What does it actually mean to build an AI-native company?

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I talk with True Ventures Managing Partner Puneet Agarwal and Gather CEO/co-founder Mayank Mehta about how the startup evolved from an AI-powered customer feedback idea into a broader research and content platform for marketing teams.

We get into founder conviction before product-market fit, what investors actually look for when there’s little external signal, how the company reshaped its go-to-market strategy after realizing the original motion wasn’t working, and why Mayank rebuilt major parts of the business around AI workflows in real time.

There’s also a very tactical discussion about customer discovery, early hiring, AI-native operations, and a weekend growth experiment that produced more meetings in two weeks than the previous year of outbound efforts combined.

RUNTIME 51:33 EPISODE BREAKDOWN

03:18

What True Ventures Looks For at Seed

07:00

What Gather Actually Does

11:42

The Five-Slide Seed Pitch

17:21

What They Got Wrong Early

21:06

Rebuilding the Company Around AI

33:53