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 …
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 …
Link to podcast page, with audio + rough transcript. Link to transcript (organised by me; not finely edited). 22nd December 2023.
Sajith: Fun, fascinating episode giving a glimpse of one of the most unusual and inspiring GP (General Partner) journeys, immigrating near penniless from Iran to Germany to USA, and then moving from a rug salesman to starting a leading preseed / seed fund in Pear Ventures. The anecdote …
Link to podcast page and audio. Link to transcript (organised by me; not finely edited). 9th January 2024.
Sajith Pai: 776 is a differentiated VC fund in that it approaches venture from the perspective of a tech company, building and deploying tools that are usually found more in the portfolio companies of VCs than VC funds themselves. They have a platform they call Cerebro, which is the operating software …
There are 3 parts to this essay, a longer one on what I enjoyed reading (across books and podcast transcripts) this year, as well two shorter ones on what I enjoyed listening (music) and watching (web series).
Book reading is a competitive sport for some. Some want to read 52 books, one for every week. Some are more ambitious, going for 100 books. There was a time when I …
A question I get asked all the time, in emails or social DMs or in person sometimes, is about how to break into VC or Venture Capital. After all it is seen as a desirable, glamorous job (this isn’t strictly true), and given the few slots, intense demand, and limited public information (though this is changing fast, especially if you know where to look), aspiring candidates do not have too …
Shubham cofounded Affinity along with his Stanford collegemate (and roommate), Ray Zhou, in ‘15 when they were still students. Since then they have built it into a ‘late eight figures’ ($ m) revenue business in the crowded CRM category. They have a strong foothold in the investor community, or indeed any sector where relationships are the key source of revenue. In our convo, Shubham speaks about Affinity hit product market …
Link to podcast + transcript | 5 December 2023
Enjoyable rambling podcast covering a range of Charlie Munger’s interests including architecture, politics, why having more kids at a younger age makes you happier, and of course finance and business models.
A few themes which stood out to me with my thoughts on them, and excerpts from the podcast episode below.
It is not easy …
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. …
Link to podcast + transcript.
Sajith: Peter Attia is a well-known longevity and wellness guru; has a popular podcast The Drive, covering these topics. Recently, he published Outlive, a how to book giving advice on living to 100+ years. The podcast gives you a quick overview of his thinking and perspectives on this topic. Some excellent advice here that can be readily implemented including 1) the importance of primary …