In this essay, I reflect on my past five years in venture, my learnings and evolution. My evolution, of course, echoes the evolution of the Indian venture and startup landscape too, and cannot be seen in isolation. So we will take a deeper look at the Indian startup and venture landscape too. In addition, we will try and cover a few questions I (and perhaps other venture capitalists or VCs) …
Venture Capital
Podcast: Elizabeth Zalman and Jerry Neumann on The Logan Bartlett Show
15 September 2023 | Link to podcast episode
Really candid episode where a founder Liz Zalman, and her investor Jerry Neumann discuss the challenges of being a startup founder, fundraising and venture capital from their distinct perspectives, as a founder and as a VC. Liz doesnt hold anything back, talking abt her investors who dont get into the nitty gritties with her, or dont really come prepared to board meetings, …
Podcast: Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Footwork Ventures, on 20VC w Harry Stebbings
6 September 2023 | Link to podcast
Enjoyed this wide-ranging chat between Nikhil (NBT) and Harry Stebbings. Having enjoyed Nikhil’s writing previously, this was a concentrated dose of NBT that I was happy to have. What stood out for me from the convo – his perspectives on how he prioritises traction (or early signs of PMF) over the market when it comes to picking, how he tries to avoid getting …
Podcast Transcript: Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures, on Venture Unlocked w Samir Kaji
Link to podcast | 30 August, 2023
If you are a GP or an aspiring GP (or even just a venture nerd) you will enjoy this podcast episode. There was so much I learnt from this one; a lot of it being very tactical advice around fundraising from LPs, such as on how to segment the LP market, how to construct your top of funnel, and ensuring that your discussions …
Podcast Transcript: Sheel Mohnot, Better Tomorrow Ventures, on 20VC w Harry Stebbings
14th July 2023 | Link to podcast
Good fun chat between fintech investor Sheel Mohnot, also one of the more colourful personalities on startup twitter, and 20VC host Harry Stebbings. Sheel is forthright with his takes and perspectives covering topics such as why he thinks there is no right way in venture (many paths work per him), why the venture industry would be better off with reduced fund sizes …
Podcast Transcript: Rob Go, NextView Ventures on 20VC w Harry Stebbings
23 June 2023 | Podcast Link
Rob Go is a co-founder and Partner at NextView, investors in Attentive, Devoted Health, Whoop etc. Before co-founding NextView, Rob was a VC at Spark Capital and a PM at ebay.
This is a terrific podcast giving you the inner mechanics and dynamics of raising a venture fund. It goes behind the scenes of what it is to raise a VC fund from LPs …
Interview Transcript: Christina Cacioppo, Vanta & Andrew Reed, Sequoia – ‘Zero to One: From Idea to Product’ | Slush 2021
Link to interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=545HHo4Z79U 1-2 Dec 2021
This is an edited transcript of an onstage chat between Christina Cacioppo, founder & CEO of Vanta, and Andrew Reed from Sequoia, who led the Series A into Vanta. Covers a bunch of useful themes around product-market fit (PMF) and early phase of launching, including how they worked with design partners and didn’t start coding till they saw strong resonance with the MVP …
PMF Convo #12 – Shreya Mishra, SolarSquare, prev Flyrobe
Shreya Mishra now runs SolarSquare, a B2C rooftop solar panel installation company. Our conversation however was around her previous startup, Flyrobe, which was a fashion rental startup that however struggled to find product market fit or PMF. Flyrobe was a company we tracked closely, as it competed closely with a Blume portfolio company, Stage3. Both struggled to find PMF, and have now been acquired.
In our convo, Shreya talks about …
PMF Convo #11 – Abhishek Kejriwal, Kutumb
I first heard of Kutumb when their monster Series A was announced sometime in June’21 (about two years ago). Consumer social apps weren’t our strong suit then at Blume, and we hadn’t tracked the team actively, even though an ex-colleague had shared this as a potential opportunity with us. In recent times, I started hearing about Abhishek Kejriwal, the cofounder and CEO of Kutumb, from multiple sources, as someone with …
PMF Convo #10 – Prukalpa Sankar, Atlan
Prukalpa was one of the first founders I thought of speaking to, when I conceived this series of talks. She was one of the few founders who had tweeted about PMF (Product Market Fit) and her take on it. I had also heard her speak on the topic, on an audio talk where we were fellow panelists. Nonetheless I hesitated, for I wanted to be better prepared for our conversation. …