My Experience with SPC: From Rejection to Fellowship
The Rejection That Started It All
SPC launched in India in July 2024. My friends Aman Gour and Sashank Gondala couldn't stop talking about it. "You have to apply," they kept telling me. They even referred me, which felt like a good sign.
Back then, my co-founder and I were working on voice agents for consumer research. We were both product managers, excited about what we were building. So we applied for SPC membership.
We got rejected.
I was confused. I called Prateek, the India partner, to understand what went wrong. He was honest with me: "I was excited about you because someone recommended you. But since you're both product managers, I expected strong insights. You didn't have those insights, and you hadn't worked together long enough."
Fair enough. It stung, but I got it.
The Second Chance We Almost Didn't Take
Fast forward to February 2025. We saw SPC's founder fellowship applications open.
My first thought? "Why would we even bother? SPC had already rejected us for membership. Why would they give us funding?"
But something made us try anyway. Maybe it was stubbornness. We decided to spend just one hour on a Monday morning filling out the application. One hour, then back to work.
By this time, we had pivoted to working on AI for playable ads - a completely different space from our original voice agents idea.
The first interview didn't go well. We weren't prepared. We figured that was it - no second round for us.
Then they called us back.
The second interview was with partners in the US. This time, we told our story differently. We talked about how advertising would become more engaging, more immersive. We wanted to start with playable ads and build from there.
They seemed to like our story. They asked about technical insights - we didn't have deep technical insights yet, but we understood what it would take to solve the problem.
When they called us for a third interview in person at the SPC office in India, we knew we had a shot.
Getting In
March 4th, 2025. I was at my sister's place when one of the India partners called. He was excited: "We're offering you the SPC founder fellowship."
I told everyone around me. Called my co-founder. We were thrilled.
But then the doubts crept in. Did we really want funding right now? There's a difference between how you operate when you're funded versus bootstrapped. More responsibility, more pressure.
I talked to my former manager about it. His advice was simple: "$400k isn't growth money that should worry you. It's patient capital. You'll have time to figure things out, pivot if needed. Plus, you get a community and you'll visit SF. This will help you decide much faster whether to keep going with this idea or try something else."
Another friend suggested: "It's healthy to keep drawing a salary while you search for product-market fit. Otherwise it just gets frustrating."
Between my co-founder and me, we realized this meant we could have bigger ambitions. We had been thinking about doing services work for a while longer to validate our insights, but visiting conferences like GDC in the US would have hit our savings hard.
We decided to accept.
Entering the SPC World
We flew to SF immediately because GDC (Game Developers Conference) was happening. One of the SPC partners told us something that stuck: "The only thing you have as founders is momentum and energy. Regardless of SPC funding you or not, you should have gone to these conferences anyway."
He was right. We had been doing services work for too long. The incremental learning was getting smaller. We were getting frustrated with problems we couldn't control, and we hadn't even talked to US companies yet. We needed to get out of India and actually try selling to them.
The SPC office is beautiful - right in the heart of SF. It's always open for members. After conferences, we'd go there to work.
The founder fellowship officially started March 29th. They took us to Sonoma for a two-day kickoff. That's where I met the other founders and the program really began.
Key Lessons from Day One
Two things from those first two days stayed with me.
First, Evan shared something he learned from working with Sam Altman: Sam never negotiated against himself. He'd walk into rooms full of confidence, asking for what he wanted. Most rooms would reject him, but in one room, he'd get what he wanted. The lesson? Never reject yourself before others get the chance to.
Second, storytelling is everything - but it's incredibly hard. We had to explain what we were doing in two sentences. As a B2B company, we struggled with this. My co-founder and I spent significant time just discussing how to present our idea in two lines. Sounds easy, but actually very hard.
We were never fully satisfied with our pitch, but we kept improving it. We'd tell the story and see if people got excited or not.
I learned that at this early stage, it's not just about what you build - it's about how you sell it, what your 100x vision is, and your storytelling. JB, one of the partners, taught us a lot about this.
The Demo Culture
After Sonoma, we started the real work. We had a demo every two weeks.
One thing SPC taught us: you don't need a complete product to validate or invalidate or make progress on your hypothesis. You just need an "artifact."
An artifact could be anything - a document, a Twitter post, a video, a rough vibe-coded prototype, mockups. It could even be a pitch deck. The point wasn't having a polished product. The point was: are you getting excited about this? Can you get other people excited? Can you find customers with this artifact?
I loved this concept. It's so simple but powerful.
During demos, Aditya would always push us to think bigger. "Don't do incremental stuff that any large company could do. Think first principles. Think about something they can't just extend their current version to reach."
He'd give us "tough love" feedback, and we'd take it positively. The demo calls were fun - 32 teams divided into four cohorts of eight teams each.
The Community
The other teams were also doing incredible things. Someone was solving medical tourism starting with IVF. Another team was building a non-intrusive brain-computer interface. There was a team building humanoids for disaster management with precise remote control. Others were working on accounting, law, consumer knowledge interfaces.
The community members were fascinating too. People who had sold companies before and wanted to start again, but were being careful about what they picked next.
I met a member interested in building devices for blind people - apparently disability tech is such a big market in the US that the government funded the costs for products.
The forums were incredible. SPC people always lived at the edge of technology. When MCP launched, there was immediately an MCP forum. One company from our batch, smithery.ai, came out of those discussions and is doing really well now.
There were forums for agents, voice AI, video AI, fintech - you name it. The technical talent density was insane. If I had a technical problem, I could tap someone on the shoulder or send a Slack message and get help.
The Structure
Every two weeks: demos where we'd present an artifact. Every two months: unofficial board meetings. Every six months: demo faire.
Between demos, we could book time with any partner through their Calendly. We took advantage of this.
SPC also organized hackathons - one with Anthropic, another with Roblox. The culture and density of builders from around SF who'd show up was incredible.
We had sessions with some of the biggest names in tech. Someone from OpenAI research. Satya Nadella (though I missed that one). The Instagram founder, Instacart founder, Roblox founder.
We had workshops from experts - authors of famous sales books (Founding Sales), B2B SaaS experts, PR experts. All incredibly helpful.
The Pivot and Reality Check
A few months in, we were struggling. The companies we talked to weren't interested in being design partners. It felt like a chicken and egg problem.
I talked to one of the partners about this. They suggested we pause and think about whether we wanted to come back to this idea. The gaming industry was mature and not growing fast.
We decided to pivot to advertising and consumer AI.
When we announced this at the community artifact day, the first thing they said was "Congratulations for taking the courageous step of pausing." But they also told us not to rush into the next thing - take our time.
The unofficial board meetings happen every two months. SPC doesn't sit on your actual board, but these sessions give you a reality check. It's one hour with all the SPC partners, and they give you tough love feedback on your progress.
We got some hard feedback in one of these meetings that I still remember today. It helped us understand how hard it would be to win in the US market and how important curiosity and passion are to build a unique take.
Final Thoughts
SPC didn't just give us money - they gave us a community, mentorship, and space to figure out what we really wanted to build.
The question was never "where's the revenue?" or "where are the customers?" It was always "are you getting excited about this? Do you want to keep going deeper, or are you not feeling it?"
They just wanted to know if we were curious and getting excited about what we were building.
If you're thinking about applying to the SPC founder fellowship, here's my advice: Be at a very early stage, have some insight into a market or deep experience in a space, and have a thesis (it can be wrong and can change). Most importantly, be sure about your co-founders and the space you want to work in. You don't have to be sure about the exact idea yet.
The community, the culture, the support - it's unlike anything else. It's not just about the funding. It's about being around the most ambitious, curious builders in the world.