01
The screen is not the product
A good flow cannot rescue bad incentives, weak distribution or broken economics. Those are product problems too. I look at the whole system before adding another feature.
Prateek Agarrwal
I build products. I build the business around them.
Product and strategy leader. Fintech, SaaS and consumer. 0 → 1 → 100.
I have spent 13+ years building startups, from the first sketch to real scale. My titles often said product. The job was bigger: set the strategy, find the GTM, shape the brand, assess acquisitions, fix operations, hire teams, build partnerships and get everyone moving in the same direction. I know when to set the course and when to get into the details. The point is to make the business work.
The work
I tend to join when the answer is not obvious and the stakes are real. Sometimes the product is missing. Sometimes the business model is wrong. Sometimes a good team is pointed at the wrong problem. I work out which one it is, make the call and get the company moving.
Most recently, I joined Baysys before revenue. We were taking a fresh look at debt recovery. I worked on the thesis, the product, the data and the first live portfolios. One week could be a platform roadmap. The next could be contactability or a better way for a borrower to settle debt without being chased.
Before that, I ran product and strategy at Jai Kisan. The business already had scale, but parts of the product, GTM and team setup needed a reset. Earlier at Khatabook, I built an MSME lending product from scratch and took it live. I also helped start bookkeeping and invoicing products for Indonesia and India.
At ZestMoney, I worked on growth, KYC, lenders and collections. Not glamorous. Very important. Those systems helped the business serve millions and add more sources of capital. I got into lending in 2017 at CashCare, where we built one of India’s first fully digital loan journeys.
Before fintech, I worked on rentals at Housing.com. I started in SaaS, growth and commerce after graduating from Drexel in 2012. I have only worked in startups since.
Different companies. Different stages. The job stays fairly consistent: find the real constraint, make the call, give the team clarity and stay close enough to the work to know when the call was wrong.
What startups taught me
Startups are not a neat upward line. I have seen them survive, firefight, pivot, thrive and fail. Sometimes in the same year. You learn to decide before the spreadsheet is complete. You also learn to admit when the decision was wrong.
Teams can handle uncertainty. What they cannot handle is fog. I am clear about what we know, what we are guessing and what we are doing next. People get room to do the work. I own the trade-off.
How I think about products
02
Find what is actually stuck
Growth rarely stalls because the backlog is too short. It is usually trust, timing, money or one bad handoff nobody owns. Find that first.
03
Make the next decision cheaper
The first version should teach us something useful. Ship it, watch what people do and change the bet before the organisation gets attached to it.
04
Simple is expensive
The customer should not pay for our organisational mess. I will go into the ugly process, policy or data problem if that is what it takes to keep the product simple.
Currently
→
Building again.
Right now I am testing self-serve software ideas around boring business problems. I am also learning AI the only useful way: by building with it. Most of it is noise. The useful part is how quickly a rough idea can become a real product in someone’s hands.