40 Rejections, 15 Days of Cash, $15 Million in 16 Weeks

40+ rejections from VCs. Just 15 days of money left in the bank account. The world seemed stacked against a founder from Surat—no Ivy League degree, no Silicon Valley pedigree, no safety net.

Yet Vishal Virani, co-founder and CEO of Rocket.new, defied every conventional startup playbook. From a diamond manufacturing hub in India where "out of 10 diamonds, 9 get manufactured in my city," he built an AI-powered development platform that attracted half a million users in just 16 weeks and secured $15 million in funding from Salesforce Ventures and Accel.

In this candid interview, Vishal shares the raw truth about building without privilege: how location doesn't determine destiny, why product obsession beats perfect pitches, and the pivotal moment when GPT-3 changed everything. This is a masterclass in turning disadvantages into unfair advantages.

Vishal: I'm Vishal Virani, co-founder and CEO at Rocket. I'm growing up in an environment where no one was an engineer. Right after college, I started my first venture. Devise was a Figma to code platform. Device we scale our user base from 0 to 3500 users.

When GPT 3 launched, we realized like, OK, this world is going to be changed faster than our imagination. That was the pivotal moment. And then after like I started my 2nd and 3rd venture, which is Rocket, if you have an idea. Just put it in Rocket platform, you will have your entire product ready, which you can just launch without worrying about anything.

In just like 1st 16 weeks, we had like a multi-million applications on our platform. Rocket is funded by Salesforce Venture and Excel. In just 15 weeks of our inception, we got like $15 million of Citron. So in the next 5 years, my entire goal is removing the entire mandan clerical and repetitive work from every user's life.

Vishal: I grew up in Surat. I did my schooling and my college in Surat. If I describe all the Surat, everyone interacted with the product of Surat because Surat is the largest diamond manufacturing hub, and out of 10 diamonds, 9 diamonds get manufactured in my city, and one of the largest textile manufacturing as well, a kind of without resources, without a kind of an environment where I can grow.

I was a quite curious guy, and I'm the first engineer of my family. They don't know anything about the education, so I said like, OK, I want to pursue the engineering. They said, You have my blessings, but we cannot support you because you don't have money. But also they feel proud because like someone from our family is able to do this thing, able to cross these barriers and achieve this next status.

I'm just using my principles which I learned from my surroundings of a farming. In a farming, you cannot control the rain. You cannot control the weather. I just read everything on the internet without complaining about my Ivy League background or a startup background. I started building. I just give wings to my curiosity and, and, and build a startup.

Vishal: Rahul and I have a very similar thoughts. Instead of doing master's, can we learn it from the world? And that's how right after the graduation, we started our first business. Instead of doing master's, and our goal was like, OK, for 2 years we'll take all risk of our life. We'll not focus on earning the money, but we'll focus on learning. And if we just get the money to survive ourselves, it's like one of the biggest achievements.

In 2021, we realized everyone is just hiring the developers. LinkedIn was flooded, but like we are hiring developers. And we realized they are not even enjoying their own work. So the thought was like, OK, how we can remove the mundane and rapidity work from user's life. It's a pre-LLM era. We started doing our research. Ultimately we focus on building the Figma to code solution where users just need to upload the Figma designs and we can convert into code. And with that thought we started device.

Device we scale our user base from 0 to 3500 users. We process 10 million screens, which is like the highest in this entire space. Our users convert 10 million Figma screens into code, and it was like quite comfortable business for me.

Vishal: When GPT 3 launched, we realized like, OK, this world is going to be changed faster than our imagination, and I still remember I spent almost 60 hours of time sitting straight forward to write my prompt to correct something which is unbelievable at that time, and this is. A time to adopt the new things. We have the conviction like, OK, now LLM is enough powerful where we can create a very big impact in our users' life.

There is a world before GPT 3 and there is a world after GPT 3. This is just iPhone version 3. We need to think about iPhone version 15, how powerful it's going to be. So don't worry about the current version of GPT. Think about GPT 15, how powerful it's going to be. That was the pivotal moment.

Figma is going to be just a small feature in the future. Let's think bigger. And that's where we again relocate our vision of like automating the entire software development life cycle. We conviction over a comfort zone, and with that we decided to pivot like, OK, Figma to code product to a complete software development automation where the user can just put the prompt and we can deliver the entire results. And when we got the conviction, we decided to pivot from like device to rocket.

Vishal: We always listen to our users. Whenever I interact with like any founder, any right person, I always listen to them. We actually talk to CTEOs of Fortune 100 companies, to solo printers, everyone. So right now, it's everyday, 3 new web coding platforms. Launched themselves on the product hunt and everyone had the same answer, like these are the prototypes which is not scalable, which is not even a production ready code, just trying to replace our Figma designs with these prototypes, but it breaks, and that's where we realized like, OK, we are building the right product.

We got the email from a new accuser, and he emailed us like a long email where he was just showing a kind of ingratitude. Without your product, I can never imagine this kind of a thing. He's a solo printeur. He don't know about product management. He don't know about product marketing. He don't know about anything. He just had an idea. He was using like multiple vib coding platform and delivering the results, and when he got to know about Rocket, he tried the platform.

He wrote to us, like, in my life, I'm never able to close 7 projects in just like 20 days of time. He started his journey with a $25 subscription and now, Paying $4000 per month without any sales pitch. Just think about your users. Till now, like we got like hundreds of emails every day. I send an email personally to all the users. Definitely it's an auto mode, but when they replied, I read it personally, and then we provide the required support to our users, and that motion really works well for us, and that's how we gain the trust from our users in the very early days.

Vishal: As I still remember, it was a 2021 time. We got 40 plus rejections from the VCs. When every small and big ideas were getting funded, we were like getting one after one rejections. After 40 rejections, we got the first term sheet. Just 15 days of money left in our account, we got the term sheet. That was like the last 3 months when we know like after 3 months we are going to die. It was like the hardest time.

Every time you need to have a background, you need to be from Stanford or IIT or some good colleges, it can be like ex Google or ex Microsoft will get easily funded. I was not from the product. I always introduced myself as an ex of my ex. The reason is like after college, I started my first venture, and then I started Devise. They don't say it upfront, but I know how they judge, what they judge, and they're right at that place because they need to. Trust on their parameters. They have some thesis and all, so definitely we are not fit there, but we didn't give up.

Don't worry about your location. Don't worry about your zip code. We always try. We learn new things. We try this language of this world. I decided like till a last penny in my account, I will not give up. I will fight for the term sheet. I will fight for the funding which can help me to survive.

Vishal: For the founder, those are the most important moments. When you are in pain, don't think about the pain. Think about the mistakes that you are making because of that you are having that pain. So for me at that time, why, what was wrong in my pitch? Why I'm not getting the fund when everyone else is getting? So I start analyzing my own pitch, the word that I'm saying, the kind of like numbers that I'm presenting, how I can articulate it better instead of like getting into a kind of a depressed.

Or something else. I just started thinking of where I'm making a mistake every day, and every day I try to improve myself, and, and that's how we got the first term sheet of our city. Before that, like no one else got the venture capital funds. We got it. I only say like that will never give up attitude, helped me a lot.

Vishal: Every advice is not a signal, and as a founder, you need to understand if you build the right product, you will be able to capture the market, but if you just build a marketing company, someone will come and capture your market. Just focus on product, product, product, Stay away from noise, identify the signals because nowadays you will get like hundreds of advice, hundreds of new things on X, but from all the noise, you need to identify which signal will work.

Let me give you an example. GitHub Co-Pilott was the first product who started like code generation. They have the power of Microsoft. In Satya Nadella, in all keynotes started with GitHub Co-Pilott. They have the power of OpenAir and everything, but still, after 1.5 years, Cursor came and captured the entire market. GitHub has everything. In that case, like cursor has no space, but still with the right product, Cursor captured the market.

If you are not a native English speaker, you will have a hard time. To convince someone, don't speak, just prove. That's why instead of creating the pitch deck, we created the product, we created the traction, and that's why Rocket is funded by Salesforce Venture and Excel. Salesforce Venture got to know about Rocket Platform on X because someone shared the story. They give a try to our product first. They actually already tried the product which is already at Series A B level in the wipe coding space, and when they tried our product, they Think like this is the best product they've ever seen in this particular space, and that's how they reach out to us and in just 15 weeks of our inception, we got like $15 million of Citron, which is like one of the highest rounds in India.

Vishal: So build the right product. In the early days, focus should be like 60%, 80% on product, 20% on marketing. It should not be the other way around where you are just focusing 20% on product and 80% on the marketing. That's the kind of the learning that I got in the last like 4 years of my device and rocket journey.

Vishal: In the next 5 years, I just want to create a world where if you have an idea, just put it in Rocket platform. At the end of the day, you will have your entire product ready, which you can just launch without worrying about anything. The future is going to be looks like, just consider like Charvis, when you are traveling from a parlor to a downtown, just talk to Rocket or with Siri or with your CarPlay, and by the time you will reach that office, like you will have your application ready.

How we can remove legacy systems from the world and we can create the new system, that's what I think about every day.