A Founder Gets Candid​ About Fund​raising ​& What Fueled ​H​is Startup’s Success

Episode notes

What if your inspiration for starting a company came from solving a problem you experienced first-hand as an engineer at a tech giant like Uber? In this episode, we welcome Anish Dhar, Co-Founder and CEO of Cortex, to share his incredible journey from an engineer at Uber to founding Cortex, the internal developer portal that addresses a massive gap in engineering processes and recently raised a $60M Series C round. Anish reflects on how he and his co-founders identified a critical pain point that they knew countless engineers experienced but no one had tried to solve yet. Being “close to the pain” motivated them and was a huge factor in their startup’s fundraising success. Our expansive discussion touches on: What VCs are looking for at Seed, Series A and beyond Anish’s experience applying (and getting rejected the first time) at Y Combinator and how persistence paid off Why being close to the pain point your product is trying to solve gives founders an advantage The engineering challenges that inspired Cortex In Anish’s words, starting a company is “truly one of the most gratifying and impactful experiences that you can have.

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