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 …
Venture Capital / Startups
PMF Convo #17 – Mohit Kumar, Ultrahuman
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 …
Oral History: Mel Goldman, Indian Venture Pioneer
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 …
TAM: Notes & Thoughts
Reflections on Total Addressable Market (TAM); why TAM doesn’t matter but thinking about it matters.
TAM is the carpet under which the lazy VC buries his no’s.
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 …
How senior corporate executives exploring roles in venture or startups, should approach them
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 …
Notes & Thoughts on First Round Capital’s PMF Method
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 …
Reflections on Strategy
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. …
Podcast Notes + Transcript: Mamoon Hamid, Kleiner Perkins, on Venture Unlocked, w Samir Kaji
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 …
Interview Thoughts & Notes: Ben Sun, Primary Venture Partners, by Mario Gabriele, Generalist
March ‘24 | Link to the interview is here.
Sajith: Very interesting interview of Primary’s Ben Sun by Mario Gabriele. NYC has such a lot of interesting venture funds (Thrive, USV, Firstmark etc.) and clearly Primary is one of them. All of these evolved and developed their secret sauce to compete with Bay Area funds, and hence you see some interesting differentiators with each. With Primary, it is clearly …
Podcast Notes + Transcript: Chris Farmer, SignalFire, on Venture Unlocked, w Samir Kaji
Link to podcast. Link to transcript (organised by me). 27th September 2023
Sajith: Fascinating glimpse into an unusually-designed venture firm, structured like a company more than a fund, and one that is designed to look at sourcing and support not like the traditional venture fund, but more via analysing datasets and extracting signals from them, to both find (source), and then mind (support) these companies. Think Bridgewater but …