For emerging managers running smaller, early-stage funds, the biggest challenge with effectively deploying reserves is a lack of access to adequate & updated information on how the business is *really* doing.
Series A & beyond firms have well-defined information rights and get data from the company on a regular cadence via board meetings, monthly update calls, or investor update emails.
As micro-funds writing $100-500K checks into pre-seed & seed rounds (often on SAFEs), we are at the mercy of the founder in terms of what they choose to share with us.
Even if one works hard to build a relationship with the founder via adding value, the real underlying health of the business still gets communicated either extremely passively (via intermittent emails) or in person with a significant lag (say, a lunch or dinner every 6 months, which is like dog years in today’s tech cycle).
So even if an emerging manager would love to double down on likely winners (& it also makes sense from a portfolio construction perspective), I question their ability to effectively underwrite follow-on rounds under these constraints.
In this scenario, it ends up being either blindly following an external signal (“Tier 1 VC is doing the round, so it must be a good company”) or a gut (emotional?) call on the founder/ market (“I just love this founder and believe they will build an amazing company”).
Neither of these is an analytically rigorous way of deploying follow-on dollars.
Perhaps for emerging managers running smaller pre-seed/seed firms, the optimal answer is what Dave McClure had suggested some time back:
(1) Take as many shots on goal as possible with the 1st check, buying as much ownership as possible & at the lowest price possible.
(2) Instead of reserves, do one-off SPVs in significantly de-risked follow-on rounds (Series B & beyond).
PS: Benjamin Narasin of Tenacity recently shared some great insights around portfolio construction on an episode of the Team Ignite Ventures podcast.
After spending more than 2 decades in venture, here’s Ben’s portfolio construction:
With AI disrupting middle-management roles, many professionals in their late 30s to 50s will need to reinvent themselves.
Anecdotally, in the Bay Area, Iâm seeing middle managersâparticularly at the Director levelâdisproportionately affected by recent layoffs at large tech companies.
The precedent was set by Meta in 2022/23 when Zuckerberg openly questioned the need for multiple organizational layers, arguing they slowed execution. Many of Metaâs layoffs were aimed at flattening teams.
Likewise, Elon Musk and Jensen Huang are known for engaging directly with frontline employees, even interns, to unblock key challenges. Brian Cheskyâs “Founder Mode” philosophy echoes this approach, encouraging leaders to dive into details and manage execution at the ground level rather than delegating critical projects to layers of managers.
Now, AI is accelerating this shift. By supercharging individual contributorsâturning them into self-sufficient, full-stack execution engines across coding, marketing, and salesâAI is reshaping how Big Tech structures its workforce. As companies prioritize efficiency, the middle management layer may be on the verge of disappearing.
In the last mobile/cloud/SaaS cycle, middle managers served as the bridge between executive leadershipâs vision and frontline execution. However, as tech companies swelled due to ZIRP-driven capital excess, Directors and Senior Directorsâwhether intentionally or notâbecame bureaucratic bottlenecks.
With AI disrupting these roles, or at the very least redefining their purpose and required skillsets, many professionals in their late 30s to 50s will need to reinvent themselves. This could mean re-skilling or up-skilling to become AI-native knowledge workers, transitioning to different industries, or even leaving core tech altogether to apply their experience elsewhere.
This may sound extreme, but itâs exactly what Iâm observing in my circles.
Zoom pitches demand quick engagementâcapture attention in 60 seconds, use visuals wisely, and keep slides concise. Bring personality and storytelling to stand out.
More than half of the pitches I take as an investor happen on Zoom. I also frequently pitch to LPs on Zoom, so Iâve gathered plenty of experience here.
Over the years, Iâve realized that pitching effectively on Zoom is a completely different skill from pitching in person. In fact, I almost always nail in-person meetings, but Zoom can be hit or miss.
In-person meetings have a consistent energy and settingâstandard surroundings, small talk, and even table arrangements. Zoom, however, introduces external factors that can impact the experience: audio quality, lighting, background noise, AI note-takers, joining delays, screen interruptions, and even the lingering mood from a previous (probably also Zoom) meeting.
TL;DR:
Attention spans and patience are significantly lower on Zoom than in person. Participants lose interest and get irritated much faster.
While first impressions, body language, and icebreakers set the tone in an in-person meeting, on Zoom, you have 60 seconds to capture attention and pull your audience into your pitch.
If thatâs true, Zoom pitch meetings should be structured very differently. Hereâs what I recommend:
1. Open with Your Strongest Points
With only 60 seconds to grab attention, avoid meandering intros or generic company overviews. People tune out fast on Zoom. Instead, start with the three strongest parts of your pitch in the first 30 seconds.
â BORING: “Iâm the founder of… Weâre based in SF and started three years ago after identifying this opportunity while working at…”
â INTERESTING: “[COMPANY NAME] is [1-line description]. Weâre at $X ARR/N users, growing Y% week-over-week. Our team comes from [COMPANIES], and hereâs our unique insight: [1-line unique value prop].”
Walking through slides one by one makes Zoom meetings boring. It also reduces face-to-face engagement, shrinking participants to tiny squares above a massive slide. This makes it harder for investors to read facial expressions, passion, and conviction.
Instead, use slide sharing only when diving into specificsâmetrics, product visuals, or key data points. If a conversation naturally leads to deeper discussions, screen-sharing makes sense. And if someone asks for more details, thatâs a great signâtheyâre engaged.
3. Prioritize Stories Over Generic Narratives
Broad business narratives and jargon make Zoom meetings dull. Theyâre harder to internalize and, in the worst cases, cause brains to switch off entirely.
Instead, use specific, personalized stories to make your points.
Rather than saying âOur product saves companies X dollarsâ, share a real customer success story.
Show how one specific customer (name, picture, and all) used your product and what impact it had.
Investors remember compelling stories more than numbers and percentages.
4. Leverage Visuals â Videos & Images Work Best
Spoken words are harder to absorb on Zoom, but visualsâespecially videosâhave a much stronger impact.
After your opening, incorporate relevant images or a short video to drive home key points. A well-placed visual can communicate in seconds what might take minutes to explain verbally.
5. Design Zoom Slides Like a TED Talk Deck
Verbose slides wonât be read. While your full pitch deck can be detailed, the version you present on Zoom should be simple, bold, and visualâlike a TED Talk deck.
Each slide should focus on one core idea
Use minimal text and large fonts
Whenever possible, let charts, images, or visuals tell the story
For inspiration, check out the following slides used by top TED speakersâthey prove that less is more.
TLDR: for Zoom meetings, like for TED Talks, less is more…
6. Let Your Personality Shine
Too many Zoom pitches feel roboticâmonotone delivery, deadpan expressions, and no effort to break the ice. Thatâs a missed opportunity.
The easiest way to be interesting? Be yourself. Show quirks, humor, and enthusiasm. Your journey, energy, and passion make the conversation engaging.
Your job isnât to blend inâitâs to stand out. If you canât get people to actively listen and engage, a future investment isnât happening anyway.
Closing Thoughts…
Mastering Zoom pitches is an evolving skill, but structuring them thoughtfully can make all the difference. Adapt your approach, test what works, and refine as you go.
Have you found any techniques that work particularly well in Zoom pitches? Would love to hear your thoughts!
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.
I recently tweeted a really interesting insight I heard from Mike Maples, Jr of Floodgate at a recent Draper University closed-door event:
This is so true, and a common mistake that founders & product leaders make while building new products. Looking back on my own startup, while I rigorously tried to execute Paul Graham’s “Do things that don’t scale” philosophy, I still created unreasonable expectations in my own head around user growth for each MVP iteration. This was probably due to the baggage I was carrying from my previous experience of working at large companies like Alibaba, where numbers were talked about in Millions & sometimes, Billions.
When the absolute user numbers weren’t met, my morale as a founder would get hit with each iteration. In hindsight, hitting numbers shouldn’t have been the goal at all. The ideal 0-to-1 mindset is like that of a scientist, with curiosity being the core driving emotion, backed by an iterative product development approach. The target outcome of this approach should be to gather insights that help refine the hypothesis.
Similar to how scientists drive their research process one experiment at a time, I have realized that building any new product or service from grounds-up requires moving one “unit” at a time. It’s up to you to decide what that unit should be – acquisition, activation, frequency of use, revenue or even just getting qualitative feedback!
In a scientific process, more than just the number of experiments run, what’s important is taking the learning from each experiment & applying it to the next one so it becomes better than the first.
Similarly, a good approach to building anything new is to delight one person at a time. This automatically focuses the building process & anchors it on an actual customer, thus making it easier to ship something that solves a monetizable problem for someone in the real world. Trust me, this is a non-trivial hurdle that many startup teams are unable to cross.
The 0-to-1 stage can be highly fuzzy but breaking it down into one unit at a time helps give more clarity to the team around the exact short-term goals.
The most profitable way for a product to grow is via word-of-mouth. The above approach naturally optimizes for it. And once the testimonials & organic growth start kicking in, traction compounds with minimal incremental effort.
Of course, the key to executing this building approach well is patience. Again, think of a scientist. A larger research budget or more headcount can’t necessarily speed up a breakthrough. Similarly, building one unit at a time requires a small team committed to iterating over a long enough timeline for customer compounding to kick in. A lean & capital-efficient operating model is a requirement of this approach as a long runway significantly improves the odds of success.
Learning from my mistakes as a founder, as I have now started working towards regularly putting useful startup & investing content out there, I am consciously following the approach of publishing & learning one unit of content at a time – blog post, Twitter thread, LinkedIn post etc.
Same for my angel investing, wherein I am trying to help each founder, co-investor & startup employee I meet, one week at a time, with whatever resources I have – network, expertise, capital etc.
This approach is helping me to first put the core enablers of my venture investing craft in place that then, hopefully, self-compound. Therefore, I feel much better this time about hitting my long-term goals.
Also, in case you are interested in other similar startup insights shared by Mike Maples at the DraperU event I referred to earlier, check out my Twitter thread on it.
Subscribe
to my weekly newsletter where in addition to my long-form posts, I will also share a weekly recap of all my social posts & writings, what I loved to read & watch that week + other useful insights & analysis exclusively for my subscribers.
I am petrified before attending any event!! There, I said it. Mixers, happy hours, cocktails, group dinners, you name it – the right side of my brain hates them all. Even attempting to “work the room” is equivalent to getting a root canal for me. Who to say hi to first? What does one talk about with a complete stranger? Why am I even here? My mind is fuzzy with these & many other questions, even as I attempt to fill out my name tag with an oversized marker, using my rarely-used & barely-legible handwriting, while awkwardly stooping over the registration desk.
But with experience, you learn to consult both sides of your brain. And while the right side of my brain is freaking out, the left side is reminding me of all the useful insights I have gathered, the wonderful collaborators I have met (many of whom have become close friends), & the positive energy I have taken away from these mixers, happy hours, cocktails & group dinners.
So yes, I am a self-confessed introvert who has been on a long journey of figuring out how to get myself to attend & do better at events. While I curse myself while driving over, palms sweaty, brain thinking through all the small talk I would need to be prepped for, admittedly I have been better off in my career & life after attending almost every one of those events.
Am sure you have heard of that old wisdom – “you should do what you fear the most ‘cos that’s where your growth is”. In that spirit, around the Fall of last year, I resolved to attend every good event I was invited to. But this time, I went in with an approach that I felt would work for me, incorporating all that I had observed about myself during & after these events.
Here are some ideas from this approach:
Ask for an attendee list before the event – I figured that not knowing who I will be bumping into gives me major anxiety (yes, I am a prep-first kinda guy!). So I now ask for attendee lists upfront, so I can identify a few people I would definitely want to introduce myself to. This reduces uncertainty & guarantees at least a few interesting convos. PS: how do you do this when the guest list isn’t available, you ask? Simple – to begin with, I focus on having a good conversation with the event lead đGuarantees one valuable discussion at the minimum.
Keep modest goals, quality over quantity – early on in my career, I used to put a lot of pressure on myself to meet the most number of people at an event, which made the whole thing really unpleasant for me. Over time, I have realized that spending focused time with a few quality people is significantly more valuable than exchanging business cards with tens of folks. So now, for an average close-knit event, my goal is to walk out with 1-3 quality connections that I can follow up with later. This reframing has been a real game-changer for me!
For large events, set up 1:1 meetings on the sidelines – while attending large conferences, I didn’t even know where to begin, leave alone spending quality time with relevant folks. One hack I have developed is to avoid networking en masse at these conferences. I post on LinkedIn & Twitter that I am attending a particular event & then use outbound (using attendee list) + inbound (via social) to schedule 1:1 meetings on the sidelines. This takes the pressure off of working a large room & ensures a number of focused interactions.
Connect on social post-event – events are just a lead-gen channel. The real value is in transforming these cold connections into warm relationships. Many times, in-person follow-ups are hard to schedule. I have found interacting on social (Twitter & LinkedIn) with these connections to be immensely useful in both giving us more context about each other, as well as maintaining momentum in the conversation. Personally, my social media game is much better than my events game, so this is one of my top strategies.
Lastly, be genuinely curious! – my coach said something beautiful to me last year – “to form meaningful connections, replace judgment with curiosity”. Meeting new people with genuine curiosity, without overthinking about motives & outcomes, totally elevates the quality of human interaction. If I have to suggest just one mindset that can help you the most while meeting new connections, this is it! Whether we are introverts or extroverts, we all crave genuine human connection. And I believe that authentic curiosity is its strongest source.
This topic is very close to my heart so I hope these points are helpful as you initiate new connections at events. I am very much a work-in-progress at this, so please share your learnings too đđ˝
Subscribe
to my weekly newsletter where in addition to my long-form posts, I will also share a weekly recap of all my social posts & writings, what I loved to read & watch that week + other useful insights & analysis exclusively for my subscribers.
It’s been a gut-wrenching last few days for us to witness several friends get impacted by Google’s RIF. My wife is a tenured Googler so naturally, we have built some outstanding relationships there & got so much value out of its community. This makes it even harder to see close friends & collaborators come to terms with this abrupt life change.
Folks who have built successful BigTech careers are typically pros at the job-hunting process, so I don’t think I can share any particularly new insights there. However, there is one idea I believe could be relevant in navigating this phase, & that I have been sharing with some friends over the last week. It’s the value of being “radically open-minded” while searching for your next adventure.
As we progress through our careers, especially beyond the first decade, we tend to build a certain self-image in our heads. It mostly reflects where we have seen the most external success in the past (titles, money, fame, influence etc.). But the reality is that the market is an ever-evolving beast that doesn’t really care about this self-image.
So while we might believe that we fit best into specific roles, or deserve certain compensation, the market may disagree. And this isn’t necessarily a negative reflection of one’s skillsets or experiences – in rapidly-changing industries like tech, the definition of talent-job-fit for the same role keeps shifting across eras, especially when the macros are hard. We don’t get exposed to this change while at a stable job until we start job hunting under pressure, which is when this reality hits us in the face.
So how can one effectively deal with this challenge while job-hunting? The key is having a radically open-minded approach to this process. Borrowing from a beautiful piece of advice one of my mentors gave me when I was trying to bounce back post my startup – try & approach this phase the same way a founder tries to find product-market-fit:
Talk to many different types of customer segments
Deeply understand their pain points
Talk about your unique value proposition & how it can potentially solve these pain points
Observe where your value prop is resonating the most
Follow the highest-fidelity customer signals
Have an overall vision as a guiding North Star, to keep this process aligned with your internal compass
This approach is much more “discovery-based” (where does the market believe I can uniquely solve a problem), rather than “search-based” (this is what I want OR this is where I think I fit in the best). Similar to how market-pull takes startups in directions that the founders never originally expected, it’s worth being open to all kinds of re-framings & new opportunities that the market sees for you as a professional.
The curse of being an achiever is believing that you know exactly what’s best for you next. I call this a local maxima. But often, the market is giving you signals that can potentially take you to a global maxima in the long run, allowing you to become the best version of yourself. You just need to a) listen to the market & b) be brave to move in new directions. That’s what being radically open-minded is.
Humbly sharing these 2 cents from my own life experience, with the hope that it can give you a new tool to emerge stronger from this uncertainty. If I can help you in any way (listen/ brainstorm/ give intros), please don’t hesitate to DM me on Twitter. More power to you!
PS: in case you are interested in startup roles, especially in the US-India corridor, feel free to check out my portfolio. Happy to make intros.
Subscribe
to my weekly newsletter where in addition to my long-form posts, I will also share a weekly recap of all my social posts & writings, what I loved to read & watch that week + other useful insights & analysis exclusively for my subscribers.
2022 definitely felt like the end of an era. A decade-long party for US tech, fueled by low-interest rates -> increased availability of risk capital -> price inflation across asset classes.
The last chapter of this post-GFC era was perhaps the craziest – an unprecedented pandemic -> widespread lockdowns -> more fiscal stimulus -> injecting more air into already inflated asset bubbles.
With inflation crossing 7%, the Fed finally started increasing interest rates last year and is expected to continue quantitative tightening over the next few quarters. Public market valuations expectedly turned south (valuations are based on DCF, so as discount rates go up, valuations go down), with tech growth stocks correcting by as much as 80-90%.
The following dynamics are currently at play:
Large tech: shrinking macro-demand + adverse public markets -> pressure on companies to reduce costs to bring them in line with lower growth projections -> drastic cost-cutting measures, including major layoffs.
VentureInvestors: public market corrections -> LPs cut back on venture allocations + downward revision of expected returns on exit -> venture activity slows down + any deals that happen, happen at much lower valuations given new public market comps.
Startups: less capital available + higher bar in private markets -> startups need to cut costs to survive -> layoffs in high-cost/ non-core functions + pause hiring unless absolutely essential.
2023 appears to be the “year of transition”, as both the overall macroeconomic cycle, as well as the technology sector within it, move into a new paradigm. I see the following ten big ideas for 2023:
Leaner-and-meaner big tech
For anyone working in tech over the last decade, we have witnessed first-hand the level of entitlement & cultural complacency that has grown within large tech companies like Google & Meta. With more challenging times ahead, I expect large tech companies to take drastic steps towards re-wiring their cultures & operating models. Layoffs are just one piece of the puzzle – expect significant changes to compensation policies, KPI/ OKR philosophies, org. structures, functional locations, work-from-home policies, contractor hiring, operating routines etc., all with the aim to make execution more efficient.
Founder-led companies (eg. Meta, Salesforce, Shopify, Coinbase etc.) will take quicker & braver calls to re-invent themselves, compared to those run by professional management teams (eg. Google). In the latter case, I expect shareholders to put considerable pressure on these professional CEOs to take corrective measures. In fact, I won’t be surprised if some of the big tech CEOs get unexpectedly replaced as many of them come across as peacetime CEOs who will struggle in wartime.
2. Capital efficiency over growth for startups
The last decade in tech startups was all about growth. This year, expect investing thesis & operating models to decisively shift towards capital efficiency. Mirroring the demands for margin improvement by public markets, I expect private market investors to significantly raise their expectations on operating efficiency.
Founders will have to react fast and in several cases, give a 1800 turn to their culture & business models. A silver lining – founders who were heads-down amidst the craziness of 2020-21, building their companies in a capital-efficient way, will have an enviable opportunity (& deservedly so!) to play offense both with customers & investors.
3. Bay Area bounces back
Remote work boomed during the pandemic, as tech companies grew at unprecedented rates. However, we saw signs of a comeback-to-office across both big companies & startups last year. With current headwinds, I expect factors like teams getting together to drive execution & in-person networking to become increasingly important.
With rampant layoffs, tech professionals will also feel more insecure & would need more access & optionality to get their careers back on track. All this bodes well for the Bay Area – I expect significant migration to the region, especially for people in their 20s to mid-30s. In terms of the sheer depth of the tech ecosystem, the Bay Area remains unparalleled. As emerging areas like AI, health-tech & EVs gain strength, they will provide even more reasons for talent to be physically here.
4. “De-angelification” of the startup ecosystem
Amidst the post-pandemic investing frenzy, liquidity-rich, over-optimistic, FOMO-driven tech professionals started dabbling in angel investing. Becoming an angel in a “hot deal” became a status symbol, & rapid paper-markups made everyone feel like a winner.
A majority of newbie angels from this vintage neither understand the nuances of this asset class nor have the depth of resources to play the game effectively over the long term.
As more startups start shutting down this year, combined with layoffs & decreasing compensations courtesy dwindling value of RSUs, I expect a massive churn in 2020-21 vintage angels. In my experience, tourist angels typically drop out of the game around the 4-6 deals/ 24 months mark, as they see portfolio companies starting to shut down & their hard-earned money vaporizing into thin air.
5. More pain in Crypto
If you thought 2022 was brutal for Crypto, brace yourself! FTX implosion is only the beginning of a much-needed cleanup in the space. I expect many more tokens to go to zero, projects to shut down & low-conviction talent to move out. Given the scale of the FTX fraud, am expecting even more regulatory oversight & ramifications for the overall sector this year.
Personally, I do believe there is a kernel of truth in the Web3 opportunity. The faster this cleanup happens, the sooner the next chapter can begin & we can make tangible progress towards discovering its real-world use cases.
On BTC and ETH, I expect both to remain flat at best, & significantly down from current levels in the bear case.
6. The FOMO shifts to AI
Whenever there is too much consensus around a trend or an asset class, I get worried! It was clean-tech pre-GFC, then Blockchain & Crypto pre-pandemic, moving to Web3 & future-of-work post-pandemic. Based on my Twitter feed, I can safely say that with the rise of OpenAI & launch of ChatGPT, the FOMO has now shifted from Web3 to AI. I am expecting the space to see a lot of hype, investor interest & startups being launched in 2023.
Studying how the previous FOMO waves evolved gives a fair understanding of what to expect – those without first-principles conviction & a long-term strategy are more likely to get their hands burned. Those who were anyway committed to the space & were quietly building behind the scenes over the last few years stand to disproportionately benefit from the increased availability of risk capital & talent.
7. The return of “moats” (& rise of deeptech)
As the perpetual-growth era of software ends, I expect the question around “moats” to re-appear in the diligence checklist of investors. The lifecycle of companies like Netflix & Robinhood has clearly shown how hard it is to have a sustainable competitive advantage in tech (one reason why Warren Buffet stays away from investing in it!).
As the likelihood of purely growth-driven exits goes down, I expect venture investors to start looking at deeptech verticals with inherent moats much more seriously. These include space-tech, health-tech (including lifesciences), energy, climate etc.
Each of the above markets seems to be getting unlocked in its own unique way & while these companies can be more capital-intensive & have higher technical risk compared to say SaaS or Social, the resulting market leaders have much more defensible competitive positions & hence command healthy valuation multiples.
8. EVs taking over the transportation stack
EVs are seeing major progress on both the supply & demand side. On the supply side, most major auto companies have an EV product in the market, with use cases evolving from urban sedans to SUVs, pickup trucks & now, even semi-trucks.
On the demand side, record-high gasoline prices have acted as a key unlock. This is visible in the rising hybridization of the latest gasoline car models. With non-Tesla EV products rapidly expanding, consumers have more choices across use cases & price points. I wrote a post a few months back on how I warmed up to EVs & Tesla, in particular. I expect EV penetration to have significant growth momentum this year.
9. Digitization of mainstream healthcare
A positive side-effect of the pandemic has been consumers getting increasingly comfortable with digitally-delivered healthcare services. In my case, interacting with healthcare providers over Zoom and accessing services such as Carbon Health & One Medical via their apps (including getting advice via chat) has really opened my eyes to its value. Even beyond that, I work-out with my trainer via video & our family nutritionist is in India with all interactions happening via Whatsapp.
I expect the overall healthcare stack, including mainstream services, to digitize at an even faster rate in the coming year. These tech platforms will also open up opportunities for niche services to exist eg. virtual monitoring & consultations for chronic patients, pre & post-natal advice, nutrition guidance etc.
10. India as a global greenshoot
Amidst an unstable China, weakening EU, war-torn Russia, one-dimensional Middle East, fiscally-unstable LatAm & fragmented Africa, India appears to be a solid greenshoot both geo-politically & economically. A stable & reformist govt. has worked hard to put together core growth pillars over the last 8 years – from building physical infrastructure & a national digital payments network to ensuring economic development at the grassroots & supporting tech startup activity in the country. India is poised to now reap the dividends of all this hard work, and similar to China, grow its per-capita income from ~$2k at present to ~$10k over the next 20 years, all in a democratic environment.
India’s tech ecosystem has also come of age in the last 5 years. The mega question of “can exits of venture-backed companies happen in India?” has been progressively answered, beginning with the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart, followed by IPOs of consumer companies like Paytm, Nykaa & Zomato in domestic public markets, & the IPO of Freshworks in the from-India SaaS space on Nasdaq. There is a growing pool of startup talent, courtesy of a decade-long Mobile & software wave, which will fuel the country’s tech ecosystem over the next decade.
The above ideas are making me super-excited for 2023, both as an angel investor & operator. After a 2.5-year hiatus, I returned to angel investing in 2022, doing 3 deals in Q4. With the turning cycle & above ideas as a backdrop, my goal is to make 2023 my most active year yet as an angel, while also keeping a high bar on quality. Excited to collaborate with all founders, angels, VCs & operators out there đđ˝
Subscribe
to my weekly newsletter where in addition to my long-form posts, I will also share a weekly recap of all my social posts & writings, what I loved to read & watch that week + other useful insights & analysis exclusively for my subscribers.
My 2 cents on the Zuck-Metaverse bet: I would think many times before betting against Zuck. Even with his iffy moral compass, he is one of the great founders of our generation.
Having said that, history tells us that truly disruptive innovation rarely comes out of big corps. Most big companies operate under the classic Innovators Dilemma. Creating absolutely new markets requires entrepreneurial passion, backed by a different set of incentives. Big corp. teams are typically not set up for it.
Of course, we have the whole Steve Jobs-iPod/iPhone counter-example, but that was driven by a cathartic chapter in his life (getting kicked out of Apple, restarting from scratch with NeXT & Pixar). In a way, that fueled Jobs with the hunger & passion of a noob founder.
Am not seeing those Jobs 2.0-type motivations & incentives with Zuck. His bet seems driven by a commercial need to pivot the company into the next post-FB/ post-IG era. Combine that with all the big corp baggage & public markets pressure, and itâs hard to build in a truly startup way.
Personally, like with all new technologies & markets (eg. Web 3), I believe there is definitely a kernel of truth (& opportunity) in Metaverse. I would bet a â2004-Zuckâ like 0-to-1 founder is more likely to crack it than a Big Tech like Meta. In my mind, the Eigen Question for this whole episode is – can Zuck pull off a Jobs 2.0 act with Metaverse? It has been done only once before in Consumer Internet (as far as I can remember). Would you bet on it?
Subscribe
to my weekly newsletter where in addition to my long-form posts, I will also share a weekly recap of all my social posts & writings, what I loved to read & watch that week + other useful insights & analysis exclusively for my subscribers.
Since opening up our beta in Aug-end, we have been seeing job-seekers successfully leverage Workomo to prep on their interviewer before jumping on a Zoom call. Am sure two questions are crossing your mind as you read thisâââWhy is getting to know your interviewer before the call important? And why should I use Workomo to do my prep, instead of looking up the person on LinkedIn or Google Search? Let me answer both these through what we are hearing from our users.
Q1. Why is getting to know your interviewer before the Zoom call important?
Because the majority of interviews are happening over Zoom & Meet, and itâs that much harder to leave an impression over video compared to in-person. Because you canât use your body language & energy to âcharmâ someone over software. Because economic uncertainty driven by the pandemic has made competition for the same jobs that much more intense. Because unlike 15 years back, itâs likely that your interviewer is a digital âcreatorâ of some sort and extremely passionate about itâââsomething that you can use to your advantage.
Gone are the days when âreading up a company’s websiteâ and âasking intelligent questions in the endâ itself differentiated a candidateâââthese are now table-stakes. One positive to come out of the present video interviews paradigm is that as a candidate, you know beforehand who you are interviewing with. I remember my days of interviewing for major consulting firms and Investment Banks as a young Associateâââsitting in their offices for a whole day, with people coming in one-after-another for roundsđ There was NO way I could know each of them beforehand.
Now itâs different. Details of every interviewer is present on your Zoom meeting calendar. Powerful software like Workomo can automatically identify & pull in relevant insights you need to know about them, all accessible to you with 1-click. Imagine opening the conversation by bringing up the fact that your interviewer worked at Google in 2012, which is when you also interned there. Or that you noticed his Twitter handle mentioning âidolize Maradonaâ, and that you feel todayâs Messi is betterđđ˝ââď¸
Q2. Why should I use Workomo to do my prep, instead of looking up the person on LinkedIn or Google Search?
Because you probably donât have more than 1â2 mins to prep before rushing into your Zoom interview. Because you are cognitively overloaded with working-from-home, taking meetings all day from your messy living room, and not having the bandwidth to even remember the last name of each interviewer, let alone doing 5â7 clicks and jumping through many hoops to get to someoneâs profile. Let me not even go into running a comprehensive cross-platform search on LinkedIn & Twitter, & trying to distill all this info into key insights that you can then use. Even a 10x salesperson who does this day-in-day-out for a job struggles with this.
We have designed Workomo grounds-up to solve these pain points & make it a âremote-firstâ people insights product:
No typing or remembering namesâââWorkomo integrates into the calendar and automatically identifies people in your meetings.
Aggregates data from multiple sourcesâââthrough the Chrome extension, a contactâs âCue Cardâ is available at 1-click. This Cue Card combines data from multiple public sources, so you donât need extensive search.
Designed to be digested in <60 secsâââpeople insights in the Cue Card are distilled so you can skim them quickly and access all the right talking points.
We remind you to do people-prep at the right time & placesâââwith the goal of making interview-prep more productive, we use a combination of smart triggers (a timer on the extension icon, a meeting card auto pop-up on the calendar, within the meeting invite card in Google Calendar, pop-up right as you enter a Zoom or Meet call) so you donât forget to prep but also, donât waste precious time doing it.
Utilize pockets of time during a Zoom or Meet callâââthere are often waiting-room scenarios in video calls. Now you can use these to continue your prep, as Cue Cards are seamlessly accessible WITHIN the Meet window and RIGHT NEXT to Zoom windows. So prep & plan your talking points without leaving your Zoom or Meet context.
Viewing Workomo Cue Cards within Meet
As a job seeker, you are presently wading through unchartered territories of virtual interviews. There are no playbooks to succeed at it. As tribal beings, evolution has wired us to respond to and judge based on in-person energy & cues (thatâs what conferences, coffee shops & bars were for). I mean, how do you beat evolution & still leave a solid impression in a Zoom interview?
The answer isâââdo your people-prep before the meeting. You are living in the age of the creator economy, where professionals are increasingly voicing their passions, interests & expertise digitally. Finding common connections & areas of interest can help you break the ice in even a drab Zoom call. And with software like Workomo, you can do this in 1â2 mins, without eating into your packed schedule or taxing yourself mentally.
