There’s a story we’ve all heard before—maybe even told ourselves when things get tough. You know the one: “If you just believe hard enough, work hard enough, the world will eventually bend in your favor.”
Well, I used to think that was mostly feel-good fluff—until I heard Vishal Virani speak.
Not on a TED stage. Not from a Silicon Valley penthouse. But from a cramped apartment in Surat, India, with 15 days of runway left and 40 venture capital rejections stacked like tombstones behind him.
And yet—here he is today: co-founder and CEO of Rocket, an AI-powered software development platform that raised $15 million in seed funding just 15 weeks after launch, backed by Salesforce Ventures and Excel.
How?
Not with a slick pitch deck. Not with Ivy League credentials. But with a simple, stubborn belief: If you build something people truly need, they’ll find you—even if you’re building it from a city most investors have never heard of.
“You’re Not From Stanford. Try Again in 10 Years.”
Let’s be honest: the startup world loves a certain kind of origin story. You went to Stanford or MIT. You interned at Google. You dropped out with a prototype already in your back pocket and a Y Combinator invite in your inbox.
Vishal’s story? It doesn’t fit that mold.
He grew up in Surat—yes, that Surat. The city that polishes 9 out of every 10 diamonds in the world. A place known for textiles, gem-cutting, and relentless hustle—not SaaS unicorns or AI breakthroughs.
“I’m the first engineer in my family,” he says, voice steady but tinged with the weight of that fact. “My parents didn’t know what ‘product-market fit’ meant. They didn’t even know what a startup was. But when I told them I wanted to study engineering, they said, ‘We can’t give you money—but we give you our blessings.’”
That blessing came with a caveat: you’re on your own.
No safety net. No alumni network. No “warm intros” to VCs who summer in Napa. Just curiosity, a laptop, and the internet.
And yet, instead of wallowing in what he didn’t have, Vishal asked a different question:
“Okay, we’re in India. What advantage can we use?”
That mindset—that refusal to build a “wall of excuses,” as he puts it—became his secret weapon.
TheDevi.ce: Building in the Dark (But Shipping Anyway)
Right after college, Vishal and his co-founder Rahul made a radical choice.
No master’s degree. No corporate job. No “get experience first.”
Instead, they gave themselves two years to learn by doing. “Our goal wasn’t to make money,” Vishal recalls. “It was to survive—and learn everything we could.”
What emerged was TheDevi.ce—a Figma-to-code platform that let designers turn mockups into functional front-end code with a single click.
At the time, it felt niche. Almost too simple.
But they shipped it anyway.
And users came—350,000 of them, to be exact. They processed 10 million Figma screens, more than any competitor in the space. For a while, it was “quite comfortable,” Vishal admits. Steady growth. Happy customers. A real business.
But then… everything changed.
The GPT-3 Moment: When the World Shifted Overnight
“I still remember,” Vishal says, leaning forward, “I sat for 60 hours straight, just writing prompts. Trying to make GPT-3 do something unbelievable.”
It was 2020. The world had barely grasped what AI could do—but Vishal saw it clearly: this wasn’t just an upgrade. It was a reset.
“There’s a world before GPT-3,” he says, “and a world after.”
Most founders would’ve doubled down on their existing product. After all, TheDevi.ce was working.
But Vishal saw the bigger picture: Figma-to-code was just the beginning.
If large language models could understand human intent, why stop at converting designs? Why not let anyone—a solopreneur with an idea, a non-technical founder, a small business owner—describe what they wanted, and have the entire product built for them?
That conviction led to a gut-wrenching decision: pivot hard.
They shut down TheDevi.ce—their “comfortable” business—and rebuilt everything from scratch as Rocket.
“Prefer Conviction Over Comfort”
Pivoting isn’t just hard—it’s terrifying.
You’re walking away from revenue, users, momentum. You’re betting that your hunch about the future is worth more than today’s reality.
But Vishal had a mantra: “Prefer conviction over a comfort zone.”
He wasn’t chasing trends. He was chasing a vision:
“In five years, if you have an idea, you should be able to put it into Rocket—and by the time you finish your coffee, your entire product is ready to launch.”
No developers. No months of coding. No $200K in contractor fees. Just… done.
It sounds like science fiction. But in Rocket’s first 16 weeks, they saw millions of applications built on the platform.
And the most telling proof? Users voting with their wallets.
One solopreneur—completely non-technical—went from a $25/month plan to $4,000/month in weeks. No sales call. No demo. Just pure, organic trust.
“He emailed us,” Vishal says, “and wrote: ‘In my life, I’ve never closed seven projects in 20 days. Without Rocket, it would’ve been impossible.’”
That’s the kind of testimonial no marketing budget can buy.
40 Rejections—and One Lifeline
But getting to that point? It nearly broke him.
In 2021, while AI hype was exploding, Vishal and his team were getting door after door slammed in their faces.
“40+ rejections,” he says quietly. “From firms funding anything that moved.”
Why?
“You’re not from Stanford. Not from IIT. Not ex-Google. Not in San Francisco.”
He knew the unspoken rules. VCs have theses. Networks. Pattern matching. And he didn’t fit the pattern.
“I always introduced myself as ‘ex-my-first-startup,’” he laughs. “Because technically, I had no ‘prestigious’ resume.”
With only three months of cash left, they faced extinction.
But instead of spiraling, Vishal did something unusual: he studied his failures.
“Every rejection, I asked: What’s wrong with my pitch? My numbers? My story?”
He rewrote. Rehearsed. Refined.
And on the 41st try, he got a term sheet.
Not just any term sheet—the first venture capital deal ever secured by a founder from Surat.
“That ‘never give up’ attitude?” he says. “It’s not just a slogan. It’s what keeps you alive when the world says no.”
The Product Is the Pitch
Here’s something most founders won’t tell you: investors don’t fund dreams. They fund proof.
Vishal understood this early. Instead of spending weeks on a polished deck, he built the product first.
And that’s how Salesforce Ventures found him—not through a warm intro, but through a viral post on X (formerly Twitter).
Someone tried Rocket. Loved it. Shared it.
Salesforce’s team tested the product before they even reached out.
“They told us: ‘This is the best dev automation tool we’ve ever seen.’”
Compare that to GitHub Copilot—a product with Microsoft’s full backing, OpenAI’s tech, and Satya Nadella’s personal endorsement.
Yet within 18 months, a scrappy newcomer called Cursor stole the spotlight—not with marketing, but with a better product experience.
“Build the right product,” Vishal insists, “and the market will find you. Build a marketing shell, and someone will eat your lunch.”
The Future: Software That Builds Itself
So where is Rocket headed?
Vishal’s vision is almost poetic in its simplicity:
“Imagine you’re driving from Palo Alto to downtown San Francisco. You tell your car, ‘Build me an app that helps local bakeries manage pre-orders.’ By the time you park, it’s done.”
No IDEs. No GitHub commits. No sleepless nights debugging CSS.
Just human intention → working software.
He’s not naive—he knows legacy systems, enterprise inertia, and technical debt won’t vanish overnight.
But he also knows this: the next wave of creators won’t wait for permission.
They’ll use tools like Rocket to skip the gatekeepers entirely.
And that’s the real revolution—not AI replacing developers, but democratizing creation itself.
Final Thought: Your Zip Code Doesn’t Define Your Destiny
I’ve interviewed hundreds of founders. Many from Stanford. Many from garages in Palo Alto.
But Vishal’s story sticks with me—not because it’s extraordinary, but because it’s so human.
He didn’t have advantages. He had obstacles.
And instead of letting them define him, he used them as fuel.
“Don’t worry about your location. Don’t worry about your zip code,” he says. “If you have a will, you can build it from anywhere.”
In a world obsessed with pedigree, that’s a radical idea.
But maybe—just maybe—it’s the only one that matters.
Because in the end, great products aren’t built in elite institutions.
They’re built by people who refuse to quit.
People like Vishal Virani.
And maybe—just maybe—you.
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