Author: #Raghav

Venture Investor, Entrepreneur at Heart, Father, Traveler, Cricketer, Teetotaler, Just loves his business suits !, Always up for a challenge...VIEWS ARE PERSONAL

What colour is your startup’s moat?

The purpose of this blog is to provide the startup CEO with a framework that captures learnings from successful competitive battles. I believe this framework should (1) Help entrepreneurs shape their business model such that it enjoys impenetrable competitive advantage or a large barrier to imitation (2) Encourage entrepreneurs to alter capital and resource allocation to feed and widen the barrier to imitation (yes they need to be fed and protected – more on that below) (3) Help better communicate the same to their employees and investors as they align on a business strategy (4) Avoid ‘Grow or Die’ mindset which leads to ‘Grow and Die’ results

Learning from Failure (Part 2) – ‘The Middle Seat Strategy’ – Stuck in No Man’s Land

Imagine a scenario wherein the company's senior executives are unable to logically answer the question "What will the company NOT do?"- if so, there is a high probability that the company is 'Stuck in No Man's Land' or is following, what I call is the 'Middle Seat Strategy'. The name 'Middle Seat Strategy' came rather … Continue reading Learning from Failure (Part 2) – ‘The Middle Seat Strategy’ – Stuck in No Man’s Land →

‘The Deception of Growth’​ – Hyper-growth rendering Competitive Advantage meaningless?

Hyper-growth is hiding flaws in business strategy and clouding the entrepreneur's ability to invest behind sustainable competitive advantage. The idea if the blog is to bring to forefront core tenets of good strategy and also, present an easy framework to communicate the same.

Entrepreneur’s Guide to Private Company Valuations

Private company valuation is arguably one of the most important and often, opaque term in a private market transaction. Especially in early stage private market transactions wherein performance data is limited, the valuation can be a lot big function of the investment climate - it could be ‘entrepreneur wish’ (bull run) or the ‘investor wish’ (bear … Continue reading Entrepreneur’s Guide to Private Company Valuations →

Chasing Growth – pursuing the right metrics at the right time

Everybody loves growth! Faster the better? – the first and foremost metric an investor looks to know about and arguably the biggest driver of startup valuation. Leading investors have defined startups as entities chasing fast growth (and I can’ t agree more!) – the importance of this metric is well understood, having said that what … Continue reading Chasing Growth – pursuing the right metrics at the right time →

Unit Economics matter, Scalability of the Unit Economics matters more…

I like entrepreneurs who think hard about the unit economics (UE) of their business from very early on in the post 'product - market fit' phase. Having said that, I love entrepreneurs who think not only about UE but also, the 'scalability of their unit economics'. Eliminating the jargon here, what I mean is that … Continue reading Unit Economics matter, Scalability of the Unit Economics matters more… →

Measuring ‘Product-Market Fit’ – Is your startup ‘CURWing’ in the right direction?

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”                 A lot has been written about the concept and importance of ‘product – market fit’ – having said that, I have always found entrepreneurs yearning for some structure or simple framework around identifying, defining, measuring and improving key metrics that would enable them to claim … Continue reading Measuring ‘Product-Market Fit’ – Is your startup ‘CURWing’ in the right direction? →