Episode Details

Vishal Sunak spent nine months cold-emailing nearly 100 general counsels before writing a single line of real code. His SaaS fundraising journey took LinkSquares from a fake Rails prototype to $10M ARR and $21M raised across three rounds.

LinkSquares validated demand through 100 cold email interviews, built a Rails prototype with no backend in 100 days, and used that traction to power SaaS fundraising from pre-seed to Series A. Vishal ran raising capital like a sales pipeline using HubSpot CRM, absorbing 100+ rejections before growing from $1M to $4M ARR in one year.

In this episode, Vishal reveals why he interviewed 100 customers before building, how he overcame startup funding rejection as a no-name first-time CEO, and how he discovered a greenfield niche in post-signature contract management that venture capital SaaS investors initially dismissed.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Interview 100 customers before building: Vishal cold-emailed nearly 100 general counsels over 9 months to find reliable trends, avoiding the trap of building the wrong product.
• 🤝 Cold email works for SaaS fundraising validation: LinkSquares landed its first 10 customers through cold outreach to complete strangers, proving traction without warm intros.
• 💰 Run SaaS fundraising like a sales pipeline: Vishal tracked investor conversations in HubSpot CRM, sent updates twice yearly, and treated raising capital as a systematic process.
• 🧠 Let revenue tell your fundraising story: Without Ivy League credentials, Vishal used undeniable ARR growth - $1M to $4M in one year - to prove he was worth betting on.
• 🛠️ Build a realistic prototype for honest feedback: A Rails app with no backend in 100 days that looked completely real enabled demo-quality SaaS fundraising conversations early.

Chapters

• Introduction
• Quote: Prove it every week
• What LinkSquares does and the market opportunity
• Revenue and SaaS fundraising milestones
• The Backupify acquisition that sparked the idea
• Deciding to build a solution for contract management
• Building a Rails prototype with no backend
• Cold emailing general counsels for validation
• What 100 customer interviews revealed
• Discovering the greenfield post-signature niche
• Why they waited 9 months before building
• Getting the first 10 customers from cold email
• Growing to 300+ customers and diversifying channels
• SaaS fundraising as a first-time no-name CEO
• 100 different reasons investors said no
• Three rounds of financing from pre-seed to Series A
• Transitioning from engineer to CEO
• Lightning round

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/281
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email