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There’s a phase every AI startup goes through.

At first, it s simple.

  • Stripe handles subscriptions.

  • If something breaks, you manually adjust it.

  • A credit here. An invoice tweak there.

Let s fix it properly later.

What’s one metric you trust more than likes and signups?

Startup land rewards motion.
Announcements, launches, funding headlines, feature drops - it all looks like acceleration.

But visible activity isn t the same as real progress.

Shipping fast doesn t mean you re building the right thing.
Raising capital doesn t mean you found product-market fit.
Talking about scale doesn t mean you solved anything painful.

A lot of ecosystems reward velocity because it s easy to measure.
Markets reward outcomes because they re impossible to fake.

What does “good marketing” even mean in 2026, when everyone can ship and everyone can post?

Emergent isn t just doing marketing. They re making it feel inevitable.

They picked a moment with attention gravity (India AI Impact Summit in Delhi), then stacked surfaces that create I keep seeing them energy:

  • Billboards across the city + Economic Times print ads

  • A narrative number big enough to force curiosity: $100M ARR run-rate in 8 months

  • Credibility signals and proximity without being subtle

  • And a product unlock right after: now on mobile, build from your phone

The genius is they re not explaining the product.
They re engineering belief: this is the platform, everyone s building, you re late.

Koshima Satija

4mo ago

What is the most underrated skill for startup founders in 2025?

Everyone says execution matters most.

But I think it s execution in the right way
The kind that runs experiments, not marathons.

It s easy to move fast.

It s harder to design motion that actually teaches you something.

Can you really do outcome-based pricing if you can’t measure outcomes?

Last week I met a Voice AI company. We barely talked product. The real heat was pricing, not how much, but what exactly are we charging for?

They don t want per-minute, per-seat, or per-API-call anymore. They want per resolved call, per booking, per qualified lead, per deflection.

Sounds clean. Until you try to define resolved.
Who validates it?
What if their CRM says something else?
What if attribution breaks?

At that point, the metric becomes the product. And the infrastructure behind that metric becomes the business model.

Are credits becoming the default pricing language for AI products?

Subscription pricing struggles when value is variable.
Pure usage pricing is accurate, but messy to explain, messy to predict, and easy to hate when the bill surprises you.

Credit-based pricing sits in the middle:

  • Simple for customers: I bought 10,000 credits

  • Flexible for teams: bundle tokens, GPU time, storage, calls into one unit

  • Better for finance: prepaid revenue, clearer burn, fewer billing shocks

  • Better for product: you can experiment with packaging without rebuilding billing every time

The bigger trend is this:
We re moving from pricing as a plan to pricing as a runtime.

Why does running one outbound motion feel like orchestrating four different systems?

Every Monday, this is my GTM reality-

  • One tool for prospect discovery + enrichment.

  • One for basic LinkedIn workflows.

  • Another just for LinkedIn messaging.

  • And a separate one for email sequences.

Same list. Same campaign. Different dashboards.

If I want to remove one company, I remove it everywhere.
If I pause outreach, I double-check multiple tools to make sure nothing accidentally goes out.

Koshima Satija

4mo ago

Which pricing model is working for you?

For years, SaaS pricing revolved around seats.

If you're adding more teammates then pay more.

This was simple, predictable and scalable.

Are we confusing chaos with creativity?

Vibes are powerful. They spark ideas fast and give you momentum before overthinking takes over.
But vibes without structure just create noise.

That's where prompt engineering matters.
It's the bridge between inspiration and execution. It turns abstract intent into concrete instruction.

It's what turns "I want something cool" into:

  • Here's the outcome

  • Here's the user

  • Here are the constraints

  • Here are the edge cases

Is ambition contagious or is burnout?

Spend enough time around driven builders, and your standards rise. You want to ship faster. Do more. Stay ahead.

That part is powerful.

But here s what I ve been noticing about myself:

I treat growth as urgent.
I treat health as optional.
Deadlines feel fixed.
Sleep feels flexible.
Momentum feels critical.
Recovery feels negotiable.

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