Konark Singhal cofounded MockBank, an edtech co that provided test prep for government exams. The startup saw some initial traction and were able to raise a small preseed round, but struggled to grow and scale. Eventually, the co was acquired by a well-funded competitor, and Konark exited MockBank to found and run Mountblue, a profitable bootstrapped coding bootcamp play. In our chat, Konark talks about his definition of PMF (effortless …
Venture Capital
PMF Convo #8 – Prashant Singh, Jar
Prashant Singh is one of the most original thinkers I know in the Indian startup ecosystem. An ideal career for him would have been writing fiction, but he is, disappointingly for fiction readers, delightfully for us in the startup world, now golden handcuffed to product management! I think of him as a Product Manager’s Product Manager; conversations with him always lead to interesting insights and perspectives, a different take on …
Podcast Highlights: Marc Andreessen, a16z, on The Lunar Society Podcast
Link to podcast + transcript. 1 February 2023.
Venture is our craft and Marc Andreessen is one of its shokunins. So when the Shokunin speaks, you stop everything and listen, or in my case, read (the transcript). Dwarkesh Patel asks some very good questions to PMarca in this wonderful podcast. I particularly enjoyed reading PMarca’s riff on managerial capitalism vs bourgeois capitalism, and venture as the managerial firm that …
Podcast Highlights: Eddy Chan, Intudo Ventures on ‘Venture Unlocked’
Link to podcast. Published 3 February 2023.
I found it an interesting listen given Intudo is the leading local VC of Indonesia; a la Aleph for Israel, and I daresay Blume for India:) Hence I was curious to learn more about them. I found the following utterly fascinating – their concentrated deployment strategy (only 26 cheques in six years of existence), their sourcing strategy (actively engage with and woo …
PMF Convo #7 – Vasanth Kamath, smallcase
Vasanth Kamath and the smallcase team have been very intentional, deliberate operators building a well-crafted and thought-through product in smallcase. The use of lower case alphabet is deliberate (again that word!) as Vasanth and the team want everyone to think of smallcases as a common noun (like mutual funds) and not a proper noun; which of course is the opposite of how a Xerox or traditional marketer thinks! In …
The Three (or More) Products Founders Have to Keep in Mind
There is not one but as many as three (or more) products that founders need to keep in mind, and keep evolving, while they build their startup.
The first product is well understood; this is the one aimed at users / customers, consisting of all of the surface edges of the startup that come into contact with the users, in order to solve the user’s problems. The desire to create …
PMF Convo #6 – Asad Khan, LambdaTest
This was one of the first interviews I conducted, as part of the research for my book on product market fit (PMF here onwards). Asad is cofounder & CEO, LambdaTest, building one of the most technically innovative India startups. As Satya Nadella recently put it after meeting Asad: “LambdaTest is doing for test automation what Kubernetes did for container orchestration – creating that next level of efficiency around test automation …
PMF Convo #5 – Pulkit Agrawal, Chameleon
I first heard of Chameleon, which helps SaaS companies improve their product adoption processes and practices, from Sheel Mohnot when I was interviewing him for our PMF Convo. In our convo, Sheel mentioned this company that took six years from their Seed to Series A raise. I was intrigued and asked Sheel for a connect to Pulkit Agrawal, the founder & CEO of Chameleon. I had a …
PMF Convo #4 – Nishchay A G, Jar
I interviewed Nishchay A G, the cofounder of Jar, recently, as part of the founder conversations I have been having, for my book on product market fit (PMF here onwards). Nishchay and Misbah, well-known in startup circles, and experienced operators, saw their fintech startup Jar hit escape velocity, thanks to a clever product and some compelling growth hacking. Nishchay also has a reputation for differentiated thinking in the Indian startup …
PMF Convo #3 – Sheel Mohnot, Better Tomorrow Ventures
This is interview #3 from the conversations I have been having with founders, funders and operators, as part of the research for my book on product market fit (PMF here onwards). This one is with Sheel Mohnot, and unlike the earlier two convos with founders (Anshuman Bapna and Chaitanya Ramalingegowda) this one is with a funder, a VC, Sheel Mohnot, who is fairly infamous on twitter:) Follow …