Hi, I am
Harsha!

0-to-1 GTM·Developer Ecosystems·Community-Led Growth

Three fast-scaling, VC-backed startups. Three industries. Same playbook: find the truth, build trust, then build the engine.

Hey, I'm Harsha!Welcome to my corner of the internet.
3GTM engines
50+Events globally
3
GTM engines from zero
50+
Events & webinars globally
1M+
Users acquired for B2C fintech platform
6,000+
Unique event registrants
Work

Three engines. Three markets.
One playbook.

Each role, a different industry and audience. The approach stayed the same.

OLake by Datazip | Founding Member, GTM

July 2024 to Present

Built a developer ecosystem from zero where cold outreach failed. Education-led growth worked.

Standard B2B playbook yielded no adequate results. So I built an education-led engine instead: partnered with Apache Foundation for India's first official Iceberg event, executed 15 webinars and 7 large-scale global events featuring speakers from Google, Meta, Netflix, Snowflake with zero budget. 100+ discovery conversations shaped the product direction and contributed to closing the seed round. Led the Product Hunt launch (#3 ranking).

Open SourceDeveloper GTMData InfrastructureCommunity
35+POC conversions, 22 clients in production in 5 months
6,000+Registrations across 22 events and webinars globally
1,500+GitHub stars, 600+ Slack, zero paid

The Money Club | Founder's Office, Growth

September 2023 to July 2024

Designed for real India. Tier 2 city research to brochures that closed 100+ leads at one event.

Travelled across Tier 2 cities to understand what people actually need from financial products. 75+ user interviews revealed the gap between what fintechs build and what users need. Led 0-to-1 B2B product launch end-to-end. Designed collateral that turned heads at fintech events in Singapore, UAE, and India, pulling 100+ inbound leads from a single set of brochures.

FintechB2B + B2CProduct Design0-to-1
$30M→$48M+Capital pooled via redesigned referral systems
200+Users in under 2 months for new B2B product
CNBC 200Top Global Fintechs recognition

Mudrex (YC'19) | Growth Manager

April 2022 to September 2023

Built a community that started running itself. First lesson in systems that scale without you.

Built WAGMI, India's largest student Web3 community, closing partnerships with every major institution. The moment it clicked: students started running it themselves. Also ran guerrilla user research, shot marketing videos, BTL activations across Bengaluru, and managed integrated campaigns with Zepto, Zomato, and CRED.

CryptoConsumerCommunityPartnerships
1M+User acquisitions through campaigns
5,000+WAGMI members, all IITs, ISB, IIMs
$70KPartnership opportunities in 6 months
Approach

My playbook starts with people. The channels come after.

Every audience is different. Developers distrust outreach. Crypto users need social proof. Fintech consumers in Tier 2 India need education before a product pitch. The surface changes every time. The foundation doesn't.

At Mudrex, I walked into offices unannounced to talk to real users. I built a student community of 5,000+ that eventually ran itself because the ambassadors believed in it. That taught me the most important thing I know: if people feel ownership, they become your distribution.

At OLake, I took that same principle into a completely different market. Developers don't want to be sold to, so I built an education-led engine: 15 webinars and 7 global events in 6 months, featuring practitioners from Google, Meta, Netflix, and Snowflake. Zero budget. All through relationships.

At Money Club, it was Tier 2 India. I travelled to understand what people actually need from financial products. The collateral I designed from those insights generated 100+ leads at a single event.

"The playbook personalises on top. The first principles stay the same: understand the pain deeply enough that the solution feels obvious."

Every GTM engine I've built started the same way: conversations before campaigns. I get into the communities, the Slack groups, the events, the Discord servers where my audience actually talks. I listen first. Then I build the system.

The Engine I Build Every Time
Listen
100+ conversations across channels. Find the real pain.
→
Educate
Events, content, practitioners. Earn trust first.
→
Scale
Community runs itself. Growth compounds.
Understand the pain first
Get into the rooms where your audience talks. Events, communities, Slack, Discord. Listen before you build.
Earn trust through education
Events with practitioners. Content that teaches. Give value before asking for anything.
Build systems that scale without you
From WAGMI running itself to OLake's community growing organically. The best engines don't need you pushing.
AI Work

I don't just use AI tools.
I build with them.

Independent projects at the intersection of AI and go-to-market.

λ

GTM playbook for a voice-to-text AI startup

Researched and orchestrated a positioning pivot from voice-to-text to AI governance for BFSI companies. Defined product use cases, messaging, positioning. Built SME sales enablement. PR strategy securing 3 industry accolades in the Middle East.

>_

Autonomous AI agent for founder engagement

Built for an early-stage VC to streamline founder engagement. The agent identified AI-native founders, generated tailored sponsor proposals, and let people explore the entire directory conversationally, ask questions, understand proposals, and qualify themselves as sponsors or attendees in real time. Built using Claude, Fireflies.ai for meeting capture and synthesis, deployed end-to-end.

HSR Founder's Club platform

Website and web app built end-to-end using AI tools. Full deployment pipeline. Community platform for Bangalore founders.

ReadAloud: gamified narrative reading app

I kept zoning out during podcasts and long articles. So I built ReadAloud: paste any public URL, and it narrates the article paragraph by paragraph. Every two paragraphs it pauses, summarizes what it just read, and runs a quick quiz to check if you were actually paying attention. Built with Claude Code and Gemini, deployed on Vercel.

Tools I build with
Fireflies.ai Claude Claude Code Cursor n8n Wispr Flow ElevenLabs Perplexity Gemini SuperDemo VEED.io Canva Figma Vercel GitHub Happenstance.ai Numerous.ai Fireflies.ai Claude Claude Code Cursor n8n Wispr Flow ElevenLabs Perplexity Gemini SuperDemo VEED.io Canva Figma Vercel GitHub Happenstance.ai Numerous.ai
About

A bit about me.

I studied economics, taught students, built communities, and ended up running GTM for technical products across three industries. Every role started from zero. Every market needed a different playbook. The constant: understanding people well enough to build something they actually trust.

Education
B.Sc. Economics Honors, Loreto College, University of Calcutta (2022)
CGPA: 8.2/10 | Stata, SQL, Python
Research
Expiration-Day Effects on Index Futures: Evidence from Indian Market
The Cause of Unemployment in Current Market Scenario
Achievements
HBS Peek Class (cohort of 90) | Stanford CME295: Transformers & LLMs | Anthropic: Claude Code in Action, Introduction to MCP | Symbiosis International: Consulting, fund management improved 2.5x
Early Leadership
Yuvaa East India Head (600K+ community) | AIESEC International Relations (Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan) | Teach for India Fellow | NABARD field research, West Bengal
College
E-cell Initiator | Economics Fest Coordinator | Essay Winner (Cryptocurrencies) | NSS, Debate, Leadership Training Service
Speaking
Guest speaker on product marketing. Hosted India's first official Apache Iceberg event with Apache Foundation.
harshakalbalia@gmail.com LinkedIn Book a call Download Resume
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