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I have been catching up with founder friends for eChai’s Slice of Startup Life series. These are the little moments and side notes that don’t always get written down, but they stay with us.
The other day, I was catching up with Anuj Dalal, founder of Zestard, and he said something that stayed with me:
“According to me, the business is not just sales and operations; it’s beyond that. When a founder is coming from a job background, they are either from the sales team or the operations team. But when we start a business, we need to talk about HR, finance, account, legal, admin, liaisoning… and you usually pick that up only through co-curricular or other activities.”
It reminded me how startups stretch you into rooms you didn’t imagine yourself in. You walk in with one strength, maybe sales, maybe ops, and suddenly you’re dealing with contracts, bank officers, team disputes, compliance deadlines. Nobody really prepares you for that part.
Anuj connected it back to the side things he kept doing, robotics contests and cultural events in college, free city seminars at Ahmedabad Management Association on finance, trade, IP rights. At the time, they were just things he was curious about. Years later, they turned out to be the experiences that gave him the range to step into all the “beyond sales and ops” parts of running Zestard.
I keep thinking about that. Maybe it’s not just the main track that makes us founders. Maybe it’s also the side roads we take, the random events we show up at, the projects that don’t look like “career moves,” the moments of curiosity that add up quietly in the background.
Maybe that’s what we should pay more attention to. Not only the formal training or the job experience, but the parts of our lives that quietly prepare us for responsibilities we can’t yet see.
When Experience Isn’t Enough to Build the Next Business
I was talking to my friend Pankaj Bhimani, who has built B2B companies in corporate apparel and cloud telephony. Now he is building 58Miles, a D2C travel accessories brand. And he reminded me of something every founder eventually learns: experience is not enough when you start a new business.
The first curve was product. He wanted to design his own bags but had never worked with materials, ergonomics, or manufacturing. Every mistake meant months of correction. What he thought would take a season stretched into three years.
The second curve was distribution. Moving from B2B contracts to online sales meant learning an entirely new language: funnels, conversions, digital marketing. As Pankaj put it: “That’s a steep learning curve I’m still on.”
At one point, he wondered if it would have been easier to be an expert in either bags or consumer branding. But then he smiled and said: “If I were from the bag industry, I would have followed the traditional way. Not knowing the rules gave me the freedom to imagine differently.”
That is the founder’s dilemma. Experience gives you the courage to start, but inexperience gives you the imagination to see what insiders miss.
And in the end, that is the founder’s path. The curve is steep. The mistakes are costly. But that is the fun of it. You take what you know, learn what you do not, and keep going until the story bends your way.
The Hidden Cost of Good Opportunities
As a founder, your day often starts with opportunities that sound exciting. A coffee with someone you admire. A partnership that could unlock a new audience. Warm intros to people who look important. An invite to launch in a new city. A big pilot with a logo you’d love on your site. A speaker invite, sometimes the kind we do at eChai, that may feel good in the moment, but being part of it quietly takes more time than you thought. A feature that rides today’s trend. A side project that makes you feel alive. A business partnership that sounds promising but pulls you into an area that isn’t what you’re building right now.
Each of these feels right on its own. Together, they chip away at the one thing that powers your company: focus. The cost is never obvious on day one. It sneaks in slowly. A sprint slips. A customer request waits longer than it should. A roadmap bends a little, then a little more. Momentum leaks quietly.
And none of these are mistakes. Coffee builds trust. Partnerships open doors. Intros can help later. A pilot teaches. Talks build brand. Trends can work. Side projects spark ideas. The real skill is knowing sequence. What belongs now, and what belongs later.
That is the founder’s everyday dilemma. Not whether an opportunity is good or bad, but whether it is good for you, at this stage, in the game you are playing.
When I asked a few founder friends about this, Utpal, founder of Upsquare, shared a story from The Guardian. Google’s AI Overviews looked like an extra source of visibility, yet the hidden cost was steep. Clicks plummeted, and publishers saw traffic fall.
If even the biggest opportunities come with hidden costs, how do you decide which ones are truly yours to take?
Failure Feels Confusing Because It’s Incremental
Failure in startups rarely happens in a single moment. More often, it creeps in quietly. A customer seems less engaged. A launch lands flat. Numbers stop rising and just sit there. Each signal alone feels fixable. Together, they shift the ground under your feet.
Harsh Pokharna, co-founder of OkCredit, once reflected on how ambition can backfire. On instagram he admitted: “We launched in 14 languages. Then killed most of them.”
Instagram
Others describe failure as a slow build of small mistakes. Nithin Kamath of Zerodha put it sharply: “Sustainability is more important than valuation. Misjudging the market size and opportunity, then setting wrong expectations and chasing valuations are probably the biggest reasons why startups fail.”
For some, the lesson is personal. Sam Altman wrote on X: “i failed pretty hard at my first startup–it sucked!–and am doing pretty well on my second.”
X
X
Even future giants have been told their idea was too small. Brian Chesky of Airbnb recalled that in 2008 an investor told him the market “did not seem large enough.”
Founders who endure often share their own grounding habits. Ghazal Alagh of Mamaearth posted on LinkedIn: “Clarity is power. Habit is greater than willpower. Choose discomfort. Consistency over perfection any day.”
Others speak to the emotional whiplash. Paul Graham, in his essay “What Startups Are Really Like,” described it like this: “The emotional ups and downs were the biggest surprise for me. One day, we’d think of ourselves as the next Google and dream of buying islands; the next, we’d be pondering how to let our loved ones know of our utter failure.”
And sometimes the advice is simply to own what has already happened. Mark Pincus said it at FailCon: “If we can all intellectually and emotionally own our failures, then you control your destiny.”
Failure rarely comes as a crash. It comes like a season. Sometimes, by the time you notice, you have already been living in it. The question is not whether you have failed. Everyone does, in small ways. The real question is which story you are in right now: the season of drift, or the season that teaches you how to begin again.
Zams wants AI to move from assistant to teammate for sales teams
While leading eChai SF, I get to meet founders who are working on the problems that almost every team talks about. One of the most common frustrations I hear is the quiet tax of coordination. A new customer request means updating Salesforce, pinging a manager on Slack, drafting a quote in HubSpot and sending it out by email. Each step is straightforward, but together they drain time from the real work of building relationships and closing deals.
That is the gap Nirman Dave has been chasing. His first company, Obviously AI, focused on making predictions simple enough to run directly from a spreadsheet. The idea found traction, more than 82,000 models were created, the company raised from Sequoia Scouts, B Capital and Facebook’s startup fund, and Nirman earned a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30. Yet he kept noticing the same limit. Predictions were useful, but they did not reduce the repetitive work that dominated the day.
In 2025, the company rebranded as Zams, named after an astrophysics term that marks the moment a star stabilizes. For Nirman, it symbolized AI reaching a stage where it becomes dependable infrastructure. Zams builds AI agents that carry out workflows across more than 100 business tools. If a customer asks for a quote, the agent can log it in Salesforce, alert the manager in Slack, prepare the document and send it back.
There’s a short demo that shows this in action:
https://youtu.be/_MRxG66-ceY.
There’s a short demo that shows this in action:
https://youtu.be/_MRxG66-ceY.
Customers already report strong outcomes. One linked Zams to $10 million in ARR without adding staff. Another cleared a 208-day backlog. Sierra Pacific says it saved 4,160 hours of work, and Husk Energy mentions $775,000 in revenue unlocked. These are company-reported numbers, but they suggest teams are trusting Zams with processes tied directly to revenue, not just side projects.
The broader landscape makes this more interesting. Businesses have long relied on tools like Zapier to connect apps, RPA systems to automate back-office tasks, and now copilots from Microsoft and Salesforce to surface insights. What Zams is aiming for is a layer that doesn’t just connect or suggest but quietly executes, the type of work teams today still handle manually.
From the eChai SF lens, what excites me is the question this raises. Will companies begin to treat AI agents as part of the team, trusted to carry out workflows end to end? If that shift happens, it could change how businesses scale, allowing growth without headcount rising at the same pace. That is why Zams is a story I’ll be following closely.
The eChai Effect - In Their Words
“When we launched LegalWiz.in back in 2016, concept of procuring legal and compliance services through a digital commerce platform wasn't as prominent in India. eChai played a significant role in providing the early adopters, and building significant positioning in the startup fraternity. Overtime, eChai grew to be a massive network of like-minded entrepreneurs and extended that benefit to all the members in a true "co-rise" spirit. I personally love to attend eChai events, learn from subject matter experts who share relatable and actionable insights and experiences. For startup journeys, it is so important to be surrounded by people who can add relevance, perspective, and push you to do better. Most importantly a group of people where you aren't being judged about things going right or wrong, but be a motivational force that keeps you going, yet keeping you in check. eChai is that place for me!”
Shrijay Sheth
Founder at LegalWiz.in and Hire4Higher Consulting
"I have evolved from role of Community Builder to Startup Consultant to Startup Ecosystem Enabler to Angel Investor and now launching a Venture Studio and eChai has been a catalyst in my overall journey as Startup Evangelist since 13 years."
Mehul Shah
Co-Founder at Counselvise & Ivy Growth
"From late-night brainstorming over chai to early morning founder calls, eChai has been more than just a network for me; it’s been home base for ideas, impact, and inspiration. What started as a simple meetup years ago turned into a powerful movement, connecting founders, creators, and dreamers. I’ve had the privilege of seeing startups find product-market fit, marketers (like me) find unexpected collaborations, and most importantly, people finding their tribe. संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं – Let us move together, speak together. It’s not just a verse from the Rigveda — it’s how Jatin and the entire eChai community truly operate. We don’t just network, we grow together. Forever grateful to be a part of the eChai Effect.
Jaydip Parikh
Chief Everything Officer at Tej SolPro
eChai Partner Brands
eChai Ventures partners with select brands as their growth partner - working together to explore new ideas, open doors, and build momentum across the startup ecosystem.
