The areas you overlook as a founder often become your - and your company’s - biggest weaknesses. Akhil Singh, CEO of OptiMantra, shares lessons from his journey as a technical founder and why evaluating blind spots is key to scaling successfully.

For founders, it can sometimes feel like you’re navigating a maze. The business world is crowded with incubators, accelerators, VCs, growth equity, private equity, and countless others. And, as you grow, you’ll have more and more of these emailing you quarterly and requesting a call to “learn more”!

Each type of organization has its own sweet spot— and most have very, very specific company sizes and types that they’re looking for (e.g., we only invest in vertical SaaS with at least $3M in revenue and a growth rate of 50%) but that isn’t always clear. Understanding where these players operate in terms of customer size and stage is critical to knowing who might be the right partner at the right time.

When you’re a small cash-strapped team scaling engineering, offshore resources can be a game-changer. Done right, you get velocity, cost efficiency, and a round-the-clock development cycle. Done wrong, you end up in endless cycles of hand-holding, quality issues, and wasted time. After working with multiple offshore teams, here’s what we’ve learned about how to manage them effectively — and what to avoid.

For early-stage founders, the term “margin” often sparks conflicting advice. Some investors preach that healthy margins are non-negotiable from day one. Others argue that obsessing over profitability too early distracts from growth, product-market fit, and scaling. So, which is it?

The truth lies somewhere in between: margins matter, but context matters more.