Best thing I saw all week wasn’t on my feed. It was in a room.
Miami Innovation Academy, Week 5 @NortheasternMIA@pablo_casilimas from @161ventures breaking down w/ @Rania___305 how to raise when all you have is a story.
Founders locked in!
Demo Day is going to be 🔥
I rarely talk about my story here.
At the age of 14, I ran away from home.
I dropped out of high school.
I floated through life in my late teens and early 20's with no real purpose.
And then I learned of the wonderful world of start-ups.
An ecosystem where you are rewarded for your drive and not just your background and accolades. This changed the entire trajectory of my life.
Since then, I have been committed to giving opportunities to driven people who may not have the connections, prestige, or capital to make their dreams come true.
I am honored to speak to founders at Harvard University this month alongside my brother Shivang Raisurana.
This will not be a talk about "what your pitch deck should look like" or "founder market fit". This will be a real peek behind the curtain as to how investors (and other founders) truly evaluate YOU as a founder before even thinking about your company.
If you are a founder who wants advice, guidance, intros, or whatever, never hesitate to reach out.
⚡️Fastest way to spot AI slop:
You can tell no human edited it.
🔎Founder takeaway: AI should amplify thinking, not replace it. Humans still ship vision and taste.
#AItools#productthinking
AI won’t replace taste, judgment, or storytelling. ✨
🔎Founder takeaway: AI can generate infinite content. Only humans make people care. Craft still wins — especially when paired with leverage.
#AI#storytelling#founders
😷Pandemic lesson: communities built on buildings disappear.
Communities built on relationships survive.
🔎Founder takeaway: your network should outlive locations. If it doesn’t, it was never real.
#communitybuilding#founders
Genius is equally distributed. Opportunity isn’t.” 🌍
🔎Founder takeaway: most founders don’t lack talent — they lack access. If your city doesn’t have operators or investors, build the room yourself.
#entrepreneurship#ecosystem
⏩The AI startups winning right now aren’t flashy.
They quietly turn 15 minutes into 15 seconds.
🔎Founder takeaway: if you can show clear before vs after, distribution solves itself. Demos > decks. Always.
#AIstartups#SaaS
If your AI pitch starts with “we use AI,” stop. 🤖
Founder takeaway: customers buy outcomes, not models. Lead with cost ↓, time ↓, accuracy ↑. AI is the engine — business impact is the product.
#AI#B2B#product
📈Scaling lesson: you can’t make every decision — but you can define how decisions get made.
🔎Founder takeaway: hire people who solve problems without permission. Process scales after values, never before.
#scaling#operators#founders
Culture isn’t a values slide.
Culture is decisions made when no one’s watching. 👀
🔎Founder takeaway: the moment “that’s not my job” becomes normal, speed dies. Early teams win with default ownership.
#leadership#startupculture
The agent future isn’t one execution model.
It’s bursts and marathons.
Stateless and stateful.
That’s why a new agent-native platform had to be built from first principles
Congrats @jhaynie@rblalock@agentuity!
Every pitch deck says “this is a unicorn.” 🦄
Investors don’t fund projections — they fund momentum.
Founder takeaway: show a metric moving (churn ↓, time ↓, revenue ↑). Hype expires. Proof compounds.
#startuplife#VC#traction
Most early startups fail because they build to fundraise instead of to sell. 😬
🔎Founder takeaway: fundraising is a tool, not the job. Customers create leverage. Revenue creates options. The best rounds happen when you don’t need the money.
#fundraising#founders
Founders don’t need more networking events.
They need warm customer intros, early hires, and investors who answer texts. 📲
Founder takeaway: community isn’t vibes, it’s infrastructure. If your ecosystem doesn’t create outcomes, build the room yourself. 🏗️
#startupcommunity
AI will kill jobs—and create new ones 🤖⚖️
Every tech revolution does.
WEF: AI creates 97M new roles by 2027, even as others disappear.
The edge isn’t AI itself.
It’s judgment 🧠, context 🧭, and critical thinking.
Use the tool. Don’t outsource your brain.
#FutureOfWork#AI
If you want a company that lasts 10+ years ⏳
build belief—not just software.
Great products feel inevitable.
Bain: companies with strong loyalty grow 2.5× faster
If leaving your product feels painful 😣
you’re doing it right.
#Brand#CustomerLove
Education is the real AI opportunity 🎓
Most companies don’t know how to use AI safely—not whether to use it.
Gartner: 80% of enterprises fail to scale AI due to data & governance issues
Winners won’t build flashiest AI ✨
They’ll make AI usable 🛠️
#AIAdoption#B2B
AI adoption isn’t blocked by technology 🤖
It’s blocked by fear 😨
Fear of job loss
Fear of change
Fear of breaking things
Deloitte: 60%+ of enterprises delay AI due to org resistance, not capability
Founders who remove fear unlock demand 🔓
#AI#Enterprise