
Mandel AI
AI agents for resilient supply chains (YC S23).
Founder/CEO
As a founder and CEO who has navigated every stage of building a business, I’ve been deeply involved in every aspect of the journey. Over the years, I’ve mentored fellow entrepreneurs within my network and received great feedback. I’d love to support you on this challenging path by helping you avoid the mistakes I’ve made and prepare you to handle the unexpected.
I've raised funding from an accelerator, business angels, and VCs. Each step required a different approach, from proving early traction to modeling growth plans with institutional investors. Along the way, I’ve learned valuable lessons about pitching, negotiating, and choosing the right investors.
From recruiting my co-founder to scaling our team beyond 20 people, I’ve navigated the complexities of hiring, managing both onsite and remote teams, and making tough decisions like layoffs. I’ve focused on fostering motivation, alignment, and a strong company culture while implementing performance reviews and feedback systems to drive growth. Through it all, I’ve learned that a company’s success is ultimately shaped by its people, and creating an environment where they can thrive is key.
I've led the design and execution of GTM strategies for SessionStack.com since its inception. From securing our first customers by leveraging platforms like Reddit and Quora to creating high-impact content that reached millions of people and brought in hundreds of customers, I’ve continuously adapted our approach. As the company grew, we've also implemented more traditional strategies, aligning with our increased funding and brand awareness.
Entrepreneurship is a mental game. I’ve been through the highs and lows, dealing with a founder split, navigating a last-minute failed acquisition, and making the tough call to do layoffs. Through it all, I’ve developed the tools to stay calm, focused, and clear-minded, through both exciting and difficult circumstances. Success and failure are two sides of the same coin, and resilience is what keeps you moving forward. You have to learn to enjoy the ride.
Having built a product analytics company and worked with the best tools on the market, I’ve seen firsthand how data-driven decision-making can transform a business.
Product-market fit is the single most important goal in a startup’s early stages. I've been in a position where my company was growing, acquiring new customers every month, but the process was so difficult that we had to be brutally honest with ourselves - we hadn’t truly reached product-market fit. That led to tough but necessary decisions, including multiple pivots, raising bridge rounds, and reshaping our team. Without real product-market fit, growth is unsustainable

I have used FullStory extensively to evaluate and understand the competition while building SessionStack. FullStory offers powerful session replay and analytics capabilities, and my hands-on experience with it helped me benchmark and refine our own platform.

AI agents for resilient supply chains (YC S23).

Led cross-functional teams of engineers and PMs, partnering closely with Sales, Product Marketing, Demand Gen, and UX to bring new products to market. - Led the launch of the AI Observability & Evaluations Platform - the company's first product in this emerging space - Built the early GTM team, landing the first customers and driving initial traction - Identified the market opportunity for an Agent Memory product and led a cross-functional team to start building and validating it - Defined the broader vision for an Agent Engineering platform that brings the individual products together into a unified offering - Helped shape the org for cross-functional execution and speed in a fast-moving market

Founded and scaled an AI-powered session replay and digital experience analytics platform. - Built the entire org from scratch, with a core team in Sofia, Bulgaria, and contractors in different functions internationally - Won hundreds of customers ranging from YC startups to large enterprises, including Kraken, IQVIA, and CalPERS - Raised €1.75M from VCs and angel investors - Went through multiple pivots before finding product-market fit - Recruited executives to lead functions like engineering and sales - Led the company through multiple M&A processes with NASDAQ-listed companies and top-tier VC-backed scaleups
A platform that empowers data scientists to turn analytics models into intuitive web applications. - Worked with founders to build the product from the ground up - Contributed to acquiring the initial enterprise customers - Developed and integrated the analytics stack to track key product metrics and user behavior

Worked on UI components and data processing libraries for developers. - Built products within the company’s top-performing revenue division - Dedicated 70% of time to engineering and 30% to customer success