The New Founder Playbook | People Picking Passion Over Profit
Issue #03 | Saturday, May 17th | The Pipal Perspective
Welcome to the third issue of The Pipal Perspective! This week we’re understanding a specific type of Founder Persona, and questioning if AI will indeed take over the world.
In this issue:
✏️ From Our Desk: The New Founder Playbook
🔎 Hidden Opportunities
🔦 Talent Spotlight
▶️ Resource Corner
✏️ FROM OUR DESK: THE NEW FOUNDER PLAYBOOK
Someone asked me recently about patterns I'm noticing among founders. It got me thinking. After working with so many early-stage brands over the past two years, we've quietly observed some interesting shifts in who's starting companies and why.
The founders we're attracting aren't fresh college grads with startup dreams - they're accomplished professionals seeking something deeper.
Here's the deal. The people walking through our doors have already "made it" by most standards. They've led teams at MNCs or scaling startups. They've checked the career boxes. And now? They're building something entirely different - for entirely different reasons.
What connects them? Passion first, profit second. Money matters (of course it does!), but it's no longer driving the bus. We're seeing people who've reached a point where making an impact on something they genuinely care about has overtaken pure financial ambition.
Like the AWS global lead who is now building in the cloud procurement space. Or the successful investor who has his own fund, now creating solutions for sports recovery focusing on athletes like himself. Or like Roxanne (highlighted in the last issue too) who is a new mom, and feels sustainable baby clothing is just too expensive. These aren't random business ideas - they're solutions to problems these founders have lived through and can't stop thinking about. Something which isn’t just an identified gap in the market which makes business sense, but also something they care about deeply.
The second pattern we can't ignore? Time has become the ultimate currency.
These folks value efficiency like nothing else. Having run departments and managed teams, they know delegation isn't just convenient - it's survival. They're looking for partners they can trust quickly, not vendors they need to babysit. They’re happier to delegate decisions sooner rather than later, and end up deciding who to trust simply based on vibes sometimes.
"I need someone who gets it" - we hear this constantly. They want that LinkedIn presence but can only spare two hours monthly to review content. They know they need a killer website but have zero interest in building it themselves - even with those "easy" AI tools.
It creates this interesting dynamic: founders who make trust decisions faster than ever before. They size you up quickly, hand over real responsibility, and expect quality execution without hovering. And honestly? We're here for it.
And finally - maybe most interesting of all - is this shift toward specialized, no-long-term-commitment collaboration. The Gig Economy is flourishing.
Post COVID and The Great Resignation - the startup world is re-organizing around expertise hubs rather than permanent teams. These aren't college kids freelancing between classes - they're seasoned pros who've chosen flexibility over the 9-to-5 grind. Today's founders get this instinctively and build accordingly, pulling in specialists for specific challenges rather than hiring generalists.
Here are some snippets from fiverr’s Small Business Report for 2025.
A quick glimpse of the most popular services on fiverr:
And, a deeper look with stats:
If you are a freelancer or an agency catering to small businesses, we highly recommend you skim through this super short (and very visually pleasing) report!
What does this mean for us as The Pipal Collective and for anyone working part-time to support other entities? We're no longer just a service provider - we're an extension team. The line between "us" and "them" gets more & more blurred with each project. We're in strategic conversations earlier, trusted with bigger decisions, and held to higher standards.
TLDR: Today's most interesting founders aren't chasing unicorn status - they're accomplished professionals building from passion, valuing time above all else, and picking specialized partners over traditional teams. In this new world, being a true extension of their vision beats being just another vendor every time.
🔎 HIDDEN OPPORTUNITIES
Curated openings in startups (mainly marketing focused roles) that fly under the radar but (potentially) offer exceptional growth.
Finshots / Ditto Insurance | Multiple Openings
Finshots simplifies finance news for millennials through a daily 3-minute newsletter reaching 500,000+ subscribers, a popular podcast, and easy-to-understand explainers. The sister company Ditto provides personalized insurance advisory services with a no-spam policy (interesting for fintech marketers to explore), helping 300,000+ users make informed decisions. Both are backed by Zerodha and currently have openings for writers, designers and SEO folks.
Check careers page on website here
LinkedIn post by VP Marketing here
Meta | Client Partner, eCommerce & Retail
Help big retail brands use Meta better in Bangalore. Perfect for marketing folks who understand both online and offline retail. You'll work directly with major e-commerce platforms and retailers, showing them how Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp can boost their business. Need 7+ years in marketing or sales, experience talking to senior leaders, and a knack for solving problems. Bonus if you've worked in retail before. This role reports to the Industry Head and is key to Meta's growth in India. Check LinkedIn post here and Apply Here
*Know of an opening? Forward details to priyanshi@thepipal.in and we’d happy to share it with our network!
🔦 TALENT SPOTLIGHT
Ahsaas Verma | Brand Builder
A marketing storyteller with 7+ years of crafting brand narratives that actually connect. A MICA MBA graduate, he has the technical frameworks and also a blend of analytical thinking and creative instincts that get results. From brand management at established companies to recent work leading product storytelling at Shree Cement, he’s built campaigns that perform across touch-points.
What drives him? Simplifying the complex. Whether it's turning messy data into clear insights or transforming fuzzy brand visions into actionable campaigns. Now he’s looking to build teams and shape brands that stand the test of time.
“Let's create work that not only performs, but also inspires.”
Connect with Ahsaas
*Looking for your next opportunity? Email your profile to priyanshi@thepipal.in and we’d love to feature you!
▶️ RESOURCE CORNER
Platform: YouTube
The Video We Loved: What happens if AI just keeps getting smarter?
With the amount of time I spend on Claude - I keep thinking where this whole AI thing is actually headed? And I know I’m not alone. We've been consuming a lot of content around AI developments lately, and this video really made us stop and think. While most content pieces will tell you “how you can use AI to …”, this one is different. This one talks about the actual implication and impact of the increasing dependency on Artificial Intelligence.
The biggest misconception most people have? That advanced AI is just ChatGPT but better, instead of something potentially civilization-altering.
Watch this to get a clear timeline of AI capabilities, from today's tools that can write emails and simple code to potential future systems that could design even smarter versions of themselves without human input. Basically, while we're great at making AI more powerful, we're not so great at ensuring these systems will reliably do what we want them to do - especially once they surpass human intelligence.
This is something that Silicon Valley often glosses over, but many top researchers are now speaking up about. Sharing some points that really stuck with me:
AI progress isn't slowing down - the jump from barely coherent text in 2019 to complex reasoning today happened in just a few years
The real inflection point comes when AI systems can improve themselves, making the progress curve much steeper *panik*
The problem isn't AI "hating" humans - it's that super-intelligent systems might view us as irrelevant to their goals, much like we don't consult ants when building highways
Watch the entire video here:
Found a report or article that you think the world should know about? Let us know!
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