The Kintsugi Founding Story: How Domain Expertise + Technical Chops + Market Timing = Unicorn Trajectory

The Kintsugi Founding Story: How Domain Expertise + Technical Chops + Market Timing = Unicorn Trajectory

Three ingredients rarely converge at the right moment: deep domain knowledge, technical ability to build at scale, and a market in complete chaos. When they do, the results can be extraordinary. Pujun Bhatnagar had all three—and a father who saw the opportunity years before anyone else.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Pujun Bhatnagar, CEO and Co-Founder of Kintsugi, a sales tax automation platform that’s raised over $8 million, walked through the complete arc of building a company now doubling revenue month-over-month. From a father’s prescient warning about a Supreme Court case to surviving SVB’s collapse to securing funding at 2x their Series A valuation in months, this is the story of how the right combination of factors can create a unicorn trajectory.

The 37-Year Head Start

Most founders discover problems through personal frustration or market observation. Pujun had something more valuable: a father who spent his entire career watching the industry he’d eventually disrupt.

“My dad built a career in compliance and taxation and really worked in the space for 37 years before retiring,” Pujun explains. “And ever since this case was taken to Supreme Court, he was like, ‘Pujun, you should really keep an eye out on this, because if South Dakota wins, this could have, quote unquote, an earth shattering effect on how sales tax is handled today.'”

That conversation happened while Pujun was still at Facebook, years before starting Kintsugi. His father wasn’t making a casual observation—he understood the implications of South Dakota v. Wayfair at a level few people in the industry did. If the Supreme Court ruled that states could require out-of-state businesses to collect sales tax based on customer location rather than company headquarters, the entire compliance infrastructure would need rebuilding.

“And guess what? That is exactly what happened,” Pujun notes.

The 2018 ruling didn’t just change one regulation—it triggered a regulatory avalanche. “By November of 2019, 48 jurisdictions including DC and Puerto Rico had passed regulations around whether or not people should collect sales tax.” Thousands of businesses suddenly faced compliance obligations they never had before, and the incumbent solutions weren’t built for this new reality.

The Unique Unlock

Domain knowledge alone doesn’t build companies. Pujun’s edge came from marrying his father’s expertise with capabilities most tax experts lack: the ability to build large-scale technical systems.

“I’m a data guy. I’ve already worked at Facebook for five plus years. I know how to build these systems,” he explains. “My unique unlock was I have a unique advantage because my dad has worked in the space, plus my technical ability of building these large systems. So I decided to marry them together and build a company in this space.”

This combination mattered because the problem required actual engineering, not just tax knowledge. “All the players in the market, Avalara, it was a big company, but not necessarily a good company,” Pujun shares. “They were kind of caught with their pants down with the changing regulations, because if you have a sales tax engine that is powered by engineering, you can change the code and you can very quickly iterate to catch up with the different rules that are coming out.”

Competitors ran agency models—manual processing, offshore teams, high-touch service. They couldn’t pivot quickly because their infrastructure wasn’t software. Pujun could build the AI-powered automation that would collapse weeks of manual work into minutes of computation.

The Hard Years Nobody Sees

September 2021. Pujun quit Facebook and started the company. But here’s what separates trajectory from hype: he didn’t rush to build.

“In the two years leading to the pre seed fundraising, I was doing sales tax by hand for ten different companies just so that I could understand really the ins and outs of what needed to be built,” he explains.

Two years. Manual work. No revenue, no product, no validation that this would work. Just pure immersion into the problem space. The timeline is revealing: started September 2021, incorporated December 2022, raised pre-seed September 2023. “We started writing really our first line of scalable code after pre seed fundraising. Before that was all MVP.”

During this period, the team also conducted systematic customer discovery. “We had this massive spreadsheet of 15 adjacent ideas that we wanted to build in. And we just did, I think, 300 to 500 interviews to essentially figure out what we wanted to build.”

This wasn’t typical startup hustle—it was strategic patience. By the time they raised pre-seed, they understood the problem better than anyone in the market, including incumbents who’d been around for decades.

The Crisis Within the Crisis

Just as Kintsugi began fundraising, the ground shifted beneath the entire startup ecosystem.

“When we were first fundraising, SVB collapsed,” Pujun recalls. “And that was an experience that I don’t wish on my worst enemies.”

SVB’s collapse in March 2023 sent shockwaves through the venture ecosystem. The bank that held deposits for nearly half of all VC-backed startups failed overnight. Founders couldn’t access cash. Investors paused deals. The fundraising environment froze.

For Kintsugi, trying to close a pre-seed during this chaos, it was nearly fatal. “I think when you think about fundraising, you should always keep four to six months budgeted where at least one of the co-founders would be devoting 100% of their time to it. And by the end of it you would be successful. But you just have to be patient.”

They survived. Pre-seed closed in September 2023. But that period taught lessons about resilience that would prove valuable later.

The Inflection Point

When product-market fit hits with proper foundation, growth can be explosive.

“Ever since we were publicly available, we have been doubling in revenue month over month,” Pujun shares. That’s 100% month-over-month growth—a rate that’s only sustainable when everything aligns: right product, right market, right timing.

The team scaled from three to 47 in ten months. They raised Series A in March/April. Then the real validation came: “Very recently we have more cash injection coming in at two x the valuation of what we raised our Series A at.”

Two times valuation in months. That doesn’t happen because of smooth storytelling or impressive decks. It happens because the business fundamentals are undeniable. “We have quadrupled in revenue ever since we raised our Series A.”

Why the Formula Works

Domain expertise + technical chops + market timing is a rare combination, but understanding why each matters helps founders evaluate their own positions.

Domain expertise meant Pujun could see what competitors couldn’t. When regulations changed, he knew second-order effects. When customers explained problems, he understood what they really meant versus what they said. Two years of manual work deepened this to mastery level.

Technical chops meant he could build what domain experts imagined. “We spend, I think, 65% to 70% in R and D. Meanwhile, other companies run like agencies.” That engineering focus created software leverage—the ability to scale exponentially rather than linearly.

Market timing meant the opportunity was real and urgent. “Sales tax has now become the number one driver of revenue for local governments.” The regulatory landscape was still shifting, creating constant demand for better tools. “I suspect that in the next two years, it’s gonna be all 50 states and all 52 jurisdictions.”

The Path to Unicorn

Looking three to five years ahead, Pujun’s ambition is clear but grounded in gratitude.

“I want Kintsugi to be a unicorn and more,” he states. “And I want the people who are involved in this journey of building Kintsugi as something that they are proud of their legacy.”

The vision extends beyond valuation. “Every person that has chosen to join Kintsugi, I will always be eternally thankful from the bottom of my heart,” he shares. “I want to build a culture where by working at Kintsugi, people are bringing pieces of them together and going on this healing journey and building something that is bigger than the sum of their parts.”

For the next twelve months, the focus is operationally clear: “How do we ten x our revenue, if not more?” With product-market fit proven, capital secured, and a team of 47, the question shifts from survival to scale.

The Replicable Elements

Not every founder has a parent with 37 years of domain expertise. But the pattern holds: deep understanding of a problem space + ability to build technical solutions + timing around market disruption creates disproportionate opportunities.

The lesson isn’t to copy Kintsugi’s specific path—it’s to identify where you have unique advantages others lack. Where your background provides insights competitors can’t easily acquire. Where your technical abilities can automate what others do manually. Where regulatory or market shifts create windows of vulnerability in established players.

Then have the patience to do the unsexy work before building, the resilience to survive crises like SVB, and the conviction to invest heavily in engineering when everyone else takes the easier service path.

That’s how domain expertise, technical chops, and market timing combine into unicorn trajectories.