1Mby1M Founder Sramana Mitra wants entrepreneurs to not waste their time and money.
The waste stems from a widespread misunderstanding of how investors think.
Over 99% of founders chase funding before they are fundable.
Here, Sramana teaches how to build with customer money (otherwise known as revenue) until a startup reaches that fundable stage.
Once fundable, a startup can go to investors like a king, not a beggar.
Sramana Mitra: The bulk of your revenue right now comes from the home security segment.
Yamin Durrani: That’s right.
Sramana Mitra: Based on where you sit, where do you see open problems where new entrepreneurs could come in and build new businesses? Where would you point and steer new entrepreneurs towards?
>>>Sramana Mitra: What is the fund size of Orios?
Anup Jain: I would comment on the check size. The check sizes at the seed stages have gone up. In response to that, Orios invests anywhere between $1.5 million to $2.5 million in the seed stage. We look for some degree of data and traction before we make that investment. Pre-seed is an area that is very vibrant.
2021 was one of the high points for India as well. We feel that we should participate given the rate of digital adoption in the economy. Companies are being given the opportunity to scale much faster. They shouldn’t have to come back to investors over shorter periods of time to seek an extension of runways or to conduct experiments.
>>>Sramana Mitra: How do you sell these use cases? How does GE, for instance, sell these use cases?
Yamin Durrani: Not everyone is selling all of these use cases. GE has smart lighting. They want to combine the security angle with the lighting angle. If there is detection of a human being by the camera, then lights should turn on. They can detect if there is nobody present in the room. They could switch off the lights. They can program it for different lighting. The primary goal is security.
Sramana Mitra: This is the OEM strategy mostly through security apps. What about the other verticals that you’re going into?
>>>ITSM leader ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) recently reported results for a mixed second quarter. Uncertain economic conditions and elongated deal cycles have dampened ServiceNow’s outlook for the year. However, its 99% renewal rate and impressive large deal metrics make it an attractive long-term bet.
>>>Anup Jain, the Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners, discusses the Indian startup ecosystem and its trends and nuances.
Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about your background as well as about Orios.
Anup Jain: I’m an accidental VC. I didn’t grow up in this ecosystem, but I’m very passionate about entrepreneurship. When I started my corporate career with Procter & Gamble, it was a dream job. I’ve always been excited about doing innovations and disruptions. It brings about meaning to all stakeholders.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Let’s get into the use cases. You’ve talked about a variety of verticals in which you have businesses. Let’s start with the home vertical. You said you have partnerships with several brands within the home segment. Tell us more about the use cases.
Yamin Durrani: If you look at the home segment, the typical approach that a brand takes is to build an end-to-end solution. We look at different brands like GE Lighting, which already have a strong presence in the home segment. They want to compete in the space of home security. Their pain point was there was no software stack that provided the backend infrastructure. That would have taken them close to two years and $5 million to $8 million.
>>>According to a recent eMarketer survey, when it comes to social media sites accessed by the US users, Reddit ranks 8th with over 46 million users. While Facebook and Instagram are the leaders by a fair margin, Twitter came in close at 56 million users. After staying away from a listing for over 15 years, Reddit appears to be willing to test the stock markets out. Last year, it filed confidentially to go public. It has yet to disclose finer details of the listing though.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Have you invested in a PaaS company?
Janam Mehta: Purple.com is an e-commerce platform company. Healthflix is a very good example. They’re an EMR. They use data to help pharma with their research and give them insights. That’s a very good example of aggregating data from SaaS and making it a platform business.
Sramana Mitra: It’s not very easy to get platform companies to go to market as platform companies before Series A.
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