How Goldcast Returned 27x in 5 Years (The $300M Exit Story)

All right, well, welcome. My name is Gaurav Jain. I'm one of the founders of Afor Capital. We're a $500 million pre-seed fund. We're the world's largest pre-seed fund. Pre-seed for us is investing at the idea stage typically, or maybe companies have a little traction but not a whole lot, certainly pre-product market fit. And today we're honored to have the founders of Goldcast who just sold the company for almost $300 million. And the reason I wanted to invite them to do a podcast with me is because because they are a perfect example of what a pre-seed story looks like. 5 years ago, these founders were international students at Harvard Business School. They didn't have visas to stay in the country. They didn't have a product. The pandemic had just started, and the safest thing, frankly, they could have done is stay in school. They had student loans to deal with, and Coldcast was just, just an idea, but instead they chose to drop out, raise money on an idea. We were very lucky to have led that round. They figured out how to stay in the country, thankfully, and they started building. And 5 years later, they sold that company for almost $300 million in cold hard cash, as they say. But this story isn't about luck. This is a story about making scary decisions early and having the right partner when it mattered. If you're waiting for the moment when starting a company feels safe, this episode unfortunately isn't for you. But this episode is about how 3 founders took what was an idea and converted that into an incredible company, an incredible outcome for them personally, incredible outcome for the investors and all the employees that joined them along on the journey. And I can't wait to see where they take Goldcast next. And of course, you're going to have the treat now of hearing right from the horse's mouth. Well guys, this feels like déjà vu from our first Zoom meeting. What was it, just over 5 years ago? A lot has changed, a lot hasn't changed, but I used to have a full head of hair back then. You guys thankfully look even younger 5 years later. So however you did the founder journey clearly suits you, suits you well. But let's cut right to it. So 5 years ago, you guys were international students at HBS. Two of you didn't have visas to stay in the country. You didn't have a product. Podcast was just an idea, right? The pandemic had just started, right? We're talking like circa May, June 2020. And frankly, the safest thing I feel you could have done, it was just stay in school, right? US student loans, so much uncertainty in the world, but instead you chose to drop out, right? You raised money on an idea. Now we were very lucky to be pre-seed investors in the company, and you figured out how to stay in the country. Thankfully, and you started building. You started building what became Goldcast, and 5 years later you've sold a company for just under $300 million in, as they say, cold hard cash. We're obviously very lucky investors. Uh, great outcome for you guys and for the team, and Siemens, I say, is a very lucky acquirer, and I can't wait to see where you guys will take this, take this company. But this story is not about luck, right? Uh, it's a story about how you made a, a scary decision really early. Take us back to that moment, right? Take us back to that moment of sort of summer 2020. You're sitting at HBS, you're trying to figure out, should we go back for a second year? Should we drop out? Should we start this company? There's a whole bunch of other companies doing something similar. What made you want to do this? And maybe as part of that introduction, just talk about a little bit about you as well, maybe 30 seconds, kind of, you know, your background pre-HBS, and then let's talk about that decision. Palash, you wanna go first?

Yeah, I can just start with my background, Gaurav. So I, we met from the HBS Circles and that's how I came to the US my first time in 2019. And before that I had an above average years of work experience, I would say. So I worked for 7 years before HBS, 4 years in at this tech company called InMobi as a product manager. And then before that I was at ITC, which is like the Unilever or P&G of India. Like hardcore manufacturing, hands-on work for 3 years. And I'm from a very small town in India. So I was chasing the American dream coming here.

Nice. And HBS was arguably the pinnacle, right? Of how you could break into the US. Kishor, tell us about you.

Yeah, Guru, so similar to Pulash, I had worked in India and a couple of years abroad as well, but worked in consulting, other healthcare company, 4-5 years work experience. But primarily came to business school with an objective to start a company. And that's how we met Palash, right? I and Palash met in India before coming to business school in a meetup, and we decided that, hey, let's do something together. And then we eventually met Ashish because Palash and Ashish are the same section mates. So that's how we all three met together. And I'll let Ashish give a quick introduction as well.

Yeah, so I was a software engineer for, I think, 6 years before, before going to HBS. Which is a little bit non-traditional. So basically, I was at two different companies that were both sold to much, much larger companies. And I was just kind of like getting a little bit bored. So I ended up applying to HBS as well as like a program at Harvard for engineering. So I was doing a dual degree program. Yeah, and Plesha, I met because he used to sit like diagonally behind me in every single class for our entire time there. I was actually at HBS working with another couple of our mutual friends, mine and Palash's friends from our section, on a bunch of other different startups on like various different industries. One in the tire industry, like literally car tires, things like that. But, you know, Palash and Kishore kind of came up with this idea and they kind of like pulled me in and then that's how we kind of started the company. Yeah.

Amazing. Sure, go ahead.

No, two things about Ashish. Gaurav Jain, any company he joins gets acquired. So he's been the lucky charm that has taken us till the journey and also He's an MS MBA, so yeah, you know, let's say a true engineer at heart.

So Ashish was a hot commodity at HBS, right? Everybody wants to start a tech company. Fair enough. So guys, let's go back to that decision, right? I'm sure it was not a straightforward one, right? Especially for folks coming from abroad, you know, not to mention the American dream and like Harvard brand, but also student loans, visas, like How did you make that decision? Like, what were the pros and cons? You know, of course, today dropping out has become a little bit more aspirational, but it wasn't certainly the case 5 years ago. But even now, it's not easy to make that decision. Walk us through that.

Yeah, Gaurav, just remembering of those times gives me a little bit of PTSD, I would say. It was intense. But this was like— so just a little bit of history. Kishore and I met in Bangalore just 3 months before HPS started, and we met because our offices were just next door. He was interning at a tech company where I was just finishing my work at InMobi, and we kind of bonded on this idea of wanting to start up. And we were, I would say, one of the few who were really serious about starting up, like we wanted to start up exiting in, but we thought, okay, we'll do our degrees and then maybe work for 1 year and then keep in touch and then start up. So we had been exploring ideas from day 1. On and off. And then after, I would say, 3-odd iterations, and Ashish was doing his own iterations in parallel with another team within our sections, we were all kind of in touch with each other. We came at the idea of Goldcast, right? And at that time, the idea was, okay, virtual events is going to pick up because COVID is coming. And if you look back at that time, right, April of 2020, it was like no one really had a product in the market. Everyone was in beta or things were just being built. And And at that time we thought, okay, this is something that has two characteristics that none of the ideas that we were evaluating earlier was— had. One was that it had clear tailwinds. There was no doubt that this was going to pick up and then this was going to be a big market. I think the second was kind of challenged eventually, but those two were the thesis at that time that looked right. The other thing was that we going in, kind of understood that this will be a very competitive market and I did not want to build something horizontal from my last experience, not something that was everything for everyone. So we wanted to verticalize. The question was like, how do we verticalize? So Kishor can talk a little bit about it. He did a bit of research.

Yeah, but about the HBS point, Balaji, so I think there are a couple of things that are a bit hindrance. Gaurav, as you know, we have big loans. On our head, right? So, uh, unless you take like a $150K, $200K salary, it's very tough to pay off that loan, right? It'll take years and years to do that. That is one. And second thing is, uh, the other point that I and Palash had to face was because of the visa situation, right? A lot of funds that we pitched to said that, hey, only if you quit the school, we'll fund you, right? Because we didn't have visas. And it's a chicken and egg problem, right? Like, we you know, you have to quit to get visas and they're like, hey, it's just, it's just not working out very well for us.

You have to quit to get the visa and the visa wouldn't be given if you don't have funding, like the O-1 visa that we were going after, they would not be given if we didn't have funding.

Exactly. Right. And also the third point is that I think, you know, except Ashish, you know, we didn't work in the US, right? So I think that also didn't create that familiarity that a lot of folks who are born and brought up in the US have when it comes to raising capital. So those three were, I would say, important points we had to take into consideration while doing this. So until and unless— until the time we met F4, it was not obvious for us as to how we will do this, even if you are bullish on the idea. Yeah, yeah.

By the time we had built the conviction that this was the right place to go in, which is what, despite all of these things, had us push through.

Yeah, so sounds like you guys came into HBS with the intention of starting a company, but the timeline got pulled in, right? Maybe partially because of the pandemic, partially you got through, you found an idea that started to take off and you felt like it was now or never, right? With this idea, we've got to do it now. As much as you would have preferred not to drop out, right? And maybe finish school and do it slightly easier, you just felt that this was maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity. And just like enterprising entrepreneurs, you found a way to kind of access the resources, whether that's capital, visas, whatever else, to make it happen. Walk us through, you started touching on this, the process of raising money, right? You guys are still students, you know, just an idea, no product. By the way, 3 MBAs, right? We make fun of that, right? In the venture circles, right? Oh, of course. Like how many MBAs does it take to change a light bulb, right? Like 3 MBAs starting a company. Sure, Ashish has a technical background, but an MBA nonetheless, right? It's a very volatile time, early pandemic. It's unclear, you know, is the world gonna come back? Come to an end. Like, what was that process like? You know, who did you speak with? What was the response like? I know it's been a few years, but just what, what kind of— what do you remember? What are some of the lessons, right, from— for other founders who are, you know, facing different circumstances, but again, a lot of uncertainty at the, at the earliest stages?

Yeah, um, I'll give a short answer to what I remember, Gaurav. At that time, we had this chicken and egg problem, right? Like, we, we, we had we thought we had a very good sort of wedge into this bigger market, and it was a unique wedge at the time, but we didn't have the product. We didn't have the time to build the product because timeline-wise, by the time we came up with all of this in April, we needed the visas by August, which meant that we needed funding by mid of June. Otherwise we'll have to pay the, you know, the semester fee at HBS and then we are gone. And we had made up our mind that this is now or never. So we were running against a timeline. So we built a deck, and at that time, you know, we convinced Ashish to join. He hacked together a nice prototype on Bubble. I don't know if it's still around, but it was a working prototype.

This is Vibe Coding before it was called Vibe Coding.

Essentially, yeah. So that's what we pitched to you. I don't know if you even know about that, but that was the original demo in July.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we did that and then we started just scanning our network. So we had the combined network of IITK from my side, Kishore's IIT Chennai network, Ashish's network here from his Meetup time, Jet.com time, and HBS networks. And then after the initial, I would say, 20 days, we realized it's going to be very hard because one of the other reasons, right, within those 20 days, first, A, we didn't have enough proof points. We were first-time founders just in business school. There's a lot of uncertainty around going full-time and there's a lot of uncertainty in the market as well, right? There were, by this time we started raising, 3 companies that had already raised $15 million or more, which was a lot in those times. And yeah, so we were getting a lot of nos, and we spoke with everyone, I would say, right from the topmost, the Sequoias, all the way up to more smaller pre-seed funds, seed funds as well. So it was a lot of nos over the next 30 days. Kishor, what do you—

No, no, that's correct, I would agree with that.

Walk me through the— what's the personal, you know, calculus like in those moments where you're, you know, you have this like dance, right, of like, we got to find funding fast enough before we have to like decide whether we have to go back to school and visas, but we need more product to get the funding. But, you know, it's like, how do you How do you stay focused? How do you stay committed? How do you not just take the easy path of, man, we're just going to enroll for another year? And like, what would you say to founders who are in this situation now? Like, how do you— because of course we don't know the counterfactual, but like, if you'd gone back to school, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be, you know, selling a company for $300 million. Like, walk us through like what got you through that, through that moment.

Sure. So, so honestly, I think a bit of naivety, I would say, right? Like we were so naive at that point of time, we jumped into this problem deep enough that we were like, hey, let's figure it out, right? And if you had taken a very objective view that, hey, you know, how does this market look like? There are already a bunch of players already funded. We wouldn't have probably done this, right, in a purely objective way. But we have probably a little bit of naivety. Little bit of, you know, dumbness, but also just like sheer will that you want to, hey, let's just go in and figure out what's going to happen, right? And I think once we started speaking to some early prospects in the market that, hey, look, this is what we are building, what is, what do you think, right? We have some mockups we want to show you. I think them also getting excited showed us the additional proof point we needed that, hey, you know what, there is something here. We should just go in and explore. Let's do the best with raising capital. So those are like some of the things that were going on in our mind, uh, but I think once we raised or got a couple of angel checks and shown some commitments, we were all in, right? That was the time when you're like, you know what, let's just not go back, right? Like, people are giving us money, let's take it more seriously. Obviously, once we received a check from you, it became very obvious.

Yeah, I think it also just really helped that, uh, you know, to have co-founders who were kind of like working on different parts of the problem. So as you were kind of saying, there's a lot of things that needed to happen in a very, very short period of time. And for instance, I will say like me and Kishore, I think we were working on completely different set, like parts of that problem without really like stepping on each other's toes at all or having any sort of like friction, which I think really, really, really helps now that like I look back, it could have gone very, very differently, right? Like Kishore was really focusing on like building the narrative, uh, you know, like getting customers. I was really focused on just building the product. Palash was actually focused on both of those two things at the same time, but it just kind of helps to like have a team at the early stages that you can trust to kind of like work on all of that to, you know, happen with enough velocity to like kind of get investors, to get the first customers. And I think that really helped a lot in that time.

Yeah.

And also the, the, I would say one learning that I have had from that time was that we had spoken with a lot of customers and it built the conviction and there was a lot of tailwind. I think that is something that is very, you know, everyone talks about it, but we could really feel that. And it is very hard to find markets with tailwinds. I think this is a unique point in time where there's lots of markets with tailwinds, but at that time it wasn't true. And I had more at risk. I had a 4-month-old kid, apart from all the immigration concerns and $100,000 in loan. But I just had been looking for something with tailwind for almost like 5, 6 years. I had the desire to do that and couldn't, and this was just too good to pass. And staying would have been like a safe move and leaving was pretty reckless, but I think it was worth the recklessness.

I think in some ways MBAs get a bad rep because maybe we are guilty of making things over-academic, right? And studying it like a case study and doing all this analysis on market and competition and business models and so on and so forth, which maybe makes sense when you're like a massive public company. But at the earliest stages, I think so much is it about just the instincts and like, and it's taking the leap. Like I remember when I started a company in the mobile space, after we had decided to start the company and launch the product, somebody showed me a competitor's product and I that I'd never heard of. And I was like, oh my God, part of me was like feeling embarrassed that I hadn't done the analysis to know of the competitors. Part of me was feeling thankful that I didn't know this competitor existed, 'cause we probably wouldn't have started the company if I knew of all the competitors. And like, it's just sometimes ignorance is bliss, right? Sometimes you just gotta, you just gotta do it because there's more reasons always to not start a company than to start a company, right? The odds are always stacked against you. Even if you do all this analysis of tailwinds and the right team and the resumes, like, odds are always gonna be against you. And I think at some level you just have have to have the belief, right? You just have to have the belief. You've gotta give it time, you've gotta move fast, you gotta keep iterating, and then you're gonna figure it out, right? Sooner or later. Sometimes it happens right outta the gate, sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but if you've got that combination, it generally works out. Well, let's talk, you know, you had mentioned when you started raising, there were already a couple of companies that had raised, you know, meaningful amounts of capital. And I really think there was a, a David versus Goliath analogy. I think it's very applicable in this case. I feel like over the course of the 5 years, you know, of course Hoppin was the Goliath, right, in the space. I think the peak valuation was $7 billion, raised like billion plus in venture capital. I remember talking to Series A, Series B investors when you guys were raising and pitching them on Goldcast. It'd be like, look, I like the team, I like the idea, the traction, but like, I just think Hoppin's going to win the space. Like, I just— it's a winner-take-all market and they're just going to, you You know, they're just going to kill, crush everybody. But you guys, walk us through that. You know, how did that like impact customer acquisition when there is this massive goliath in the industry and all these other companies that are funded by arguably really well-known investors? You know, how did that impact the team motivation? How did you guys keep going? Right? It would have been probably easy to change directions, pivot out of that, but you, you kind of took on head-on and of course, you know, eventually you won and, and most companies I don't think ever saw, you know, the light of day past a year or two. But like, walk us through that. Can't be, can't be that easy. Walk us, walk us through that, that journey.

Yeah, I think, Gaurav, one thing that is the worst of having such a big player in, in a new market is that that player sort of sets the expectations, even if they are not the right expectations. So even though we had a unique angle of going after B2B companies and we were talking their language and everything else, there are a bunch of things that, that that Hoppin was doing and had done that created expectations for everyone, right? Like customers wanted a set of features which we thought were BS, and eventually that turned out to be true, but they wanted it, right? And then Ashish's life was hard. He had to make all of these things, or Kishore had to convince them that these things are not important. Second thing is with investors also, I think it is very hard to look past another competitor which is at $100 million in ARR and then has raised $1 billion. So our first time around when we were raising a seed round, which the $10 million, you know, Unusual Ventures round, that round was super tough because we had, if you remember, two very blue-chip funds who were interested in investing. And then in the midst of a raise, we had Hopin come up with like this $125 million raise news, right? And they pulled back and then the entire fundraise kind of almost fell through that time, which was very, very, very stressful because we had only like, I don't know, $300,000 in the bank at the time.

How did you keep going? What gave you— so talk about the emotional part of it, right? Uh, what was the conversation between the three of you?

Yeah, I think, um, it's a good, it's a good question. I think it was very hard, right? Because, um, I think we had at the seed round, we had probably pitched to 100+ investors, right? Every Discussion was more around the fact that, hey, they've raised so much money, they've hired CXOs from X companies, Salesforce, ServiceNow, you guys can't compete, right? Or what is your differentiation? Because they have raised so much money, there's actually oxygen out there. What does that look like, right? So every no was quite hard for us to do it. The one thing that kept us going was that at least in the seed round we raised after you guys, we were winning customers, right? At least in the segment we were focused on. The B2B vertical, uh, we were able to get into the vendor shortlist and winning customers, right? That was the only signal that probably helped us think that, hey, you know what, if we can win against a player that has raised, you know, gazillion amount of dollars, and if we stay focused on that vertical which could be a big market, why can't we do it? And that is what kept us going, uh, but it was hard. I, I, I— we wouldn't, we wouldn't say that, you know, we had this this amazing discussion every day and kept going. We just kept our heads down and like kept building the product. And I think the one thing that we realized early on is that in the earliest stages of company building, we felt that if you're able to win customers, right, iterate on the product much faster and get the flywheel out through word of mouth, you can build a decently good business. We don't know if it's massive, it's small, but if you can keep that flywheel going, that will lead to a good outcome. It just takes one yes from an investor to get us going. That was the mindset we were in, and luckily we got yeses in the seed round from a couple of folks, and we just kept going.

I would argue, looking back, and I'd be curious if you guys agree, is the competition and having very well-funded competitors who were winning the PR war ended up being a blessing, not a curse. I'm sure in the moment it didn't feel that way, but looking back, forced you guys to focus, right? Focus on an ICP and focus on go-to-market, things you control, right? What you don't control is how much money they raise. What you don't control is like, you know, what revenue they have, but you control who you sell to and product you build. And I remember having those conversations with you guys at the time, and it was very clear you were zoning in on more and more of a very clear niche that you could own. I'm not sure if it wasn't for the existence of like Hop and other competitors, you would have probably focused, you know, that quickly. I think it would've been easy to be more of a horizontal product, to be, you know, everything for everybody. Because I remember, you know, in peak pandemic, like everybody had a need for virtual events, right? Whether that was businesses, big businesses, small businesses, individuals, whatever it is. I mean, at Forward, we were hosting a bunch of, you know, virtual events too, right? So like, I think it would've been easy to get kind of sucked into many different directions. And in some ways, I think because you couldn't raise a lot of capital like Hopin was. You kind of were forced to say, okay, what can we really do well? Which I think was really, really good discipline, um, kind of looking back.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

In early markets, the fault lines are often not very clear, Gaurav. And it— while we had that conviction, right, uh, and it only, uh, got strengthened with time, with customer feedback, also with competition, right? We could not have survived a horizontal war. It is hard to keep that conviction because we, we, we were like, okay, B2B is going to be a big niche, and every investor was like, yeah, I don't So it was kind of hard to keep that, keep that conviction, but it did definitely help.

Yeah.

Well, so, so let's talk about pivots along the way because you had more than one from the idea that we funded back in summer 2020 and what Goldcast is now has evolved, which by the way is a feature, not a bug in our book. In fact, our best companies go through multiple pivots or evolution, right, of their product, go-to-market. I think that's sort of how you build really big companies. So I'm not surprised that you guys went gone through your own journey, but it's still not an easy decision, right, to, to, to make, especially after you've raised money, made commitments to investors, employees, and, and your identity is tied to a certain direction, certain idea. Walk us through that, right? So, so you had the first pivot is the post-pandemic pivot, right? We're, we're, we're realizing that virtual events may not be as large of a market as, as, as we think it is. And I'd say the second pivot was around the ChatGPT moment, right? Where you're basically trying to become an AI-native company. Right. And, and asking yourself the question on like, what is the AI-native kind of video marketing kind of B2B product look like? And you, you did that very successfully as well. There might have been others. Walk us through sort of like, you know, how you were managed to be self-aware to know that you should make a pivot, how you managed to kind of corral the troops to make that. What were the learnings? You know, folks right now, uh, founders are very much facing this situation, especially companies that started pre-ChatGPT moment, right, are still trying to figure out, you know, what is that, what is that AI-native answer for them, or maybe something happens in the macro. So, so walk us through that, that journey.

Yeah, yeah, um, Kishor, go for it.

Yeah, actually, Shrikant, step in as well since you are also sort of building a product on the side. So, Gaurav, um, what I think happened was, um, uh, I think it started showing in retention first, right? Because, you know, it was a very cyclical business when we are operating in the COVID times. The demand cooled off, retention started showing impact, right? And we could not let it slide because it is a big number. So the immediate focus for us was that how do we pivot the product towards a very recurring use case? And that's where we started focusing on like, you know, webinars, in-person field events. Expand the aperture of the initial wedge we started and going into adjacent use cases that can make it a lot more recurring, right? That was the first pivot we took, right? And which I think we three realized it very quickly that we should do this very aggressively. If not, we are going to be left out of the market because it's not a SaaS business. It's not a recurring 90% plus ARR kind of business. But the next pivot was interesting, Gaurav, because Like I said, ChatGPT happened and then we're still in the events business. But again, it was very clear to us that, hey, we have to sort of really figure out what are the AI applications for our use case, right? So what the three of us did was, you know, we discussed and we said that, hey, Palash, you should focus on the existing business because that's where the existing revenue is going to come from. I and Ashish were like, hey, let's go and figure out and talk to existing customers and figure out what the net new use cases look like, right? And once we started discovering that, that's when we put a SWAC team together to go build it out and figure out what the revenue streams look like. But we divided the responsibilities that way because we couldn't ignore the existing customers as well who are buying our old product. And I and Ashish have to go and figure out the new product. So that's how we split the responsibilities, but that's the quick timeline of the pivots that happened on the two sides.

Yeah, so for the second pivot, which is kind of like the ChatGPT moment pivot, I think It was just very clear for us that there was, we didn't offer any stickiness in terms of like the video content, right? People were putting in so much time and energy creating these webinars, bringing in these like really great speakers, and then all we allowed was for them to go and download the MP4 and then go and, you know, do everything else somewhere else. So I think we knew very quickly that, hey, like LLMs are getting to a point, maybe they weren't actually at the right, right at that point when we first started building the product. But are— would soon get to the point where they could make pretty reasonable video editing decisions, uh, given the right context, right? So I think that was our original kind of insight back then. Um, and then, yeah, as Kishore was mentioning, we went to a lot of different customer calls. I think for maybe 2-3 months, that was like the main thing that Kishore and I did for one summer is just go talk to every customer that we had. At that point, we had this advantage that we actually had you know, uh, maybe more than 100, maybe 150 customers at that point. And we also had enough clout where we could go and just get even people who weren't our customers, just, but just wanted to be friendly with us, uh, chat with us. And we got a lot of really useful feedback for how to build like the first kind of cut for like a video editing tool for those people. And then ever since then, that kind of original trade-off that LLMs can do video editing just at least at a pretty basic to intermediate level well. Has just like kept being proven to be true every single time. And I think the real reason for that is that it's easy for a marketer to kind of verify whether or not the output is the output that they want. So they basically click a button and even though they know nothing about different effects, about how to zoom in, zoom out, when to put in B-roll, when to put in motion graphics, they can look at the output and say, hey, does this meet my brand guidelines? Does this look like something that I'd wanna post? And because of that, I think we've just been getting significantly better over the last couple of years.

Palash, anything to add?

Yeah, no, Gaurav, the only thing that I think was tough at that time was, A, like what different ideas we could explore because AI can be applied in any place. And the only counterintuitive thing here was that there was nothing like this in the market, right? We were kind of going very different from everyone in the category. Everyone was expanding in in-person events because that was the thing to do, right? Okay, virtual events going down, in-person events kind coming back, let's do that. And for a variety of reasons and all of the customer feedback that we have, we took the counter move of going more horizontal, right? Like, okay, let's build after the virtual events and webinars. And while it looks great in hindsight, at that time it was very counterintuitive because this space which we were operating in was all top-down sales, right? We were selling the product top-down. The other part was all like small ACV, bottoms-up products, right? $20, $10, very early space, not sure how big this will be. And I remember not only Kishore and Ashish were involved in this, but like at some point when we started getting some traction, Lauren, who's our CPO, we made her PM this like individually and put 2 or 3 of our best engineers in it. So it was a lot of resource drag for a seed stage, Series A, early Series A company, and it took a lot of like conviction at that time to bet in this direction when no one else was doing it in the category. And there were lots of like open questions.

We find companies that are distributed obviously have a harder time iterating rapidly. And, you know, you're talking about these discussions you're having on, hey, we're seeing this in the retention numbers. Should we pivot? Should we not? You know, splitting the company on some parts of the team kind of focusing on the existing business, some part of the team going after the new business. You guys have built a distributed team from day one, right? The three of you are in different locations, but you also got a big engineering team in India. How have you managed to move fast, iterate, stay, stay, you know, on top of everything given, given the setup?

Yeah, great question, Gaurav. I think the one thing that I would say at least, and you guys should give your own point of view, is that the three of us have been very well coordinated. From the beginning. And so while the speed of execution comes from our own speed of movement, we were always willing to move very fast and be super hands-on and sort of set the pace, which was very important even though we were not in the same place. So that was one. And the second is I think we were all— all three of us are quite intellectually honest. We are very optimistic, right? And have a rosy picture of the future, which made us kind of jump in in the first place, but we could not be unrealistic, right? We could see the writing on the wall that, hey, we don't change to a recurring model, things will fall off. If we don't get on AI, things will fall off. And at that time, I think it was— we felt we were late, but this was quite early. This was like mid-2023 when we started releasing some products. So I think that was very important. Having said that, I do think it is quite hard for a remote and fully distributed team to move and I have lots of viewpoints on, you know, how I will do this in the future if I have to. We have discussed that. But Kishor, what, Ashish, what do you think?

I think if you had to do it again, I would have done it in person. I think we started the company remote. I think that obviously because of that we had to hire folks remotely. But, you know, I'm actually glad that none of our competitors also do in-person stuff, right? Because if they had done that, it would have been tough to compete. Week, right? Because there is a natural advantage of teams co-located in person together and grind it out compared to being remote, which is a little harder, like you said. But luckily we were able to get on the other side. That's amazing.

I think only because it was in our— oh, sorry. Yeah, I think only because it was in— I think only because it was in our DNA from the very beginning, I think we kind of figured out how to set up these processes where, you know, the India team would have working hours that overlapped with our working hours. So even though all of our product was based here and our engineering was based there, we'd kind of figure out how to, how to make sure that we had the maximum overlap, how we'd be able to communicate. But there's lots of stuff that I like really is so much harder to do, um, that yeah, as these guys were saying, I don't think I would do it again if, if we had the choice. That's fair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Makes sense. Guys, let's talk about the exit, right? Of course, in Silicon Valley, in venture circles, you know, we talk about these big numbers, right? Billions now these days, $10 billion, $100 billion outcomes, right? While of course as an investor, you know, you want to chase that, we all realize those are few and far between. And frankly, most companies go to zero, right? Most companies don't yield an outcome for anybody involved. Walk us through how you thought about selling the company now versus keep going versus raising another round and continue to build the business. And, you know, I have this sort of theory that, you know, you don't want to outgrow your exit, right? I think certain markets have, you know, certain appetite for exits. I wonder if that was kind of going through your heads, but walk us through how you thought about it, why you felt this was the right time to to kind of land the plane and any advice you may have for founders kind of at a similar juncture?

Yeah, I think we have spoken at length between the three of us, Gaurav, because to your point, it's not an easy decision to sort of exit the company because the company is closely tied to the identity of you, right? Once the company is gone, you feel a little lost. But I think We have to be intellectually honest on that piece. The framework now I've come to is that if you have, you know, if you're a SaaS business, right? If you have extremely good retention, let's say like 120%, right? Growing like, you know, 100% year on year or at least 70% year on year, the market is big, you can keep going, right? Because I think you shared this post recently or I saw it somewhere else. The true value comes in compounding, right? And that comes in the late, uh, 20 years, 15 years. That's when real wealth gets created and real exit gets created. Uh, so that's what I would advise for folks. Just, you know, think twice before you sell when you are in that position like that. But I think for us, we were in an interesting spot where we were growing, but I, it, it, it was, it was. Not the 2x, 3x growth year on year, right? And we also thought that, hey, we would be better off joining a bigger player in the market that has already a bigger distribution, whereas compared to us, we have to go get customer one by one in a, in a market where retention is not the best, uh, I would say, right? So those things came to us saying that, hey, you know what, we should explore what this looks like. Obviously, if the exit value is not where we think it should be, we'll keep building the business. But if the exit value is the right point, then you know what, we also have to think about, do we want to spend the next 10 years building this company or do we, you know, get a good exit, have a great, you know, get the right thing for the employees, but eventually build another company that with all the right learnings that we have. That's how we thought about it. I'm sure Ashish and Parash have interesting thoughts as well.

Yeah, I think it's important to say that we were also thinking of raising money at the same time, right? Because I mean, we're optimistic founders and I think there definitely are aspects aspects of our business that, that could definitely grow or could have grown into like billions of dollars. Like for instance, the video editing thing that I was talking about, uh, we were investing a lot of resources in it. We still are. And there was a lot of reason to believe that that would have made it to, to a billion-dollar business. But I think honestly what happened was a really, really like perfect buyer came in that kind of like really understood our business, was not really in exactly the same line of business, but it was in kind of like a very, um, you know, like a very synergistic, for lack of a better word, uh, line of like set of lines of businesses that, that wanted to buy us and kind of keep everything going as is, right? Like they, they wanted to definitely continue to invest in the AI stuff, which is very important to us as founders, but they also really valued like that core kind of like webinar virtual events business that we'd built up. And, and I think it was, we really liked the conversations we had with them. Of course, we liked, you know, like what the financial outcomes were for ourselves, but a combination of all of that made us just feel like we're not going to necessarily get a better opportunity, or we'd be taking a huge risk in order to get maybe only a slightly better exit maybe in a few years' time. So there's the time value of money. There's also just like these people seem like really good stewards of our business, so that's why we want to go with them.

Yeah, I think the time value of money definitely got to have made a lot of sense. And as the two things, I think again, in hindsight, We got to the outcome we have because we took those chances, right? And even though we were not the biggest player in the industry, but we were perceived as the leading player because we kind of took the moves which reconfigured the category, right? And then everyone started following. So that drew the attention of the acquirers. And then second, we were also— we also were realistic with ourselves, right? Like if you look at— although we cannot comment on the price because we are not allowed to, But if we just look at the history of MarTech, right, in this decade, there have been only like 3 acquisitions that have been bigger than this. And one of them happened just, you know, after ours. So we saw that this is the right sort of time value for money. We are also exiting at a very high point of the company. The business is still growing pretty fast. It has customers like OpenAI, Zscaler, Workday, like the best names out there. And it's still at the peak. —like escalating the peak of innovation. And it makes sense to join a bigger company where, you know, this can get into thousands and thousands of enterprises.

You know, the one common theme I'm hearing from a bunch of your answers is around being self-aware, right? Whether that's being self-aware on when to start a company, on who to work with, on when to pivot, right? Where to focus, when to raise, and I think that sort of also permeated in our decision on when to sell, right? I think one of the challenges we find with founders is because you're your own boss, like nobody's sort of telling you what to do, when to do it, how to do it. And if founders are not self-aware, they're not asking themselves the hard questions, then maybe nobody is around them. And of course, as investors, we try to play that role, but we just don't have that level of context, frequency, depth to truly be able to, you know, ask those hard questions and like, uh, at the, at the, at the rate you need. And I think it, that self-awareness it really needs to come from the team. And I think kudos to you guys to have been able to pull that off even though you're distributor, right? I think it's a little bit easier when the 3 founders are under the same roof and you're constantly having those debates. But I think the fact that you did it in the context that you did is commendable. And look, we also find that, you know, this is your first rodeo, right? I think if you can have an exit like this with your first rodeo, and I'm sure you can do wonderful things inside of Cvent, we find that it also ends up being a very accretive acquisition, right? got for a reasonable amount, not too high, but where distribution can truly scale revenue exponentially, like every side is, is really happy. And then of course, founders then have tasted blood and they, you know, go on to do wonderful things over the course of their, their careers. Guys, let's do this. Let's do a rapid fire. I want to do like 5 years in 5 minutes. Let's do a retrospective. I'm going to ask a bunch of questions and feel free to jump in, or maybe I can call somebody and then like short answer, right, to each one of them, sort of what comes to mind as the first thing. What was the scariest moment where you feel like quitting would have been logical?

Yeah, for me it was our Series A because this was just at the moment when COVID had ended, markets had completely crashed, and we were raising for a virtual events platform. The amount of nos and the amount of apathy I got from investors was mind-blowing, and I was holed up in a hotel in Boston alone for like 2 months doing that. So, and we were only 2 years in at the time, so I thought, okay, we have raised $10 million, done something, $2 million ARR. Maybe the thought of quitting crossed my mind a little bit, I would say.

You sure? No, that's a similar answer, Gaurav Jain. Nothing, nothing would have changed. Similar time when we were struggling.

Ashish?

Yeah, I think Plesh knows what I'm going to say. So one of the very first things that we ever did was host an event for HBS, actually for all of our classmates. It was a club fair, uh, and for various reasons, mostly because we were kind of like moving from a no-code to like our own code platform, we didn't test it properly. It's like a massive failure. All of, uh, you know, my, my classmates were like texting me, like, you know, making fun of me, all these things. And it was just like a very demoralizing time and like the very beginning stage of the company, right? So it was, it was tough. I think it also made me and this whole team learn a lot of lessons. But yeah, that was, that was a tough moment.

Yeah, actually, that— now I go back, I know similar thing happened to the customer. The platform completely failed during one of their main events, right? The customer emailed us saying that, you guys fucked up our event, call me back ASAP. So, you know, and then we had to call them and apologize. It's all real time, right? You can't like mess around with things when real events are happening. So tough times when we had to rebuild the product and change the infrastructure and stabilize stuff.

So, because when you think about it, like we were, we're building software for marketers, right? So we're building software. That they're putting in front of all of their clients. So it's like a really, really, really high bar. And, you know, at the very beginning, it's really hard to like come out into the market with a product that is stable enough, that is, that is always going to like work well enough for those people. So we had a lot of like, you know, on the knife's edge moments, but I think we, we kept iterating, learning, failing just enough but not too much to kind of keep going.

And you're reminding me, I, I, I had thankfully forgotten about this episode, uh, given the incredible company you built, but you're reminding me of the time when, uh, 2020, September 2020, we were having a full pre-seed summit where we were hosting Max Levchin, who started PayPal, and, and Affirm. And I want to say Katrina Lake started Stitch Fix. Some like incredible speakers. And the email, I think, that went out in the morning, uh, and reminding people of the, of the invite link for, for Goldcast, it said, dear first name, last name, right? And, and there was like some mail merge issue or something, and there's thousands of emails went out, and I was just like Guys, what's going on? And you're like, oh crap, okay, let's fix this bug. And except it's too late. But that is the nature of building products, guys. I mean, stuff like this happens. You know, I know it's much harder for you guys because you're building a mission-critical product, right? Because of course this is externally, you know, facing and it's impacting our brand or impacting the brand of your customers. So I can totally imagine. And I remember every single pre-seed summit, I think we've hosted like 6 or 7 now on Goldcast. Like, I'd be like, Plush, are you— you're on standby, right? Because sure, you're available, right? Something goes wrong, I'll be texting you and you guys are like watching the, watching the, uh, watching the show. And, and if something goes wrong, you know, you, you were gonna jump in. So, uh, I, I, I'm sure you did that for a lot of events.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I, I forgot about that too until you just reminded me. Yeah, we definitely had a lot of that in the beginning and there were definitely a few of those times where I was like, oh man, this is too hard, too hard of a market. But, but yeah, we made it there.

This is a personal, personal question, but what was the exact dollar amount? In your personal bank account the day you signed the A4 term sheet?

Palash, you remember? Yeah, I think Gaurav Jain was like $2,000 or something. $2,000, honestly.

I think Ashish would have probably been the richer of the three since he was in the US.

I think I had more, but most of it was earmarked for my second year of HBS, so yeah.

And Palash, you had $2,000 in your bank account, but you had $100,000 of student loans. So yes, yes. So negative net worth. Negative net worth. And Kishore, were you in the same boat?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, Gaurav. Absolutely. Wow.

And Ashish, were you lucky enough to not have student loans or you also came to school with student loans?

I did not have student loans, but I basically was going to have zero net worth at the end of the two years.

Nice to be American, right? If we hadn't wired the money that week, what was the backup plan? Or did you have a backup plan?

Honestly, Gaurav, no. We would have gone back to school.

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that's actually the honest answer because we had literally spoken to everyone and everybody had the same answer that you guys had to get out of school for us to fund you. And we were like, hey, if you can't fund us, we can't get the visa. It's a chicken and egg problem that kept happening for a month or so. So that is what would have happened. We would have gone back to school.

That's what I said, Gaurav, in the comment that I would still be dejected on the bank of Charles River because that's where Kishore and I were always like sharing our woes with each other, like, hey man, so many nos.

You know, I think, I think this, this, this part of the story is so important to tell because I think VC Twitter and LinkedIn these days creates this expectation that if you're not a hot deal, it's just not going to be a hot company. And I think it's very easy to conflate a hot deal and a hot company, you know? And I think we just talked about, you know, the David and Goliath story, right? I think that's the different— that's the other side of the coin. But clearly this wasn't a hot deal. Deal, right? When you were fundraising. But I think if investors who you pitched know the outcome that you eventually had back then, they would have all invested, right? It was an incredible IRR. We did 27x on our first check in 5 years. Like, that's amazing IRR, right? Actually, I haven't even calculated it, but it's very, very high, right? It's higher than most investments than any of the VCs in Silicon Valley make. So I think it's, again, kudos to you guys though, to like still keep going. And obviously we feel very lucky and honored to have invested. But it's, it's, I think, really important for us to pass on that message that believe in yourself, you know, first principles thinking. If customers like what you're doing, you want to go do this, you do this. And investors and money is just, it's a part of the, part of the journey. It is not the end in and of itself. Absolutely. What was the most prestigious job offer you turned down or ignored to build Goldcast, or, or, or maybe you would have gone for?

Palash Gaurav Jain, actually I didn't have any. Yeah, we had— you burned the boats. Yes, we burned the boats.

Yeah, same, I didn't have anything actually. You know, I interviewed with a bunch of places to be on the safer side, didn't get through anything actually. So no.

Yeah, just like an internship at a VC over the summer, that's the only thing. So nothing much.

What's the one thing you would say that first-time founders misunderstand about raising early?

Oh yeah, Gaurav, I think one thing that is very important to understand is that a lot of people think about, okay, if I raise right now, it will be very highly dilutive, and hence I should not raise, and I should should struggle a little bit more and get to some point. But given the pace of stuff right now, there's a very limited window of time in which things can happen. Like, we can say all we want, but if we had entered this market, say, 3 months after we did, we would not be here despite our best efforts. So there's definitely a window of time in which you have to get in, and assessing that window of time is like a nuanced thing that a founder has to do, and convincing the investors of that window of time is what I think is needed if you check the boxes of a good team and a good market.

Sure. I think, Gaurav Jain, the other thing that I learned is that in the early days, people optimize for A16Z, Lightspeed, Sequoia, things like that, right? But I do think you just need folks who are supportive and believe in you in the earliest of days and who can help you navigate mitigate things. That's all it matters, right? And just because some company has raised from Sequoia, Lightspeed, doesn't mean that the market is taken heads down, right? Like, it's so early in the days of building company, and if you get the right investors on board, you can still build a massive business. So branded VCs in the earliest stages don't impact that much as what you think as first-time founders. And second thing is competition. Also, again, earliest days doesn't matter, right? If the market is big enough, we can build a great mess, uh, irrespective of that.

But I think also if you, if you choose the right, uh, right early stage VCs, then they'll, you know, help you throughout the whole process. So I know Gaurav Jain was helping us, you know, even during this exit in a lot of, lot of ways. So they stay with you the whole time if you choose the right partners.

Definitely true. That, that, that was unexpected. I wasn't going to pitch that when we were trying to do the pre-seed, is that I will be helping negotiate your, your 9-figure exit, uh, you know. In 5 years, but I'm honored that I could play a role. As you look back to the 5, 5 and a half year journey, what do you think was like the most precious memory you have? What's like the one moment you remember as like, that was special?

There's lots of them, Gaurav, but I think for me, the one moment that kind of gave us the real spark to go the distance was when we won Drift, which was an early proof point that we can really give it a good fight. Because before that, it was just 9 months of like pure, solid, unadulterated struggle. But the moment we won Drift, and all kudos to Kishore and Ashish for like— Kishore for like hooking them in when we had nothing, and Ashish for building stuff that they wanted really quickly. That gave us a lot of confidence that, hey, this is— we could win this.

Customer validation, huh? Yeah. Kishor? I feel two things, Gaurav.

One is, I think after the exit happened, a couple of folks pinged us saying that, hey, we took off our student loan because of the amount we got from this exit, right? You know, a lot of thank you notes that we received because, you know, for many people getting $100K is a sizable amount for them to take care of their life, right? And that was a big impact that we've personally had over the lives. So thinking about that makes— brings a lot of joy. And the second thing is that I do think in tough moments, like really tough moments, I think we three stuck together, right? I think thinking about those gives me joy that we've been able to stick together and keep going, right? And I think it's easy to fight over things and get your egos in the picture. And the fact that we stuck together and kept going, I think gives me a lot of So, Sam?

Yeah, for me, I think we're going back to the whole remote-first company thing. Like whenever we got to kind of like, you know, actually meet all of our teammates in person. Like I remember one time we did a Goa trip with a lot of the engineering team and all these people that I'd just been seeing on Zoom calls late at night and stuff like that, I got to actually meet in person, hang out with them. Those are always the moments that I'll kind of remember.

Awesome, guys. I want— this is such a treat. I wanted to do this because I feel like so much about the Goldcast journey was like non-obvious in the moment, but also like it could have not— it could have gone in a different direction so many different times, you know, 3 MBAs starting a company, fundraising being difficult, the market not being as large as we thought it was going to be, right? AI moment happening. You know, the pivots along the way to distribute a team, you know, just, just so many things about this. I almost feel like breaks the case study of like a successful startup. It's like exception, exception, exception, exception. And like, yet in 5 years you've managed to go from an idea to an almost $300 million exit. And frankly, more than anything else, you built an amazing business, like happy customers, incredible logos, an amazing strong team, which is why you had multiple offers for the, for the, for the exit. It was a competitive process. I think it's because you built a real business, a real engine, and a real product. And I think that is something you should be very proud of. And I wanted to do this because I want to share that story because I think it's again easy because VC Twitter is all like the— it's like the anti-Goldcast, right? It's like 0 to $100 million in one year. You know, it's like just takes off and it's like these like dropouts, you know, you know, coming— people coming out of OpenAI or dropouts from Stanford. You know, it's just like it's like almost like the mirror image of Goldcast. And I think it's important to celebrate create, you know, companies like, like you guys as well. Because again, that's— I think that's what, that's what, you know, uh, the American dream's about. That's what venture capital is about. That's what entrepreneurship is about. Uh, and it's not just about the headlines, right? It's not just about, you know, the sexy logos. I think it's about doing the real, real dirty work, but, but the true value-creating work. So anyway, I think it's been a treat for me to be part of the journey. Um, you know, hopefully you guys have taken a breather, uh, post the, post the exit. Uh, we feel obviously very, very honored that you had an amazing outcome for us, uh, and, and our LPs and our, you know, our investors our pension plans and charities and endowments, and they're, they're very happy when you can, you know, when we can return capital, um, as well. Um, so, so thank you.