Building a Startup, Understanding Customers, and Scaling Across Markets

From Global Brands to Startup Growth

Vidhi Kumar is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Cardboard, where she workes with sales, marketing, and product growth to help the startup scale across markets.

Before becoming a startup founder, she gained experience across multiple industries including consumer products and financial services and worked with global brands such as L'Oréal.

Early in her career, Vidhi focused on bringing international products to local markets. In India, this meant translating and localizing products into multiple languages while keeping messaging accurate and culturally relevant.

“India is incredibly diverse,” she explains. “We often had to translate and localize products into four or five different languages while making sure the message remained accurate and culturally relevant.”

Her experience adapting products across diverse markets later proved valuable in Europe, where different languages, cultures, and customer expectations present their own challenges.

Introduction to Cardboard

Managing software subscriptions has become a common challenge for growing companies. In many startups, founders still approve SaaS purchases manually, employees sometimes pay for tools with personal cards, and finance teams spend significant time tracking receipts and subscriptions.

Cardboard was created to simplify this process. The platform helps companies manage their digital tools in one place, providing employees with virtual company cards for approved purchases while automatically collecting and matching receipts with the company’s accounting system.

By bringing subscription management, payments, and accounting together, Cardboard aims to give startups better visibility and control over their software spending.

To understand the thinking behind the company and how startups can approach growth, we spoke with Vidhi Kumar, Co-Founder of Cardboard, about her career journey, marketing lessons for founders, and what it takes to build a company across international markets.

Why Sales and Marketing Must Work Together in Startups

At Cardboard, sales and marketing are not treated as siloes.

Instead, they operate with a single focus of growing the company.

Vidhi describes her role in growth as combining responsibilities across both areas.

“In startups, the customer conversation should flow across the entire company,” she says.

This integrated approach allows insights from customers to directly influence messaging, outreach strategies, and product improvements.

Cardboard uses a combination of inbound and outbound strategies to attract and convert customers while continuously fine-tuning its go to market approach.

The Most Important Marketing Lesson: Understand the Customer First

One of the biggest mistakes Vidhi sees in early-stage startups is trying to sell to everyone.

Successful companies, she explains, do the opposite.

They start by deeply understanding a specific target customer.

This involves identifying:

The industries they serve
The job roles of potential buyers
Demographic and psychographic characteristics
The motivations and challenges customers face

“Startups need to clearly define who they are building for and what problem they are solving,” Vidhi says.

Without this clarity, marketing and sales efforts often become unfocused and ineffective.

Creating Alignment with the SPICED Framework

As Cardboard grew, the team realized that different departments sometimes described customer problems in different ways.

To address this, they implemented the SPICED sales methodology, which creates a shared language across the company.

This framework helps teams clearly define:

The customer’s situation
The pain points they experience
The impact of those problems
The expected outcomes

By aligning sales, marketing, and product teams around the same customer insights, Cardboard ensures everyone understands the customer’s motivations and goals.

How Founders Should Use AI in Marketing

Artificial intelligence has become an important tool for founders, but Vidhi believes it should be used carefully.

She sees AI primarily as a brainstorming and perspective tool to enhance thinking and not replace it.

“AI is like an employee that never sleeps,but it still needs training.” she says.

It can help founders:

Generate ideas
Review messaging
Identify unclear communication
See their product from the customer’s perspective
Vibecode ideas that previously depended purely on coders

However, she emphasizes that founders must first understand the fundamentals of marketing.

Without that knowledge, it becomes difficult to recognize when AI-generated content is incorrect or misleading.

Instead, she encourages founders to learn from books, podcasts, and the experiences of other entrepreneurs before relying heavily on AI tools.

Books That Shape a Founder’s Mindset

Vidhi recommends that founders focus their reading on areas where they lack knowledge.

Some books that have influenced her thinking include:

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution by Uri Levine
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

These books emphasize curiosity, adaptability, and the importance of managing ego in leadership.

Building Culture Across Different Nationalities

Cardboard’s team reflects the international nature of modern startups.

Employees come from several countries, including Norway, Sweden, Latvia, and India.

Building a strong culture across such a diverse team requires patience and open communication.

Communication styles vary significantly between cultures. For example, Norwegian communication tends to be very direct, which can sometimes be interpreted differently in other cultures.

By acknowledging these differences and encouraging open dialogue, the team can collaborate more effectively.

Why Flexibility Matters in a Startup

Startups rarely follow a straight path.

New opportunities often emerge while solving the initial problem.

Vidhi emphasizes the importance of maintaining a growth mindset and staying flexible.

However, she also warns founders not to build too many things at once.

Unlike large corporations, startups must prioritize a few key initiatives and build trust with customers gradually.

Building Trust Before Selling the Product

Trust plays a crucial role in the early stages of any company.

Before customers trust a product, they often need to trust the people behind it.

Customers want to understand:

Who the founders are
What the company stands for
Why they should believe in its mission

At Cardboard, leadership actively challenges each other’s assumptions to avoid becoming too attached to their own solutions.

Vidhi shares a piece of advice from CEO Ole Daniel Nitter:

“Imagine your startup as a movie. What would the audience be shouting at the screen for you to do differently?”

Managing Stress as a Founder

Startup life can easily lead to burnout if stress is not managed intentionally.

Vidhi maintains balance through activities such as:

Yoga
Meditation
Walking while listening to podcasts

She recommends starting with small habits rather than setting unrealistic goals.

“Consistency is more important than intensity when starting a new habit.” she says.

Preparing Cardboard for International Growth

Cardboard built its early foundation in Norway.

Norwegian customers are known for being direct and honest with feedback, which helped the team refine both the product and strategy.

Now the company is preparing for international expansion, beginning with Sweden and the Netherlands.

Team members in those markets have already joined the organization, helping Cardboard build a presence locally.

The Role of Networking in Entrepreneurship

Networking is an essential part of building a startup.

However, Vidhi emphasizes that there is no single correct way to approach it.

Founders should experiment with different communities and events to find environments where they feel comfortable building meaningful relationships.

Even if networking feels uncomfortable at first, it becomes easier with practice.

The Challenges of Building a Startup in Norway

Norway offers a supportive environment for startups, but it also presents unique challenges.

One of the biggest is the relatively small domestic market.

Another is the climate, as long winters can sometimes affect energy and motivation.

At the same time, Norway has strong advantages, including high societal trust and supportive business ecosystems.

Encouraging More Women to Become Founders

Vidhi encourages women who are considering entrepreneurship to take the leap.

“The best way to learn entrepreneurship is by doing it,” she says.

Failure is part of the journey, and flexibility is essential.

She also believes entrepreneurship will play an important role in diversifying Norway’s economy beyond oil and gas.

Making Conscious Choices About Work-Life Balance

Earlier in her career, Vidhi describes herself as a workaholic who had few hobbies outside of work.

Over time, she realized the importance of developing interests beyond her professional life.

Work-life balance ultimately comes down to conscious decisions.

Choosing time for family, hobbies, or personal growth means intentionally saying no to other commitments.

What Investors Look for in a Startup

When raising capital, investors typically focus on one key question:

Can this idea generate significant value?

They evaluate both the market opportunity and the founding team’s ability to execute.

At Cardboard, the team combines experienced professionals with younger talent, demonstrating both expertise and long-term potential.

Final Thoughts

Building a startup requires constant learning, flexibility, and strong collaboration across teams.

For Vidhi Kumar and the team at Cardboard, the focus remains clear: understanding customer problems deeply, building trust with users, and scaling a solution that simplifies how companies manage their digital tools.

As more businesses rely on SaaS and AI agants, the challenge of managing subscriptions, payments, and receipts will only grow.

Cardboard aims to make that complexity disappear, so founders can focus on building their companies.

Interview with Vidhi Kumar, Co-Founder of Cardboard