The Investment Memo

The Fastest Growing AI Companies use us. Here’s how we built our company. | Zubin Koticha, Raindrop

For more information on Raindrop, please visit https://www.raindrop.aiRaindrop raised $15M to help teams monitor their agents in production and fix issues, across millions of events.Zubin Koticha (CEO, Raindrop) unpacks his journey to product-market fit, why monitoring beats evals for real-world reliability, and how semantic signals surface true bugs. Bucky Moore (Partner, Lightspeed) shares the insight that went into preparing Lightspeed’s Investment Memo — digging into early product decisions, first impressions of the Raindrop Team, and the future of AI markets as agents become more prevalent.Chapters00:00 - Intro1:37 - What is Raindrop?3:26 - How is AI monitoring different from evals?4:35 - What is the founding story of Raindrop?6:49 - How did the idea for Raindrop come about?8:05 - Raindrop is building up significant traction. What is the customer reaction to Raindrop?9:23 - What is the future of Raindrop?10:33 - How are customers using Raindrop?11:48 - How do you balance growth and reliability as a startup?13:08 - How did Zubin and Bucky meet?13:55 - How did Raindrop decide when to fundraise?15:53 - Why did Raindrop choose Lightspeed as a partner?17:19 - What are the theses of Raindrop?19:45 - How is Raindrop thinking about competition?20:59 - What makes Raindrop an exciting company?ABOUT THE INVESTMENT MEMO PODCASTThe Investment Memo is a podcast interview series where founders see their original investment memo for the first time and revisit the deal that started it all. The memo becomes the spine of the episode — sparking honest conversation about early conviction, risk, growth and the relationship that formed between founder and investor.Stay In Touch: Website: www.lsvp.comX: https://www.twitter.com/lightspeedvpLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightspeed-venture-partners/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightspeed/The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily represent the views of Lightspeed. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.