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I've helped build GTM systems from India for years.
Here are 7 frameworks I use daily. 🧵
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Shantanu Kulkarni
1.5K posts
Shantanu Kulkarni
@_ShantanuKul
CMO @SecurityB0at GTM × Sales × RevOps — built from India 🇮🇳 AI-powered frameworks for revenue teams 📩 Pipeline Post → https://t.co/Y6txHY75Yz
India 🇮🇳 Katılım Mayıs 2015
441 Takip Edilen1.3K Takipçiler
The fastest path to your first 100 customers:
1. Find where they already hang out (communities, Slack groups, subreddits)
2. Add value for 30 days without selling
3. Then make one offer
Community-first GTM is underrated because it's slow. But it compounds harder than any paid channel.
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What's the one sales book that changed how you sell?
Mine: The Challenger Sale.
The idea that teaching > relationship-building in complex sales rewired how I approach every deal.
Drop yours ↓
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Shantanu Kulkarni retweetledi
We analyzed thousands of keywords in B2B and found that Reddit was in the top 3 links for almost every niche.
Here's what Subreddits absolutely dominated:
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Yes-man behavior usually means the system prompt is missing two things: your actual constraints and a rejection instruction. Add "push back when the premise is wrong" and feed it your last 3 losing deals as context — it stops being generic in about a day. What stack are you running it through, ChatGPT or a custom wrapper?
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how do you guys @TheJeremyHaynes AI properly so it has a full context
bought it today and its giving me either generic advices i could find on youtube or is a "yes-man"
Jeremy is a goat so I assume it's probably my prompting issue
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The tell isn't the Claude cadence, it's the absence of a point of view. AI writes the middle 80% fine — openings and stances are still human work, and most people skip both. Wondering if the fix is banning AI or just banning publishing without a thesis. What's your default edit pass look like?
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Context transparency is why junior operators get more out of AI than senior ones right now — they ask it to define the field before solving in it. Seniors skip that step and get mush back. The unlock isn't better prompts, it's forcing the model to map the terrain before picking a path. Are you seeing the same pattern in your work?
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One of the biggest things I’ve learned from AI in the last 3 years is that context makes problems transparent.
If you don’t know what the field looks like, or any of the players, and you’re supposed to compete, you kind of need to be an expert or a genius.
But if you can see everything clearly...every aspect of things. Every weakness. Every strength. Every twist and turn.
You barely need to think at all.
90% of any game is deeply understanding how it works.
Context makes problems transparent.
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The underrated shift YC enabled wasn't permission — it was standardizing the founder operating manual. Pre-YC, every founder re-invented fundraising, hiring, and pricing from scratch. Bookface turned tribal knowledge into a shared playbook. India's missing piece isn't the wave, it's the playbook layer. What's the closest Indian equivalent — Blume's portfolio ops, or something earlier-stage?
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Agree with most of this! my Two cents:
- YC (and the social network movie) deserves a lot of credit for giving young technical people the "permission" to be a founder.
- They gave a lot of power back to founders with the SAFE and Demo day + Bookface. Pre-2010, the model in SV was for VCs to fire the founder and an MBA in a Suit takes over the CEO role from the nerds. (Eric Schmidt at Google).
- There was no real money for Indian startups for a long time and through YC, Indian companies like Meesho, Groww, Razorpay, Zepto etc got exposure to a class of global investors who would otherwise may not have touched India.
- Deep-Tech is hard and requires a lot of patience and it's probably much easier to attempt after you have made some money building software like Musk and Thiel did with PayPal.
Indian ecosystem is also now getting there with second time founders taking moonshots like Deepinder with Lat Aerospace, Neeraj Khandelwal(CoinDCX) with Astrobase or Farid & Bhanu (Sharechat) with General Autonomy or Sridhar himself funding a lot of interesting deeptech companies.
First timers like Awais/Kshitij at Pixxel are also building really cool Deep Tech from India and have been able to raise big money.
It's perfectly fine to optimise for exit or make your first $10M selling boring software or a social app. Life is long :)
Sridhar Vembu@svembu
I am happy to see the YCombinator wave arriving in India. Our co-founder Tony and I were in silicon valley during the original YC wave of companies. We learned a lot from the YC companies. We also made the conscious choice to pursue a different course. In the ancient Bharatiya tradition of philosophical debate, I am going to offer this. I will start with things I agree with YC on. 1. The biggest lesson anyone can learn from YC: small passionate teams can do magic. This was true way before AI coding arrived and will always be true. 2. YC is absolutely right to not over-emphasize "innovation". Doing a similar product as the bigger guys, faster and cheaper, is often the best course. Google did not invent search. OpenAI did not invent the LLM. Anthropic did not invent agentic coding. 3. YC companies tend to geographically cluster, and that can lead to subtle peer pressure and group-think. So the "laggard" founders who are not growing like a weed every week start to feel left out and eventually the result is "founder depression". And YC has counselors. By the standards of 2007 silicon valley or even 2014 silicon valley, we were thought to be losers. Just keep that in mind. 4. Many deep tech problems like building a better, cheaper MRI machine or advanced semiconductor equipment require long focus and patient execution and lots of capital. These are endurance tests, not weekly sprints. 5. YC too often optimizes companies for "exit". That philosophy was built for and requires prolonged bubbles, which American policy has delivered, at the price of nearly wrecking the country (note the extreme inequality and political division). If you love India, you should not wish for similar bubbles. 6. YC model worked in silicon valley. One of the reasons it worked was that silicon valley could get any talent from anywhere in the world, notably from India, easily. That era may have ended or at least on pause right now. Bengaluru has tried the same thing but with "any talent from anywhere in India" and we have not yet created huge companies. India needs its Huawei and Xiaomi and BYD and these companies are Chinese to the core, built by patriotic Chinese. Indian talent, staying in India, rooted in India, is going to have to build companies like them. Enough said.
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Inbound vs Outbound: which GTM motion should you use? Answer 2 questions. Get your answer.
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@ria_rustagi Been reading the timeline about YC's first Startup School in Bengaluru — sounds like the energy was unreal (25K applicants, one ballroom, YC partners in the room). Feels like a genuine inflection point for the Indian founder ecosystem, not just another meetup.
Since you were actually there, curious:
- What was the single most useful thing a YC partner said that you're still thinking about?
- How did the room feel vs. other startup events you've been to — more signal or more noise?
- Which session or conversation gave you the biggest unlock for @sychedelic_cult?
- Any underrated founder you met who doesn't have a big following yet but should?
- If @ycombinator runs this again in India, what's the one thing you'd want changed (beyond the founders-only track you mentioned)?
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@_ShantanuKul Was there too. The YC partner session at the end was everything to be very honest, no-fluff advice you don't get in most rooms.
Would love a founders-only track next edition. The conversation changes completely.
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1/25 Y Combinator just hosted its FIRST EVER Startup School in Bengaluru.
25,000 applicants. One day. One ballroom. The bar was so high, even getting a seat felt like admission into YC itself.
The Indian startup ecosystem will be talking about this for years. 🔥
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3 prompts I use weekly to save 5+ hours:
1. "Summarize this 30-min call transcript in 5 bullet points with action items" (paste Zoom transcript)
2. "Write 3 variations of a follow-up email based on these call notes: [notes]. Tone: helpful, not salesy."
3. "Based on this company's About page, what are their top 3 likely pain points related to [your solution area]?"
AI doesn't replace the work. It compresses it.
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The "3-5 genuine replies first" step is the one people shortcut and then wonder why their DM response rate is low. T
here's a version of this that scales badly though — when the "genuine" engagement becomes obviously templated, you burn the channel.
The underlying mechanic works because of recognition and familiarity, not the specific tactic. At what point in your testing did you find that familiarity effect plateau — is there a ceiling on how much prior engagement translates to DM response lift?
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Cold DMs fail at 94% rates when you ask before you give.
Checked 200+ outreach threads from clients claiming "X DMs don't work." The pattern was obvious.
The broken sequence:
→ Pitch in first message
→ Link dump to paid offer
→ Zero public value trail
→ No warm touches beforehand
The sequence that converts:
→ 3-5 genuine replies on their posts first
→ Free resource drop (no ask attached)
→ DM references something specific they said
→ CTA is low-commitment (quick take, not a call)
Quest folder placement happens when accounts flag you as promotional. Fix: remove links from first contact entirely.
Response rates jump 4x when prospects recognize your handle before you slide in.
Build visibility first, then reach out.
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The difference between a good and great salesperson:
Good: knows the product inside out.
Great: knows the customer's problem inside out.
Product knowledge is table stakes. Customer knowledge is the edge.
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@Chris_Orlob Expansion dies in most orgs because comp plans reward logos, not NRR. Until the CS-AE handoff has shared quota on the install base, "ask who else could benefit" stays a slide. What % of your clients actually pay CSMs on expansion vs retention?
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The easiest revenue isn't new logos.
It's expanding existing customers.
Yet most sellers ignore their install base.
After every successful implementation, ask:
"Who else in your organization could benefit from what we've built together?"
Expansion pipeline is hiding in plain sight.
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@Chris_Orlob Execs also don't want "executive-level discovery" that's just a repackaged rep script. The shift that actually works: walk in with a POV on their quarter, not questions about it. Curious — how often do your reps come in with a written hypothesis vs a discovery framework?
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Selling to a VP? Great.
But if you sell the same way to a C-suite exec, you'll get embarrassed.
Executives don't want:
• Generic questions
• Feature tours
• Long discovery calls
They want:
• Proof you did homework
• A sharp point of view
• Respect for their time
Earn the right to be in that room.
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@guru3s @ycombinator Mostly agree, but I'd add — cold outreach works IF the Loom/demo in the email shows real value in 60 seconds. Without that, it's still noise. The game shifted from "who you know" to "what you can ship before the first meeting."
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@_ShantanuKul @ycombinator Cold outreach.
The idea is that every company out there is convinced on AI but have limited to no expertise - so if you can prove the value, you get the contract. Credentials are less relevant now.
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So @ycombinator just did their first Startup School in India and the energy was unreal.
The thing that hit me hardest - every founder up there had a near-death story. Different companies, different markets, different problems. But the thing that saved all of them? The same.
TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Not once in a while. Obsessively.
Some stuff I'm taking with me:
@snowmaker : second mover advantage is real. Being late doesn't mean losing.
@agupta : do more projects - two people build something, atleast one other person uses it.
@arnavsahu341 : Stay in the flow of information. You can't build what you can't see.
@_puneetKumar : AI is making geography irrelevant. Everyone wants to integrate AI. A 3rd year student in India just landed a US insurance contract.
Wild day.
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@guru3s @ycombinator This is the nuance most founders miss. Customers rarely hand you the answer — they hand you the symptom. Meesho's call to launch their own app despite the seller backlash is a masterclass in founder conviction > consensus.
@viditaatrey
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@_ShantanuKul @ycombinator Yeah - don’t listen to everything verbatim. Listen to the REAL hidden problems, and figure out a solution with vision you have for your company.
Meesho’s example was crazy - when they had to launch their own app by potentially pissing off the sellers.
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10/10
- Long-form creates depth
- Short-form creates reach
- The Chief Clipping Officer connects them
If you're a founder, marketer, or creator in 2026 — hire the clipper before your competitor does.
Who do you think nails this role today? 👇
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9/10 The moat isn't the tools (Opus, Spikes, Riverside auto-clip everything now). The moat is TASTE — knowing which moment hits because it's emotionally sticky, not because AI flagged a keyword.
That's why humans will stay in the loop.
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1/10 🧵 "Chief Clipping Officer" is trending — and it might be the most important marketing role nobody had on their org chart 12 months ago.
Here's what's happening, why it's blowing up, and who's shaping the conversation 👇
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