I'm Snehal — I'm co-founder and CEO of MeetRecord.

Prior to MeetRecord, I've been involved in a few startups.

I started my first company — hellointern.com — in the second year of college. It was the first internship portal in India.

We had over 20k students find internships in over 3k companies — including companies like Yahoo, SAP, and so on. 

hellointern.com was acquired by a Singapore-based company. 

In between, I worked for a startup, which was founded by Stanford alumni, where we compressed 3D data by 1000x. 

When I joined, that company had ~30k users — When it got acquired by a tech company later on, it had 3M users.

I’m now building MeetRecord. We help revenue teams to capture insights from calls. We help you automate your coaching and then derive insights that can help you create playbooks to close deals faster.

We have raised 2 rounds of funding. In our previous round, we got a lead investor through our network for the seed round — Powerhouse Capital. 

We then had a friend reach out saying that there was a new fund called All In Capital and that we talk to them.

We just gave one presentation to them and they were all in — which closed the seed.

Last year we were not actively raising, but were approached by a few VCs.

We bluntly asked every investor if they’re serious about this sector, asking for the research they’ve done for this sector, and what thesis they have. 

If they respond with some particular data that shows that they’re interested, then we update them on a monthly or quarterly basis.

I happened to meet the partner of the lead investor for our Pre Series A, SWC Global, and he really liked the product that we were building. 

He really liked that we were quite frugal. He also liked the way we structured our products, and they liked our team too.

They decided to jump in and invest in this round. All In Capital decided to double down too.

They had a pro rata right and got in on the $2.7M round.

Our current ARR is around $250k. We want to grow 4x in the next 6 months.

Our GTM channels are mostly SEO and content, and that's how we have gotten all this ARR. Our plan is to actually reach that with a burn of $1M — this is why we raised.

We ask a very simple question to every investor who reaches out: “What is your thesis around the market that we are in?”

It's very difficult to convince someone about the markets. If they're already convinced about the market then they need to be convinced about your team and execution.

That’s an easier game to play — so I asked that simple question and I got their thoughts.

I also checked with the portfolio and the founders that they’ve invested in — that's how you generally gauge which investors are best fit for your business.

For the first seed round we did cold outreach. The network and the people that we were connected with eventually worked — that generally helped.

In the second round, we were approached by a few VCs while simultaneously doing cold outreach to VCs we aspire to associate ourselves with. 

In the first round we pitched to 10-15 VCs — I secured meetings with about 80% of them. 

We did a pitch to All In Capital and in one shot they asked us how much of the round was left.

The remaining amount was $310k — they filled out the rest of the round.

The focus was on the problem that we were solving and how we felt this problem will evolve.

The positioning we took was that every company will need a solution like MeetRecord to be part of their sales stack.

What investors really liked about us was that we didn’t spend a single dollar on advertisement or paid marketing. 

We were able to be frugal — that showed the execution. We did demo sessions and product sessions, too. 

They liked how the team had domain expertise along with the depth of the product. 

They also talked to our customers and checked the renewal rates — Our customers were pretty happy — so that probably convinced them.

We had a growing customer base — in only 3 months, we were around $6k ARR. 

This showed the product has a lot of potential. We had a lead investor early on through our network. 

Once you have a lead investor the next investor is not that big of a challenge.

We did not focus that much on urgency, but we did set a deadline — we wanted to close it in 2 weeks so that we could get back to execution.

Having previously been in the startup domain and having a lot of investor friends actually helped us a lot. 

The challenge for us was post term sheet when you focus on getting your data room ready.

When you’re at an early stage, you are focused on selling and solving customers' problems.

You're not focused on creating detailed MIS reports, ensuring that you're invoicing everything and getting investor docs ready.

That process itself took like 3 to 4 months for us. 

We did not experience this before so we had no idea how it needed to be done — but now we are prepared with a data room ready.

In our first presentation with our lead investor — which came from a cold outreach from their side — they had nearly passed on us. 

I had no hope, but suddenly after 2 or 3 months, the investor just reached out — I thought it would be one of those just random catch ups.

I hopped on the phone and told the same story and how we were building the company. He got really excited — they ultimately invested.

Many times investors just reach out to you to update their CRM, but sometimes you might be lucky like we did. 

Your deck should have three main things: how you position yourself uniquely in the market, emphasizing your team’s domain expertise (if you have it), and showing your execution through growth.

When we had the idea we did launched an MVP — we spoke to 50 people in the US just to get feedback. We got customers interested actually paying — and some did. 

In the early days when you are building the company, you will have bugs and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. 

Investors expect that not all 40 metrics you’re tracking to be fantastic.

Focus on one particular metric that you want to nail down and execute on that.

Create a story around the pain point that you're solving and connect that with the expertise and the passion your team has. If you merge that correctly, you'll create a wonderful story.

SWC Global, All In Capital, and Powerhouse Ventures.

They're fantastic people and great to work with. 

I remember reaching out to All In Capital when we were pitching to a new investor — they picked up our call around midnight and they helped us with how we should pitch.

Websites like Houck’s Newsletter.

It’s also about listening to the founder themselves and how they tell the story. 

Over time I’ve realized presentation slides all look more or less pretty similar — what differentiates is the story that you tell.

Listen to the founders — I really like Aravind — Perplexity's Co-Founder.

Speak to other founders and your investor friend — and practice.

A lot of people generally emphasize presentation decks, but the story and the way you communicate the pain of your customer is 90% of what matters.

You have to nail that bit — to nail it, it's best to listen to other founders.

It’s not a unique take, buy people emphasize fundraising as the goal.

Before I was a founder, I thought fundraising would feel like an achievement of sorts.

Now being a founder, I realize the actual drill starts after fundraising. 

If your aim is to build a successful large company the fundraising will just happen — the goal is not the fundraise; it’s just a means to an end.