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The Courage to Startup Again
How Glimpse Pivoted Its Way to Success
Most founders cling to their initial success. Akash Raju chose the harder path: Walking away from something good to build something great.
"We were at this crossroads," Akash explains, thinking back to the early stages of Glimpse, a company that today helps CPG operators use AI to automate distributor deductions. "It was pretty successful, but we had this realization that the business would probably plateau.” In their early stages, despite strong growth numbers, something felt off. While Glimpse was scaling in certain categories, other verticals showed resistance. The options were clear: sell the business, maintain it as a stable income source, or venture into the unknown.
During peak COVID, Akash and his co-founders moved into a basement.
"We lived there for three months," he recalls with a laugh. It's a very typical startup story for all the young founders."
But what followed wasn't typical. Rather than rushing to build a replacement for their previous venture, they embraced uncertainty and gave themselves permission to learn.
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"We spent 15 months from sunsetting Glimpse 1.0 to launching Glimpse 2.0, and in that time, we probably talked to over 500 people. Just talking to them every single day."
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"It was a mix of five or six different ideas that we launched," Akash explains. "We had almost like an equation of: is this going to work? Do we want to pursue this? Until we landed on what we're doing now."
During a trade show, without a fully formed idea, Akash and his team worked the floor, having conversation after conversation about people's challenges. After explaining their emerging concept to a potential customer, they heard the words every founder dreams of: "If you build this, we're ready to go right now." They were down to try it, and that started the feedback loop of more customers every single week.
This wasn't just about changing direction—it was about fundamentally reimagining what his company could become. The new Glimpse would be built from hundreds of conversations with real people facing real problems. The strategy was simple, listen carefully, and follow the frustrations.
"We pivoted our way into product-market fit," he says, revealing an insight that challenges conventional company journeys. Sometimes the fastest path to success is abandoning what's working for what could work better.
For founders considering a pivot, Akash's story offers a powerful reminder: sometimes the biggest opportunities come when you're willing to start over, listen intently, and build exactly what the market is asking for.
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