Sajith Pai
Writings on VC, Tech & Culture
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Software needs to eat guns

October 3, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Miscellany No Comments Tags: Guns, Technology

Written a day after the Umpqua Community College shootings.

From whatever I have read about the U.S., there is virtually zero chance of rewriting the 2nd amendment.

We know Mike Bloomberg has plans. Sure Bloomberg is worth $37b and if he goes all out, it may make some impact. But I am really sceptical. Many Americans love their guns, and attitudes are unlikely to change soon. So what should …

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Why Don’t Indian VCs Write?

September 29, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Venture Capital / Startups No Comments Tags: Content Marketing, Startups, Venture Capital

Sometime in 2013, I restarted my dormant twitter account, treating it akin to a RSS reader, curating a mix of interesting people to follow and learn from. Some of these were writers, some politicians; others included philosophers, flaneurs and a few executives. Consistently I began to find that the most interesting tweets were from (Valley) VCs – Marc Andreessen, Benedict Evans, Paul Graham, Chris Sacca, Fred Wilson (NYC though) etc. …

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Understanding LinkedIn / A Rebuttal to Monday Note

September 24, 2015 By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Content, LinkedIn, Strategy

I love Monday Note. It is one of my favourite media + tech blogs (along with Benedict Evans and Stratechery). I like it so much that I even adopted the wordpress theme that they use, for this blog. Imagine my disappointment then, when I came across their recent article on Monday Note – lamenting LinkedIn’s failure to become a publishing major domo. The article clearly missed a few …

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A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes – Part II

September 19, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Higher Education, Online / Digital, Startups, Universities

In a previous post A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes I laid out EdTech investment themes into three buckets

  • Lifelong education
  • Unbundling of the university
  • Rethinking existing education business models in light of tech and mobile

In the post, I had shared that I would go into greater detail on bucket #3 in a future post, as to which of the various business models and processes could be rethought, and …

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We Got Into IIT / IIM, But Our Kids Won’t.

September 6, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Admission, IITs, Universities

Every once in a while, in parties, at coffee klatsches with friends, and in business meetings, I hear this line. It is typically said by those whose kids are in middle grade, all in premier schools, usually of the IB ilk. It is usually to the tune of “I got into IIT / IIM but my son / daughter is unlikely to”. Sometimes, it is followed up with a question, …

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Thoughts on the Future of the Degree

August 25, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Clayton Christensen, Degrees, Unbundling, Universities

I like to collect examples of college alternatives. I know this is unusual, given that most people like to collect coins, or matchbox labels, but I do think college alternatives are fascinating things.

College alternatives are educational programmes, typically a year or even two years long, which provide real-life learning through a mix of vocational classes and hands-on learning via internships, leading to a career pathway, almost always in tech. …

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A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes

August 15, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Business Models, Startups

EdTech funding is hitting record levels, never seen before. A recent report by Ambient Research put edtech funding for H1’15 at $2.5b (in contrast to $2.4b funding for the whole of 2014).

In India we haven’t seen the kind of frenzy around edtech funding we have seen in China. 8 Chinese companies saw funding of $50m+ in the first half of 2015. These 8 companies raised more money than all …

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What Should Pearson Buy?

August 2, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Acquisitions, Pearson, Valuation

An open letter to John Fallon, Chief Executive of Pearson Plc

Dear John

For the nth time, congratulations on the sale of FT to Nikkei for £825m ($1,288m).

Everybody says £844m, but you and I know that with FT Group’s £19m in the bank, the funds you have got from Japan are a tad lower at £825m. Still that is a bucketload of money. And with The Economist Group’s 50% …

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Why Nikkei Paid $1.3b for FT

August 2, 2015 By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Circulation Revenue, Financial Times, Valuation

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

As you would all know by now, Pearson sold the FT Group yesterday to Nikkei for US$1.3b. The FT Group includes FT, some magazines such as Banker, Investor’s Chronicle, a 50% stake in Russian Biz Paper Vedomosti, an-EIU type co called Medley Global Advisors etc.

The valuation, at ~35X the adjusted operating income of $37m (on rev of $559m for 2014) is amongst …

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The Race to Build the Web’s Annotation Layer

August 2, 2015 By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Annotation

My recent post for INMA’s Tech Trends blog looks at attempts to build an annotation layer to the web, led by the likes of Genius, Declara, Hypothesis etc. Annotation services can be enormously useful to readers, in providing context and meaning around an article or even a phrase in the article. But there is also a risk that annotation services could strip out all that intelligence, gathered from multiple websites, …

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