Rakesh Kamath
I scale companies. Not decks.
Twenty years of walking into companies where the traction is real but the systems are fragile, and building the engineering, operational, and financial infrastructure that makes growth durable. Give me an inch of responsibility and I'll turn it into a mile of ownership. That part hasn't changed.
Co-founded and exited a SaaS platform that reached 5.8M users across 119 countries. Led a 60-person engineering organization toward $24M ARR. Turned a founder-led startup into an enterprise growth engine with 91% activation rates in a market where 65% is considered good.
This is where I write about what I've learned doing that.
What I'm thinking about
Why Your Engineering Team Isn't a Revenue Engine (Yet)
Most engineering orgs are optimized for shipping features, not driving revenue. Here are the five structural fixes that change that.
The Fragile → Stable → Productive Arc
Every engineering team falls on a three-stage arc. The problem is almost never the people, it's the operating system they're running on.
What AI Operationalization Actually Looks Like
The AI features in your pitch deck are almost never the AI investments that move your business. Here's what actually works.
Are You Working on the Right Thing?
There are two kinds of engineers: those who want to do it the right way, and those who want to work on the right thing. Most teams only have the first kind.
The Financial Blind Spot That Kills Scaling Companies
A real example of how quarterly cash flow summaries hide a five-month gap between what leadership believes and what's actually happening.
Your Activation Rate Is Your Real Product-Market Fit Metric
Most founders measure product-market fit wrong. Look at activation rate instead, the percentage of new accounts hitting meaningful value within 30 days.
If your company has real traction but the systems underneath it are starting to crack, that's the problem I spend my time on.