Dear founder #8: moving fast, intellectual honesty, and tapping into the “unknown unknowns”
- By ssyc1
- June 26, 2020
- No Comments
As investors, we enjoy many of our discussions and interactions with founders – probably a good thing – and often gain much happiness (even excitement) when, after “following” founders and … Continue Reading
Dear Founder #7: Thinking global from day 1
- By ssyc1
- May 1, 2020
- No Comments
One of the happy things in my day-to-day life is that we are increasingly seeing founders who are thinking global from day 1. Substantive thoughts about building a “global” company … Continue Reading
Dear Founder #5: Managing growth pains – 8 alignment tools to manage complexity
- By ssyc1
- February 24, 2020
- No Comments
Anyone who has worked at large organisations will know what organizational inertia feels like. There was once this much-read corporate tome titled “Can elephants dance?” (written by the then CEO … Continue Reading
Dear founder #4: not all revenues are created equal
- By ssyc1
- June 5, 2019
- No Comments
[A note from 5 Oct 2019: “gross margins” and “sustainable revenues” has become talk of tech town this past week, and a big-name Silicon Valley VC has made a similar … Continue Reading
The Power of the Power Law, “super-stars”, and moving the returns curve “to the right”!
- By ssyc1
- February 21, 2019
- No Comments
I finally get to jot down some of my thoughts here about the “power law”, and more specifically the “power of the power law” …. I. The phenomenon of superstars OK, … Continue Reading
Nuts and bolts #3: your financial model and your understanding of your business, your market and your customers, and your value drivers
- By ssyc1
- February 11, 2019
- No Comments
Dear founder. This is a letter to all you founders who are preparing a financial model for your Series A or even Series B round. First, may I congratulate for … Continue Reading
Great founding teams – a revisit
- By ssyc1
- December 24, 2018
- No Comments
[An earlier version of this post was titled “Builders of the world, design and surf once in a while!”] As 2018 draws to a close, we reflect on how we … Continue Reading
Nuts and bolts #2: 9 delightful things about product-market fit
- By ssyc1
- September 24, 2018
- No Comments
A lot of ink has been spilled on “product market fit” but we are still very often answering Qs about this and so we are going to jot down a … Continue Reading
Being long on innovation – part 2: Thriving under the shadows of giants
- By ssyc1
- September 14, 2018
- No Comments
[Addition on 24 Oct: adding a link to an a16z blog-post published not long after on the same topic highlighted in point 5 below, that selling in the early stages … Continue Reading
Dear founder #3: building strong and weather-proof companies
- By ssyc1
- January 15, 2018
- No Comments
We invest to support companies building for the long term and so we are very interested in founders who want to build long-lasting and strong companies irrespective of the state … Continue Reading