Ranjeet is one of the more interesting figures in Indian startup twitter. I have, for long, enjoyed his tweets and thoughts on the challenges and learnings from building a content platform in India, Pratilipi; one that paved the way for a wave of vernacular language apps to inspire and follow and expand the market. Hence, I was excited to get him aboard for a PMF Convo. And he didn’t disappoint. …
PMF Convos
All PMF Convo posts appear here.
PMF Convo #14 – Vinay Hiremath, Loom
Vinay Hiremath is the first tech leader I have had a chance to interview through all these episodes of PMF Convo. Vinay and I were connected by Jai Relan, an impressive young builder / hustler who is presently an Associate at The Council Fund. Now, I have always been curious as to how tech looks at PMF (product-market fit), and this talk did help in getting that perspective. Now, …
PMF Convo #13 – Arindam Paul, Atomberg
Arindam Paul has emerged as one of the most insightful marketing voices from the Indian startup ecosystem over the past few years. His practical posts and threads on various aspects of marketing and growth are chock full of advice for founders and operators covering diverse topics such as brand marketing for D2C brands, advertising strategies for Amazon marketplace vs Flipkart etc.
Arindam joined Atomberg Tech in 2015 as one of …
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. …
What is PMF? Learnings from 10 Interviews.
I have been interviewing founders, operators, and investors on their perspectives on product-market fit (PMF hereafter) over the past few months, as part of research for the book I am writing on this topic. I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of the first ten interviews and review the definitions of PMF that have emerged. Thus, this essay where I tease out common strands and themes …
PMF Convo #9 – Konark Singhal, Mountblue, ex-Mockbank
Konark Singhal cofounded MockBank, an edtech co that provided test prep for government exams. The startup saw some initial traction and were able to raise a small preseed round, but struggled to grow and scale. Eventually, the co was acquired by a well-funded competitor, and Konark exited MockBank to found and run Mountblue, a profitable bootstrapped coding bootcamp play. In our chat, Konark talks about his definition of PMF (effortless …
PMF Convo #8 – Prashant Singh, Jar
Prashant Singh is one of the most original thinkers I know in the Indian startup ecosystem. An ideal career for him would have been writing fiction, but he is, disappointingly for fiction readers, delightfully for us in the startup world, now golden handcuffed to product management! I think of him as a Product Manager’s Product Manager; conversations with him always lead to interesting insights and perspectives, a different take on …
PMF Convo #7 – Vasanth Kamath, smallcase
Vasanth Kamath and the smallcase team have been very intentional, deliberate operators building a well-crafted and thought-through product in smallcase. The use of lower case alphabet is deliberate (again that word!) as Vasanth and the team want everyone to think of smallcases as a common noun (like mutual funds) and not a proper noun; which of course is the opposite of how a Xerox or traditional marketer thinks! In …
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