Building a startup during COVID, selling a startup, and marketing yourself: Ish Baid (Virtually, YC S20)
Welcome to the sixth episode/edition of YC Founder Stories. I started this experiment curious to learn from the best founders who went to YC and take this opportunity to narrate their stories.
The Format: The interview is divided into two parts: 1) Q&A and 2) BONUS CONTENT. I’m still experimenting, so bear with me as I iterate. Let’s get started.
Today’s guest is Ish Baid from Virtually (YC S20), which was the first ever "Student Relationship Manager" for online schools to bridge the gap between educators and students.
Ish previously worked at Facebook as a software engineer and is currently building Reflow AI, creating AI agents that build and run your HR tasks and workflows.
Virtually was the first ever "Student Relationship Manager" for online schools to bridge the gap between educators and students. With Virtually, you could track attendance on Zoom, send reminders, and more.
Read on to learn more about Baid’s YC application and journey!
Prefer to listen to the interview? Just hit play or get it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Q&A:
What was your startup idea when you entered YC?
We got into YC for the Summer 2020 batch, building the Shopify for online schools. If you go back to 2020, with COVID and the pandemic, the idea was appealing as people couldn't go out and were stuck at home. Learning and education needed to adapt, so we started building the Shopify for all schools.
We had been working on it for a year before, believing education would shift online for broader knowledge access, tapping into industry experts, regardless of where you lived. We started the business in 2019, and in 2020, with the tailwind from COVID, that became the core idea we entered YC for.
How did you come up with the idea?
The origin story was always that I was an engineer at Facebook. I remember living in Seattle at the time, and there was this snowstorm in, I want to say, February or March of 2019. Stuck indoors, I played around with conferencing software and realized it was getting really good, expanding my mind. I started thinking about the impact of improving conferencing on various industries, especially education, which was dear to me as an avid learner, side-course enthusiast, and former college graduate student instructor.
The premise was that over time, it only makes sense to learn from anyone, not just those around you. So, remote education became a significant piece. I started leaning in and building the platform around mid-March 2019.
What are the key elements to focus on when applying to YC?
Yeah, my journey to YC was quite long. I applied six times, not all with one company but across different phases. Applied as an undergrad, applied a couple of times with my first company during school, and virtually applied three times before finally getting in. Out of those six applications, I was offered an interview four times, attended twice, and finally secured a spot.
What did I learn from this? It's undeniably competitive. The key in the application is providing deep insight. Clearly express what advantage your experiences give you in knowing a market. Focus on who you're building for, what you're building, and how it will grow. YC dislikes jargon and attempts to impress with flashy stats or partnerships. They look for founder-market fit, the opportunity, and your ability to execute, even if revenue isn't a factor for most YC companies entering the batch.
Share your YC interview experience in 1-2 sentences.
This might sound a bit cliche, but the essence is to make something people want, YC's tagline. It's seemingly basic, yet surprising how many startups fail at it. To phrase it differently, build things people want to buy. I made this mistake too, wanting to build what I wanted, not necessarily what people wanted to buy. Understanding and empathizing with users is crucial.
The YC interview is a 10-minute intense session, whether in person or remote. I've experienced both. Doing it in person used to involve flying out to Mountain View, inducing anxiety. Doing it remotely feels great—you're in the comfort of your home with notes at hand. It's an intense process where they thoroughly grill you on your business, making it quite chaotic.
Did you pivot your idea before or during YC?
Yeah, so every startup naturally evolves. We went through soft pivots and later had a hard pivot in the business lifecycle. When we entered YC, we were building the Shopify for online schools, helping people create their own online schools.
However, it turned out there wasn't a huge market for that. Over time, we pivoted to become more of an analytics software for online schools, coding boot camps, accelerators, and similar programs.
This shift aligned with what people wanted to buy, not necessarily what we initially wanted to build. Discovering this market required talking to customers, spending time with them, and understanding their problems to gain valuable insights.
How did YC help you go from 0 to 1 to N?
Yeah, I mean, I think YC is great for people who are competitive in nature. I've always been that way, which is like, sure, you can tell me to accomplish something and I can obviously set my goal and try to accomplish it, but I'm very competitive in nature.
So if you put other people next to me who are also trying to hit similar goals, I'm gonna try to work so much harder, and I think that's the beauty of YC. At the end of the day, it's just creating accountability.
Sure, you could emulate the same thing for yourself, but it's when you're surrounded by some of the best builders in the world and you see how much they can accomplish in a short period of time, it really motivates you to try to do the same.
So, I think just creating that accountability with the community, with the structured program, with all the guidance and lessons, that's how it really enabled me to move faster.
Share a “do things that don’t scale” story in your startup journey.
In the early days, there was a lot of stuff like this. We custom-built many integrations for a few customers we really wanted, even though the product they wanted was different than what we had built. People are nervous about too much customization, but in the early days, it's okay because you're learning and getting close to the customer. You're theoretically building what they want to buy, getting closer to a sale by doing enough of those customizations.
Eventually, you start to see patterns emerge in terms of what people want, and then you can scale down the road. Many successful businesses start feeling like services businesses initially, especially with software companies, where the goal is to solve a problem for customers. They don't care if it's a product or a service—they care about solving their problems. So, being extremely focused on helping them solve their problems should be the priority. We grinded out custom integrations and use cases for customers we really wanted, adapting our entire company to focus on those specific cases. That pivot wouldn't have happened without those custom integrations in the early days.
How did you get your first 1,000 users?
Man, that's a great question. We launched on ProductCon, and YC helped us with a big public launch. Typically, big public launches result in disappointment because you see an immediate crash.
ProductCon is great for exposure, but most sign-ups may not be your target customers. After the initial hype, you can focus on those who are left, the ones who stuck around, and start building for them. For us, our first paying customer came after ProductCon.
We stayed, did cold outbound, focused on relationship building, and did a lot of sales—grinding our way to sales. Those early custom integrations brought in thousands of students into our platform, a key step in putting our heads down and doing the work to sell the product.
Share 3 tips for founders who are trying to get into YC.
Start with a great market and a great team: The lesson here is that ideas can change, but a great market can make or break your startup. Having a strong team and choosing a market that has potential for success, even if your initial idea evolves, is crucial. Spend time validating the market, assessing its willingness to pay, and then move forward with starting your business.
Make progress and move fast: For founders aiming to get into YC, the key is to demonstrate progress and the ability to get things done quickly. Even if you don't get accepted on the first try, keep going. Many successful YC founders faced rejections initially, and persistence is often a key factor in eventual success.
Don't make getting into YC your primary goal: The first thing is just to start with a great market and a great team. The lesson here is that ideas can change, but a great market can make or break your startup. Having a strong team and choosing a market that has potential for success, even if your initial idea evolves, is crucial. Spend time validating the market, assessing its willingness to pay, and then move forward with starting your business.
For founders aiming to get into YC, the key is to demonstrate progress and the ability to get things done quickly. Even if you don't get accepted on the first try, keep going. Many successful YC founders faced rejections initially, and persistence is often a key factor in eventual success.
The primary goal should be building a successful business, not just getting into YC. YC might be one path, but there are various avenues for funding and growth, like profits, capitals of commodity, more. Don't take rejection personally, as YC is one of many potential resources. Proving that you don't necessarily need YC and can succeed independently makes your startup more appealing to investors, including YC.
BONUS CONTENT: Deep insights, more tactical advice, and an open discussion.
What are some things that you learned from building and selling your business and moving on from it?
Yeah, I mean, the journey was quite interesting, quite a ride, four and a half years. It started with, obviously, I share the origin story. After essentially coming up with the idea of starting to build a platform, I worked on it just exploring the market for about six to nine months. That's where we raised our first pre-seed round from Afore Capital.
Super grateful for the investors there. Gaurav and Anamitra are terrific, incredible. If you're lucky enough to work with them, I think they're really some of the most supportive investors you can have. So I'm very lucky. They invested in me. They gave us our first 300k check.
After that, we continued building, iterating, eventually got to the Shopify model for schools, got into YC, did YC. After YC, we actually, before Demo Day closed our round, it happened quite quickly from Tiger Global. So Tiger Global led our seed round.
In total, the company raised $2.2 million in capital. Then we grew out the team, going from being just me to another full-time engineer. We brought on two more engineers, a designer, head of customer success, and a bunch of contractors, and continued to build the platform, iterate for the better part of the next two, three years.
Until we had a buyer purchase earlier this year, it seemed like a good opportunity to basically move on to the next thing. I was totally toast too. I had learned a lot, and there were a lot of things that I wanted to do differently with the next business. I was ready to move on to a new market, new industry.
I took the exit and took some time off and now just getting back into building with my new thing.
What are a few things you want to do differently with your second venture?
Yeah, so I'll start off with what I talked about before—the foundation. If you're in a good market and you have a good team, getting everything else wrong doesn't mean you can't win. There's a huge focus on the market, really thinking about the market.
Getting experimental and spending a lot of time doing things that don't scale. To build a great software business, in the early days, it's like building a services business. You go out and manually solve problems for a specific set of users, using software to automate it over time. This approach is much better to build trust with the industry and gain customers.
A lot of my mental models have flipped. Silicon Valley tends to glorify raising a ton of capital and hiring a lot of employees, which feels prestigious. However, many of those companies die, causing devastation for the employees going through layoffs. Now, I have a different perspective, admiring companies that can achieve better scale with as few employees and as little outside funding as possible.
Looking at Silicon Valley, it seems like a hamster wheel of following funding rounds. People often talk about getting into YC or raising a Series A as their goal, but these are the wrong goals. The real objective is to solve problems and build a business. There are multiple ways to achieve that; maybe venture is the right route, or maybe it's not. It depends on the market.
Once the product is off the ground, not every product is meant to be venture scale. Some may not have the potential for it. So, the initial focus is to get the engine running, scale to a million dollars in revenue, and then explore expanding to different markets. If going big makes sense, then taking venture capital to scale is an option, but maybe the business can get big without it too.
My philosophy, summarizing how it's different this time around, involves being more open-minded about different options and paths. It's about relying on validated learnings, not just building what I want to build but what the market wants. Always listen for feedback and make decisions based on that feedback.
Why should founders consider raising funds?
Yeah, I think the best time to raise capital is obviously when capital is the biggest bottleneck to growth, right? One should decide if going big is the desired path. It might not be the right life choice, but if that's the goal, and capital is the primary bottleneck, then it makes total sense. However, for many people, especially in an era where building software is becoming cheaper with advancing AI tech, it doesn't always align.
The cost of software is decreasing, but seed rounds are increasing. Raising more capital just because it's possible can be dangerous, as having too much capital leads to solving every problem by throwing money at it, diminishing the creativity of building businesses. When you lack substantial capital, it forces you to be incredibly creative, and startups often produce their best work under such constraints.
Some good use cases for raising venture capital include tackling a big market with traction, where competitors start emerging. If the goal is to capture the market before competitors become significant, raising capital makes sense. For instance, Airbnb raised capital when facing a competitor in Europe and wanting to go head-to-head. Leveraging the right opportunities, such as getting preempted in a funding round or receiving an acquisition offer, can also be valid reasons to raise capital. However, challenging oneself and evaluating if it's the single most crucial thing for business growth is a conversation that not enough people have with themselves.
How do you communicate your market to VCs?
Yeah, I do think it's obviously having the numbers to back you up is great. But pitching the market has a lot to do with telling the story. The story for us is like, the circumstances were right, even though this wasn't a huge market at the time, the circumstances were right to help it blow up and become really big.
We painted a picture of the factors affecting it, particularly during COVID and the changes in the world. We discussed how we saw the world going in a certain direction, and if it did, there would be a need for a product like ours. We highlighted our readiness to capture that market.
That was the story we told. However, it didn't pan out exactly that way because COVID stopped in many ways due to vaccines, and people returned to normal lives. The market didn't materialize as we thought. So, it changed expectations. At that point, you can either fold or try something else. Pivoting into a different market requires courage, and it's challenging, but founders need to be honest with themselves and recognize if they're heading towards a dead end. Adjusting is scary but sometimes necessary for survival.
Talk to me about your hiring process.
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it just comes down to two principles that we cared a lot about, which were low ego and a growth mindset. I think it came down to a lot of honestly my personal preference. I love working with people who are incredibly open-minded, open to being wrong, and ambitious, wanting to grow and get better.
We just tried to filter on that as much as possible. We didn't always get it right. But whenever we could, we tried to reconcile the mistakes and then learn from them.
What are some of the lows that you faced and how did you overcome them?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think the biggest hurdle was probably just the journey to finding kind of product-market fit and just like, what is the right audience to go after and what's the right thing to build and how do you reach them, right? Just, I think those are the three questions to answer to get product-market fit. And that's really hard because it's like three changing variables.
So, you know, focus, like honestly, we just tried to do too much. I, you know, when trying to get your early customers, people try like all these different things. And now I've come to learn that it's just, you just need one product that you sell to one audience and you have one way to reach them. That's all you need to get to your first million dollars of revenue. And so it's just like, I think just a laser focus on that would have been better, but we didn't have it.
I think we just tried to do too much in terms of go-to-market. We tried webinars and we tried podcasts and we tried social media and blog posts. And it's just like, at the end of the day, the one thing that worked for us more than anything was just like sales, just like outbound selling. And so I wish we had just focused our efforts on that with one specific audience. And I think we would have just accomplished more if you had done that, but we just, we didn't. And so that made, I think that made that journey much longer than I think it could have been. I think we could have found much better traction much sooner had we just tried to do less, to be honest.
Tell me about Reflow AI.
Reflow is my latest project, TBD if we'll keep that name—I really like it, but getting the domain is tricky. So, with Reflow, there are a couple of principles that I'm applying from Virtually, focusing on a great market and a great opportunity. I started my career at Facebook, building our internal HR systems. This gave me early exposure to HR processes and insights into what it takes to run internal people operations. When I saw the advancements in AI technology, my thoughts went to roles that are incredibly tedious and manual, empowering people to do more with less.
Reflow is essentially being built as the AI assistant for the HR function, aiming to help HR teams accomplish more efficiently. The idea is to automate tasks that are labor-intensive but not necessarily high-leverage for HR professionals. Tasks like spending extensive time in their inbox and holding others accountable for their assigned tasks. In these early stages, we're still figuring out our identity, but the direction is clear—leveraging AI and LLMs to address enterprise use cases and help businesses capitalize on this technology.
We're currently focused on HR, but we see potential in expanding to other operation-heavy roles within the enterprise, such as finance, legal, or IT, as we continue to develop and grow. It's an exciting journey, and we aim to make a positive impact on businesses by enabling them to focus on driving their key business metrics.
What is an ambitious goal you are chasing?
I would say that with Reflow, one of our primary goals is to achieve early profitability. Ideally, when we have this conversation next year, I'd like to share that Reflow has become profitable, indicating complete self-sustainability. While we may have secured some initial capital, the goal is not to rely on additional funding.
Any closing thoughts before we wrap up?
In conclusion, I would just say, if you're out there and you want to build something, just go for it. Just don't make the same mistakes as me. Just build something people want to buy. That's like just the huge, huge lesson.
I remember actually I've been reading Thomas Edison's biography recently, and that's one of the things is like, you know, he would measure his success by building things and then trying to sell them because that's the best way to find that somebody values what you've built.
So, yeah, it's really hard, but just build, build stuff people want to buy. And I think if you can do that consistently, you're going to build a really great business.
Thank you for sharing, Ish! Where can people find you?
I’m on Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, and my personal site.
That’s it for today. I have some awesome founders lined up for the next episodes, and I can’t wait to bring them to your inbox.
Meanwhile, if you like this interview, please share it with your founder friends - nevertheless, grateful for your time 🙏🏼
Let me know your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below 👇🏼