A startup founder has called out the CEO of a more established company after being debarred from their conference. Lakshya Gupta, the founder of Y Combinator-backed Lab0, was upset that he and his team were asked not to attend Propel, Rocketlane’s flagship event for professional services leaders that is set to take place in San Francisco next month.
IIT Bombay alum Lakshya Gupta was so upset, in fact, that he took to social media to share a screenshot of the email that Rocketlane CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan sent him.
Why Rocketlane ‘banned’ Lab0
In the email, Ganesan politely explained that Rocketlane could not have Lab0 at their conference as they are competitors who operate in the same space.
Ganesan, who is based in the US and studied at IIM Bangalore, told Lab0 co-founders Lakshya Gupta and Sujay Srivastava that their tickets to Propel would be refunded.
(Also read:)
“After an internal review, we’ve realised that we are unable to host you at Propel as Lab0 operates in a space that directly overlaps with Rocketlane’s offerings and would present a conflict of interest,” wrote the CEO of Rocketlane — an Agentic PSA and customer onboarding platform.
“We’ve built this community and event with a lot of effort from our marketing team, so it would be hard to accommodate Labo this time,” Ganesan elaborated, saying he wanted to be “transparent” about the reason for rescinding the tickets.
“We do want to be transparent and let you know promptly, our team will refund your tickets,” he assured the founders of Lab0, adding that he would be happy to meet them one-on-one at a later date.
Bad blood
Gupta shared a screenshot of the email on X, apparently miffed at being barred from the two-day event.
“The CEO of a $400M company just banned a pre-seed startup (us) from attending their conference as we supposedly “compete” with them,” wrote the IITian startup founder.
He then tagged Ganesan and Rocketlane and wrote, “not cool”.
(Also read:)
The post drew mixed reactions, with some claiming that Rocketlane was well within its right to ban competitors and that their CEO’s email was polite.
“He was very polite with this email and you’re out here being petty,” wrote one X user.
“They could have simply refunded your tickets with a reason citing logistical issues – but they took the more transparent road, why be angry with them? they are well within their rights and very transparent about it,” another said.
also waded into the debate, advising the founder of Lab0 to show more respect. “CEO of a $400M company replies personally to a pre-seed startup, explaining why he has to decline your tickets to their event, politely explains why and offers a 1:1 instead. And you decide it is cool to publicly mock him for it. Life is too short to dunk on people, Lakshya,” Warikoo noted.
