In my latest PMF Convo interview, I spoke to Romita Mazumdar, founder & CEO of beauty products co Foxtale. Romita is a VC analyst turned founder, who started Foxtale during the COVID-19 pandemic, speaking to 900+ women and 100+ brands to figure out the specific sub-problem she wanted to attack in the beauty space. Her earned insight was that Indian customers want instant gratification, and efficacy, and she designed …
Startups
Podcast Notes & Thoughts: Lulu Meservey on Colossus’ Invest Like The Best
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…
PMF Convo #18 – Srikrishnan Ganesan, Rocketlane
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 …
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 …
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 …
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: Alexis Ohanian, 776, on the Turpentine VC podcast w Erik Torenburg
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 …
PMF Convo #16 – Shubham Goel, Affinity
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 …
PMF Convo #15 – Ranjeet Singh, Pratilipi
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. …