What happens after the visa gets approved?

In this episode of Off To The Valley, I sit down with Nino Melikidze, co-founder and CEO of Immitracker, to talk about the invisible side of immigration, the identity shifts, career resets, and emotional weight that don’t make it onto official paperwork.

Nino shares what it felt like to start over in Canada, how long it really takes to feel at home, and why she created a product that helps thousands of immigrants navigate that transition.

We talk about:

✔ Moving between countries and cultures

✔ Building Immitracker from personal experience

✔ The emotional math behind product-market fit

✔ B2C vs B2B as a solo founder

✔ What she’d do differently if she started today

This is an episode for anyone who’s ever had to start from scratch and wants to build something meaningful in the process.

What do you do when customers ask for the wrong things?

Toni Hopponen, founder of LandingRabbit and previously Flockler (acquired in 2023), joins Off To The Valley to unpack what 13 years of bootstrapped SaaS taught him.

From building a self-serve product without a sales team to decoding landing pages that actually convert, Toni shares real, hard-earned lessons about customer interviews, product intuition, and why founder-led growth has its limits.

We also talk:

• His move from Finland to the UK to chase a global SaaS vision
• Why most landing pages fail in under a minute
• What makes a problem truly worth solving
• Why listening to customers too literally can backfire
• How he validated and built LandingRabbit after Flockler’s exit

It’s a masterclass in staying lean, staying curious, and building for real people.

Tune in if you’re thinking about bootstrapping, validating an idea, or designing a product customers will actually pay for.

From one rupee rentals to building Goldcast, Palash Soni’s founder story is as real as it gets.

In this episode of Off to the Valley, Palash, Co-founder and CEO of Goldcast, walks us through his early entrepreneurial sparks in a small Indian town, launching a side hustle at age 10, and eventually founding a VC-backed SaaS company out of Harvard.

We talk about:

• Building Goldcast in the middle of business school
• Navigating student debt while starting up
• How to validate SaaS ideas in a noisy AI market
• Finding the right co-founder and avoiding common early-stage traps
• Making remote company culture actually work
• And why real traction comes from solving valuable, enduring problems

This is a no-fluff, honest look at what it takes to go from ambitious experiments to building a company that brands like Mailchimp and Zuora trust.

If you’re thinking of launching, pivoting, or scaling something of your own, this one’s a must-listen.