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. Turned a founder-led startup into an enterprise growth engine, building RevOps from zero and hitting 91% activation rates in a market where 65% is considered good. Led a 60-person engineering organization through a post-acquisition integration toward $24M ARR.
This is where I write about what I've learned doing that.
What's keeping you up?
Growth feels random
Revenue is growing but you can't explain why or make it faster on purpose.
My team ships but nothing moves
Engineers are working. Features are deploying. Revenue isn't responding.
Enterprise deals are stalling
Someone asked about SSO or SOC 2 and the room went quiet.
The board keeps asking about AI
You have 'AI strategy' on the roadmap and no idea where to start.
Something else
Your scaling problem doesn't fit neatly into a category. Most don't.
Or just keep scrolling. The essays below cover all of this and more.
What I'm thinking about
Why Your AI Feature Will Fail If Your Data Layer Isn't Ready
Every SaaS founder is being asked about AI. Most are building on a data foundation that can't support it. Here's how to know.
What a $1M ARR Founder Actually Needs from a Fractional CTO
It's not architecture. It's not AI. It's the operating system that connects your engineering team to your revenue.
The Five Systems You're Missing Between $500K and $3M
At $500K ARR, the founder is the operating system. At $3M, that stops working. Here's what to build in between.
Why Your Engineering Team Isn't a Revenue Engine (Yet)
Your engineers are shipping. Revenue isn't responding. Here are the five structural fixes that bridge the gap.
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. Here's how to move through it in six months.
What AI Operationalization Actually Looks Like
The AI features in your pitch deck are almost never the AI investments that move your business. The ones that do are boring, invisible, and unglamorous. 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.