system is. It's broken everywhere. Yes, that's what I realized. I came to the US and I'm like, I thought this is wonderful. This is groundbreaking. And I started like talking to people and cousins, you know, who lived here. They all share the same thing. It's pretty much fucked up everywhere. It's not like it's only the Eastern countries has this. Downfall. I think, yes, I saw a couple of startups helping teachers to customize the way they teach kids. I think what you're saying is absolutely futuristic because if a kid can get a custom learning module for themselves, I think that is so fascinating and maybe they learn fast, right?

So fascinating. Just imagine, like I mentioned, I think I was good at. I was really, really good at maths. But if you ask me about certain other subjects, honestly, I was just like, I I used to get great marks, but really that passionate.

Right.

So I now like history as a kid. I I I don't think so. I enjoyed. I used to get good marks, like you know as an Indian for the sake

of it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That was fine. But now I'm The way I see history now is very different from the way I saw history back then. Like, you know, watching documentaries or doing certain things in a way that is really interesting and not just reading books. So I think imagine a world where you're born and you pick things and there's like your personal teacher. It teaches you whatever you learn. And it also teaches you certain things that are like financial education, public speaking, maths. everything depending on your pace. And it's gonna be such a different world. Like, we're gonna see geniuses. Yeah.

I think I have 2 kids. I can't wait to tell them how hard it was, you know, before their time. And they have— when they know the world exists, like, in, you know, they have their senses coming to life, they see a completely different world than we see, we experience right now. So it almost feels like our mom and our dads and that generation, they never We used to sit

under a lamp and study. You know, I remember those stories. We used to walk 8 kilometers to go to our school.

Now it's like it's in your hand. So I love that. Yeah. I want to also talk about, I want to also learn how you think about the startup scene in India, especially AI. I think given recently, you know, the Indian government made a $1.25 billion investment, at least they announced it. And you were kind of an advisor to, I think in Punjab, if I'm not wrong. You're kind of helping a particular sector in India to give awareness to them to like how the technology works and all that. So talk to me about like Indian ecosystem. I think the startups in India are being like, you know, being unicorns. It's not new, but with this new revolution, how are we imagining, at least in an Indian ecosystem? What are your thoughts there?

I think when it comes to India, you know, the the kind of problems that we solve in India are going to be a little different from what we solve here. So yes, you know, AI is built on a lot of data, a lot of computation. So I would say that a lot of new solutions are going to pop up back home and they're going to be very interesting. They're going to solve a particular problem that is quite local to India, I would say. And I think, yes, it's catching up. It's catching up fast. Like when you talk to people in Bangalore, you know, everybody's like, okay, how can we build something for India using AI? So it's, and back home, you know, you throw a stone, engineer pops out, you know, engineers there. Yeah. So we know how to put things together, how to hack systems in a faster way. Yeah. So I'm quite excited to see what things, you know, what problems people back home are going to solve for the Indian economy or for the world. So.

Right.

Yeah, I'm

quite open. Any specific startups that are catching your attention, you're advising recently that are going to make a big splash in the global ecosystem?

Yeah, so I think, yeah, I am, you know, currently I invested in MagicR. That's, I think, an amazing startup. So you should check it out. They are doing like video editing with you know, with your face and you'll be able to like produce very high quality videos with just like prompts and all. So yeah, I'm quite excited about that. I am also excited to see bigger companies making a bigger mark and also, yeah, building Butternut and just putting that on, you know, the globe.

Yeah. Butternut, I think is going to be like a universal, you know, there's a universal market. Everybody can build. I wish what I am imagining or envisioning or want to share that vision with you is that it would be awesome if my grandma, imagine there is like a WhatsApp type of a thing and she wants to create some business. And if she just writes in her native language and AI converts that into English and literally builds something. out of it, that would be awesome. That would be like, that would be like incredible. So I feel—

You can already do that with AI, with Butternut as well. So yeah, we are not on WhatsApp right now, but you know, if your grandmother goes to Butternut and gives the company name and the prompt in her own native language, the entire website will be built and you can definitely go and translate it into English with just a few clicks. So It's already there.

Wow. Now that's news. So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about investing. You said you invest heavily. I saw a lot of your tweets talking about, you know, you invest in YC, you know, you do this. What do you look in founders, especially in 2024, that excites you that, okay, these are the founders I, you know, they're like this type of persona I want to invest in?

So yeah, when, you know, when you're investing in somebody in seed or pre-seed stage, you are definitely definitely going after the founders. You're looking for very passionate founders, people who have solved problems in their life and they know how to navigate. And thirdly, I think people who are flexible. Like, you know, it's like, yeah, you have this one idea or one hypothesis in mind, you bring it to life, you see how the world reacts to it, you know, and you collect that data, go back, and then iterate over it. So I think I really look for people who are very determined, who have, I mean, solved like difficult problems in their life, not just related to code, but you know, how they have navigated their lives. Yeah. So that really excites me because that really shows your grit, your determination, you know, how far you have already come and how far you can go. So yeah, my bet is totally on founders. Like how good I feel talking to them and You know what problem they are solving. Am I also quite passionate about it?

Right.

So that's my thesis on investing in seed or pre-seed stage startups.

And you went to, if I'm not wrong, at least you got access to the YC recent batch demo. Any particular— do you want to give a shout out to like any startups that stood out to you and like, okay, these guys are like killing it?

Yeah. So PartnerHQ. Magicar. These are the 2 names that really stood out to me and I'm happy to be a part of their journey as an angel investor. So yeah, I mean, all the startups were so amazing, but these 2 really stood out for me.

Awesome. One last question before we wrap up. I ask this especially for founders, at least founders who build things, you know, before and now currently building something. What are some lessons you learned from SOC Soho? that you're implementing in Butternut?

Yeah, so the lessons I learned from Sock Soho, I think I would just generally tell, you know, my principles. I think, yeah, I've just become better at them, at implementing them, but certain principles remain the same. And so first of all, definitely, you know, when you're finding an idea to work on, you should definitely look at what you are passionate about and if there is a market for it. And the best way to do it is launch fast, build something. Like, you know, people don't want a perfect product. Don't spend like 2 years building something that's perfect. Launch something really quickly. Like put a deadline of 2 weeks, build something and launch it into the market that you think are going to be your potential customers. Talk to them. Like don't take feedback from your friends and family. These are kind people who will say, oh my God, amazing. This is a billion-dollar idea. You know? No. Just take feedback from people who might pay you in future. Ask them, you know, see their reaction, let them talk, see their reactions. Like, are they able to navigate? Is this a problem they actually face that they might pay or they might be passionate about using this product? So if they are, like, go ahead and, you know, talk to them more. What more do they want? And collect data. I'm not saying like talk to 5 or 10 people, talk to 200 people, 300 people. You'll see a common pattern. Go back, do your work, iterate, come back, launch. So build fast, launch faster, iterate at lightning speed. So that's, that's my mantra of building.

Core principles.

Core principles.

Yeah. I love that, Preetika. You know, I think I love talking to you. I feel there is so much, there's so much future when you talk. And I love that. And, you know, rooting for Buttonheart. I probably might've used, I will use it for myself because I have some ideas I want to ship. And I just like, you know, I don't know how to code and these ideas kind of need some technical help. So we'll definitely use it. And folks who are listening, you should all try Butternut. It feels like magic. Like I said, you just talk and it builds, you know, a product for you. So any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

First of all, you know, I thank you for having me here. Like, I really enjoyed talking to you and I think I would just say, you know, as Jensen just recently said at Stripe Sessions, like, AI revolution is here. Like, if you are not going to be a part of it, you're going to be replaced by somebody who's using AI, you know?

Right.

So I would urge everybody to start exploring new tools and they will not only make your life simpler, but you'll be learning something that was not there before. So Yeah, explore new stuff, build new stuff. And I'm so excited for the future.

I love that. I see, like I said, right, I think this episode hopefully gives people the vibes of, you know, reimagining what they're doing currently and building future in their own way. So appreciate you, Preetika. Thank you so much for joining us and dropping all the lessons, your knowledge. sharing your journey with us today. And for folks, you know, appreciate you listening. We have amazing founders like Preetika coming on the show next as well. So stay tuned. Appreciate you. Cheers.

Thank you.