The Startup Velocity Question: What Hinders Acceleration in VC Funded Companies?

I have been running 1Mby1M since 2010. I find myself saying to entrepreneurs ad nauseam that VCs want to invest in startups that can go from zero to $100 million in revenue in 5 to 7 years.

Startups that do not have what it takes to achieve velocity should not be venture funded.

Experienced VCs, over time, have developed heuristics to gauge what constitutes a high growth venture investment thesis. 

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: No Unicorns, Then?

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

By de-emphasizing Unicorns, am I recommending that we should be less ambitious for Kolkata? Bengal? Eastern India?

No.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is a GREAT strategy for building Unicorns.

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Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: New Technologies Bring New Opportunities

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

I am sure many entrepreneurs are chomping at the bits to get a Generative AI startup going.

And, you are reading about hundreds of millions of dollars in VC funding being splashed on this quest.

Well, I want you to think differently.

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: Low Appetite for Risk

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

Why has Kolkata’s startup ecosystem failed to thrive thus far?

One hypothesis is that the Bengali population has low tolerance for risk. There is, obviously, truth to this, especially in view of the evidence that the bulk of entrepreneurial progress in Bengal has been led by the Marwari and Gujarati communities.

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: No Products, Only Services

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

Kolkata doesn’t have many product startups. True.

Most startups are services based. True.

There is nothing wrong with services companies. Technical skill development in India has happened at scale in the services companies. It would be tremendously helpful to have large scale skill development happen in Eastern India. Entrepreneurs won’t build tech #startups without tech skilled people. An ecosystem has many dimensions. Also Bootstrapping tech product startups using services is a tried and true technique.

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: Lack of Role Models

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

Another refrain that we hear a lot is the lack of role models.

Role models help. No question.

You know who is one of my role models? 

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: Lack of Good Mentoring

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

These days, everyone is a startup mentor. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of self-proclaimed mentors anywhere in the world.

The question, however, is what is good mentoring?

If you are an entrepreneur, what kind of a mentor should you be looking for?

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: Bootstrapping vs Blitzscaling

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

The startup ecosystem around the world is driven by the notion that Venture Capital funding is essential to building companies.

This isn’t true.

Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: A Strategy Discussion

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here.

This weekend, I had hundreds of interactions on LinkedIn around the subject:

Why did Kolkata miss the startup momentum that has gained ground in the other 6 major metros? What can be done to catch up and leapfrog?

Generative AI: A Strategy Blueprint for Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship

Ever since ChatGPT was made available to the general public, everybody is talking about how it will impact the world as we know it. 

ChatGPT is a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3 family of large language models (LLMs). Generative AI is trained on vast amounts of data that enable it to understand and respond like a human. It helps create new content from previously created content. It can write and debug computer programs, compose music, plays, and student essays, and answer test questions. 

OpenAI’s Journey and Financials

OpenAI was originally founded in 2015 with a stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, AWS, Infosys, and YC Research pledged over $1 billion to the venture. 

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 1)

Naren died.

Suddenly.

My pear tree

still has some golden leaves.

Rain drips disbelief.

It can’t be.

It is.

These are the only lines I could come up with on Sunday afternoon.

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