Software Engineer turned Founder. I help founders to ship SaaS products faster.

With experience leading engineering teams at multiple early-stage startups, I’ve seen firsthand what it takes to build and scale successful products.

At 19, my entrepreneurial journey began by selling pre-built sales funnels for digital agencies, where I quickly learned the importance of customization in business. Since then, I’ve experimented with various startup ideas, learning valuable lessons at every stage.

I launched Cold Pitch, a tool that personalizes cold emails 9,000% faster than an SDR. My latest product, Commentify, automates LinkedIn comments, turning engagement into conversions.

Through these experiences, I’ve learned that building a profitable business requires access to distribution or capital.

💬 If you’re a founder looking to validate your SaaS idea or launch your MVP faster, let’s work together to get your product to market quickly and efficiently.

Mithun Kumar

Madhav Bhandari

I’m a B2B marketer with 12+ years of experience helping startups grow from scrappy beginnings ($2M+ ARR) to category leadership ($20M+ ARR and beyond). I’ve built lean, high-performing marketing engines across both PLG / sales-led companies.Some wins I’m proud of:• As Hubstaff’s first marketer, I helped grow revenue from $200K to $5M ARR in 4 years (now $30M+ ARR).• At Close, I helped break through our revenue plateau and reach 8 figure ARR (now $30M+ ARR)• At Storylane, I scaled marketing to grow our revenue from $2M to $10M+ ARR within 2 years.• At Bonsai (acquired by Zoom), I scaled marketing and tripled our ARR in under 2 years.How I typically drive results:• Building content engines that generate millions in organic traffic• Running demand gen across SEO, ads, dark social, events and influencers• Creating GTM playbooks for new products and categories• Aligning brand, product marketing, and revenue into one motion• Leading bold, creative campaigns that actually get noticed• Using pattern interrupts to stand out in crowded marketsMy strength and philosophy is doing marketing that stands out. I focus on work that drives action and ties directly to pipeline.I’ve helped many scale-ups grow beyond $10M ARR, either as a full-time leader or a hands-on advisor. I love taking on this challenge.I'm open to taking on more advisory roles, especially with martech / salestech companies. If you’re looking for an advisor who's actively in the work and brings practical experience, message me. Thanks for reading till the end!

Head of Marketing

Internally, the Chief Content Officer at Storylane.

My goal is to drive demand for Storylane using content-led initiatives such as video, social, organic search, brand and partnerships. 

Navigating the $1M to $10M ARR journey over the next couple of quarters.

I think mascots are wildly overrated in B2B.

Companies spend a surprising amount of time, money, and creative energy building mascots, and most of the time, almost nobody actually remembers them.

This has been on my mind lately after a few conversations about brand and positioning. We even talked internally about whether Storylane should have a mascot.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to.

Ask yourself a simple question: do you remember Salesforce’s mascot?

If you’re like most people, your reaction is probably something like, “Wait… does Salesforce even have one?”

That’s not a knock on Salesforce. It’s just how memory works.

Most people don’t remember mascots. If you do, you’re either paying very close attention or you really love mascots. Try this same exercise with the companies or tools you admire and you’ll see the same pattern play out again and again.

Now flip the question.

Who is the person you associate with those companies?

That answer usually comes immediately.

Salesforce brings Mark Benioff to mind.
HubSpot makes you think of Dharmesh Shah.
Ahrefs is Tim Soulo.
Lovable is Anton.
Zapier is Wade Foster.
Kit is Nathan Barry.
Close is Steli Efti.

I know what these people look like because I keep seeing them show up in my feed, emails, conversations etc. Over time, that repetition matters. A handful of operators consistently show up, share their thinking, and slowly become the mental shortcut for the brand itself.

Every company has people like this. Leaders or executives who post regularly and become the identity you associate with the business. The mascot fades into the background, even when one technically exists.

At the end of the day, people remember people.

A visible executive who shows up consistently tends to stick far more than a mascot ever will, and you can lean into that approach really hard if you want to.

I’m not saying mascots are always wrong or that this is some universal rule. But it lines up closely with what I’ve seen across both smaller companies and much larger ones.

Feels like we’re living in a people-first moment right now. Maybe mascots come later.

Pattern Interrupt Marketing book coming soon | Head of Marketing @ Storylane

I just submitted the full draft of my book.

It’s based on the marketing framework we built internally at Storylane to consistently come up with campaigns that don’t look like everyone else’s. The same framework that helped us grow brand awareness 7x, from about 1,500 people searching for us each month to north of 10,000 now. The same framework that helped us 12x traffic and go from roughly $2M to $10M+ in ARR in two years, without raising any funding.

I didn’t start with the goal of writing a book. The framework came first.

The observation was simple: almost every software category is now brutally crowded. Martech and sales tech have been this way for a while, but now it’s everywhere. New products launch into markets where dozens of companies are running the same playbooks. Same positioning. Same channels. Same promises.

Scroll LinkedIn, walk a conference floor, browse competitor websites - everything blends together.

I remember walking a sales enablement conference and realizing that once I got home, I couldn’t remember which booth belonged to which company. Same colors. Same claims. Same outcomes. It wasn’t confusing. It was boring.

At the same time, the growth playbook has changed.

Push tactics are far less forgiving. Ad costs keep rising. SDR connect rates are down. Cold outreach is harder than it’s ever been. SEO is brutally competitive. These channels still work, but sameness now gets punished quickly.

What’s changed even more is how buyers buy.

A large part of the journey now happens through self-discovery. I see it in my own behavior and in the people I work with. Think about the last few tools you bought. You probably didn’t start with a “best X software” search. You heard about them through people you trust, content, communities, events, or conversations you’ll never see in attribution.

That’s why pull tactics are thriving. It’s why brand matters more. It’s why LLMs matter. Buyers are forming opinions and shortlists long before they ever talk to sales.

In this environment, growth is about out-differentiating your competitors.

That’s the exact problem this framework was built to solve.

Internally, we call it PIPE - the Pattern Interrupt Portfolio Engine. The idea is to identify category patterns and deliberately break them, repeatedly. Not one viral campaign. Not one channel. A portfolio of pattern interrupts running in parallel so you’re constantly giving the market new reasons to notice and remember you.

Now I’m conflicted about the name of the book and I need your help.

I could call it Pattern Interrupt Marketing. Clean, obvious.

Or I could go with PIPE, which is what we’ve been calling the framework all along.

I’m leaning toward Pattern Interrupt Marketing, but I’m curious what lands for you. Which one do you like more (or hate lol), or do you have a another suggestion?

I’m still processing how 2025 turned out for Storylane.
When we started the year, I don’t think any of us genuinely believed we’d pull off what we just did.

Few things that happened in 2025 that deserve some recognition:

1/ We crossed $10M ARR - and how we did it matters.
We did it in record time, without any add-on funding, as a lean, remote, angel-strapped team. Profitable. Disciplined. The next milestone is $20M ARR, but this one mattered because of how we got here.

2/ Storylane scaled in both capability and use cases.
We had like 500 releases this year (no kidding). We went live with Lily, made it possible to build demos instantly using AI, added demo A/B testing, demo alerts, Hubs, interest screens, presenter mode, desktop apps for Mac/Windows, deeper sales tech integrations, and a growing set of AI-powered workflows.

3/ Customer love showed up everywhere.
We crossed 1,000+ 5-star reviews on G2, and Storylane is now the highest-rated demo automation software. Across search, G2, and even LLM responses, we consistently show up as the demo automation leader.

4/ We made a lot of noise - and it compounded.
Employee advocacy drove ~28M impressions. Influencers added another ~8M. That’s ~36M impressions in total, or roughly 3M per month. A big chunk came from our team being genuinely proud to talk about what they’re building.

5/ Demo usage went ballistic.
Customers created 150,000 demos, roughly 2x YoY, largely driven by AI features. Around 1,700 Hubs were created. Total demo views crossed 50M+, nearly 5x YoY, with over 1.1M hours spent engaging with demos.

6/ We expanded both logos and depth.
We crossed 5,000+ paying customers and added names like HubSpot, Alibaba, and Deloitte, alongside customers like Microsoft, Amazon, Pearson, and Nasdaq. Expansion revenue also became one of the fastest-growing parts of the business as existing customers added more teams and use cases.

7/ Marketing leaned hard into pattern interrupts.
Demo Dundies  S2 went fully live on set and we sent the winner to Italy. We ran conference activations ranging from Julius Caesar at INBOUND to Santa taking over our website. We launched Democcino (our coffee blend), rolled out Denim Jackets across the conference circuit, kicked off Finer Demos Club (webinars + IRL), and quietly rolled out a full visual rebrand built for a multi-product future.

8/ The team scaled with intent.
We crossed 50+ people, with most growth in customer support as onboarding accelerated. Next month, the entire team meets in Malaysia to celebrate!

Looking ahead to 2026.
The goals are clear: 
- $20M ARR 
- launch and grow our third product (launching end of Jan) 
- roll out a full V2 UI 
- double down on customer marketing and expansions

As always, we’ll keep building in public and sharing what we learn.

If you want a more fun version of this recap, my team put together a fun year-end review video that’s absolutely worth watching.

Did you know Storylane also has a second product called Hubs?

Hubs is what reps use after a good demo call, instead of sending a long follow-up email with pricing links, demo videos, case studies, and random attachments that get forwarded internally and ignored.

But what we just shipped in Hubs last week is the part I’m most excited about: Interest Screens.

When a prospect opens a Hub, the first thing they see is a simple screen asking what they care about - their role, industry, or the part of the product they want to explore.

From there, they only see demos, PDFs, and assets that are relevant to them.

So instead of you guessing what to send, or manually curating content for every deal, the buyer self-selects and the Hub adapts automatically.

On your side, you can see exactly what they chose and how they engaged, which makes follow-ups and next meetings a lot more focused.

Here's a live example - https://lnkd.in/eVhQn8v4

Interest Screens is live for all Storylane Hubs customers today, and if you’re not using Hubs yet, it’s worth a look 👇

I like asking questions that don’t have clean answers and actually require experience. The kind where you only really have an opinion if you’ve lived through it. I enjoy exchanging notes more than sharing conclusions, and that’s why I like LinkedIn. You get peers from all over the world chiming in with their own context, numbers, and scars.

A lot of my LinkedIn posts have sparked some GREAT discussions. Most of that value lives in the comments, and while those conversations disappear in the feed, I really don’t want people to lose what’s in there.

Here are some of those discussions on topics ChatGPT will never give you a straight answer to - they’re people-led and experience-led.

1. Running ads on branded searches - yes or no?https://lnkd.in/e9DCCS6G

2. What actually works in LLM SEO? Or is it hype?
https://lnkd.in/erwgKypA

3. How to get more out of your ads budget when LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads keep getting more expensive https://lnkd.in/eVVR9Sua

4. Managing work-travel balance, especially as a new parent https://lnkd.in/eYuQSgqU

5. LinkedIn native audience targeting vs custom audiences - what drives better ad ROI? https://lnkd.in/edrR9vnF

6. What B2B marketing budgets actually look like and where are marketing leaders investing https://lnkd.in/eWGUbS6p

Glad to have peers in my network who like to nerd out on this stuff with me and give back so generously.

“Why doesn’t every company just offer a free trial?”

That was naive me until a few weeks ago.

Everyone says B2B companies should just offer a free trial, but many teams  avoid offering a free trial because, for their business, it’s not a great decision.

Here’s what I keep seeing.

1/ For some products, real value only shows up with real data. Offering a free trial means exposing that data. When the data is proprietary IP, that’s not a tradeoff teams are willing to make. Using fake or limited data in a trial makes the product feel weak and hurts trust.

2/ For other products, value only shows up at scale or with heavy customization.
Offering a free trial means spinning up environments immediately. Trials can’t reflect real scale, heavy customization doesn’t work in an instant self-serve setup, and engineering gets pulled into what should be low-touch conversations.

3/ Offering a free trial also lowers the bar too much. It creates signups, not intent, and pulls sales and SE teams into early-stage, low-quality conversations that are expensive to support.

This isn’t to say free trials are bad. They’re just not universally good for every business. Every company has different constraints and economics.

But across these conversations, the pattern is consistent. Teams want buyers to experience the product, but they need control - over the data, the narrative, and how much human time gets pulled in early.

That’s why a lot of these companies are now using Storylane instead of offering free trials. It lets prospects explore realistic workflows, self-qualify, and bring sales in later, without exposing IP or struggling with scale.

One sales leader summed it up perfectly in a recent call: "if buyers can move themselves forward just as far without an AE or SE, why involve humans early at all?" 🤔

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