From Aerospace Dreams to Building Better Learning Tools: A Conversation with Kushal Murthy
Interview by Xiao He · Farley’s Coffee, San Francisco
Introduction
Xiao He: Wonderful to meet you again, Kushal! To start, could you introduce yourself to our readers?
Kushal: I’m a five-time founder currently working on my sixth with Peazy Labs. I often say I come from a wealth of failure, so I feel quite qualified to sit here with multiple badges of failure honor. I come from an aerospace background by qualification, but I’ve built across retail, e-commerce, and material science, and during Covid, I was designing masks. That process made me realize education and learning are what truly matter to me. My last company, Sapientury, was in education, and what I’m building now is in learning and development. I want to put a small dent in how people learn new software.
On Choosing Aerospace and Chaos
Xiao He: I noticed from your LinkedIn that you studied aerospace engineering. Why did you choose that, and what was that period like?
Kushal: Honestly, I stumbled into aerospace. Back in India, most majors were standardized computer science and electronics, but aerospace was new and felt limitless. There weren’t enough professors or labs, so we partnered with companies and learned by doing. It was chaos and that chaos felt like an opportunity.
By my second year, I realized I didn’t want to stay in Laplace transforms and calculus forever. I was drawn to high-entropy environments, and that’s when the word entrepreneurship entered my world. I started a project to deliver food with drones, hoping to do it before graduation. That’s how aerospace turned into entrepreneurship.
Early Experiments: From Human-Carrying Drones to Learning Platforms
Xiao He: What were those first projects like?
Kushal: My co-founder and I made a pact: we wouldn’t graduate with just a degree, we’d graduate with a successful project. Our dream was to build a drone that could carry humans. (Laughs.) Very impractical, but that’s part of the DNA of entrepreneurship ambition and impracticality go hand in hand.
We gathered a team of eight from three universities, taught ourselves programming, and got drones flying. We wanted to go from flying food to flying medical organs, to eventually humans. We didn’t get that far, but in the process, I discovered my love for education. I was helping others realize what they wanted to do.
That’s when my drone company, Vimana (which means “flight” in Sanskrit), evolved into Vimana Foundation, a nonprofit student-run project library. Students from 25 universities joined, paying just $10 a month to borrow project kits. It was like a library of engineering tools, for students by students.
Why a Nonprofit?
Xiao He: Why did you choose the nonprofit model?
Kushal: Students are often extreme, either obsessed with money or totally idealistic. I leaned toward the latter. I thought, if I do well, I’ll be fine. I didn’t imagine it would become my main venture.
As for outreach this was 2018, before LinkedIn became what it is. We used WhatsApp groups! I was just 18, spreading forms across campuses. There were few opportunities back then, so when something aspirational appeared, students wanted to join. We created interviews not to test skills, but to understand potential. It was imperfect, but magical.
On Education, Curiosity, and Why Silicon Valley Works
Xiao He: You’ve lived in both India and the U.S. How do you compare the ecosystems for innovation?
Kushal: Curiosity is the key. In Silicon Valley, you’re constantly bombarded with what’s new today. That keeps people curious. In India, students aren’t surrounded by that same exposure or startup culture. There’s still a big gap between universities and startups.
Another difference: in the U.S., students can change majors mid-course. That forces decisiveness. In India, once you pick a major, you’re locked in for four years. You stop asking questions. You’re on a roller coaster you can’t hop off until the end. That’s dangerous for creativity.
On Defying Expectations
Xiao He: Did your parents or friends doubt your choice to start companies instead of taking a job?
Kushal: Oh, absolutely. The first year, everyone thought I was crazy. My attendance dropped. I was sitting in other universities’ classes to learn different things. My parents were worried. Friends stopped relating to me.
But by my second year, they started to see results. When Boeing offered me an internship and I turned it down to pursue my startup, they were shocked but when Sapientury got incubated at IIM Bangalore (India’s equivalent of Harvard), everyone finally said, “Okay, maybe he’s onto something.”
From Bangalore to San Francisco
Xiao He: What made you move to the U.S. and to San Francisco specifically?
Kushal: Initially, I came to visit my partner, Komala, and explore replicating Sapientury in the U.S. But I quickly realized the content-based EdTech model was dead here. Everything was moving to AI and agents. By December last year, I decided if I’m moving countries, I should be where AI lives. That’s San Francisco.
Komala left her job in New York, found one here at a YC startup, and we made the move together. She’s my biggest supporter and challenger. She’s a brilliant GTM operator, and I focus more on negotiation and product–market fit. We balance each other well.
Knowing When to Jump Ship
Xiao He: You ran Sapientury for 4.5 years. How did you know it was time to move on?
Kushal: It was a hard call, and I wish I’d made it earlier. Founders need to know when to jump off a ship and catch another.
When I saw AI’s rise two years ago, I should have shifted sooner. Our customer acquisition costs kept rising, and I refused to make education unaffordable. We bled margins through 2023–24. I tried bringing the model to the U.S., but it was too late.
The restless months after quitting were the hardest you keep second-guessing. But I told myself, you’re in your twenties fight harder. That conviction pulled me back up.
From EdTech to AI Training Agents
Xiao He: How did your new idea emerge?
Kushal: I explored finance AI and women’s health AI before realizing my real home was still learning but this time, in corporate learning.
Enterprises spend millions training users on complex software like Salesforce and Oracle. Today, that training is done through dull videos or PDFs. I’m building an AI agent that sees the user’s screen and conducts a live workshop within the software: “Click here. Now drag this. Build your workflow.”
After pitching the idea at Dreamforce, several Salesforce consultancies said, We’d pay for this now. That’s when I knew.
I always use three metrics before committing:
User desirability do people actually want it?
Technical feasibility can it be built now, not too early or too late?
Business viability can you price it well and still keep margins?
All three aligned.
What’s Next
Xiao He: What’s next for your new venture?
Kushal: I’m looking for a pre-seed incubator ideally focused on enterprise AI to help me unlearn B2C habits and learn B2B strategy. I’m building the MVP while signing design partners, and meanwhile, hoping to have Komala join once we raise our first round.
Book Recommendation
Xiao He: Last question I always ask any book or podcast you’d recommend?
Kushal: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It’s a brutal, honest look at what running a startup really feels like. It reminds you: venture-backed companies aren’t just “small businesses” you carry investor expectations, growth pressure, and sleepless nights. It’s not romantic. It’s real.
Xiao He: Great recommendation! Thank you, Kushal, and I wish you all the best!