From Failed Startup to $200M Company | Tejas Manohar

What happens when your startup fails overnight?

In this episode of The Fork in the Road with Perry S. Kaufman, Tejas Manohar shares how his first company collapsed during COVID… and how that failure led to building a company that has raised over $200 million.

Tejas walks through his full founder journey, from teaching himself to code as a teenager to landing a job in Silicon Valley at 16, to building HighTouch, a company transforming how businesses use data and AI.

You’ll hear how he:
Got hired without revealing his age
Found his first customers through cold outreach and online communities
Pivoted after losing everything
Built a product the market started pulling, not pushing
Scaled from 3 founders to 350+ employees

This is a real look at what building a company looks like, messy, unpredictable, and driven by persistence.

If you’re a founder or thinking about starting, this episode will change how you see the journey.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Welcome + Tejas intro
1:00 Early obsession with programming
2:30 Influence of immigrant parents
6:20 How he got hired at 16 (without saying his age)
10:30 Learning + dreaming at Segment
13:00 Why you don’t need a “perfect idea”
16:00 The first startup (and why it failed)
18:00 COVID wiped out the business overnight
20:00 The pivot that led to HighTouch
21:30 What HighTouch actually does (simple explanation)
24:00 Stage 1: Survival and first product
27:00 How they got their first 3 customers
30:00 Why early customers are the hardest
33:00 The moment they knew it would scale
35:00 Growth tactics: communities, content, sales
38:00 Scaling leadership from 3 people to 350
41:00 Raising $200M and investor mindset
44:00 Building a “generational company”
45:30 Advice for founders: agency, resourcefulness, curiosity