Category: Archives

There are over 500 startup accelerators in the US and over 1000 worldwide. Most accelerators are aligned with Universities (at over 35%), some are government funded (local government mostly) at 29% and some (15%) get grants from rich individuals and institutions such as Kauffman Fund. The remainder (21%) are privately funded accelerators such as 500… Continue reading How Accelerators Make Money To Manage Operating Costs

I read the interview with Steve Hogan yesterday about the reason for failed startups. Take a look at the #1 reason why startups fail according to him. Hogan says, is that they’re sole founders without a partner. “That is the single biggest indicator of why they got in trouble,” he says, adding that it’s especially common for… Continue reading The Reason Why #Startups Fail in India

I was reminded of this yesterday when a friend, Rajesh Setty eloquently put it in an email signature to me. The opposite of winning is learning. Which should technically mean that the opposite of learning is winning, but that’s not true. You do learn when you win, The mystery of success and the articulation of failure is a big… Continue reading Winning And Success, Learning And Not Losing or Failure?

Remitly, a Seattle startup that helps immigrants in developed countries send money home to family and friends in developing nations has filed confidentially for an IPO. Pricing and terms will be known by early July. Remitly competes with Western Union, Transfer Wise, Money Gram, Xoom and others in the $550B remittances market. Remitly competitor TransferWise has also seen… Continue reading New Ipo Filing – Remitly #fintech Global Money Transfer Company, Previously Valued At $15.b In Jul 2020

It has become quite fashionable to be an angel investor. The last 5 years has seen an increase in the number of registered angel investors on various platforms – from a mere 3000, we are at over 25K in the US alone. That begs the question – do we have more people who have become… Continue reading How Can You Tell If An Angel Investor Is “real” Or “fake”?

I asked this question on Hacker News last week to understand the shifts in software development over the last 20 years. From 1995 to 2015, there has been a dramatic change in the developer ecosystem. I thought I’d summarize all the changes and try to make sense of the trends. In this post I am only going… Continue reading What Has Changed For Developers In The Last 20 Years

As a child (and even now) I was a huge fan of Asterix and Obelix. I would spend hours reading and re-reading Asterix and son and imagine what it would really be like if I had special magic powers. The possibilities were endless.The names were funny. The fights were amazing. The adventures were awesome. I did believe… Continue reading The Perfect Startup Team: Asterix And Obelix

“If you got it, flaunt it”, would be the best way to talk about the traction slide on your overview. In fact, show it early, often since in the absence of other stronger parts of your business, traction trumps theory. Progressively, % growth is the easiest to show if you have small numbers or have… Continue reading How To Present Your Traction Slide with 7 Samples

I have been clear in my preference for hacker / developer / engineer founded companies. I prefer developers since they can actually solve the problem using tools at their disposal without having to “hire” people they dont understand anything about. The biggest challenge of backing hacker founders, though is that once every so often (more… Continue reading Its a “marketing Problem”, The Product Is Actually Good – The Engineer’s Myth

I have mentioned several times that working in a startup is like a sine-curve, or a roller-coaster rider. Its multiple ups and downs every hour, day, week and month. It takes a special kind of maturity to handle them as they come and not lose focus of your goal or the near-time milestone. I have tried… Continue reading How To Survive The Sine-curve Of Emotions At Your Startup?