An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma

An Operator's Blog is hosted by Soumitra Sharma, General Partner at Operators Studio, a micro-VC firm focused on the US-India corridor. This podcast takes you into the world of startups and venture capital, featuring candid conversations focusing on sharing real operating insights, tips, and playbooks that you can immediately start using to solve your biggest challenges as a founder and operator. Join Soumitra as he cuts through the BS & interviews top founders, operators, and investors who have built businesses in the trenches for decades.

An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma is a business podcast hosted by Soumitra Sharma, with 27 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Soumitra Sharma hosts An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma, a business show with 27 episodes published.

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  An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma

  Building A Prosumer AI Startup: The Merlin Story

  Dec 11, 20251h 18mS0

  <p>This episode delves in-depth into building a Prosumer AI startup.</p><p>We cover everything from overlooked spaces in AI, how to choose problem statements as a founder, learnings on upfront market research & customer discovery, creating defensibility in Prosumer AI, managing the foundation model layer, including closed source vs open source, Prosumer GTM, particularly influencers and affiliate marketing, new usage-based pricing models, fundraising learnings and finally, specific learnings for US-India founders.</p><p>Joining me for this discussion is Pratyush Rai, Co-founder of Merlin, an AI productivity assistant that you can use for everything from getting one-click answers to...

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  An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma

  Agentic AI Meets Compliance: Lessons From Sprinto

  Oct 22, 202555 minS0

  <p>This episode delves in-depth into building an AI Applications startup in the area of Compliance. </p><p>We cover everything from how to choose problem statements as a founder including a 2x2 framework for idea evaluation, approaching building in “boring” verticals, executing an effective customer discovery process, thinking through product differentiation in the Applications layer, evolution of GTM in the age of AI, new-age pricing models, present state of AI fundraising in the Bay Area, and finally, specific learnings for US-India founders.</p><p>Joining me for this discussion is Girish Redekar, Co-founder of Sprinto, a unified, AI-powered compliance platf...

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  An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma

  Building An AI-Infra Startup In 2025: Seed-Stage Lessons From Pipeshift

  Sep 25, 20251h 8mS0

  <p>This episode delves in-depth into the present market landscape, challenges & opportunities being navigated by AI infra startups in the Bay Area. </p><p>We cover everything from parts of the AI ecosystem that are overhyped and underhyped, real AI infra pain points & apprehensions of enterprise customers, nuances of leveraging closed source vs open source models in enterprise infra, discovering gaps & wedges as a startup, creating differentiated products against competition, AI-first GTM, new-age pricing models and finally, lesser-known aspects of fundraising in the Bay Area.</p><p>Joining me for this discussion is Arko, Co-founder and CEO of Pipeshift, a Y...

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  An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma

  From Zero to $1M ARR: Building a US–India Enterprise Dev Tools Startup

  Aug 6, 202548 minS0

  <p>This episode goes in-depth into the key operating aspects of building & scaling a US-India Enterprise Dev Tools Startup. </p><p>We cover everything from the ground reality of how AI is impacting enterprise dev tools, why engineering founders should code less & sell more, thinking through ICPs, MVP best practices, GTM approaches, including outbound and events, the importance of founder-led sales, and finally, how pricing models are evolving with AI.</p><p>Joining me for this discussion is Sudheer Bandaru, Founder & CEO of Hivel. Hivel is a B2B SaaS solution that helps companies improve engineering productivity and release better s...

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  An Operator's Blog - with Soumitra Sharma

  How Skydo Found Product-Market Fit in India’s Cross-Border B2B Payments

  Jun 17, 20251h 16mS0

  <p>This episode goes in-depth into Skydo’s journey from Day 0 to emerging as a category leader in India's cross-border B2B payments today, helping more than 6,000 Indian products & services exporters receive payments from 150+ countries & in 32+ currencies.</p><p>We cover everything from the untapped cross-border payments opportunity, learnings from fintech MVP iterations, doing customer research to identify unique product & business model insights, the philosophy of "do things that don’t scale" and figuring out differentiation pre-PMF, leveraging founder-led sales to acquire early customers, building a culture of radical transparency, learnings from VC fundraising and finally, Skydo’s plans for the ne...

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