📍 kamo river, kyoto (current fav place on earth)
Yash Vijaykar
Hola I am yash (rhymes with brush 🪥/ 🖌️)
I'm a builder at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and early-stage startups.
i was part of the founding team of an AI healthcare consumer startup - it shut down, since then i have been just experimenting with life (cause why not 🤷) taking bets on myself (its daunting and you'd never regret betting on yourself)
- ended up learning a lot about myself
- was diagnosed with clinical depression, solved for it
- started living inside out (driving things from within (antifragile), than listening to external forces, people around me telling what i "should" / "shouldn't" do (fragile))
- rewarded myself a trip to Japan last dec - it was AWESOME!
(I can say with certain confidence now, I've gotten pretty good with navigating uncertainty)
on the work side, been doing something unusual: identifying founders worth betting on (scouting like a vc), building unsolicited cases for how I'd create leverage for them, and reaching out cold, before anyone asks. check out the portfolio.
- changing current environment (moving from Bengaluru -> North America) - realised current environment is suboptimal (zero sum games, low trust, low opportunity), want to be around high conc of like minded + like hearted people playing positive sum players and long term games 🫶
- i am excited to be a part of a startup asap as possible (small team energy, solve meaningful problems is what I'm craving)
vibe fit? Let's chat! pls email with [subject]: to love icecream 🍦, is to be hooman and we'll take it from there
(PS: I read every everything)
I show up before I'm hired
I think like a founder. I build the case before anyone asks.
Identifying founders worth betting on (scouting like a vc) to work with, building cases for how I'd create leverage for them, and reaching out cold, before anyone asks.
No brief. No job post. I did the work because the problem was interesting and the founder seemed worth betting on.
The thesis: understand their north star, map the top bottlenecks, present options.
I've also walked away — 9 times, including an early SpaceX investor after a 4-hr call when integrity red flags surfaced.
- Cold emailed Grace twice — first email high signal, no reply. Followed up a week later with a better hook → got a reply and a meeting
- Built Kintsugi's business case from first principles before the call
- Mapped the core inefficiency: manual, human-dependent screening
- Quantified: insurers lose ~$1.26B/yr from missed depression in chronic-disease members
- Fermi estimate: flag 1% of calls + convert 20% to care → ~$240M saved → ROI of 120×
- Mapped smart outreach, automated ops workflows (BD meeting summaries → Slack + HubSpot)
- Got an assignment from Albert (COO): build a CXO pitch deck — shipped with full autonomy, went beyond the brief
- Shipped a Loom walking through the work before the next call
- Got the offer (~$120k/yr) and declined
- Wanted apprenticeship access to a founder I admire, not a contract. Long-term games with long-term people. Walked away respectfully.
- Identified the core constraint: clinician time
- One physician capped at ~20 patients/day
- 78Health's model unlocks 1,500+ patients per physician
- Built the revenue math: $6M run rate = 0.2 take rate × $250k/physician × 120 physicians
- Mapped the full funnel — physician signing to first live patient. Flagged missing denominators: active patients per physician, CAC, retention speed, activation rate
- Ran a pre-mortem on the fundraise and two-market risk (US + India bandwidth split)
- Asked the hard questions: EMR integration risk, platform risk from Epic/Cerner, why two markets simultaneously
- Got to offer discussion — equity, comp, onboarding — before fundraise timing created uncertainty
- Built two distinct ICPs with job-to-be-done mapping
- Guides ICP: 18–32, male-skewed, gamer identity, self-diagnosed ADHD/anxiety. Trigger: "I've watched 40 Dr. K videos, time to go deeper." Value prop: $120 vs $200/therapy session
- Membership ICP: 18–35, long-term Dr. K follower. Wants ongoing growth, not a one-off fix. $10–15/mo frictionless
- Mapped both funnels end-to-end
- Guides CVR at 0.5–1% of 1.5M monthly site visitors
- Membership: 6–12K active subscribers, $72–144K MRR, 8–15% monthly churn
- Identified revenue bottlenecks and built the 6-month path to 50% growth: $1M → $1.5M
- Asked hard questions in the interview because I genuinely cared what moves the needle — got a generic rejection with zero context
- Flagged it directly to Dr. K: "For a company whose mission is built on trust, care, and honest conversation — these small interactions carry disproportionate weight." Said my part. Moved on.
- Read his blogs. Watched his podcast. Played Factorio. Then cold emailed with a personalised video — mission-aligned, not credential-matching
- Deep research: his writing, podcast appearances, publicly shared frameworks
- Ask was deliberate: start with a tiny problem, earn the rest
- Nabeel replied, watched the video, engaged genuinely
- Stalled on visa. Not merit.
- Went deep into NK's world — podcasts, investment thesis, WTFund cohort — before building anything
- Mapped why energy transition is his highest-conviction bet, bottom-up:
- GHGs → renewable shift → CO2 halved
- UEI as the energy trading layer
- CPO incentive alignment as the real unlock
- Built a Figma mindmap validating the whole thesis. Researched his portfolio: Ossus, SolarSquare, Matel. Ranked 10 key insights. Did the full work.
- Then didn't send it.
- Caught myself mid-way: the drive was "get a 10x career jump" — ego, not mission. Chose not to reach out from that place.
- The self-awareness that stopped me is the thing he'd respect most.
- Studied the business cold: balance sheet, Antiwork's north star ($10M EBITDA), product philosophy, open-source strategy, PM stance
- Sahil posted a $1K story bounty — wrote the sci-fi story with AI, then declined the money. Cold email: "I don't want the $1,000. I want to work with you."
- Built a personalised video: why his "Reflecting" post was the moment I knew I had to reach out, how I could create leverage starting tomorrow
- Got ghosted — then noticed he'd blocked me on X and deleted my comment on his thread
- Reached back out: "Felt weird and unlike you — curious if something went wrong on my end." No reply.
- Chose not to force it. Moved on clean.
Nintee
1st hire and founding PM. Worked directly with Paras Chopra ($200M SaaS exit). Shipped 12+ products 0→1 in two years — across healthcare, GenAI, and mobile gaming. No playbook, no senior PM, full ownership every sprint.
- WordRally (mobile word game) — 3 MVPs + 25 alpha builds in one month; D1 retention 25%; avg session 1.5 min → 8 min
- Nintee Habit Coach (LLM, React Native) — conversational AI from design to prod; FTUE, image captioning, chat memory, intent classification
- Weight loss coaching app — $800 MRR, 90+ active users globally; Sanjeev Bikhchandani and Vijay Shekhar Sharma were users
- Calorie tracking + NLP chatbot — D7 retention 20% → 40%; Tanmay Bhat (6M followers) was an active user
- Community — Discord + Telegram from 0 → 2,500 members; solved cold-start from scratch
Backers: Sequoia · Kunal Shah · Balaji Srinivasan
Level Supermind
- Led trainer onboarding — closed target by 157%, managed 7 global trainers across 5+ countries
- Delivered 60+ audio experiences
- Owned video production: team of 21, budget INR 20L (~$27k)
PijonCo
D2C merch brand built from zero — design, ops, meme marketing. 100+ orders PAN India. Shut down at breakeven when the learning curve flattened. Intentional.
🧑🏫 B.Tech, Food Engineering & Technology · Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai · 2017–2021. Chose not to sit for campus placements — joined BeerBiceps' startup instead.
🏔️ principles
These are reminders that take me closer to who I am. I need them time to time. Carved out based on experiences lived through.
Inspired from nabeelqu's principles note. Feel free to steal what you like.
📝 blog
Threads, essays, and notes. Mostly about mental health, startups, and what I'm figuring out.
i write where ever i can - i'm sure you can relate