Last week during New York Tech Week 2025, we joined more than 1,000 events hosted by founders, investors, and VCs. This post is a full Mucker recap of the three sessions we hosted, each one focused on supporting early-stage founders:
- Session 1: Building An AI Startup Founder Panel
- Session 2: Buyer Journey Framework – The Secret to B2B Go-To-Market Success
- Session 3: Building From Zero To One Early-Stage Founder Panel
Here is a recap of each session, including key takeaways.
Session 1: Recap Building An AI Startup Founder Panel
Mucker Capital hosted a panel moderated by Aahad Patel, Investor & Chief of Staff at Mucker. The panelists were:
- Dan Cleary – Co-founder & CEO, PromptHub
- Rock Vitale – Founder & CEO, Easie
- Zhou Yu – Co-founder, Arklex
Everyone Wants AI. But What Are They Really Buying?
It might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many founders overlook it: companies don’t want “AI,” they want a problem solved.
“We’re not selling tools. We’re solving hair-on-fire problems,” said Rock. All three founders emphasized the danger of building something “cool” instead of something critical. When a pilot turns into churn three months later, it’s often because the product never solved a must-fix pain.
Zhou added, “We sell to developers, but the value still has to show up in dashboards. You have to prove the ROI immediately.”
From Pilot To Paid: Making Early Customers Stick
Dan was blunt: “Honestly, I don’t even know what a design partner officially means. We just talk to every early customer like they’re helping us build.”
Whether it’s a formal pilot or a Slack thread with engineers, the goal is the same: to gather real feedback and consistently over-deliver.
Dan also explained why they don’t charge by usage: “We don’t want to punish customers for using the product.”
Rock emphasized the importance of having someone inside the customer org who champions the project. “Without that VP or C-level pushing it, you’re dead in the water.”
Should You Raise Money Right Now? Maybe, Maybe Not.
With AI rounds flying and revenue multiples rising, the panel tackled the fundraising question head-on.
“If money’s being thrown at you and you’re building something venture-backable, maybe take it,” Dan joked.
Zhou was more cautious: “It’s not just about the check. It’s about who’s on your cap table. They’re with you for the long haul.”
Rock took it further: “You don’t want to be the founder explaining missed earnings to your board two years from now because you took on more than you were ready for.”
In short? Know why you’re raising. Choose your investors like co-founders.
What These Founders Would Do Differently
Several founders shared that they made early moves too quickly, especially when hiring sales roles before fully validating demand. Looking back, they realized they should have spent more time pressure-testing the problem first. One common mistake was chasing “nice-to-have” use cases instead of honing in on the most urgent, must-solve pain points.
Zhou put it simply: “We said yes too much. If someone was interested, we chased it. But not everyone who’s curious can actually buy.”
Dan added, “You’re probably wrong in the beginning. And that’s okay. What’s not okay is being attached to being wrong.”
Go-To-Market: What’s Actually Working
Outbound had mixed results, but the panelists shared a few channels that started to work as they refined their approach. Dan’s team leaned heavily on content and writing to build credibility and trust early on. Zhou and Rock focused on warm intros and referrals through their networks, consistently leading to better conversations.
Rock also shared how he used Smartlead (an outbound tool) not to book demos, but to cold email journalists and land press coverage. That earned credibility and visibility without relying on traditional outbound for lead generation.
Aahad reminded the audience: “Founders need to lead go-to-market in the beginning. No one else knows the customer as well as you do.”
Hiring, Building, And Moving Faster With Less
Everyone agreed: build lean. Use AI where you can. Hire slowly and intentionally.
Zhou’s team works together in person in New York. Dan’s team is remote, but he builds around timezone overlap and strong equity alignment. Rock summed it up best: “One great engineer is better than five you have to manage.”
Working With Enterprise Customers
Someone asked how to balance shipping fast with enterprise-grade reliability. Zhou explained that it’s important to test quickly but deploy carefully. Enterprise customers don’t care that you’re a startup; they still expect stability in production.
One founder asked about landing early enterprise customers. Rock emphasized the importance of finding an internal champion, someone inside the company who genuinely cares and will advocate for you.
What AI Still Can’t Replace
While everyone agreed on building lean and using AI where possible, one thing stood out: some work requires a human touch.
Rock put it clearly: “Customer empathy. You can automate processes, but the emotional nuance of understanding user pain points still has to come from people.”
Session 2: Recap Buyer Journey Frameworks – Session
The following day, Tony Yang, our Head of Growth at Mucker, hosted a session at New York Tech Week, where he discussed the Buyer Journey Framework – The Secret to B2B Go-To-Market Success.
Buyer Journey Decision Frameworks ≠ Your Funnel
Marketing and Sales Funnel = A way to measure and track growth, a means to establish workflows and processes amongst GTM teams. → Company Focused.
Buyer Journey = How prospects go about their decision process to purchase. → BUYER-CENTRIC.
Identify Value Statements That Guide Each ICP or Persona Through Each Stage
What’s a value statement?
A value statement is the key belief or realization a prospect needs in order to confidently move to the next stage of the buyer journey.
They reflect what the buyer needs to believe, not just what you want to say.
Example Case ICP: Head of People — New Hire Onboarding Use Case:
Focuses on a mid-market HR leader responsible for scaling onboarding processes.
- Company Size: 50–500 employees.
- Revenue: $5M–$50M.
- Industry: Tech, SaaS.
- Tech Stack: Greenhouse, BambooHR, Workday, Slack.
- Persona: Director of HR, Head of Talent.
- Key Objective: Efficiently onboard new hires.
- Top Challenge: Disparate systems across HR, IT, and hiring managers slow down onboarding and hurt new hire experience.
Message Mapping with Value Statements Across Each Buyer Journey:
| Buyer Stage | Value Statement | Question It Answers |
| 1. Loosening Status Quo | The current onboarding process takes too long, which affects a new hire’s time to productivity, new employee experience, company culture, recruiting, etc. |
Why is this a problem worth solving? Demand Creation |
| 2. Committing to Change | We are planning for 80 new headcounts this quarter. If we don’t improve our onboarding process, new hires will feel in-the-dark, undervalued & not ready to contribute. This will lead to higher turnover. | Why now? Creates urgency. Demand Creation |
| 3. Exploring Possible Solutions | There are automation solutions that automate many of the menial tasks for new hire onboarding. Solutions like this will speed up the process and make new hires feel ready to hit the ground running. | What possible solutions? Demand Capture |
| 4. Committing to a Solution | ACME’s Hyperautomation solution uniquely meets our needs by combining automated back-end processes across all of our new hire onboarding & HR systems with a humanized user experience. | How is this solution the best? Demand Capture |
| 5. Justifying the Decision | With ACME, we’ll reduce the amount of time to onboard a new employee from 9 days to 3 minutes, allowing our HR team, the hiring manager & the new employee to focus on high value tasks. |
How is this worth the investment? Demand Capure |
| 6. Making the Selection | ACME’s customers like ABC Inc. who are similar to us had fully deployed ACME & realized a 280% increase in employee satisfaction within 45 days & reduced the time to productivity by 2 weeks. | How to move forward with confidence? Demand Capture |
Do a Content Audit to Match Each Asset to a Persona and Buyer Journey Stage
Look at what you already have. The goal is to align your existing content assets to a particular persona and buyer journey stage. This will help you use the ICP and Personas and not just have them printed on your company wall.
This will help you by:
- Identifying gaps in your content library, and
- Building out a nurture program that will help move your personas through their buyer journeys—which is the next step.
Set Up Nurture Programs with Content Tied to Persona and Buyer Journey Stage
Nurture isn’t about randomly offering prospects content about your products or company; it’s about guiding each persona by convincing them to realize the value statements they need to believe in order to move to the next stage of the buyer journey.
Start by mapping your content across two axes:
- Buyer Journey Stage (Stages 1–6), you can group the stages:
- 1-2 Why and Why Now.
- 3-4 What.
- 5-6 How (ROI, Case Studies).
- Persona (e.g., Sales Leader, Marketing Leader, RevOps Leader) and ICP.
This becomes a matrix you can use to:
- Audit your current content assets
- See how many assets exist per persona + stage
- Identify where you’re missing content
- Prioritize what to create next to move more buyers forward
A simple pivot table can reveal the gaps and help you design targeted drip-nurture programs that actually accelerate deals.
Use a Lead Scoring Model That Accounts for ICP Fit, Persona Fit, and Journey Activity
Lead scoring should be separated into two parts:
- Fit — broken into ICP (company) fit and Persona (role) fit
- Journey activity — based on engagement with content aligned to specific Buyer Journey stages
Steps to Implement a Buyer Journey–Based Scoring Model:
- Create custom fields/properties in your CRM for:
- Buyer Journey Stage 1–2 Score
- Buyer Journey Stage 3–4 Score
- Buyer Journey Stage 5–6 Score
- Assign points based on the content leads engage with, using your Content Audit / Asset Map to match content to Buyer Journey stages
- Apply score decay rules for prolonged inactivity (e.g., reset negative points to zero)
- Add these Buyer Journey score fields to the appropriate page layouts in your CRM or marketing automation tool
- Categorize all newly created content by Buyer Journey stage using your Content Audit / Asset Map
This scoring model gives you a more accurate picture of when a lead becomes an MQL, because they’ve engaged with content across the Buyer Journey stages. You score them accordingly, and can confidently determine they’re convinced of both the “why” and the “why now”, based on actual progression, not arbitrary point totals.
To deep dive into this method, watch Tony Yang explain Buyer Journey Framework – The Secret To B2B Go-To-Market Success.
Session 3: Recap Building From Zero To One Early-Stage Founder Panel
The final session at New York Tech Week 2025 hosted an insightful where early-stage investors and founders shared their experiences about navigating the startup journey. The session was packed with practical advice, personal anecdotes, and hard-earned insights.
Introduction to the Panel
The panel kicked off with Cliff Bersani, investor at Mucker, and the panel included notable founders:
- Matt Cheung – Founder, Ceviche
- Douglas Ver Mulm – Founder, Turris
- Denzil Eden – Founder, Smarty AI
- Tomas Ramella – Founder, Güeno
These founders collectively offered a diverse range of perspectives on the startup experience.
Taking the Leap Into Building a Business
The discussion began with the founders sharing their “aha moments” that spurred them to start their companies. Each founder described a passion or problem they couldn’t ignore. From pivoting career paths to recognizing unmet needs in their industries, they emphasized the importance of following an idea that keeps you up at night and attempting to build a solution, but not necessarily quitting your day job immediately.
Navigating Personal Stakeholders
Founders don’t embark on this journey alone. They have personal stakeholders, such as family and friends, whose support and concerns can impact their decisions. Several panelists noted immigrant family backgrounds valuing stability, yet recognized that their family’s support and grit were instrumental in tackling the uncertainties of entrepreneur life. Balancing personal relationships while pursuing high-risk business ventures requires communicating clearly and setting realistic expectations.
The Art of Pivoting and Persistent Problem-Solving
For startups, pivoting is often a crucial maneuver. The panelists shared that understanding customer feedback and market signals is key to deciding when to pivot versus pushing through challenges. When customers aren’t excited or willing to pay for your product, it may be time for a change. Balancing flexibility with persistence is an art form that many early-stage founders must master.
Navigating Fundraising: Challenges and Strategies
Fundraising remains one of the most challenging aspects of building a startup. The founders advised delaying fundraising as long as possible to gain maximum leverage and keeping metrics sharp for when investors probe the viability and scalability of the business. They also emphasized the importance of crafting a compelling narrative to attract the right kind of investor support.
Building a Team: Hiring for the Future
Hiring the right people is crucial for startups transitioning from ideation to operational execution. The panelists stressed looking for hires who possess not just the requisite skills but also adaptability, a strong sense of ownership, and resilience. They highlighted creating a culture where team members are comfortable making and learning from mistakes. Leadership in startups involves setting a clear vision and ensuring everyone understands their role in achieving it.
Investor Relations
Cliff touched on the importance of engaging with investors who understand the founder’s business and can ask insightful questions. This kind of relationship can significantly aid in providing higher-quality insights as the company grows. Founders were also advised to be selective and consider personal compatibility when choosing investors, as these relationships are long-term and akin to a partnership.
Tapping Into International Talent
Denzel and Tomas discussed the potential of leveraging international markets for talent. They highlighted the importance of understanding customer preferences and ensuring customer-facing roles are adequately aligned with client expectations, which sometimes means having local representatives familiar with the culture and language.
Communication and Leadership
The discussion also covered the importance of developing strong leadership and communication skills necessary for growing a business. Founders emphasized the importance of setting a clear vision, maintaining transparency with the team, and the need for networking and mentorship to navigate the complexities of leadership in startups.
Evaluating and Maintaining Company Culture
Denzel noted that a company’s culture changes every time the team size doubles. She emphasized the need for founders to continuously assess the operational and cultural dynamics of the company to ensure alignment with the original values and mission.
Handling Failures
The panelists unanimously agreed that failure is a fundamental part of the startup journey. They stressed the necessity of learning from failures, maintaining a positive outlook, and using setbacks as opportunities for growth.
These highlights capture the essence of the startup journey as described by the panelists, offering valuable lessons for entrepreneurs aiming to build resilient and scalable businesses.
Growth, Setbacks, and Continuous Learning
Continuous learning and adapting to failures were a common theme throughout the discussion. The founders agreed that every failure is an opportunity to learn, and maintaining a growth mindset can transform setbacks into stepping stones. They advised that understanding and iterating on both successes and failures is crucial for building a successful startup.
This session underscored that the journey from zero to one is fraught with challenges but is equally rewarding. Founders must balance innovative ideas, personal sacrifices, strategic pivots, and smart hiring to turn their visions into reality.
Wrapping Up New York Tech Week 2025
New York Tech Week 2025 was a success, bringing together early-stage founders, growth, and venture capital minds for meaningful conversations and tactical insights. Each session is available to rewatch in the video embeds included throughout this blog.
Building something great? Learn more about how MuckerLab backs early-stage founders like you.
