“Consumer founders who get success are people pleasers, but to scale they need to please consumers, not everyone else,” says Kunal Shah

CRED founder Kunal Shah has shared a simple but strong message for consumer startup founders. 

He says many early entrepreneurs try to keep everyone happy, but this habit can start holding them back once their company begins to grow.

Why Kunal Shah Says Founders Must Shift Their Focus to Customers

In a recent tweet, Kunal Shah wrote, 

“Consumer founders who get some success are natural people pleasers. But to scale the company they run they need to dial up their need to please consumers and dial down their need to please everyone else.”

Shah’s comment reflects what many early-stage founders go through. In the beginning, they rely on support from investors, friends, early team members, and others. 

This often pushes them into saying yes to too many things. While this may help during the early days, it becomes a problem when a company starts growing fast.

Shah says the only group a consumer brand must stay fully focused on is its users. Experts agree that when founders try to meet every request from every side, the product can lose direction. This can slow progress and make the customer experience weaker, hurting the business in the long run.

His point about “dialing down” the need to please everyone else is about learning to say no. As companies grow, founders must make choices that keep the product sharp and customers happy, even if it disappoints others around them.

As more consumer brands rise in India, Shah’s message is a clear reminder: growth is not only about funding and hiring. It also requires founders to change how they think. 

And the simplest rule, as Kunal Shah suggests, is to keep customers at the center, always.

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