Iba Masood
Co-founder & CEO, Tara AI. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive
Iba Masood is the co-founder and CEO of Tara AI, an AI-driven product delivery and sprint planning platform. Her company previously participated in the Y Combinator W15 accelerator batch.
2shows
2appearances
26statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Iba Masood said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Masood: Founders should not maximize valuation over partner alignment
“You shouldn't maximize for valuation because the thing is that if you maximize for valuation then you know incentives aren't necessarily aligned, and so what you really want to maximize for is, are we getting to work with the right people?”
Masood: VCs shouldn't route diverse founders to diverse partners by default
“Founders should be able to talk to the partner at the fund that understands their industry and their business. That's really, it's that simple. It's, you know, they shouldn't automatically assume that because, you know, this person is a female founder or a min…”
Masood: Open source projects are among the most efficiently run software projects
“We, as a company, we have this hypothesis that open source projects are one of the most efficiently run projects as a whole, because Typically when people are pursuing side projects, they have a timeline and they need to get things done quickly, but they like …”
Masood: Vet VC associate influence via LinkedIn tenure and board roles
“I think the most important thing is to meet with senior associates that have influence and how you can figure that out is really just go onto their LinkedIn and see how long have they been at the firm. Are they someone who's really an analyst, but has the asso…”
Masood: Committed VC partners will work weekends to prep founders
“If the GP really wants, you know, you to present your best foot forward in terms, in front of the full partner meeting, they will work through that weekend or, you know, whatever that date period is to make sure that your presentation is as good as it can be.”
Masood: Founders should ignore fund brand and choose the best partner
“Building a company is a longterm game at the end of the day. And so what that means is you want to ensure that you're finding the best partner for your company or your business and really take the fund out of the equation.”
Masood: Product-market fit is a stepladder you repeatedly gain and lose
“Product market fit is a stepladder. So, you're going to have it for a little bit, and then you're gonna suddenly lose it, and then you have to change your product again, and so, that's really how it is.”
Masood: Product managers spend roughly 70% of their time on project scoping
“We had about 10 to 15 contractors early on that were actually, you know, running the scoping process. And we were comparing results between what the AI could do versus what human product managers were mapping out. And what we found was that there was about 70%…”
Masood: Companies accept AI hiring for freelance roles, not full-time
“Plus we found that companies were more willing to allow AI to make the recruiting decision when it was primarily for freelance positions. So even with full time, they were still not willing to like Allow an algorithm to recruit developers specifically that wer…”
Masood: Tara will grow from $80K to $140K MRR within two months
“And so from, but we're actually going to go from 80 K to about a 140 K in the next two months because of the enterprise deals that we're almost about to close.”
Masood: Freelance developers regularly cross-list across Toptal and Tara
“We have TopTile developers on our platform too. It's not like every developer just joins one platform. They usually join multiple.”
Masood: Building a machine learning platform takes two to three years
“We started developing the product in 2015 because it takes two to three years just to build out an ML platform.”
Masood: TARA raised $2.8M after pivot for a $3M seed round
“About a fourth of our investors doubled down. And so from that 200 K when we pivoted, we raised 2.8 million. And so we had a three million Called it a three million seed.”
Masood: TARA secured a Series A term sheet in nine days
“Our total fundraise process to go from first coffee meeting to term sheet was nine days.”
Masood: Ask portfolio founders how VC partners acted when things failed
“Do your homework, but then come armed with very specific questions and really try to ask about, What did that partner do when things went south?”
Masood: TARA AI conducts board meetings every eight weeks
“So we do board meetings every eight weeks.”
Masood: Tara trained early AI models on roughly 5,000 software projects
“So we used roughly about our early data set included about 5000 software projects, and we use that to train our system to understand that, okay, with an iOS app, if the iOS app requires a two sided marketplace, here are the typical milestones, tasks, and this …”
Masood: Tara charges enterprise clients $120k annually plus marketplace fees
“So we're looking at about a 120 K annual. And then on top of that, there's also marketplace charges.”
Masood: Freelance developers on platforms like Upwork averaged $200 per widget project
“We found that the average developer was being paid about 200 dollars on the leading freelance marketplaces like Upwork. And they had to 200 dollars for a small widget project. Okay. And so they would need to take at least 10 to 18 of those projects in a month …”
Masood: Tara has about 10 enterprise and 65 total customers
“So enterprises, we have about 10. A total companies, we have about 65.”
Masood: Tara generates 60% of revenue from talent placement, 40% from software
“So about 60% of our revenue comes from placing the talent, and about 40% is coming from the software.”
Masood: Tara Intelligence burns around $110,000 per month
“So well, our burn as of today is at about a 110 K.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Iba's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Tara AI | 1 | 16 | — | full record on Top Founders → |
 Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Tara AI | 1 | 10 | — | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |