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.
Venture Capital
Nailing Capital v Scaling Capital
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.
Two, or maybe three types of capital
All money in venture capital is not similar. We can distinguish between
- Nailing Capital: money required to get you to nail your product proposition + GTM (Go To Market) approach and
‘Exhaust Fumes’, or, Understanding Startup Valuations
“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 …
How founders should think about product-market fit
Product Market Fit or PMF is amongst the most discussed and evergreen startup topics. Popularised by Marc Andreessen in a celebrated post titled ‘The Only Thing That Matters’, PMF has become a keen topic of study and analysis in the startup community. Not a year or a quarter passes by without a celebrated article or twitter thread offering a new take or slant on it. After all PMF …
I joined Amit Varma on ‘The Seen & The Unseen’ podcast
I joined Amit Varma on his acclaimed The Seen & The Unseen podcast to talk about venture valuations, the VC playbook, the evolving media sector, my productivity hacks + stack, and lots more.
It is long podcast (Amit’s signature style) but certainly the most interesting + important one I have done. Do give it a listen! Link below. (The wonderful illustration that appears on the Seen Unseen page is by …
The Indus Valley Playbook
In this long essay, in fact my longest ever at ~7k words, I set out the evolution of the Indian startup ecosystem, or ‘Indus Valley’, as well as the distinct set of hacks and business models that have evolved to help Indian startups win, which I term as the Indus Valley playbook.
The essay has three sections
- Origin and evolution of the India startup ecosystem or Indus Valley as I
The 3 Jobs of a Startup CEO
TL;DR: There are 3 core jobs of a founder-CEO in a Series A+ startup. They are prioritization, hiring and fundraising; in that order. Communicating, meetings or reviews which is how the founder-CEO spends her time, are only enablers of the above jobs. They should not be confused with the 3 core jobs. The article below unpacks these 3 jobs at length. As always feedback and criticism welcome, and I would …
Does alma matter?
I saw this tweet recently from Anmol Maini, a keen observer of the Indian startup scene.
It is yes, funny.
Is it right? Hmm….I must confess the joke has a point, but I am not sure it is …
So, what kind of a venture investor are you?
A frequent question that comes up in VC (venture capitalist) interviews / podcasts is around how VCs decide on investments, or rather, how they evaluate a startup or pitch.
The inevitable answer to that is that you quickly determine how the startup stacks up on three broad criteria: the team, or the quality of the founders, then the product or tech being used here, and finally the market or the …
Singular, social and streamed. Welcome to a post-Covid world!
This article was first published in the Sunday Times of India, 22nd March, 2020.
I work in an early stage venture fund. As the Covid-19 crisis took hold, we reached out to our portfolio to check on how the virus was impacting them. We saw an interesting pattern emerge. Naturally, purely digital businesses, the ones that move ‘bits’ around, were doing well, such as edtech or content plays. But …