Nakul Mandan (@nakul) / X

Nakul Mandan

3,453 posts

Nakul Mandan

@nakul

Founder: @AudaciousHQ. Host: @KnuckleUpHQ. Helping outlier founders achieve improbable outcomes.

San Francisco

Joined November 2010

Pinned
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Apr 14
Building a company is a confrontational act. Introducing Knuckle Up: conversations with people who’ve operated at the highest level. Recruiting. Culture. Intensity. The inner game of being a CEO. First episode with Frank Slootman drops today. Trailer ↓
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Jan 8, 2023
Increasingly feel we might be witnessing one of the best all-time CEO runs w Satya Nadella's stint at MSFT: acquisitions of LNKD, Github, Minecraft, Activision + made it super competitive in the cloud services market + recent moves w OpenAI. He's made the company exciting again!
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Feb 13, 2020
In the era of hot silicon valley companies delaying their IPOs for as long as possible, Shopify, a Canada HQ-ed company, going from $1.3B to $62B mkt cap in 5 years post IPO and probably way beyond in the years to come is going to be a case study in contrast for the history books
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Jul 5, 2018
VRBO existed before Airbnb, Regus before WeWork & messaging before Snap. As an investor, important to keep an open mind abt a new player in an existing mkt. What matters is not just the idea but the specific user insight the founder has + how they bring it to life in the product
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Jan 18, 2023
We often get questions from our product/technical founders on initial go-to-market (GTM) team buildout. Of course, every situation is a bit diff but here’s the typical $0-3M GTM hiring sequence we see for top down SaaS (distinguishing btwn SMB / mid-market and Enterprise):
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Feb 19, 2020
10 years ago, conventional wisdom in B2B software was: SMB sucks, go midmarket / enterprise ASAP. The biggest B2B hits of the last decade (Shopify, Square, Zoom, Slack) turned out to be SMB/freemium first. Whats conventional wisdom in B2B today that’ll be wrong the next decade?
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Jan 25, 2023
Earlier in my vc career, I used to think a lot about structural moats. What I realized quickly is: structural moats only exist at scale, what comes before and often is the moat itself is the founder’s ability to create an org that relentlessly executes (on both product and gtm)
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Sep 17, 2024
My wife and I became US citizens last week. Wrote up some raw thoughts: nakulmandan.com/blog/2024/an-i…
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Feb 11, 2024
Good post here by @sequoia - key message is that the app layer in AI needs to catch up: "For startups, the takeaway is clear: As a community, we need to shift our thinking away from infrastructure and towards end-customer value. Happy customers are a fundamental requirement of
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Apr 5, 2019
Two ways to grow non-linearly in B2B in my mind: (a) Go self-serve; or (b) Go large enterprise on day 1. Here's my thought process on this:
Thoughts on non-linear growth in B2B startups
From medium.com
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Sep 4, 2025
Replying to @sonofalli
Rookie pass note. Should have at least offered: "Don't hesitate to reach out if I can be helpful in any way".
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Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Jul 11, 2020
YC gets a massive discount on entry valuations b/c it created an offering that founders want; the investment they make is a side feature. One could argue at this point they could get the 7% w/o their $125k investment. Who else has created a similarly desired product for founders?
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Apr 4, 2020
Over the next few weeks, the VC world is going to get divided into the ones who are willing to make a full investment decision over video, and ones who are not
Nakul Mandan
@nakul
Dec 8, 2023
Startups are built by ambitious optimists who find ways to make things happen. The smart skeptic who’s always coming up w rationally sound arguments of why this and that is never going to happen might be right or wrong, but def not the one who’s going to build the next big thing.
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