Of late, I have been thinking of a concept I call the Congruent Square (or Rhombus for the math-purist) to better explain to founders why some of them are struggling with hitting product market fit (PMF).
Congruent Square says there has be a broad alignment / congruency in the product you are taking to market, the team that is taking it there, the consumers / market …
Two discussions, one with a founder, and another with an experienced operator, both around the definition of product-market fit (PMF) encouraged me to write this post.
Product-market fit (hereafter PMF) is seen variously as the ‘holy grail’ for startups (Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund) to the ‘only thing that matters (Marc Andreessen) to ““arguably the most critical milestone for a startup” (Jill Soley & Todd Wilms, …
An innocent google query around the origins of the term ‘product-market fit’ sent me down the internet rabbit hole a few nights back.
‘Product-market fit’ (or PMF hereafter) is a seminal concept in startupland. It is considered as a turning point in the life journey of every successful startup, and not being able to achieve PMF is considered the leading cause of failure (see here and here).
The term …
A twitter theme I have noticed of late in Valley VC tweets is the self-deprecating VC tweet, where VCs make fun of themselves, for wearing Patagonia vests (!), or spouting philosophy, or the way they interact with founders.
Take these two tweets.
Thoughts and reflections inspired by the frenzied pace of investing and dealmaking we are seeing in the early stage in India, and specifically the trend of traditionally later stage investors playing early.
All money in venture capital is not similar. We can distinguish between
I read a 2009 book by journalist Stacy Perman on cult burger brand In-N-Out Burger. It is an enjoyable read. I shared a brief review of the book + what I found interesting from the book on LinkedIn as an article and Twitter as a tweet thread. I broadly lump what I find interesting into three buckets – car commerce, food tech and finally, franchising as the accompanying …
One of the startups I lead, and manage, Classplus, has been on fire of late. It is seeing a lot of customer and investor love. I wrote out a tweet thread, to explain, their secret sauce; at the heart of which is an obsession with customer feedback, and ensuring everyone in the company is continuously talking to customers. Later, as the tweet got popular, I converted the thread into …
“There are two ways to make money in business: You can unbundle, or you can bundle.” – Jim Barksdale, cofounder of Netscape
As frameworks for identifying opportunities in startupland go, unbundling / (re)bundling is amongst the most seminal ones out there. Here is an example of how it works.
Visualize a product that helps you read (for a fee) any magazine / newspaper story – effectively you have unbundled or …
“Early stage valuations aren’t really valuations. They are the exhaust fumes of a negotiation about two things – the amount raised and the amount of dilution.” – Fred Wilson; source.
“Those guys are morons,” says Palihapitiya of many value investors. The historic way of determining value by looking at balance sheets and discounted cash flow no longer works, he asserts. “Today, when money has no value, because we’ve essentially …
The title of this piece is of course a play on The Peace of Westphalia, the name for the two treaties signed in 1648 between various delegations representing the micronations and provinces of Europe. The Peace of Westphalia brought into being the concept of the sovereign nation state. One that has a monopoly on state violence and …