Founders are going direct — but startup rivalry is nothing new

Time of India

5 days ago

Founders are going direct — but startup rivalry is nothing new
Sabotage is an age-old tactic
Rivalry, rebranded
Preempting, not just reacting
Welcome to a new edition of Full Stack. This is the place where you'll find unfiltered commentary on all things technology.Please keep the bouquets, brickbats and suggestions coming. You can reach me at [e-mail] and follow me on Elon Musk's X @samidhas Few days ago, Zepto cofounder Aadit Palicha took to LinkedIn to publicly accuse the CFO of a rival consumer internet firm of trying to sabotage Zepto's fundraise.It was detailed and direct— complete with claims of investor calls, doctored Excel sheets, and even bot-backed social media chatter to discredit the company which is in the middle of a fundraise and potential IPO.The post was discussed across WhatsApp groups, founder and investor forums, and of course, in media circles.Some saw it as a meltdown, others called it strategic.To me, it underscored something deeper: the battle for capital among high-growth startups is as personal as it is financial — and increasingly, it's playing out in public. But let's be clear — founders trying to undercut rivals during a fundraise isn't new. It's just more visible now.From investor whisper campaigns to selectively leaked numbers, this sort of interference has long been part of high-stakes corporate rivarly. What's changed is the delivery.Palicha simply chose to call it out — and to do so in real time, on a platform like LinkedIn, rather than waiting for backchannel damage to snowball.Just this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk had privately tried to influence the multibillion-dollar AI supercomputing project Stargate, spearheaded by Sam Altman.No tweets. No memes. Just classic playbook tactics — this time at trillion-dollar scale.If you've been in this business long enough, you'll remember how Travis Kalanick's Uber practically wrote the ops manual for startup sabotage.In India, Flipkart vs Amazon vs Snapdeal, Ola vs Uber, Swiggy vs Zomato — every funding milestone came with a shadow narrative of investor blocks and strategic leaks.What's different in 2025 is the speed — and source — of counter-narratives. Founders are now their own comms heads. And platforms like LinkedIn and X are where narrative wars play out.Palicha's post wasn't just about calling out one executive — it was about taking control of the story before someone else could shape it.That's a strategy we've seen in Silicon Valley too. When The New York Times was preparing a critical profile on Bryan Johnson, the biohacker behind Blueprint, he got ahead of it. He framed his anti-ageing regimen as 'scientific progress under scrutiny' rather than a vanity project. By the time the article dropped, his version had already made the rounds.In this new media ecosystem, investors and journalists are no longer the sole gatekeepers. Founders today are managing perception as much as performance. That means going direct — before rivals or reporters do.But let's not over-inflate every act of rivalry into a scandal though. If a rival startup is trying to talk down your deal or cast doubt on your metrics, it doesn't always require a public counterattack.The maturity of founders should reflect in knowing when to hit back — and when to move on.Yes, Elon Musk has made going direct fashionable but not everything he does needs to replicated.Indian founders would do better to focus on building durable businesses — not personal comms wars. A strong narrative helps. But strong numbers close the round.Samidha Sharma is Editor - ETtech. She's been covering the tech and new-age digital economy for over a decade, and has had a ringside view of the industry and its people. ‎