This Founder Had Weeks of Runway Left—Then Took a Risk That Saved the Company
Inside a founder’s last-ditch bet, and the conversation that saved it all.
They bet everything on a three-day conference. And for two days, it looked like a total failure.
Gururaj Pandurangi had no idea if his company would survive this.
They had poured more than $800,000 into building a new product. Booked a booth at one of the biggest conferences in the cloud security space. And brought his entire team to Vegas hoping for signs of life.
This conference was the moment to prove it had legs.
They needed to get traction. But by day two, hardly anyone had even stopped by - let alone become a customer. They had three months of runway left. That was it.
If the bet didn’t pay off, the company would fold, and everyone would lose.
Guru is a three-time founder, now building ThriveStack.
But this story happened during his second startup, a cloud security company that had just sunk nearly a million dollars into building a new compliance product.
The idea made sense.
At the time, getting SOC 2 compliance involved a brutal process.
Six months of expensive audits, manual documentation, and endless back-and-forth with consultants. It cost even small SaaS companies $150K just to get certified.
Guru believed they could automate 80% of that.
They spent months building an automated way for SaaS companies to get compliant without the audit hell. The product worked great, but if was unproven, unfamiliar, and hard to explain in a cold email or polished slide deck.
So they went to where the buyers were.
They booked a pricey booth at Microsoft’s flagship security conference. It was where security and compliance leaders gathered to shop, learn, and get hands-on with new solutions. If the product resonated here, they’d have traction. If it didn’t, they’d go home with nothing but swag and sunk cost. That was their plan.
But the first two days were brutal.
Traffic to the booth was light. Most people stopped by, listened for a minute, and walked away. That night, the team went back to their rooms and looked at the numbers. Fifteen visitors, maybe twenty. That was it.
Day three was their last shot.
The team was tired. The booth had been quiet for two days straight. But the night before, Guru had met a contact from Microsoft who casually said, “maybe I’ll swing by tomorrow morning. I’ll try to bring a few folks.” So they waited.
But he hadn’t shown at 11 a.m.
Or 12.
Or 12:15.
The team was exhausted and starving. Some had started to pack up.
Then at 12:30, the Microsoft director showed up
Not just him.
He brought four people from his product team too.
They stayed for 45 minutes, watching the demo, asking deep technical questions. One leaned in. Then another. “They were product people,” Guru said. “They saw the potential.”
One director left and came back two hours later, with his VP.
Guru’s team ran a full demo, swapped questions, and closed with a handshake. By the end of the day, Microsoft had offered a $1M contract.
They had just pulled the company back from the edge.
That moment still sits with him. It wasn’t a masterstroke or some brilliant growth hack. It was staying calm under pressure.
“You start to wonder, am I the only one who still believes?” he told me. “You can’t fake your way through that. You either believe the problem is real, or you don’t.”
It would’ve been easy to fold.
He could’ve downsized the team. Deferred the launch. Chased another funding round.
Walked away from the compliance idea altogether.
Every rational voice said to stop.
But he didn’t. He trusted the conversations he had before launch. The pain he saw in the market. The customers who didn’t buy, but nodded knowingly when he pitched the idea.
Most people won’t talk publicly about these moments.
They’ll post about the win.
But not the two days of silence before. Not the burning runway. Not the nights where your stomach turns as you wonder, “What if I’m wrong?”
This story is for anyone who’s been in that moment.
If you’ve ever bet big on a vision no one else could see yet.
If you’ve ever stood in a quiet booth wondering if you’re crazy.
If you’ve ever looked at your team and wondered how to keep believing - for them, not just for you.
This one’s for you.
Because the moment didn’t feel like a win while it was happening.
Catch Guru’s entire story on YouTube
Listen on Spotify
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