Usman Sheikh

Founders need to earn the right to outsource their marketing. The biggest mistake I see early-stage e-comm founders make is hiring too soon. They launch a great product, and suddenly their business becomes very real. The founder is wearing ten different hats, and is barely treading water. Hiring someone to handle growth feels like a relief. But it’s the wrong move. Early marketing is about much more than just growth. It’s about learning: → Who your ideal customers are → What channels they use  → What messaging resonates with them → What they’re looking for in a product or solution → What turns them into repeat buyers Pressing fast forward at this stage for the sake of immediate growth throttles the founder’s fundamental understanding of their customers. And that can harm every strategic decision from that point forward. Founders need to build the marketing base themselves before they have the right to outsource. But they don’t have to do it alone. Members of The Starters can book free, 1:1 coaching calls with hundreds of e-comm marketing experts who have opted in to providing support to early stage founders. They’ll answer questions, review strategy, share their experience, and help you brainstorm tactics to test and validate their marketing programs. With enough coaching, founders can become their own first marketing hire. And when the time is right, then they can hire a freelancer to run it for them.

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Sleeptech Startup Cradlewise Raises $12 Million Series A Led by 3one4 Capital and Prudent Investment Management to Build a Global Kids Sleep Brand Silicon Valley and India-based Cradlewise, an AI-first consumer health and wellness company, has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by 3one4 Capital and Prudent Investment Management, taking its total funding to date to $26 million. Here's what Cradlewise is actually building. The company makes AI-enabled smart cribs that combine sensing, learning and soothing in a closed-loop system, using multi-sensor data on a baby's movement, sound and sleep state to predict when they're likely to wake up and gently intervene before they fully do. It's not just a monitor that watches, it's a system that actively acts, and the company claims this can save parents up to two hours of effort every single day. The scale of data behind this matters. Cradlewise says its models are trained on more than 75 million hours of sleep data, backed by patents covering both its hardware and sensing systems. The company also runs its own integrated manufacturing facility in Pune, capable of producing, testing and packing thousands of cribs a month, giving it tighter control over quality, product development and costs, something rare for an early-stage hardware startup. The founder story adds real texture here. Cradlewise was founded in 2019 by husband-wife duo Radhika Patil and Bharath Patil, who built the company out of their own experience of sleepless nights as new parents. Co-founder and CTO Bharath Patil described the philosophy behind the product simply, technology that doesn't shout its presence but quietly solves problems until they're forgotten. The fresh capital comes with a clear roadmap. Beyond growth, channel expansion and geographic expansion into new markets, Cradlewise plans to extend its child sleep roadmap well beyond the crib itself, think software-led sleep routines, additional child sleep hardware, lower-priced entry points and reusable sensing modules designed to shorten future product development cycles, extending relevance from the newborn stage into later childhood while staying anchored to the same core parenting problem. The investor conviction here is notable too. 3one4 Capital's Anand Batra pointed to Cradlewise's rare combination of product depth, data and manufacturing control, while Prudent's Prashasta Seth framed the bet as sitting at the intersection of AI-native consumer hardware and the shift from passive monitoring to active, intelligent intervention, exactly the kind of thesis that's pulling serious capital into baby-tech right now. From sleepless nights to a global sleep-tech ambition, Cradlewise's Series A signals that AI-powered parenting hardware is becoming a category investors are willing to bet real money on. #StartupNews #Cradlewise #SleepTech #SeriesA #AIHardware #IndianStartups #ParentingTech — Sandeep Raiza

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Basis Vectors Capital launches www.vectoragency.ai, a NYC-based full-service marketing agency, to help B2B SaaS founders access the USA market while sitting in India or in Europe. The USA is one of the largest and most sophisticated markets for B2B SaaS. The SaaS founders struggle to access it if they are not located in the local market. Vector Agency solves this problem by combining B2B SaaS GTM strategy, execution, and operations. Vector Agency turbocharges the speed of execution by extensive use of AI to automate various components of the marketing agency. Check out www.vectoragency.ai and reach sales@vectoragency.ai if you have an interest.

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Most founders don’t realize they have a capacity problem until growth starts to hurt. A few months ago, a 6-person fintech startup in Abu Dhabi hit that exact wall. Revenue was growing. Clients were signing. But internally? Everything was slowing down. The founder was reviewing invoices at midnight. The product lead was answering support tickets. Their growth roadmap sat untouched for weeks. Hiring locally in the United Arab Emirates wasn’t realistic - senior talent came at senior costs. Agencies felt transactional. They didn’t want “outsourced help.” They wanted someone embedded in the mission. So instead of adding another full-time local hire, they tried something different. They onboarded one offshore operations specialist through Stratsmith. Not as a contractor floating outside the system. But as a core team member. Here’s what we did differently: • They joined internal Slack channels from day one • They owned full workflows not micro-tasks • They attended weekly strategy calls • They were measured on outcomes, not hours Within 90 days: • Operational turnaround time dropped by 35% • Founder workload reduced by nearly 50% • Customer response speed doubled • Burn rate decreased significantly without slowing growth But here’s the part most people miss: The win wasn’t lower salary costs. It was leverage. One integrated offshore teammate unlocked strategic time. And strategic time is where real growth happens. We’ve seen this across startups scaling in the UAE, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Australia: The founders who grow fastest don’t just hire more people. They design smarter team structures. Sometimes the highest ROI hire isn’t the most expensive one in your city. It’s the right person - placed correctly - anywhere in the world. If adding one fully integrated offshore teammate could free up 40% of your time… Would you still call it “outsourcing”? CC: Atif

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Definedge raises US$2.99M to scale its wealth-tech platforms #Pune-based #fintech and brokerage startup Definedge has raised US$2.99M, taking its total funding to US$4.07M. Founded in 2021 by Prashant Shah, CMT, CFTe, MFTA, MSTA and Rajesh Badiye, the company runs a wealth-tech ecosystem of more than 14 platforms. The round includes continued backing from Nitin Agarwal and D. Prasad, alongside new investors Anant Jain and Sachin Kasera. Definedge plans to put the funds into infrastructure, low-latency execution, Zone and Opstra, while building Algostra as a no-code retail algo-trading platform. What caught my attention is the pace behind the expansion, #Definedge says its user base grew 125% in 14 months and 10-fold in 36 months. It is also targeting US$679M in assets under management through Momentify within 24 months. Read More - https://lnkd.in/dFCja-ay Credit - Dealroom.co

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On any given day, founders are heads-down building - and design is the thing that keeps slipping. Usman Gul, Founder & CEO of Metal (Y Combinator W23, a16z speedrun Cohort 005), found that working with Zyner turned into something bigger than they expected. He puts it well: "We always thought we'd work with a design agency for a month or two. Just because of how incredible Zyner has been for us, we now view that as a long-term partnership." With Zyner, Metal got a team that's hands-on, detail-oriented, fast, and takes feedback well - the kind of design partner that makes founders want to keep coming back. Watch below 👇

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Been watching the UAE funding ecosystem for a while now. What strikes me most isn't the number of investors on the market map (there's honestly a ton). It's that most founders still have no idea how to actually reach them. You've got Mubadala, ADIA, Abu Dhabi Capital, Shorooq, and dozens of others sitting there. But the real question is: do they actually want to fund what you're building? Here's what I've learned from watching SaaS founders try to raise in the Gulf region. It's not about having a big list of investors. It's about understanding what each one actually funds. Their ticket size, their sector focus, their timeline. Most founders just shotgun emails to 50 VCs and hope something sticks. Waste of time. Better approach? Pick 5-10 that actually align with your business, research the partners who make decisions, and come with a real story. The UAE market is growing fast but it's still relationship-driven. Cold outreach gets you nowhere. If you're raising capital in the region, who have you actually had real conversations with? What made the difference? https://lnkd.in/exCp4wbX

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Exits are not easy. And at Series C/D, they are never accidental. Over the past few weeks, at Grow GCC by SSU Ventures, we’ve been in deep conversations with multiple #SeriesC and #SeriesD founders. Not pitch meetings. Not sales calls. Strategic working sessions around #StartupScaling, #GlobalExpansion, and #GCCStrategy. To understand: ✓ Where their business is heading. ✓ What pressure they are carrying. ✓ What must be fixed before scale. ✓ And what must be ready before exit. One pattern is consistent. At this stage, founders are no longer chasing growth alone. They are balancing five parallel battles: ✓ Operational efficiency across geographies ✓ Regulatory and HR compliance at global standards ✓ Brand maturity and enterprise credibility ✓ Predictable revenue and valuation stability ✓ Founder dilution already at 30–35% with active #ESOP obligations This is the “invisible phase” of startups. 1. You are too big to experiment. 2. Too responsible to move fast and break things. 3. Too exposed to make emotional decisions. Every move is audited by #Investors, #Boards, #Employees, #Customers, and future #Acquirers. Pressure becomes structural. And quietly, in almost every room, the conversation turns to: Exit. Not as an aspiration. As stewardship. As #FounderResponsibility. A serious founder does not ask: “How do I sell?” They ask: “How do I make this company #ExitReady every day?” That changes everything. It shifts focus from: Hero founders → Institutional systems Ad-hoc teams → Repeatable execution Founder-led operations → Leadership depth Local success → Global resilience This is where #GCC and #GlobalCapabilityCenters become decisive. A mature GCC is no longer about cost arbitrage. It becomes: ✓ A governance engine ✓ A talent moat ✓ A continuity layer ✓ A valuation stabilizer A post-founder insurance policy When #PrivateEquity, #VentureCapital, and public markets evaluate companies, they don’t just see revenue. They see: ✓ Delivery maturity ✓ Talent dependency ✓ Risk concentration ✓ Scalability of operations ✓ Post-merger integration readiness Well-built GCCs directly influence all five. That is why high-quality exits increasingly come from companies that invested early in #OperatingModels, #TalentStrategy, and #EnterpriseReadiness. Exits are not events. They are outcomes of years of disciplined architecture. And the founders who succeed here share one trait: "They stop building for today’s metrics And start building for tomorrow’s scrutiny." At GrowGCC, our work is not about setting up centers. It is about helping founders transition from: Startup → Institution Operator → Steward Builder → Multiplier Because in the end, the best exits are not fast. They are prepared. And preparation is leadership Sanjay Shukla Utpal Doshi . #GrowGCC #StartupEcosystem #Leadership #ScalingUp #GlobalBusiness #FounderJourney

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Having more capital doesn’t fix weak fundamentals. I’ve seen startups raise bigger rounds… only to fail faster. Because money amplifies whatever already exists. If your foundation is strong, capital accelerates growth. If your foundation is weak, capital accelerates collapse. More hires won’t fix a broken product. More marketing won’t fix poor retention. More runway won’t fix a confused strategy. Early-stage founders sometimes believe funding is the milestone. It’s not. Funding is pressure. Funding is expectation. Funding is accountability - to investors, to your team, and to the market. In my journey over 25 years, we fundraised a number of times for multiple ventures. We failed to fundraise many times too. Sometimes it was a decision made not to accept an offer to invest. Reflecting back, I see clearly now how it was a blessing that these transactions did not go through. What matters is not the fundraise. The best founders I know didn’t chase capital first. They chased clarity. Clear problems. Clear customers. Clear execution. They built traction before attention. Revenue before vanity metrics. Discipline before scale. Investors today are looking for exactly this. Growth with resilience. Ambition with fundamentals. It is time for the Camel startup. Resilience, strength and value. Incredible physical characteristics to survive the desert (see https://lnkd.in/gu9rSnUa). In our founders’ community, we see a shift toward founders who want to build sustainable companies. Because in the long run, strong fundamentals attract the right capital. Not the other way around. Curious to hear from founders and investors, have you seen capital strengthen a startup… or expose its weaknesses?

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