Tag: venture capital

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 →

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 →

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? →

3 Cs of Profitable Growth – ‘Key Metrics to ‘kill for’ or else get ‘killed’’

Over the last 6 years, I have had the privilege to work along some of the best entrepreneurial minds in the country - this allowed me to understand what each one of them was doing differently or not so differently. The following post is a summary of my findings on what differentiates successful internet companies … Continue reading 3 Cs of Profitable Growth – ‘Key Metrics to ‘kill for’ or else get ‘killed’’ →

Winning the Online Marketplace – Part V ‘Revisiting Importance of the Supply Side’

In my first post about ‘Importance of the Supply side’, I talked about the ‘Chicken and Egg’ problem (Found here - Winning the Marketplace - Part I 'Importance of the Supply Side') and how quality supply on-boarding, retaining and incentivizing is key to building a strong value proposition for the demand side. Retaining and scaling … Continue reading Winning the Online Marketplace – Part V ‘Revisiting Importance of the Supply Side’ →