TL;DR: There are 3 core jobs of a founder-CEO in a Series A+ startup. They are prioritization, hiring and fundraising; in that order. Communicating, meetings or reviews which is how the founder-CEO spends her time, are only enablers of the above jobs. They should not be confused with the 3 core jobs. The article below unpacks these 3 jobs at length. As always feedback and criticism welcome, and I would …
Startups
Articulating my position on the ‘pay for internships you really want’ debate on twitter.
Context
Naman Sarawagi commented recently.
More people would benefit if anyone could pay to get an internship where they like. I really mean the intern paying to get an internship, just like they pay for college. https://t.co/SnMpowRmHM
— Naman Sarawagi (@NamanSr) July 26, 2020
Twitter erupted saying how dare you think of unpaid internships.
I reacted to one post on this topic with this.
Thought it was a well-argued thread
Does alma matter?
I saw this tweet recently from Anmol Maini, a keen observer of the Indian startup scene.
It is yes, funny.
Is it right? Hmm….I must confess the joke has a point, but I am not sure it is …
Singular, social and streamed. Welcome to a post-Covid world!
This article was first published in the Sunday Times of India, 22nd March, 2020.
I work in an early stage venture fund. As the Covid-19 crisis took hold, we reached out to our portfolio to check on how the virus was impacting them. We saw an interesting pattern emerge. Naturally, purely digital businesses, the ones that move ‘bits’ around, were doing well, such as edtech or content plays. But …
What is the Superhuman of Calendars?
Thoughts on productivity tools, and about rethinking them for better outcomes.
If you end up subscribing to the Superhuman email service, you are clearly in the subset of busy people with a lot of emails. One thing busy people have apart from emails is meetings, and to dos. Tonnes of them. So inevitably you think of, what is the superhuman equivalent for to do lists? Or calendars? And that is …
Postcards from the future
I often tell friends that the single best thing about working in early stage investing is the number of startup decks you get to see daily, each describing a specific vision of the future. People eating meal replacements or renting clothes instead of buying, printing a toy than ordering one, and so on. These ‘postcards from the future’ are not always right. Well, they all clearly can’t be. But that …
Some more recent writings
Links to recent writings of mine. As usual, they happen on LinkedIn or other publications. My website seems to have become an archives list. That wasn’t the original plan when I started this website nearly a decade ago, though. Sigh!
- I wrote for online publisher Scroll about how Hindi is gradually but inevitably emerging as the Lingua Franca of South India. Shudder!
- Why Blume invested in Classplus?
- Why
The Rise of Hyperlocal Vernacular Video News Apps
(This was published in Mint, 19th November 2018, albeit in an abbreviated form due to space constraints. This is the complete piece.)
The latest and hottest startup sector is presently invisible to ‘People Like Us’ living in metros. Over the past year, several young founders boasting impeccable academic credentials and work experience have been moving to small town India, launching hyperlocal news apps, viz., LocalPlay, Lokal, Awaaz, Circle etc. These …
India2, English Tax and Building for the Next Billion Users
Recently, Rehan Yar Khan, who runs Orios Venture Partners, an early stage venture firm tweeted
Starting with Zomato, then Ola in Australia and now Oyo in China, looks like Indian start-ups have found the answer to beating India's 50M only "real consumers" market: Get out of the box
— Rehan Yar Khan (@rehanyarkhan) May 24, 2018
Rehan Yar Khan wasn’t being sarcastic. He was, in fact, complementing the promoters of …
Kashyap Deorah’s ‘The Golden Tap’ – A Review
I first met Kashyap Deorah sometime late ’08 in Gloria Jeans Coffee in Bandra. We were introduced by Sudhir Sitapati, a junior of mine from IIMA, and a then-advisor to Kashyap’s Chaupaati Bazaar. I was then in the Brand Capital division of Times Group, and the conversation likely revolved around our funding model and whether it made sense for Chaupaati to access it (It didn’t).
We lost touch subsequently, though …
1 2