In this episode, Mihir Gupta (Co-Founder & CEO, Teachmint), joins our host Digjay, to talk about his path leading up to Teachmint, surviving the 0 to 1 phase as first time founders, building a foundation to scale up rapidly and how to sustain momentum after scaling up, benefits & challenges of pursuing inorganic growth, finding a balance between core venture building & fundraising, aligning fundraising strategy with market dynamics, optimizing for 'conviction' & 'speed' of decision making when choosing your investors and more. Founded in 2020, Teachmint is an edtech-infrastructure startup that helps teachers and institutes create their own virtual classrooms and build direct relationships with students. The startup that is backed by marquee investors like Learn Capital, Rocketship.vc, Better Capital, Lightspeed India, Vulcan Capital among others, has scaled up rapidly in the past 2 years to become one the of the largest teaching platforms in the world. Prior to founding Teachmint, Mihir held leadership positions in startups like OYO and Open Financial. An IIT Bombay alum, Mihir spent the early years of his career as a consultant with McKinsey, working extensively in South East Asia and India. You can connect with him here on Linkedin or Twitter. ---- Show notes – (02:16) Mihir’s background & path leading up to Teachmint; Bringing together the founding team (08:42) Surviving the 0 to 1 phase as first time founders (10:46) Building a foundation to scale up rapidly (14:19) What should founders focus on, to sustain momentum after scaling up? (17:09) Teachmint’s approach to attracting & retaining quality talent (20:43) Benefits & challenges of pursuing inorganic growth (27:22) Finding a balance between core venture building & fundraising (29:51) Aligning fundraising frequency & strategy with market dynamics (33:29) Optimizing for conviction & speed of decision making when choosing your investors; How to gauge conviction when talking to investors? (37:26) How has being a founder influenced his personality over the years? (38:30) Rapid fire and closing remarks ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any podcast platforms of your choice (like Spotify & Apple iTunes). We would appreciate if you could leave us a review on Apple iTunes. This helps others discover the podcast organically. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay here on Linkedin & Twitter