Trust Is the Capital That Compounds: My Conversation with Tushar Garg
When you’re building a company, sometimes the real test isn’t your business model, your growth rate, or even your ambition—it’s whether you can keep going when everything falls apart.
Tushar Garg, founder and CEO of Flyhomes and my guest on episode 10 of Raiser’s Edge, walked right into that nightmare. He was starting a critical fundraise, the kind that determines survival, when his co-founder was suddenly hit by a drunk driver—severely injured, out for a year, future uncertain. Meanwhile, his own newborn was also in the hospital. Tushar was literally sleeping in hospital rooms, splitting time between crises and flying out to give pitches and save the company. No playbook covers these moments, but surviving—and growing—through them sets apart those who make it from those who don’t.
Every founder I’ve worked with has lived through highs and lows. Tushar Garg has also lived through some near-unthinkables. Tushar isn’t just another entrepreneur with a $200M+ track record. He’s proof in action of how relationship-driven funding can be the edge that keeps your company alive when the market—or your luck—turns.
Here are my biggest insights from my conversation with Tushat:
1. Don’t mistake fast fundraising for a strong foundation.
Tushar had the dream start: first check in 30 minutes, Series A from a Tier-1, sky-high growth. But that early ease masked a big risk—he hadn’t built a broad base of deep investor relationships. When crises hit, there was no deep bench of allies to turn to. His story is a caution: easy money isn’t a substitute for “quietly tending your garden” over the years. Relationships are the real reserve capital; you can’t afford to ignore them.
2. Vulnerability is a power move.
Founders obsess over projecting confidence. But what stood out from Tushar was his radical transparency—especially when things got tough. In moments of crisis, he didn’t try to spin reality or stay “on script” with investors or employees. He was upfront about losses, difficulties, and his own vulnerability. The payoff? He proved his resilience to his founders, and it built deeper trust and loyalty with his investors. Most founders shy away from that level of honesty, but Tushar’s example proves it’s not just good ethics—it’s a competitive advantage.
3. Trust is the currency that counts.
Tushar said it best: “Trust is your currency. Trust is the thing that compounds over many, many years and it’s too easy to lose that”(25:11). The pandemic market boom turned into a brutal reckoning for real estate companies, with many of them shutting their doors. Tushar moved fast and refined his company, shifting its focus to wholesale and B2B. But even bold moves only work if you have the right people—on your board and your cap table—who will back decisive and sometimes painful shifts. When fundraising gets hard and numbers alone don’t impress, it’s the long-term trust you’ve built, across every interaction (even with people who say “no”), that gives you the only real edge. Tushar’s seed investor stepped up a decade later to save the company in its hardest hour; that compounding trust is something no deck, no metric, no hot market can replicate.
Fundraising isn’t a game of sprints or luck. It’s the patient, persistent compounding of trust, built one authentic interaction at a time, across seasons of boom and bust. That’s the only thing you can reliably bank on, and Tushar proves it’s the edge that keeps you in the game.
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Stay sharp,
Ben