Ashish Kundra

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Ashish Kundra

Ashish Kundra

@akundra

CEO Conceptual, a growth marketing agency supporting Cursor, Perplexity, Superhuman, Atlas, Privacy & more

Berkeley, CA Katılım Aralık 2007
286 Takip Edilen657 Takipçiler
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
One benefit of getting older is you appreciate how fast time goes by and that all you need to do is appreciate the present. Meals with friends. Walks. The smell of summer. The satisfaction of growth. A billion moments that'll never happen again. That's all life is. Enjoy it.
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
@couuor Congrats! Is YouTube ROAS calculated via incrementality/holdouts/MMM or click conversions?
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Connor MacDonald
Connor MacDonald@couuor·
We wrapped up a banger Q1 at Ridge — our highest revenue non-Q4 quarter ever. I did another share of budget YoY analysis. Here’s what changed and a few thoughts on performance & goals for the rest of the year: 1/ Meta as a % of budget shrank significantly, which I’ll call a win as we still spent 25% more at an improved ROAS. I predicted that Meta would *increase* as a % of budget for brands this year with advertisers embracing creative volume, andromeda, new attribution models, etc. While Ridge didn’t see that in Q1, I won’t at all be surprised if we’re not able to drive significantly more volume with Meta through eoy. 2/ YouTube continues to be a growth channel for us. This has become essentially an always-on channel for us, and we continue to receive strong iROAS reports as we test into new content and strategies. We’ve been able to reliably spend on both Shorts and in-stream ads. 3/ Overall, we continue to find smaller nominal wins on tertiary channels — X Spend was up +362% YoY going from 1.6% to 5.4% of total budget as ROAS improved +27%. The platform has performed well for us since October of last year, and there are more meaningful updates coming to the ad platform in Q2 that i’m excited about. — TikTok Spend similarly grew +339% YoY (0.5% → 1.6% TTL). ROAS is inflated with a large % of growth coming from GMV Max (we’re a tiktok shop brand now), but performance has continued to improve. I mentioned this was one of our biggest opportunities at the end of Q4, and while we’re trending in the right direction its still a very small % of budget and an ongoing opportunity for us. 4/ Applovin is still a largely seasonal channel for us, and % of budget is down ~50% from Q4. We have a goal of unlocking Applovin on an always-on basis, but regardless I imagine we’re back to 8%+ as we enter our Father’s Day gifting campaign.
Connor MacDonald tweet media
Connor MacDonald@couuor

We spent tens of millions on ads in the last 60 days to end a record-setting Q4 at Ridge. I did a quick exercise to look at share of budget changes YoY, and its a great synopsis of what we're seeing on the performance front. Here's how things changed and a few of my takeaways and goals for next year. to note: this is paid social platforms YoY for our EDC business. We spent significantly more YoY, so even % decreases are mostly net $ increases. It also does not include partnerships or TV budgets. Here's the graph with 1DC ROAS layered in — we saw efficiency improvements on basically all fronts: To get channel specific: 1/ Meta is always the elephant in the room. It performed terribly in 2024, and at 42% TTL LY it was at its smallest share of budget for any November. We saw a 30% increase in ROAS in 2025, including non-purchase optimized campaigns that we've validated drive low 1DC ROAS yet are highly incremental. It's a huge win getting back to 50%+ TTL 2/ Interestingly, a consistent win across channels is an increase in CTR YoY, reducing cost of traffic while largely maintaining AOV/ECR Some of these very dramatic shifts are explained by different placements — more search than shopping, more in-stream than YT Shorts, etc etc 3/ AppLovin was extremely underpriced last year and took up a huge % of budget While its still a 7-figure channel for us, there was no way it would maintain its % of total spend. I was surprised it essentially maintained ROAS YoY, after being an extremely efficient channel LY. Overall it is still a seasonal channel for us and mostly activated during gifting periods, but we think we can unlock it on an evergreen basis in 2026. 4/ YouTube is potentially our most significant win YoY, We came into this year with a focus on horizontal video — unlocking in-stream YouTube Ads & linear TV — and getting to 10%+ of budget well above target makes it a great alternative to Meta and I believe drives a lot of downstream value. 5/ Twitter has performed surprisingly well since October and ended up at 3.6% TTL budget. They've very publicly improved a lot of the platform, and the ad performance seems to have come along with that. 6/ TikTok was flat YoY as a % TTL despite ROAS improving significantly. I think its probably one of our biggest opportunities for further paid social scale. 7/ Finally, the tiny bars are Reddit and Microsoft!

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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
@vivianmshen 100% agree. Can't imagine an alternative of needing 5/10/15yr more to find my person (we also met in college). Relationships compounds so starting early makes things 10x better over time.
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Vivian Midha Shen
Vivian Midha Shen@vivianmshen·
It was contrarian at the time, but it currently feels like getting married young was a huge life hack for me. 10/10 would recommend college students take dating and relationships seriously - if you can find a life partner early, do it. We got married 2 years after graduation.
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Daniel Pearson
Daniel Pearson@danielpearson·
From the trenches in the SF housing search: It is so insane. Feels like peak mania. People are bidding on places, especially "nice" places, like they are the last home on earth. Rentals are going within a day after bidding wars. Homes are selling for millions over ask, Follow @rohindhar to see examples. If you're in a rent controlled spot, do not dream of moving. If you're moving to SF, good luck!
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Andrew Lee
Andrew Lee@startupandrew·
We just raised $20M from @usv, @lightspeedvp, @ycombinator, @JeffDean, @patrickc, and others to build the cloud agent OS for work. …and I’m officially back in @ycombinator — spring ‘26 batch. It’s time to seize the moment. We're hiring! Read on... 🧵
Tasklet@TaskletAI

We just raised $20M to build the cloud agent operating system for work. The investment is led by @usv & @lightspeedvp and includes @ycombinator, @JeffDean, @patrickc & others. It values the company at $175M. 🧵

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Jonathan Wegener
Jonathan Wegener@jwegener·
🤯🤯🤯 Claude Code was able to access my iMessage database, find the first texts between me and my wife, spin up remotion, build iMessage-style animations, add voiceover and music, and produce this short film [watch with volume on]:
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Andrew Milich
Andrew Milich@milichab·
I’m joining @SpaceX and @xai with @JasonBud. X is the company realizing science fiction - reusable rockets, humanoid robots, data centers in space, and more. Almost 10 years ago, I joined SpaceX as an intern on Dragon 2 crew displays. This was in the era of the first rocket landings on barges, long before the Dragon 2 restored human spaceflight to America or Starlink delivered internet from space. Every day since then, I’ve thought about the next steps to land on the Moon - and to build a city on Mars, data centers in space, the brains behind robots, and beyond. There is no better place to build teams and products from the ground up with planetary scale resources. If you’re looking to work on the hardest problems that lay a foundation for humanity’s future to the Moon, Mars, and beyond - DM me.
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Morgan
Morgan@morganlinton·
Inside Perplexity’s first developer conference 😮
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Dani Grant
Dani Grant@thedanigrant·
Couldn’t be more excited to see @matthewrubright stepping in as the new CEO of Jam! He’s an incredible leader and has been running the ship for the past few months while I’ve been dealing with a severe autoimmune issue, and today we’re making that official as I’m stepping away to focus on recovering. It’s been the adventure of a lifetime to get to build Jam with this insanely brilliant and goofy team and with all of you - the hundreds of thousands of Jammers in 175+ countries changing the world through software. When we started Jam, I never imagined that someone would create the 15 millionth Jam (!!!) or that our product would be used more than 85,000 times a day (often by autonomous AIs, no less) to fix issues fast and get back to what matters, building the future 💜 Watch this team. They are amazing :) I’ll be cheering loudly from the sidelines, big things ahead for Jam! 🍓🚀
Matt Rubright@matthewrubright

I'm proud to be @jamdotdev's new CEO. Thank you to @thedanigrant whose vision + tenacity is undeniable. She'll step back to recover from a health issue. 15M Jams. 85k uses/day. And our mission won't change: fix software faster so builders can change the world sooner. LG!

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Ben Cera
Ben Cera@Bencera·
When I was 38, 39, when I really started to build AI products, I definitely wanted to build companies that could run themselves, It was almost impossible because the dream was so big that I didn't see any chance because I was living between Paris, LA and San Francisco; was working alone, And when I finally broke away from the idea of building products manually and used AI, I thought, "Well, now I may have a little bit of a chance", Because all I really wanted to do was build products, And not only build them, but make them think for themselves At that time, in San Francisco, in '24, '25, they already had AI, So, I would stay up all night, writing code with AI, Building apps in like 2 hours, I think I built about seven, eight apps, I would partially sleep on the couch, Because I didn't want to stop building, and that kept me going for about, Almost two years in the beginning I wanted to create a platform with the vibes of the 1990s, the vibes of the 2000s, of the 2010s, and then have a feature of the future, And I said, "Wait a second, I know the Agent SDK Why don't I use the Agent SDK which is the feature of the future?", And I didn't have any idea what to do, But I knew I needed agents, so I put agents in loops and connected MCPs, Which then were synced to real products running in production, I knew that could be a feature of the future, But I didn't realize how much the impact would be My name is Victor-Benjamin But everybody calls me Ben Once you free your mind about the concept of a company, and what it means to build a company "the right way", You can do whatever you want, So nobody told me what to build and there was no preconception of what to build cc @daftpunk @giorgiomoroder
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Mihika Kapoor
Mihika Kapoor@mihikapoor·
Simile is out of stealth! At Simile, we have built the first AI simulation of society, populated by agents based on real humans. We are building a foundation model that predicts human behavior in any situation, and a product that deploys it at scale. Thrilled to be on this mission.
Simile@simile_ai

x.com/i/article/2021…

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Daniel Pearson
Daniel Pearson@danielpearson·
I have bittersweet news! We’ve decided to shut down @growwithbamboo’s full service agency operation. The company will continue to operate our tiny fractional / advisory practice and our free Slack community, but after February 2026, the full service agency will close its doors. 12 years ago this month, I had dinner with @DannySauter at Park Tavern in North Beach. I’ll never forget it. We had a table overlooking Washington Square Park, the sun was setting, and I was excitedly rambling about leaving my job for a new adventure: To start a growth agency for mobile apps. Danny listened intently, nodded, and gave me his now SF-famous level of grace. But I could tell he thought I was crazy. It took me 4 more months to convince him to join as co-founder. The journey that followed was nothing short of a storybook. We hired more than 250 people and helped thousands of people solve growth challenges big and small. We made our clients a lot of money. We made some too. More important than the business, the journey fostered deep relationships. Many best friendships, a few romances (don’t tell HR), and at least one marriage were amongst the positive externalities. The best part about Bamboo has always been the culture and people. Our culture will persist within our relationships and how our team carries themselves elsewhere. The business impact will persist too because our alumni still manage growth all over the place. I could write an entire post about why I ultimately chose this ending rather than exploring an exit, funding a period of unprofitability (which we were forecasting), or allowing the team to pivot to a path with a larger local maximum, but none of it is important. The only important parts are to admit to a less-than-storybook ending to a truly storybook run. And to celebrate the run and everyone involved. To our clients, team, and partners: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am grateful to you and for the journey we shared. It was an honor. Onward, Daniel PS if you are hiring growth talent right now: 20 or so of the best people you could ever hire will hit the market soon (though some might start their own shops 🙃). I would love to make intros, just DM me!
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
We often refer to our ad accounts as "babies". It's a joke but feels true. When you see an account grow from $0 to $1M/mo over years, remember all the twists and turns along the way. Really makes you appreciate what it takes to build something.
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
@gauravvohra i was listening to the all-in podcast a few days ago and rumi asked "is this music that you're listening to real?" as in, are these real humans. what a time to be alive
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Gaurav Vohra
Gaurav Vohra@gauravvohra·
4yo: is there a person inside chatgippity?
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
@gauravvohra you only need delight for sharing to take a flight, & how did you hear?
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Gaurav Vohra
Gaurav Vohra@gauravvohra·
I want a gym where it's not weird to write my Substack between sets
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Julian Shapiro
Julian Shapiro@Julian·
As an adult, I've thrice encountered a type of person I despise: The high-achiever who stops chatting with you—after having a great, close, years-long relationship—the moment they no longer perceive you as useful toward gaining power and success in their career path.
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
@gauravvohra Haha translation makes sense. CDMX evening timeline culture is suuuper late, like India.
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Gaurav Vohra
Gaurav Vohra@gauravvohra·
Never apologize for being late Always thank for patience
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Ashish Kundra
Ashish Kundra@akundra·
@gauravvohra pardon i think photo is missing "move to berkeley" labels on the left/right
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Gaurav Vohra
Gaurav Vohra@gauravvohra·
Deciding where to send your kid to school in San Francisco
Gaurav Vohra tweet media
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