
She got rejected by 22 VCs—then built 6sense to $100M+ in revenue. Now she's back for AI. | Amanda Kahlow, Founder of 1mind
From A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders by Mistral.vc
April 6, 2026 · 52 min · Season 5 · Episode 29
About this episode
Amanda Kahlow shares her journey from being rejected by VCs to building a successful AI startup.
Amanda spent 16 years running a services business for Cisco and Intel. When she tried to productize her business, 22 VCs rejected her. That became 6sense, a $200M ARR company. After stepping aside as CEO and taking five years off, she's back with an AI startup called 1 mind. In this episode, Amanda breaks down why she always goes enterprise-first when everyone tells her to start small, how she used an AI clone of herself to pitch 60 VCs and raise 1mind's Series A in three days, and why ...
People in this episode
Guest: Amanda Kahlow
Topics covered
- venture capital
- AI startups
- entrepreneurship
- business strategy
- product development
Keywords
- venture capital
- AI
- 6sense
- 1mind
- entrepreneurship
- business strategy
- productization
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Cisco, Intel, 6sense, 1mind
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