How I Got Half a Million Users in Just 16 Weeks | Rocket.new, Vishal Virani

Intro

00:00I didn't went for any Ivy League college. We got 40 plus rejections from the vis. You needs to be from Stanford or IIT or some good colleges. They don't say it up front but I know how they judge what they judge. That was like last 3 months.

00:13After 3 months we are going to die. It was like hardest time but I never give up. If you have a will you can build it from anywhere. I'm the first engineer of my family. I grew up in Surat the largest diamond manufacturing hub where out of 10 diamonds nine diamonds get manufactured in my city.

00:28If you start just creating the wall of excuse around you, you will not able to move each. Just use all the resources for your advantage. Instead of just complaining about that I'm sitting in India what I can do but instead of that what we think is like okay we are in India what advantage we can use.

00:41Keep your learning mode on. I just read everything on internet without complaining about my Ivy League background or a startup background. Location does not matter. Don't worry about your location. Don't worry about your zip code. I'm Vishal Virani, co-founder and CEO at Rocket.

01:02I'm growing up in an environment where no one was the engineer. Right after the college, I started my first venture. The device was a Figma to code platform. The device we scale our user base from 0 to 350K users. When GPD3 launched, we realized like okay, this world is going to be changed faster than our imagination.

01:19That was the pivotal moment. And then after like I started my second and third venture which is rotate. If you have a idea just put it in rocket platform. You will have your entire product ready which you can just launch without worrying about anything.

01:31In just like first 16 weeks we had like a multi-million applications on our platform. Rocket is funded by Salesforce venture and Excel. In just 15 weeks of our inception we got like a $15 million of sit round. So in next five year my entire goal is removing the entire mundant clerical and repetitive work from every user's life.

The First Engineer from a Farming Family

01:54I grew up in Surat. I did my schooling and my college in Surat. If I describe about the Surat, everyone of interacted with the product of Surat because Surat is the largest diamond manufacturing hub where out of 10 diamonds, nine diamonds get manufactured in my city and one of the largest uh textile manufacturing as well.

02:10A kind of without resources without a kind of an environment where I can grow. I was a quite curious guy and I'm the first engineer of my family. They don't know anything about the education. So I said like okay I want to pursue the engineering.

02:22They said you have my blessings but we cannot support you because you don't have a money but also they feel proud because like someone from our family is able to do this thing able to cross this barriers and achieve this next status. I'm just using my principles which I learned from my surroundings of a farming.

02:40In a farming you cannot control the rain, you can not control the weather. I just read everything on internet without complaining about my Ivy League background or a startup background. I started building I just give a wings to my curiosity and and and build the startup.

You SHOULD Be Ready to KILL Your Success

03:01Rahul and I have a very similar thoughts instead of doing masters can we learn it from the world and that's how right after the graduation we started our first business instead of doing masters and our goal was like okay for a 2 years we'll take all risk of our life we will not focus on earning the money but we'll focus on learning and if we just get the money to survive ourselves is like one of the biggest achievement in 2021 we realized everyone is just hiring the developers LinkedIn was flooded with like we are hiring developers and we realized they are not even enjoying their own work.

03:30So the thought was like okay how we can remove the mund and repetitive work from users life. It's a prelim era. We started doing our research. Ultimately we focus on building the Figma to code solution where user just need to upload the Figma designs and we can convert into code.

03:45And with that thought we started the device. The device we scale our user base from 0 to 350k users. We process 10 million screens which is like highest in this entire space. Our users convert 10 million Figma screens into code. And it was like quite comfortable business for me.

03:59When GPD3 launched, we realized like okay this world is going to be changed faster than our imagination. I still remember I spent almost a 60 hours of time sitting straight forward to write my prompt to create something which is unbelievable at that time and this is a time to add up the new things.

04:15We have the conviction like okay now LLM is enough powerful where we can create a very big impact in our users life. There is a world before JP3 and there is a world after JP3. This is just iPhone version 3. We need to think about iPhone version 15, how powerful it's going to be.

04:30So don't worry about the current version of GPT. Think about GPT 15 how powerful it's going to be. That was the pivotal moment. Figma to code is going to be just a small feature in future. Let's think bigger. And that's where we again reook at our vision of like automating the entire software development life cycle.

04:45Prefer conviction over a comfort zone. And with that we decided to pivot like okay Figma to code product to a complete software development automation where user can just put the prompt and we can deliver the entire results. And when we got the conviction we decided to pivot from like device to rocket.

How to Know Your Conviction is Right

05:05We always listen to our users. Whenever I interact with like any founder any right person I always listen them. We actually talk to CTOs of a fortune companies to solopreneurs everyone. So right now every day three new web coding platforms launch themselves on on the product hunt and everyone had the same answer like these are the prototypes which is not scalable which is not even a production ready code just trying to replace our Figma designs with this prototypes but it breaks and that's where we realized like okay we are building the right product we got the

05:37email from a New York user and he emailed us like a long email where he was just showing a kind of an gratitude without your product I can never imagine this kind of a thing he's a soloreneur he don't know about product management. He don't know about product marketing.

05:50He don't know about anything. He just had idea. He was using like multiple V coding platform and delivering the results. And when he got to know about rocket, he tried the platform. He wrote to us like in my life I never able to close a seven projects in just like a 20 days of time.

06:04He started his journey with a $25 subscription and now he's paying a $4,000 per month without any sales speech. Just think about your users till now like we got like hundreds emails every day. I send a email personally to all the users definitely it's an auto mode but when they replied I read it personally and then we provide the required support to our users and that motion really works well for us and that's how we gained the trust from our users in the very early days

You Haven't Failed Until You've Spent the Last Penny

06:35as I still remember it was a 2021 time we got 40 plus rejections from the ves when every small and big ideas were getting funded we were like getting one after one rejections After 40 rejection, we got the first term sheet. Just 15 days of money left in our account, we got the tum sheet.

06:52That was like a last 3 month when we know like after 3 months we are going to die. It was like hardest time. Every time you need to have a background, you need to be from Stanford or IIT or some good colleges. It can be like ex Google or X Microsoft will get easily funded.

07:07I was not from the product. I always introduce myself as a X of my ex. The reason is like after college I started my first venture and then I started device. They don't say it up front but I know how they judge what they judge and they're right at that place because they need to trust on their parameters.

07:22They have some thesis and all. So definitely we are not fit there but we didn't give up. Don't worry about your location. Don't worry about your zip code. We always try we learn new things. We try this language of this world. I decided like till a last penny in my account I will not give up.

07:38I will fight for that term sheet. I will fight for that funding which can help me to survive. For the founder those are the most important moment when you are in pain don't think about the pain think about the mistakes that you are making because of that you are having that pain.

07:54So for me at that time why what was wrong in my pitch? Why I'm not getting the fund when everyone else is getting. So I start analyzing my own pitch, the word that I'm saying, the kind of an like numbers that I'm presenting, how I can articulate it better instead of like getting into a kind of a depression or something else.

08:12I just started thinking of where I'm making a mistake every day and every day I try to improve myself and and that's how we got the first term sheet of our city before that like no one else got the venture capital funds. We got it. I only say like that will never give up attitude helped me a lot.

Don't Take Any Advice Before You Know THIS

08:31Every advice is not signal and as a founder you need to understand if you build the right product you will able to capture the market but if you just build the marketing company someone will come and capture your market just focus on product product stay away from noise identify the signals because nowadays you will get like hundreds of advice hundreds of new things on X but from all the noise you need to identify which signal will work for you let me give you an example GitHub copilot was the first product who started like code generation.

09:00They have the power of Microsoft in Satya Nadella in all keynotes started with GitHub copilot. They have the power of open air and everything. But still after one and a half year cursor came and capture the entire market. GitHub has everything.

09:10In that case like cursor has no space but still with the right product cursor capture the market. If you are not a native English speaker you will have a hard time to convince someone don't speak just prove. That's why instead of creating the pitch deck we created the product.

09:27We created the traction and that's why rocket is funded by Salesforce venture and Excel. Salesforce venture got to know about rocket platform on X because someone shared the story they give a try to our product first. They actually already see tried the product which is already at series AB level in the vibe coding space and when they tried our product they think like this is the best product they ever seen in this particular space and that's how they reach out to us and in just 15 weeks of our inception we got like a $15 million of SID round which is like one of the highest round in India.

09:55So build the right product. In the early days focus should be like 60% 80% on product 20% on marketing. It should not be other way around where you are just focusing 20% on product and 80% on the marketing. That's kind of a learning that I got in last like 4 years of my device and rocket journey.

10:12In next 5 years I just want to create a world where if you have idea just put it in rocket platform at the end of day you will have your entire product ready which you can just launch without worrying about anything. future is going to be looks like just consider like Charis when you are traveling from a palo to to a downtown just talk to rocket or with Siri or with your car play and by the time you will reach office like you will have your application ready how we can remove legacy systems from the world and we can create the new system that's what I think about every Yeah.