Thejo Kote, founder of Automatic: $115 million sale to SiriusXM

After coming to US as a student, Thejo Kote met his cofounder Jerry at the University of California Berkeley; there, they worked on a school projected that turned into a $115 million acquisition seven years later. Crazy! Thejo is a founder of Automatic, a "fitbit for the car" company that paved the way for making cars more connected and was acquired by SiriusXM in 2017.

On this episode of the Startup Exits Podcast, we chat with Thejo about:

• How a school project turned into a successful startup

• Getting into and life after Y Combinator

• Failing to raise at YC demo day

• How raising from top tier VCs can lead to negative signaling

• Pivoting from software to hardware, B2B to B2C

Thejo Kote is now working on giving companies more financial control via his new company Airbase.

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