Lulu Cheng Meservey is the founder of Rostra, the ‘PR’ firm du jour, and the high priestess of the ‘go direct’ movement, where founders are encouraged to front the message about their co to the world, instead of relying on internal or external PR teams to front their point of view. I first came across Lulu on Twitter when Dwarkesh Patel thanked her for connecting him to Daniel Yergin…
Link to podcast and transcript, organised by Venture Unlocked. The podcast was published 26 September 2024.
Saga Ventures raised $125m for their first fund. In this episode, the three cofounders and Partners, Ben Braverman (ex Flexport), Thomson Nguyen (Square), and Max Altman (Alt Capital) talk to host Samir Kaji on their fundraise, and the experience of raising in a tight fundraising market.
What I found interesting –
As part of the PMF Convo series, I recently spoke to Srikrishnan Ganesan, cofounder and CEO of Rocketlane, a SaaS startup that sells software for better customer onboarding, implementation, and professional services automation. In June ’24, Rocketlane raised a $24m Series B co-led by 8VC, Z47, and Nexus Ventures on the back of strong market momentum in the U.S. market. This was on the back of an $18m …
I recently spoke to Mohit Kumar, cofounder and CEO, Ultrahuman, a fast-growing consumer health startup, as part of my PMF Convo series, where I speak to founders, operators, VCs who have struggled with PMF (product-market fit) successfully, or unsuccessfully, with the startups they have founded or worked with (or work at).
Ultrahuman sells such devices as the Ring Air, a sleep tracking wearable; M1, a continuous glucose monitoring …
Mel Goldman has a central role to play in the origin of India’s now flourishing venture industry. In the late ‘80s, as the World Bank officer in charge of the Industrial Technology Development Project, he identified four local partner institutions (who thus became venture capital firms) for loans, earmarked for the specific purpose of these institutions providing venture capital in turn to innovative Indian ‘startups’. From this initiative, the seeds …
If you are a founder and get a pass from a VC who cites low TAM (Total Addressable Market) as a reason for passing, then be rest assured that in nine out of ten cases, that is not the real reason. The real …
Every other week, I get at least one, sometimes two, introductions or inbounds from senior corporate leaders wanting to ‘pick my brain’ around startups / venture, or wanting to have ‘open-ended conversations’. Not all of these are around exploring job opportunities, though about half are. The rest are split between offering advisory (to startups) and investing in them, or both.
I can understand the motivation for this. Startups are an …
So, two new products launched last week. One was Airchat. But this isn’t about that. This post is the about the second one, First Round’s PMF Method! It is essentially a framework, and a program for founders. The framework helps B2B companies with a top-down motion systematically work towards product-market fit (PMF hereafter). They opened up the framework in a post (and in a Lenny’s podcast episode) but much …
Strategy is amongst the most ill-used terms in business. Its ill-use is, if anything, even more pronounced in the startup world. There are multiple reasons for that. This essay won’t cover those reasons; that is for another time. Instead, this essay will suggest a universal definition for strategy, and relate it to the startup landscape. I will also share how strategy interacts with the concept of culture, another ill-used term. …
Link to podcast. Link to transcript (organised by me). 1st November 2023.
Sajith: Mamoon Hamid covers the turnaround at Kleiner Perkins which drifted off course from the mid-2000s to the latter part of last decade, as it bloated into a multi-geography, multistage firm. He came in early 2018, and along with Ilya Fushman, reworked the firm into a smaller, focused firm, recalling its roots and origins, and its past …