During my recent India trip, a question I got asked repeatedly by both founders & investors was, “What are you seeing as the main differences between the AI ecosystem in the Valley vs India?”.
I currently see 2 main differences:
1/ Exposure (& therefore, Ambition)
AI founders in the Valley seem to have significantly more direct exposure to the work happening at the frontier. And not just in terms of the foundational technology, but also what battles the incumbents are taking on, how workflows are being iterated on, what lean, full-stack startup teams are doing to be able to generate significant product velocity & revenue, and how customers are thinking & allocating resources.
Essentially, they have the advantage of directly drinking from the Bay Area fountain of knowledge & information, spread primarily via networks.
A direct consequence of more exposure is that it uplevels the ambition of Valley AI founders and organically pushes them to raise the bar for execution within the company. Thus leading to sharper thinking, more courageous bets, and faster execution that all put together, improves the odds of a large outcome.
2/ Story-telling
I see that while AI founders in both the Valley and India are picking very similar problem statements to work on, the storytelling around the same use cases in the Valley is significantly superior.
I guess one reason is that operating directly in the target market (vs being a few degrees of freedom away from it) makes it much easier to get higher-quality early validation signals, making the story much more believable.
Also, AI founders in the Valley tend to emerge from the leading-edge companies of the last mobile/ cloud/ SaaS cycles. So they have a much better intuitive understanding of how to position & message the company in the early days to customers, investors & key hires.
Story-telling becomes even more important as how the AI landscape will evolve in specific market segments & verticals remains highly fuzzy.
So, what can India-based AI founders do to bridge these 2 gaps? Here are a few actionable things:
1/ Do extended sprints in the Bay Area regularly to drink from the same fountain.
2/ Surround yourself with Bay Area-based operators, angels & advisors (even remote is ok to begin with) who can regularly feed this knowledge & intel and, more importantly, help uplevel your thinking & ambition.
3/ Follow a conscious 0-to-1 strategy of only building for US design partners, so your product is held to the same bar as those from Valley startups.
4/ Specific suggestion for VCs – mine your network of LPs, Advisors & Portcos to hold regular AI knowledge sharing sessions with leaders of marquee AI-native companies that are building on the frontier in the Bay Area.
