👋 Howdy to the 1,310 new legends who joined this week! You are now part of a 121,415 strong tribe outperforming the competition together.

LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🛠️ Google Exited Founder, Building The AI Agent Era. An interview with Jacob Bank, founder & CEO of Relay.app.
🕵🏻‍♂️ Deel, Ripping & The History Of Corporate Espionage. A spy story of the grandest scale in the world of payroll management.
💰 Early Entrepreneurship, Cash Management & Building Scrappy. An interview with Ben Döpfner, founder & CEO of Vesto.

PARTNERS 💫

"I don't have time to post on LinkedIn" is costing you millions.

The CEO of a mid-sized agency almost deleted an email from Playbookz. Six weeks later, a $40B company was in his inbox after seeing just one post.

Another executive got 400+ qualified leads from a single piece of content they crafted.

They do everything for you:

• You talk to them for 60 minutes every two weeks

• They transform your expertise into high-converting LinkedIn content

• Your personal brand becomes your strongest channel

They'll even guarantee 20k reach in your first 28 days or you don't pay.

_{Interested in sponsoring these emails? See our partnership options here.}

HOUSEKEEPING 📨

The world is against me. Or the Lord. Maybe I am just unlucky. Yesterday I took off for the third attempt at a 3-week trip to San Martin de los Andres, Patagonia. And for the third time it fell through. First time was Christmas, when Hertz Argentina wouldn’t take my care because it didn’t have numbers printed on it. It was a brand new black card.

Today I woke up and was worse again. The route I was on had literally no accomodation for 12 hours at I was falling asleep by 10am. So the trip is off again, probably for good this time. Why am I telling you this? Not sure. But this is what I have been up to. To be honest though, ID-really-GAF. These things happen. Not gonna let it ruin my mood. Onwards!

INTERVIEW 🎙️

Multiple Exits, Founding Match Group & Building In Asset Management

Amar Varma is the co-founder and CEO of Mantle, a platform building modern solutions for managing private assets—from cap tables to capital calls. He specializes in building products that reduce friction in workflows across finance, legal, and operational teams.

With a deep background in entrepreneurship and venture, Amar has co-founded multiple successful companies including Xtreme Labs (acquired by Pivotal), Hatch Labs (the parent of Tinder), and Autonomic (acquired by Ford). His firsthand experience managing complex portfolios and private investments inspired the creation of Mantle—a tool he originally built to solve his own problems. Today, he’s using that same insight to help companies, law firms, and LPs navigate equity and alternative asset management with clarity and confidence.

Tell us about your very first exit?

The first exit is always the best exit. You've been thinking about it as you aspire to achieve something big. When it happens, you feel a rush of glee that boosts your confidence levels. For instance, after the closing party of my first exit, I went home and was back to changing diapers—straight back to reality. It's a rollercoaster: you experience a high from the excitement and then you're brought back down to everyday life. Despite this, it's an unforgettable experience and always holds a special place in my heart.

It’s funny, people often talk about the exit as a thrilling and grand event, and it certainly is. However, the real learning comes from sticking to your vision and persevering. Focus on building a solid business and not losing sight of that goal. These are critical ingredients for a successful outcome. Of course, luck and timing play roles, but without these fundamental elements, those wouldn't be enough.

Tell us about your early days at Match Group; are you still involved?

My relationship with Match Group began through my company, Hatch Labs, which was the incubator for Tinder. This relationship developed over time as I met various people at IAC, our customer at one point, including Barry Diller. As the dating world transitioned from online platforms to social and mobile applications, our project, Tinder, really resonated with users. The concept of 'swipe right' became a cultural phenomenon. There’s an interesting case study now included in Harvard Business School, about the impact it had on society.

How about your next exit selling Autonomic to Ford Motor Company?

Building Autonomic was a fascinating chapter in my life. The company that preceded Autonomic was Pivotal, which had acquired Xtreme Labs. We worked at Pivotal, it went public, then it was bought by VMware, then Broadcom with Michael Dell owning significant parts of it. Interestingly, Ford Motor Company was a customer at Pivotal, where I was the executive sponsor. This allowed me to work closely with Ford's executive team and meet the Ford family during a pivotal time when electrification, autonomy, and on-demand services were gaining traction in the automotive industry. Uber had begun to establish itself, and Tesla was emerging as a significant player in electric vehicles.

At Autonomic, we developed applications to connect vehicles to the internet, mirroring the evolution from landlines to cell phones and then to smartphones. We questioned what richer applications and features could look like beyond the basics. Autonomic emerged from this confluence of electrification, on-demand services, and autonomy, focusing on connectivity as our core layer. We facilitated the data connections from vehicles to the cloud, enabling a variety of applications. Being in the right place at the right time, Ford Motor Co. acquired Autonomic just a year into our journey.

My tenure at Ford continued to be exciting as the company pushed forward with connected and electric vehicles, with a strong focus on autonomy, though the direction later shifted. Our journey there concluded when a leading product expert from Tesla joined Ford, bringing a deeper expertise in electric vehicles that surpassed our own. It was an opportune moment to hand over the reins to someone capable of advancing their initiatives further.

Ford is a global behemoth, akin to Coca-Cola in its universal presence, deeply involved in numerous sectors. Working at Ford was an enriching experience, constantly learning from its vast scale and the family's significant role in steering the company's future.

What problem is Mantle trying to solve and why?

Mantle started from a personal problem I faced. I have a lot of investments in private companies and I've been both a GP at a fund and have run my own fund. Over the years, I've made every mistake you can think of and lost a fair bit of money because of these errors. The existing software wasn't terrible, but it often wasn't good enough, especially when it came to workflow. People would rush to input data they thought was correct. Most times, small errors weren't a big deal, but sometimes they had serious consequences and couldn’t be fixed after they were made.

This experience led to real challenges in managing my investments, particularly with tracking costs and the fair market value. Even when I managed to get everything into a spreadsheet, it felt great at first but would quickly become outdated with no easy way to keep it current. So, I created Mantle initially for myself to avoid these mistakes. It soon became useful to others as well, fitting perfectly into the workflow of financial and legal professionals, founders, and operators. It’s become a crucial tool that ties all these different stakeholders together, making everything more coherent and manageable.

What was the most difficult aspect of going from zero to one?

The most difficult aspect of going from zero to one with Mantle was the sheer amount of inertia against us at the beginning. No matter how much experience or knowledge you think you have, pushing that rock uphill is incredibly hard. The inertia of starting something new always seems to work against you.

For us, getting that initial momentum was key. It’s like, do you have a customer? Do you have an event in the ecosystem that aligns with your launch? You always need some kind of push to break through the initial barriers.

In the early stages, it’s not just about having a great idea or a solid plan—it’s about getting people to pay attention, to take a chance on something new. And even when you think you’ve started making progress, maintaining and growing that momentum is a constant challenge. Zero to one is always tough, no matter how many times you’ve done it before.

What is your main day-to-day role as CEO?

My job as CEO changes all the time. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, quarter by quarter. That’s the fun part—you have the freedom to choose where you spend your time, but you also carry the weight of that responsibility. What you say and how you act has a huge impact.

Right now, because we’re in the zero to one and one to ten phase, I’m really deep in stitching the product and go-to-market together. If you get go-to-market right, it’s probably because parts of the product are right — and that usually comes from obsessing over the details. I spend most of my time making sure we’re listening to feedback, watching for the stuff people don’t say, and constantly looping that back into how we build and present the product.

That’s basically where I live every day right now.

Explain your philosophy around leadership?

Leadership has changed a lot for me over time. When I was younger, whether it was sports or music, leadership kind of just came from being good at something. People naturally looked to you. But as I got older and was put into more leadership roles, I realized it’s not just something you inherently have—it’s a skill set. It has to evolve. If it doesn’t, you’re not really growing as a leader, and you won’t stay in leadership very long. So I take a very active approach to understanding and growing that skill set—getting better at the things I’m good at and need to be great at.

_{*Note: I don’t know how Amar and the team did this but they made personalised Lego people for their team for their Product Hunt launch. Unbelievable.}

And with more age and experience, I’ve also come to accept that there are just some things I’ll never be good at. That’s a tough thing to admit to your younger self, but an important one. You can work on something for days, months, years—and it still might never click for you.

Everyone wants to be good at everything. They want to be the ultimate entrepreneur with the ultimate success. But every journey is different, and every skill set is different. Leadership is about recognizing your limits—and knowing how to build around them.

How do you address your weaknesses?

If you’d asked me a dozen years ago to take one of those assessments, I probably would’ve said sure, glanced at the results, and tossed them aside. But over time, I started noticing patterns—there were things I really enjoyed that never felt like a grind, and others that always did. Like tax season—that always feels like a grind if it's not your thing.

Eventually, I took the Harrison Assessment, which is geared toward tech and startups. It was eye-opening. It showed me different indices—things like creativity versus being calculated. And in a leadership role, you often need both. Seeing that visually helped me understand what I was naturally good at, what I could get better at, and what I’d probably never be good at, no matter how much I worked on it.

That changed how I think about team building. You start looking for people who have superpowers where you don’t—people who complement you. Together, you cover the full spectrum of what’s needed. You don’t need to be great at everything. You just need to understand where you are, and build a team around that.

What is the North Star metric for Mantle?

Our North Star is pretty simple: build tools that give people gratification, reduce friction, and deliver tangible results.

I think about it like this; when you were a kid and you got a bicycle, it just became something you used all the time. You didn’t even think about it. That’s how we want Mantle to feel—like a tool that just fits into your workflow and makes things easier without getting in the way.

We want to be in that category of tools that people know they have, know works incredibly well, and trust that if something goes wrong, the support and the community are there to help. That’s our guiding principle.

Because at the end of the day, the stuff we’re dealing with—stock options, investors, board decks — it all feels like homework to someone. You’re almost guaranteed to be dealing with dissatisfaction. So when we build something that actually gives people a moment of gratification, that’s a huge win. It means we’re doing it right.

What were the first effective go-to-market strategies?

Like most early-stage startups, we started by working our network — reaching out for leads, feedback, and early customer engagement. And we got great responses, honestly better than I expected. But that has a honeymoon phase. Eventually, you have to go beyond people who know you — folks who aren’t your friends or investors — and convince them too.

The business itself is pretty straightforward. There are clear entry points: company formation, financings, offboarding, valuations. The challenge was getting distribution partners and peers to see why they should work with us or recommend us.

Early on, we thought our initial momentum would carry us further than it did. It didn’t—and we had to make a call: do we keep pushing the same way and just be more articulate, or did we actually miss something and need to revector?

Over time, we got sharper. We now understand the value prop for new companies, existing companies, and for financial and legal professionals using the product. That’s when things started to click—once we understood the different personas and how to stitch that whole experience together across all the stakeholders. That’s when people really started to enjoy using it.

As a prolific investor, what do you look for in a founder when investing?

That's a great question. If I had a silver bullet, I would serve it up to you and say, here are the 1, 2, 3 things we're looking for. But reflecting on decades of experience, several attributes stand out. First, there's a combination of general intelligence and emotional intelligence; someone who can really think at a high level and also understand and navigate the dynamics of a room.

Another crucial attribute is the ability to tell a compelling story. Early on, you don’t have much more than your vision, so the ability to create a bit of a reality distortion field to get people on board is critical. You're essentially trying to fill the gaps with your credibility and the tangible knowledge that you can actually make this happen.

So, the storytelling isn't just about selling an idea; it's about conveying the passion and the rationale behind the vision compellingly and convincingly. It's a highly underrated skill. Beyond storytelling, I look for someone who can react well to input—distinguishing between noise and valuable feedback, particularly from potential customers.

Sometimes what you’re building isn’t exactly what the market wants, and you need to be ready to pivot or adjust based on that feedback without losing sight of your core vision. It’s about finding that balance between staying true to your initial vision and being adaptable enough to tweak it based on real-world feedback. This adaptability can be the difference between a startup that stalls and one that scales.

How do you get the best out of yourself personally and professionally?

That’s a great question—and the answer has changed a lot over the years. Where I’m at now, with a beautiful family and four kids, I’ve learned that taking care of myself first thing in the day is critical. Then taking care of them. Those are the juggling balls that are glass—they can’t be dropped.

You’re only ever as great as the lowest moment of your family on any given day. But pushing through that and showing up is part of the magic. It sets you up with a growth mindset and an open mindset when you walk into the office.

Another big one for me has been carving out time to think. Earlier in my career, I was always doing. Now I realize how valuable it is to have sustained periods of thinking—even if it’s just taking a walk after lunch and working something through in your head. Sometimes it’s solo, sometimes it’s with peers, employees, or other founders. That creative time is huge.

And of course, communication. Making sure people know what’s going on, what you’re doing, where you’re headed. Being transparent, giving feedback quickly, and separating emotion from fact—that’s been a lifelong learning curve for me. I used to take wins and losses super personally. I still do, but I’ve gotten better at unhooking the emotion and just dealing with what’s actually going on.

And that’s it! You can also follow Amar on LinkedIn and X, and check out Mantle on their website.

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE USE 🛠️

Every week we highlight tools we actually use inside of our business and give them an honest review. Today we are highlighting Attio—powerful, flexible and data-driven, the exact CRM your business needs.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

P.S. Want to work together?

1. Hiring global talent: If you are hiring tech, business or ops talent and want to do it for up to 80% off check out my startup Athyna. 🌏

2. Want to see my tech stack: See our suite of tools & resources for both this newsletter and Athyna you check them out here. 🧰 

3. Reach an audience of tech leaders: Advertise with us if you want to get in front of founders, investor and leaders in tech. 👀