Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders S12 E8: Satya Mishra, Waylit
Mar 3, 2026
Satya Mishra, Co-founder and CTO of WayLit, built the platform after navigating the U.S. immigration lifecycle himself. He talks about founding WayLit to help lean HR teams own immigration workflows. He recounts building the first MVP, choosing Django, hiring lessons, scaling complex workflows, and selectively adopting LLMs to speed internal reviews.
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Manual MVP Turned Into Django Workflow
- Satya and Raj launched Waylit by running the immigration process manually with local St. Louis companies to validate demand.
- They partnered with a paper-based attorney, ran cases via email/paper, then encoded the workflow into a Django app to scale operations.
Immigration Falls Through Spreadsheets Without Ownership
- Immigration work often falls onto employees because lean HR teams lack specialized ownership and tracking.
- Waylit centralizes documents, deadlines (passport/visa expirations) and case status so HR, attorneys, and employees access a single source of truth.
Build What Causes The Most Friction Now
- Prioritize product work by fixing the highest-friction, highest-error parts of your workflow first.
- Use customer support questions and error hotspots as the roadmap signals for what to build next.