FOBOH: A Conversation with Co-founder & CEO Kshitija Deshmukh
Meet Kshitija Deshmukh, the driving force behind FOBOH‘s success. FOBOH is tailored for food and beverage suppliers and distributors. It effortlessly organises orders from various sources like text, email, and spreadsheets. With the ability to create straightforward approval workflows, it minimises errors and ensures top-notch service every time.
As the Co-founder and CEO, her leadership has propelled the company to new heights. Join us as we delve into Kshitija’s inspiring journey and some of her key lesson’s learned as a founder.
Can you share some common mistakes that founders make in their early stages?
Kshitija: As an early-stage founder, it is crucial to be mindful of a few key things. Firstly, it is important to thoroughly evaluate and ensure that the problem you are trying to solve is genuinely significant and adds substantial value to your target customers. By addressing a genuine and significant problem, you’re going to open a real and sustainable market opportunity, and have the best chance of building a strong foundation for growth and scalability.
Secondly, the challenge lies in staying laser-focused on what to build. In the early stages, deciding what to build can be more difficult than actually building it. Distractions are abundant, especially with the pressure to assemble a team and secure resources.
Can you share your experience of preparing to raise capital?
Kshitija: We went through our first funding round via an accelerator program, which offers a different experience than directly approaching VCs. At this stage, investors are primarily betting on whether the problem addressed is substantial and if the founders are the right people to solve it.
When it comes to preparing to raise capital, it’s really important to engage with investors early on and show them the progress you’ve made through different milestones. Right now, we’re actually in the process of our next funding round, and we’re talking to a mix of angels and some venture capitalists. It’s all about demonstrating that the problem you’re addressing is significant and that you and your team are the right people to solve it. So, we’re really focused on building those relationships and showing our potential investors how we’re making a difference.
FOBOH streamlines orders for food and beverage suppliers and distributors, reducing errors with simple approval workflows.
What are the key financial health metrics you focus on, especially being pre-revenue?
Kshitija: As a pre-revenue company, one of our top priorities is keeping a close eye on our burn rate. This refers to the rate at which we are spending our available funds. It’s crucial for us to carefully manage our expenses and ensure that we are using our resources wisely.
In addition to tracking our burn rate, we also pay close attention to various customer metrics. These metrics include interactions with our target audience, such as their engagement with our brand, expressions of interest in our product or service (such as letters of intent), and the number of sign-ups we receive. By monitoring these metrics, we aim to continually validate our assumptions and hypotheses about our target market and work towards achieving product-market fit.
By staying on top of our burn rate and monitoring customer metrics, we can make informed decisions about our business strategy and adjust our approach as needed. It’s all about finding the right balance between managing our financial health and ensuring that we are effectively meeting the needs of our potential customers.
I hope this provides a more conversational and detailed explanation of how we manage our finances and customer metrics as a pre-revenue company!
If you could go back in time to when you first started out, what advice would you give yourself?
Kshitija: Starting a business can be quite a journey, and there are a few things I wish I knew when I first started out. One important lesson is that everything takes longer than you might expect. It’s crucial to manage your expectations about the time commitment required. Another key aspect is recognising that starting a business can be emotionally challenging. It’s important to regulate and manage your emotions, celebrate the small wins along the way, and understand that it’s a long game. These are valuable lessons I’ve learned through my own experience, and I hope they can help others on their entrepreneurial journey.
Helpful resources to read next
Now that you’re on your business creation journey, why not check out some of our other helpful resources.
