What I read and found interesting this month, along with my thoughts on them.
Nakul Mandan, Audacious Ventures, on Venture Unlocked w Samir Kaji
I thought it was an excellent episode for us venture nerds. Any one who finds the craft of venture (or even strategy in general) will find this podcast interesting, given it covers …
I recently heard about a partner at one of Silicon Valley’s top venture funds, yes one in the absolute inner ring, who refuses to fund a solo founder. The following anecdote was shared with me by a mutual. The Partner was sitting on the fence when it came to a solo founder, and persuading him to commit to taking a cofounder. The solo …
This is over 20k words long! Feel free to print or download to your Remarkable / Daylight / Kindle Scribe / iPad for easier reading.
About this essay: This is the second chapter of a book I am writing on Product Market Fit or PMF (The first chapter is here). This chapter, The Pick, is about how to pick or select your startup idea / problem to …
This is about 13k words long! Feel free to print or download it to your Remarkable / Kindle Scribe / iPad for easier reading.
About this essay: This is the first chapter of a book I am writing on Product Market Fit or PMF. This chapter, Understanding PMF, starts out by setting context for why PMF matters to early stage startups. It then lays out a definition for …
What I read and found interesting this month, along with my thoughts on them.
The above is the result of the prompt “For these episode links (shared), can you extract their cover art and article covers, and give me a mock layout of their cover art with their titles for use as a composite LinkedIn banner that unifies these diverse podcast and article covers. Do not invent anything that is …
What I read and found interesting of late. For those curious abt the title, the word ‘Interleavings’ comes from publishing. Interleaved books are those sold with blank pages inserted between printed pages so as to facilitate note-taking. This was a common practice in the 16th and 17th century, but has disappeared now. Thus my term ‘Interleavings’ for my notes and thoughts on the digital texts I enjoyed reading. Here are …
This is a transcript of an AMA I did on 7 May ‘25, for the SeedToScale team (part of Accel India, runs seedtoscale.com). It was themed around unpacking the Indus Valley Report 2025 but it did go beyond the same. I have edited it mildly to make it more readable. If you see SPW, remember it stands for Sajith Pai’s Words. I have used SPW wherever I have added …
I thought the following passage from Victor Lazarte, Benchmark’s newest partner (on the Venture Unlocked podcast) was fascinating.
…“So you’re not going to come in and like, just have this crazy insight. So the way we add value is, like, every week you’re doing, frankly, like, part of it is this boring work that other people could do. Like you’re closing candidates, having conversations with this candidate, explaining to
What I read and found interesting of late. The title ‘Interleavings’ comes from publishing. Interleaved books are those sold with blank pages inserted between printed pages so as to facilitate note-taking. This was a common practice in the 16th and 17th century, but has disappeared now. Thus my term ‘Interleavings’ for my notes and thoughts on the digital texts I enjoyed reading. Here are my interleavings from the recent past.…
In my role as an early stage VC, I often get asked by aspiring founders for my reactions to, and feedback on, their startup ideas. This article is borne out of the learnings from those interactions, and is written to be helpful to any aspiring founder, who is figuring out their startup idea.
For founders who are in the process of honing in on their startup idea, it is worth …