Kathryn Cross (founder of Anja Health) and Rajya Atluri (founder of Coral AI) join The Luba Show to discuss their contrasting startup journeys — Kathryn went through YC, raised venture capital, and recently stepped away from her company after 3.5 years; Rajya bootstrapped Coral AI to over $1M ARR with just her and a co-founder. The conversation covers uncertainty, imposter syndrome, bootstrapping vs. raising, co-founder dynamics, identity, and the psychology of building.
Dealing with Uncertainty
Rajya spent about a year tinkering on different MVPs before landing on Coral AI when she saw early traction. She describes an uncomfortable “exploring phase” where she didn’t even want to talk about what she was building because she wasn’t sure it would work.
What kept her going: she genuinely enjoys the process of making something out of nothing and having people use it, and she had no desire to go work at someone else’s company.
Kathryn’s therapist (who doesn’t know tech well) kept commenting on her “unemployed era” after stepping away from Anja, not fully grasping that Kathryn was actively building something new. Kathryn’s main therapist, who happens to angel invest, was more understanding.
Bootstrapping vs. Raising VC
Rajya never intentionally set out to bootstrap — she and her co-founder just focused on getting traction and making money from day one. They got a paid customer within a week of launching, kept growing, and never felt the need to raise.
She argues bootstrapping hedges against doubts about moats and competition because you don’t need a massive outcome to justify the business.
Coral AI is an AI document assistant (research, querying documents, transcription, meeting notes, presentations, flashcards) started about two years ago. It hit its stride the first summer, and the two-person team now does ~$6-7K/day in gross revenue.
Kathryn went through YC (applied twice, got rejected the first time for lacking traction and direction), raised with 776 and Alexis Ohanian, and scaled Anja Health using mostly no-code tools (Stripe, Airtable, Zapier) and VAs from the Philippines and Eastern Europe before hiring engineers.
Co-Founder Dynamics
Rajya found her co-founder through YC’s co-founder matching platform, with a warm intro through a Launch House connection. They tested the relationship by working on small projects together before committing — she considers this the best way to evaluate a co-founder, better than any questionnaire.
They were aligned on bootstrapping from the start, which Rajya considers lucky given how easy it is to get distracted by fundraising.
Kathryn was a solo founder at Anja and scaled operations largely through VAs. She’s now “co-founder dating” for her next venture because she wants more internal strength and someone to hack on ideas with, though she’s open to going solo again.
Imposter Syndrome and Confidence
Rajya rejects the concept of imposter syndrome entirely — she thinks it’s insecurity masked in a term that makes people feel better about themselves. Her framework: either you deserve something or you don’t, and if you don’t, you have a limited window to prove to yourself that you do.
She believes confidence comes from setting goals and achieving them — accumulating evidence that you can do things — not from vague affirmations like “just be confident.”
Kathryn relates more to persistent insecurity that never fully resolves, but channels it into striving to be better. She connects this to the narrative frameworks you choose to apply to yourself — borrowing from her YC partner’s idea that limiting frameworks become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Both discuss the importance of choosing which narrative to tell yourself when multiple truths exist — e.g., Kathryn reframing stepping away from Anja not as failure but as a rational decision given market size.
Motivations and the Drive to Build
Rajya is motivated by the satisfaction of making something in her room that people across the world use and pay for. She loves the intersection of consumer psychology, content/marketing, and product-building. She still does weekly customer video calls and gets excited every time.
Kathryn is motivated by impact and high-stakes decision-making. She gets bored as an employee because she can’t see the fruits of her labor — she needs the direct feedback loop of action leading to visible results. She also enjoys the difficulty and context-switching of founding.
Both discuss how Gen Z is increasingly drawn to entrepreneurship and content creation, and how the lines between “creator” and “entrepreneur” are blurring.
Fundraising: Storytelling vs. Traction
Kathryn considers herself a strong fundraiser and shares her approach: run a tight process (7 calls/day for 2+ weeks) to build momentum and FOMO among investors. She thinks fundraising at the pre-seed stage is fundamentally about confidence and storytelling, not traction.
She acknowledges this is controversial — she’s seen founders raise large rounds, inflate their egos, and have nothing to show for it. But she believes in participating in the “hype” because that’s how pre-seed works in the US (unlike Europe, where traction matters more).
Rajya notes that people in startup circles often lead with “have you raised?” as a way to size you up, which she finds reductive — she’s encountered people who’ve raised millions but have no revenue or launched product.
Both agree that bootstrapped founders are often unfairly dismissed as “lifestyle businesses” growing slowly, when in reality Coral AI has grown faster than many venture-backed companies.
Identity, Stepping Away, and Moving Forward
Kathryn stepped away from Anja in May, appointing a new CEO, because she wasn’t confident the market was large enough for the venture-scale outcome she wanted. The decision brought relief but also identity issues — she’d only ever been a founder professionally.
She started making content during her “sabbatical” as a way to maintain momentum, hit 10K followers, but ultimately realized she doesn’t want to be a full-time creator — she wants to be a founder.
She dealt with self-imposed pressure and shame about not hitting growth targets, but found that being honest with her investors relieved much of the anxiety. Her investors were receptive because the business was profitable with linear growth.
Rajya intentionally keeps her founder identity separate from her personal life — she’s never posted about Coral AI on her personal Instagram. She learned from previous failed projects that intertwining startup identity with personal identity makes failure harder to process.
Both reference the idea of “keeping your identity small” — not letting “founder” become your entire self — as important for being able to move on when needed.
Being Girly in Tech
Both embrace being feminine and see it as an asset, not a hindrance. Rajya notes that if competitors underestimate her because she’s “dumb” or too girly, that’s an advantage.
Kathryn received advice early on that as a woman you should strive to be a “7” — not too pretty to be taken seriously, not too uncute to talk to — but she rejects that framework entirely.
One of Kathryn’s investors told her he invested because she’s “the type of person to get away with everything,” which she sees as part of her personality and founder edge.
Both love attention and standing out — Rajya’s high school superlative was “best dressed” — and see no reason to dim themselves to fit tech culture.
Women in Tech and Community
Neither has met close women friends in tech through women-specific communities — their closest friendships formed organically through Launch House (co-ed) and friends-of-friends.
Kathryn makes a point of being warm to other women at tech events because there are so few of them.
Rajya notes that in the tech content/influencer space there are more women, but she thinks this is because male viewers prefer watching women — not because the industry has meaningfully changed.
At YC events, Kathryn observes the demographics still skew very male and young (early 20s).
SF vs. NY vs. LA
Kathryn did YC remotely but lived in SF for 3 months, then moved back to LA. She’s considering moving to SF permanently but hesitates because most of her SF friends are in relationships and she doesn’t have the same “buddy” dynamic there that she has with Rajya in New York.
Rajya builds from New York and LA. She argues that being outside the SF bubble is actually an advantage for consumer startups because you avoid the echo chamber — e.g., SF founders assume everyone knows what an “AI agent” is, but most consumers don’t.
Kathryn values New York for fashion and beauty inspiration and worries she’d lose that in SF, though she acknowledges it shouldn’t be a central priority.
Both observe that SF culture has shifted — everyone is “low-key a founder” now, and there’s a vibe that if you’re not building something, you’re a “muggle.” Kathryn finds this sad given how many valuable paths exist outside of founding.
YC Culture
Rajya notes YC now skews much younger and has more AI companies. Someone told her it’s easier to get into YC than to get a big tech job out of college.
Kathryn feels slightly old at YC events at 26. She thinks it’s worth doing startups when you’re young because people who go into finance/consulting tend to get stuck on a linear path, while college founders can tolerate uncertainty more easily.
Both are grateful for their college experiences (Kathryn went to Wellesley, an all-women’s college; Rajya went to all-girls school through high school) — they credit these environments with building confidence by showing them women in every leadership role.
