Real Advice For Founders
For the second episode of our series #asliadviceforfounders, we dive into the exact challenges most first-time founders face when building and scaling a company.
Today, we are featuring Adithya Narayanan.
Adithya is the co-founder & COO at Cuepilot AI and the former co-founder of Hushl. Having successfully navigated the volatile early stages of startup life twice over, he is the perfect person to share what it really takes to move from zero to one. No generic playbook formulas, just raw, honest insights from the trenches.
Here is his advice on hiring, momentum, sales and surviving the chaos.
How did you hire your first team members? Any tips on finding the right people early on?
After raising the first round, how did you decide where to spend the money? What should founders prioritise?
There’s so much advice out there. How do you figure out what really matters & what to ignore?
Is there any one tech tool, platform, or resource that has helped you the most while building your startup?
What’s one underrated thing about building a startup that you wish you had known sooner?
If you could stop first-time founders from making one mistake, what would it be?
How did you deal with burnout or stress while building?
What was that one decision or strategy that gave your startup its first big breakthrough?
Looking back, what personal skill or habit helped you the most in your journey?
How did you acquire your first 50 customers? Any growth hack that worked surprisingly well?
Blog overview
Adithya Narayanan — co-founder & COO of Cuepilot AI, and former co-founder of Hushl — shares unfiltered lessons from building two startups from zero to one. He covers hiring your first team through your existing network (and why a recruitment agency was surprisingly good advice), splitting early funding roughly 60/40 toward GTM over product, and why momentum matters more than a "perfect" product — including how a single round of cold calls became his startup's first real breakthrough. No generic playbooks, just what actually worked.
Building your GTM strategy and don't want to guess?
IncrementumX works hands-on with early-stage founders — not consulting decks, actual execution. If you're figuring out hiring, budget splits, or your first 50 customers, let's talk.
