His free app hit 200 locations and nobody used it, then he raised $25M. | Tushar Mishra, Co-Founder & CEO of Delightree

Tushar gave his app away for free. It spread to 200 locations. Almost nobody used it, and nobody paid a single dollar. So he started charging from day one, with a one-month pilot that rolled into a full annual contract. In Q4 2025, his team closed more revenue than in the two years before. Delightree just raised $25M.

In this episode, Tushar breaks down the three questions he used to qualify every customer, how turning a dusty ops binder into TikTok-style training became his biggest source of leads, and why his best cold email was a screenshot of the prospect's own logo.

Why You Should Listen

• Why free pilots kill real feedback, and what to offer instead.
• How to qualify a customer on pain, budget, and outcome before you sell.
• Why you should ignore feature requests that muddy your go-to-market.
• How a screenshot with the prospect's logo beat every other cold email.

Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Delightree, Tushar Mishra, franchise software, frontline employees, customer onboarding, customer qualification, outbound sales, cold email, net revenue retention, AI training

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:03:18 The Brand That Flew Him to Dallas
• 00:06:59 From Review Software to Delightree
• 00:12:10 A Free App Nobody Used
• 00:13:31 Ruthless Customer Qualification
• 00:16:56 From Ops Binder to TikTok-Style Training
• 00:22:50 More Revenue in One Quarter Than Two Years
• 00:26:52 A New Demo After Every Call
• 00:30:27 Which Feature Requests to Ignore
• 00:37:07 The Cold Email With Their Logo

Send me a message to let me know what you think!