Social Alchemy

Lead

DoorDash

DoorDash Drive, Strategic Initiatives (Pre-sale)

Strategy & Operations

T-Mobile

Product Strategy Intern

Outset

Outset is a digital wardrobe that uses machine learning and computer vision to digitize your closet enabling you to see what you own, value what you own & predict what you will own

Lead Strategy

Kahana

Risk Analyst Intern

Each company has that one genius move - an ingenious marketing campaign, a shift in strategy or a standout sales pitch that makes their product sell.

I’m curious about breaking down what goes into that ‘cha-chiiing’ moment.

Picture this: Netflix’s shift from DVD Rental to Streaming, Dove launching their Real Beauty campaign, or Amazon entering the Cloud with ‘AWS’. Each, a bold move that catapulted their business to new heights.

I write to understand what makes ‘the sell’, and what can we learn from it!

Join the conversation!

I quit my six figure corporate job exactly 1 year ago! 

I wrote about this first year how Outlaw was born, and 20 things I’ve learned along the way.

I’ve come to find that The real prize of entrepreneurship isn’t the company you build. It’s the person you become :)

Prarthana Anand

Open article: i quit my six figure corporate job 1 year ago by open.substack.com

i quit my six figure corporate job 1 year ago

A founder came to us with an AI radiology assistant idea in India
On paper? Perfect. Big market, massive need, promising tech.

But once we started digging, here’s what we uncovered:
1/Private hospital owners weren’t interested in paying for an “efficiency tool.”
2/What they actually wanted was a revenue generator.
3/Adoption hurdles in India (fragmented data, high capex) made scaling near impossible.

That founder saved years of wasted effort and capital and pivoted early.

This is why Outlaw exists.
Not to give founders a “yes” or a “no.”
But to uncover the hidden truths that don’t show up in pitch decks or Google searches.

Because validation isn’t about proving your idea is right.
It’s about finding out where it’s wrong - fast.

Sometimes I think building a startup is just a masterclass in unlearning.

Unlearning the idea that:
→ A perfect plan leads to a perfect outcome.
→ More information = more clarity.
→ The loudest voices always know best.

What I’ve actually found is this:
→ A half-step forward beats the best-laid plan.
→ Clarity comes from feedback, not research docs.
→ The quietest conversations often hold the sharpest truths.

Outlaw  wasn’t born from certainty.
It was born from stripping away the noise until only the problem remained.

Building is less about what you add.
It’s about what you’re willing to let go of ( kinda like life?!)

One of the strangest parts of building has been realizing:
you don’t just build the product, you build your own tolerance for truth.

Truth that your favorite idea isn’t the right one.
Truth that the market doesn’t care yet.
Truth that you have to change direction after months of work.

It’s uncomfortable.
But that’s the work.

Because in the end, startups aren’t just about building products.
They’re about building the discipline to face what’s real and keep moving anyway.

That’s what we’re trying to design into Outlaw 
a way to confront reality faster, with less wasted time, fewer blind spots, and more conviction.

Every founder I’ve spoken to has one thing in common:
they’re drowning in advice.

“Talk to 100 users.”
“Just ship an MVP.”
“Find a co-founder.”
“Go raise.”

Some of it’s useful. Most of it’s noise.

The irony is:
when you’re building at 0–1, advice doesn’t give you conviction.
Evidence does.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw 
Not another playbook.
Not another framework.

Just a way to get real signals — from users, from experts, from the market itself.

So you can tell the difference between what’s noise… and what’s real.

Most startup advice is about speed.
Ship faster. Break things. Fail fast.

But in my experience with Outlaw  speed without clarity is just noise.

We’ve spent months listening to founders, tearing apart our own assumptions, and even killing ideas we thought were “the one.”

What I’ve learned:
The real edge isn’t how quickly you move.
It’s how quickly you course correct.

Outlaw isn’t about telling founders to run faster.
It’s about showing them if they’re even on the right track.

That difference is everything.

One of the  biggest lessons in building Outlaw so far:
Unlearning what I thought “building a startup” should look like.

I used to believe:
→ If I had the perfect deck, things would click.
→ If I read enough, I’d find clarity.
→ If I asked the loudest voices, I’d get the best answers.

Reality?
Clarity came from doing.
From awkward customer calls.
From features that flopped.
From the quiet, unglamorous work of putting something in front of real people.

The gap between how we think companies are built vs. how they actually get built is huge.
And it’s in that gap that Outlaw  was born.

We’re not here to make building look cleaner.
We’re here to make it truer.

The numbers aren’t subtle.
<3% of VC-funded startups are led by women.
And yet, some of the most resourceful, creative, and resilient founders I meet are women.

The problem isn’t vision.
It’s access.

Access to the right customers.
Access to honest feedback.
Access to experts who can accelerate the messy 0→1 stage.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw to strip away gatekeeping and bias, and give every founder, regardless of background, the same infrastructure to test, validate, and prove their ideas.

Because when you level the playing field, more women don’t just participate in building they thrive at it.

One thing I’ve learnt while building Outlaw:
The work doesn’t get easier.
You just get stronger at carrying it.

The uncertainty doesn’t vanish.
The troughs don’t disappear.
The doubts don’t stop showing up at 2am.

What changes is your ability to sit with it.
To keep moving when clarity is murky.
To hold conviction when everyone else shrugs.

That’s been the real muscle Outlaw  has built in me.
Not code, not decks, not traction charts but resilience.

And maybe that’s the quiet truth of early building:
Before you prove product-market fit,
you prove founder-problem fit.

Most startups don’t fail because the idea was bad.
They fail because the signals came too late.

You burn months chasing “maybes” —
• maybe this survey means something
• maybe this accelerator intro is the answer
• maybe this customer will eventually pay

By the time the truth shows up, it’s already too expensive.

At Outlaw  we’re building for speed to truth.
So founders can hear the “no” faster, and double down on the rare “yes.”

Because in early-stage, clarity is the real currency.

Every founder talks about vision.
But the truth is, vision is cheap.

The real test?
Can you operationalize it.
→ Write it down so it stops being vague.
→ Break it into actions that a team can actually do.
→ Turn it into something a user can experience.

That’s where most ideas die not in lack of ambition, but in lack of translation.

At Outlaw that’s the muscle we’re building every day:
taking messy, half-formed thoughts
→ pressure-testing them
→ and turning them into steps a founder can actually run with.

Because ideas don’t need polish.
They need momentum.

Building a startup teaches you that clarity is earned, not given.

At first, everything feels like fog -ideas, feedback, advice, even your own conviction.
But the fog only lifts when you put something into the world.

A scrappy survey.
An awkward customer call.
A prototype that barely works.

Each signal clears the path a little bit more.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw  to help founders cut through the fog faster.
Not with more noise, but with sharper signals.

Because clarity at zero is the rarest currency.

Every founder I’ve spoken to says the same thing in different words:
“It’s not the idea that keeps me up at night. It’s whether anyone cares.”

We don’t lack ideas.
We lack evidence.

Evidence that someone will pay.
Evidence that the problem is painful enough.
Evidence that we’re not just building for our own echo chamber.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw 
Not to give founders answers.
But to force the questions into the real world -fast.

Because the earlier you find proof (or disproval), the more you save: time, money, and sanity.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learnt building Outlaw 

Silence is not validation.

A polite nod in a Zoom call.
A “this looks cool” comment.
Even a 5-minute demo where someone doesn’t push back.

None of that equals demand.

Real validation is noisy.
It shows up in complaints, pushback, follow-ups, and payments.

That’s the gap we’re obsessed with at Outlaw  — turning early-stage “silence” into hard signals.
Because founders don’t need encouragement.
They need evidence.

One of the hardest parts of building early is this:

You can be surrounded by noise: advice, markets, trends, even “signals.”
But none of it tells you if you’re actually solving a problem.

The only thing that cuts through is evidence.
A user who pays.
An expert who points out the blind spot you missed.
A customer who comes back, even after complaining.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw 
Not to give founders more noise but to give them the kind of feedback that stings, sharpens, and saves years of wasted effort.

Evidence > opinion.
Always.

The noise in early-stage building is deafening.
Everyone has advice.
Everyone has a “framework.”
Everyone has a playbook.

But the real question is:
Who’s actually giving you signals from the people that matter?
Your customers.
Your domain experts.
Your peers who’ve lived through it.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw 
Not another tool. Not another survey generator.
But a way for founders to cut through noise and get to evidence fast.

Because the difference between “I think this will work” and “I know people want this”
…is the difference between another dead Notion doc and a product that survives.

Most founders don’t fail because the idea was “bad.”
They fail because they ran out of time, money, or conviction before the truth became clear.

We’ve lived this.
We’ve wasted months chasing noise, only to realize the problem wasn’t real enough — or the customer didn’t care enough.

That’s why we’re building Outlaw 
To cut down the time between assumption and evidence.
To replace guesswork with signal.
To help founders face the brutal truths earlier when it still matters.

Not every idea deserves to be built.
But every founder deserves a fair shot at clarity

Mondays hit different when you’re building from zero.

It’s not about standups or sprint boards.
It’s about asking:

What’s the one thing we can prove this week?

Not polish.
Not pitch decks.
Not theory.

Just proof — that someone cares enough to click, to talk, to pay, to complain.

That’s the rhythm of building Outlaw 
One uncomfortable proof at a time.

Most founders think the harder part is raising money.
It’s not.

The hardest part is staying honest with yourself when nobody’s watching.

Are you solving a problem people actually care about?
Or are you polishing a story that only sounds good in a deck?

I’ve had to confront this more times than I’d like to admit while building Outlaw 

The brutal truth?
Markets don’t reward effort. They reward evidence.

And evidence doesn’t come from theory.
It comes from the conversations that sting, the feedback that breaks your narrative, the test that fails.

That’s where we’re pushing Outlaw to make honesty with yourself less painful, and more actionable.

Because if you can’t face reality fast, it will find you later and it won’t be kind.

One of the biggest traps I’ve fallen into while building Outlaw  mistaking polite interest for real validation.

A demo that ends with “this is cool” feels good.
But it doesn’t pay the bills.
It doesn’t tell you what’s broken.
And it definitely doesn’t tell you if someone will come back tomorrow.

The only signals that matter:
• A customer complaint (they care enough to want it better)
• A follow-up (they see value worth returning to)
• A payment (the harshest form of belief)

Everything else is noise.

Outlaw  is being built to help founders cut through that noise and get to the evidence that actually matters.

Taplio

Prarthana Anand's Linkedin Analytics

's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Taplio

.css-1jgreyo{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39,43,72,1) 0%, rgba(33,47,183,1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Prarthana Anand's Linkedin Analytics

's Best Posts .css-qqfgvy{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);}(last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Prarthana Anand's Linkedin Analytics

's Best Posts (last 30 days)