Built Without A Budget

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Built Without a Budget lands at a moment when many Gen Zs are chasing the entrepreneurial dream—but most books only tell the stories that end in glory. This one doesn’t.

As a finance student at the University of Toronto, Tejas Trikha launched CouBon. This two-sided, dynamic pricing marketplace connected restaurants during their slow hours with students seeking deals. Armed with limited resources and plenty of persistence, CouBon grew from a dorm-room idea into a live platform used daily by students and partnered with dozens of restaurants—generating real revenue before closing due to scalability limits and macro headwinds.

Written while the journey was still fresh, this candid account goes beyond highlight reels to share the real grind: pitching investors cold, solving the two-sided marketplace paradox, managing churn, and knowing when to walk away. It’s a survival guide for student founders—and a reminder that even when the outcome isn’t what you planned, the lessons can be life-changing.

Tejas Trikha is an Indian-born, Dubai-raised founder and writer who graduated from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. While still a student, he launched CouBon, a platform that helped restaurants fill slow hours by offering deals to students, growing it to thousands of users. Alongside CouBon, he has also worked at Mubadala Capital, KPMG, and Forbes-recognized cleantech startup Xatoms. This is his first book, written to help students take action, even when they don’t feel fully ready.