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How to Build an Enduring Startup? Insights from Gokul Rajaram
Building a company is a sequence of irreversible choices made with incomplete information. This episode examines how great founders navigate those moments, and how experienced investors recognize them early.
Gokul Rajaram, Partner at Marathon, shares lessons from decades of operating across Google, Facebook, Square, DoorDash, and investing on hundreds of early-stage startups. He explains why founder authenticity and deep customer empathy matter more than early traction or surface-level storytelling.
The conversation explores how companies scale people and decision-making, the risks of premature titles and heavyweight hires, and how investors can help founders raise their ambition at critical moments without breaking the organization.
It also offers a grounded view on AI, outlining where real opportunities exist, how defensibility is formed, and what founders must do to stay relevant as technology and expectations rapidly evolve.
We’re looking for the next generation of successful Indian marketplaces. If you’re an early-stage marketplace founder, apply now here or learn more about the #DecodingMarketplaces Startup Hunt.
We’d love to hear about your experiences with marketplaces. Let us share our learnings and build a better and stronger ecosystem. Write to us at [email protected] to be a part of the Accel family.
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We’re building Passionfroot 1, an operating system for creators to manage their business.
We’re based in Europe and raised our $ 3.4m pre-seed round from Creandum and US angels such as Vlad (Webflow) and creators like Ali Abdaal.As we’re creating a new category and as the creator economy is global and mostly online, we’re building from Day 1 a global company and product that helps creators monetize around the world.
This brings a lot of complexities especially in terms of payments and taxes as our early users are based both in Europe and the US and deal with cross-border transactions.What are Do’s and Dont’s for European startups who have a global ambition and build products for a global customer base from Day 1. Anything you would do differently?
Thanks @pjbouten! Love how you’ve thought about incrementally shaping a category with a focus on product and service, and only then thinking about getting the message out there vs the other way around.
And totally agree on the distinctions and overlaps both self-serve and enterprise motions share.
Thanks, PJ, for taking the time to address questions from the great vantage of shaping Showpad into a global, enterprise SaaS brand!