In this episode, Shruti Kapoor (Co-founder & CEO @Wingman), joins our host Digjay, to talk about her path to entrepreneurship, building Wingman, winning your first 5 customers at a B2B startup, scaling up as an entrepreneur, the Y-Combinator experience & what founders should optimize for when fundraising for their startup. Wingman is a Y-Combinator backed SaaS startup that empowers sales teams with conversation intelligence, actionable insights on successful playbooks and delivers real-time coaching. The company has also raised funding from notable VCs like Speciale Invest & Venture Highway. Since the start of her career, Shruti has worked across lifesciences research, investment banking, technology investing, commercialization, product development, fin-tech. Prior to Wingman, Shruti was part of Payoneer India's founding team & led the company’s go-to-market strategy. You can connect with her here on Linkedin / Twitter ---- Show notes – 1. (01:30) Shruti’s path to becoming an entrepreneur 2. (04:10) The ‘Why’ behind starting Wingman - genesis & problem statement 3. (07:00) Unpacking B2B ‘Sales’; Wingman’s role in empowering the Sales function of an org 4. (13:20) Key learnings from the 0 to 1 phase of a startup; The approach to winning your first 5 customers 5. (20:03) Scaling up as an entrepreneur as you scale your business; The Y-combinator experience 6. (24:45) Timing your fundraise while still trying to achieve product-market fit; What to optimize for, when fundraising for your startup? 7. (29:20) Leveraging your investors post the fundraise 8. (30:45) Rapid fire and closing remarks ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any podcast platforms of your choice (like Spotify & Apple iTunes). We would appreciate if you could leave us a review on Apple iTunes. This helps others discover the podcast. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay here on Linkedin & Twitter