When do startups begin to lose traction?
50% do not get to Round 2. 90% are gone by Round 3. In a report, CBInsights analyzed 1100 startups ( that raised seed rounds in 2008-2010) to answer exactly that question.
Why we do not focus on Sales?
If you are following the startup discourse on the net with many very knowledgeable founders and VCs and others weighing in for revenue, the primary obsession seems to be with funding. Yet anyone who has raised and spent knows that money in the bank runs out at some point unless it is backed by revenue.
Using Quora to promote your Startup
You are the founder of a novel new Startup. What is the best way to get the word around. Because you need to be visible and known. Of course you can spend investors money (or your own) run PPC ads, buy booths in conferences etc. But what if you do not have a lot of cash? Content marketing could be your answer. Hubspot has championed this idea and branded this as Inbound to great success. Where does one get started?
How did Unicorns look like as startups?
This is a question that comes up often and Ali Tamaseb, partner DCVC, spent 300 hours analyzing public data, talking to founders and combing through Crunchbase and PitchBook on exaclty this topic .
When Netflix started up
Startup stories, specially of the big ubiquitous brands like Netflix it makes for a great read. Co-Founder and first CEO Marc Randolph wrote ‘That Will Never Work’ – the behind the scenes account beyond the popular legend that Reed Hastings founded Netflix after Blockbuster charged him a $40 late fee.
Pivot
Sometimes it is the only plausible way to make it. Everyone knows the Slack story – Slack is the outcome of a Pivot the team headed by Stewart Butterfield made while trying to develop a successful video game titled ‘Glitch’.
4 point formula to get attention from a VC
Girish Mathrubootham is the Poster Child of VC funded Indian SaaS industry. He raised $400m from marque investors like Sequoia, Accel, Google and Tiger Global. SaaSBooMi, the Asian Saas meet for founders is, well, booming. This year it is slated for 24 & 25 Jan and yours truly will be there (thanks to Suresh Sambandam, CEO Kissflow).
The State of VC
A good place to start reflecting on the state of startups is to analyze the state of VC investments in 2019. As expected possibly the most succinct and comprehensive overview is available in this post by Tomasz Tunguz. The investment in quantum and the number of rounds have declined in Q4 – although it is possible that all deals have not been announced yet.
Who raised Series A?
YouTeam — Dev Teams Marketplace, a YC co. listed the VC’s making Series A investments and companies those garnered them. Seems like Biotech and Pharma are the largest beneficiaries (in terms of number of companies in top 25 – which is what they listed – as well as the $ raised). All data was sourced from Crunchbase.
Starting up in 2020
This is the last post on Startups in 2019 and what a wonderful journey it has been in sharing my learning s everyday for this entire year. So as you brace yourself for the next let me share a post from 2018 by Y Combinator where they listed areas of interest with their own RFS – Request for Startups. Y Combinator is in a unique position to see hundreds of ideas taking shape and the gaps that remain.
