Saw a post about how YC has been backing fewer India-based startups than before. I guess Antler, South Park Commons, and Entrepreneurs First are attempting to fill this gap to some extent.
With YC, the issue is that the quality and volume of AI founder talent in the Valley is so high right now that it doesn’t make sense to look outside.
Also, on a risk-adjusted basis, it’s unclear how India-based founders without global GTM experience/ networks will win against global competitors, especially given the rapid pace of AI evolution.
Personally, in addition to backing Indian diaspora founders in the Valley, am also tracking India-based founders who have specific product/ GTM/ verticalized superpowers and are hacking early US/global GTM in interesting ways.
For eg., am seeing a few India-based founders getting to $500k-$1Mn ARR with solid US logos by doing back-and-forth on B1/B2 visas. A few others are leveraging channel partner-based GTM cutting across multiple geos. In areas of deeptech’ish software/ hardware+software plays, the product itself tends to be fairly differentiated and sees relatively less competition from typical Valley/ YC companies, especially when you account for competitive pricing/ more value/ white-glove service/ rapid speed of iteration from India-based startups.
Interesting times!
