Insight
AI application startups educate their model vendors to compete against them
“Every startup in the AI application space, every, you know, service as software startup has to first and foremost internalize that their vendor is also their competitor. The model provider is both vendor and competitor. And that's a hard place to be. And they …”
Insight
Toshniwal: Early founder liquidity unlocks fearless growth instead of defensive downside optimization
“When founders are not financially secure, and let's say they put in five, six years in the company. They became, they become so fearful as this is a hundred percent of what they own. Yeah. This is a hundred percent of what they own. They cannot let it go becau…”
What-if
Toshniwal: Taking venture capital would have worsened financial outcomes for YML employees
“I think the outcome would have been, probably the personal outcome would have been worse for not just me, but also the people at YML.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: Agentic AI will consolidate five-person knowledge workflows down to two roles
“I believe that a big chunk of that work, there will be, let's say, 50 to 60% is done by agentic system. And let's say there are five jobs involved. Instead of five, they will all merge to maybe two jobs.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: OpenAI and Anthropic will eventually cannibalize coding agents like Cursor
“If you don't create enough of a deep expertise in a certain area, you know, ChatGPT, Anthropic, they are going to cut into you, which you are seeing probably with coding agents, you know, Windsurf and Cursor. Clearly they have grown very fast, but I expect Cha…”
Opinion
SaaS distribution power does not transfer directly to agentic AI
“I definitely think that the power of distribution in SaaS does not apply one-to-one in the agentic era.”
Insight
Product design is hard to offshore due to missing cultural context
“And design is such a thing, it's very hard to offshore, because it's so cultural. Just imagine if, you know, someone has not experienced Disney, and they have not experienced how healthcare system works, or they have never bought an automobile insurance in the…”
Opinion
Toshniwal: Bay Area startups treat raising venture capital as a badge of honor
“And you know, in the Bay Area, if you're bootstrapping your business, people look at you as if like something is wrong with you because it is unheard of. I think like raising money is such a badge of honor instead of like, you know, how you're servicing your c…”
Insight
Toshniwal: Digital product design resists offshoring because it requires local cultural context
“Design is such a thing. It's very hard to offshore because it's so cultural. Just imagine if, you know, someone has not experienced Disney, and they have not experienced how healthcare system works, or they have never bought an automobile insurance in their li…”
Opinion
Toshniwal: Founders should take early liquidity because AI disruption creates massive risk
“And another thesis was how you go early with startups. And you are also taking some chips off the table until they go IPO or, you know, wherever they go, which obviously is a good idea in my opinion, because with the Chad GPT era, the risk is massive, even for…”
Insight
Founder CEOs cannot scale without firing and rehiring themselves
“And I don't think any founder CEO can scale a company until they do this.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: Steve Jobs emailed him directly to praise his early iOS app
“We worked on this app called Intro to Letters, A, B, C, D, one, two, three, four, simple app, app number 55, and we launch it. And you know, get this email. I love what you're doing. Let me know how I can help best steam as jobs at apple.com.”
Assertion Supported
Toshniwal: Apple later hired YML as iOS experts for healthcare initiatives
“Actually Apple became a client too, you know, after a few years. So we were working with Apple on some, you know, healthcare initiatives and this was like working with their team, healthcare institutes, and we were the iOS expert.”
Disclosure
Toshniwal: He rejected early Credit Karma equity for cash building their app
“We built their first product mobile app and we were offered, and they were also very small. Those were like pre series a company. And they were like, look, Kashish, why don't you take some equity instead of”
Insight
Toshniwal: New AI products must be 10x better than ChatGPT to win
“If your product is not 10 X better than chat GPT and it's just one or two X, you have no chance because you know, the muscle memory of people is like, I'm just going to go to chat GPT and it's like, yeah, it's better, but it's not that good. So I'm just going …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Top YML enterprise client accounts exceeded $70M over seven-plus years
“In fact, some of the clients have stayed with us over six, seven, eight years, and each account was worth maybe over seventy million dollars, you know, sometimes over a seven, eight, nine year period.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: YML's early consumer apps brought major media fame but poor revenue
“Once we launched all these apps, it never did well. In the long run, it became, it made us famous. So, you know, we were on wall street journal, CNN, CNBC. We got a lot of fame, but I knew the reality. The business was very poor.”
Assertion Supported
Toshniwal: Pivoting YML to enterprise mobile development drove the company's ultimate success
“And Sumit and I discussed like, how about we Actually pivot to make other companies mobile first. And that pivot, you know, made YML what YML became. That was the most successful pivot.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: YML generated six acquisition offers in three weeks during 2015 process
“Like, I think he generated close to six offers in like two to three weeks.”
Assertion Supported
Toshniwal: YML reached approximately $10 million in revenue by 2015
“I think two, 15, 16, we were close to ten million in revenue.”
Disclosure
Toshniwal: YML's founders were the company's lowest-paid employees for seven years
“You know, I think like Sumit and I, we were the, probably one of the cheapest employees in the company, even after running it for like seven years, six years.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: Individual enterprise client accounts generated over $70M in lifetime revenue
“Some of the clients have stayed with us over six, seven, eight years, and each account was worth maybe over seventy million dollars, you know, sometimes over a seven, eight, nine year period.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: YML maintained a 59% average annual growth rate for a decade
“So our growth from 2016 to 23 was, I think, seven times, seven to eight times. I think if I look at the growth over the last 10 years before I sold, we grew at like 59% as an average annual rate of growth.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toshniwal: YML generated roughly $80 million in cash flow over six years
“That is a significant, because if you look at those six, seven years, you know, if I accumulate the whole six, seven years, I think our cash flow was close to eighty million dollars.”
