People are getting murdered in cities for 5000 rupees and I see crores being flushed in toilet over pointless products and companies. Mad world.

People are desperate. The social pressure in our country is insane. People are desperately looking for that single break. The worrying part is people look for these as a short cut to success.  
 I hear people telling story of how chitfund business was big hit in the 90's. Many of such chitfund ran away with money. Only then people stopped. Same will happen here too.

Consultant

Software Engineer

No wonder this is funded by UNACADEMY founders 😂😂😂😂

Program Manager

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Newton School The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the CEO would tell you. It’s a Edtech legend. Newton school was a Dark School of growth, so powerful and so wise they could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create growth… They had such a knowledge of the dark side that they could even keep the ones who paid them a chance at a growth job. The dark side of the Edtech is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. They became so powerful… the only thing they were afraid of was losing their students, which eventually, of course, they did. Ironic. They could grow others, but not themselves.

It’s due to the gravitational pull of good sense.

Brand Communication Manager

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Growth sellers unable to Grow

Product Manager

Growth sellers unable to Grow- Grapevine

Idk why I feel that, I was too confused to execute anything, I did not have a clear idea on what to do- I opened 80-90 tabs throughout the day, did a whole lot of research. wasted my founder's time to take a decision, when I close at the end of the day. 

I know I was just seeking clarity but on the execution front. I contributed nothing. I did not bring a single new visitor to my website today. some days just get spent on a whole lot of nothing.

#growth

Today I contributed 0 to my company

Growth Manager

Welcome to Confessions's Private Community

It is fun sometimes but I feel that's 20% off it. There are 99 reasons wherein you feel like giving up daily but somehow you stick along & keep going. The stories we read online or anywhere else of riches are quite few but you feel a complete let down wherein somebody made insane money in 3 years & you are struggling for 5 years+ making some money but not what you imagined.

I run a profitable bootstrapped business for 5+ years & some days are hard coz everybody is hopping on new tech (eg: Crypto, AI) & you might be doing the same old stuff & don't know how to pick yourselves up to learn something new. People are getting funded & making insane money in secondaries, etc. 

Then dealing with bullshit on the internet. Everyone on LinkedIn is successful, putting numbers & gyaan. Some days are overwhelming & you feel being super rich comes with a lot of factors in your favor & tradeoffs as well. Bas, tumhara number aaya nahi hai ya shayad hi aayega. Rant over.

Rant: Entrepreneurship is lonely & exhuasting

I’ve friends who run venture backed startups. And I’ve heard something similar. More power to all the founders who’re trying make a dent someway or the other.  
  
 Hang in there bud 🫡

Systems Architect

Founder

Last 3 years of startups have been all about SaaS. I just don't get it. So far, it was about solving real problems at scale.
First with consumer websites (google etc), then software, then shopping & delivery (amazon swiggy zomato fk etc etc) 

And now, it's all SaaS:
- Imma build a startup to help white businessmen in America do better billing 
- Imma build a 360 degree feedback tool specifically for Norwegian miners 
- Imma build a SaaS software to help HR people note down who isn't dressed properly
- Imma build a software to help hillbillies in the US better manage their trucking company

Like how are smart people in India taking up entrepreneurship to build these ideas that are dull and feel like the end of life? How does anybody become excited by this? 

is it just money? what am I missing?

SaaS: Why are people so attracted to it? (mini rant)

Analyst

Why is it that startups only get to hire the Sales and Marketing team with a limited budget of their VC or PE funding and why do they consider the Sales department not important. 

Do you think a service or product based startup can start getting revenue and customers without a proper sales and marketing team? 

And on what basis do Startups qualify selecting a sales and marketing team. Since I have seen and interacted with a few of the funded startups sales team and I feel they are below standards and just bothered to reach their targets set by the company. 

Would you like to have an organization where you can find a set of talented and well coordinated team you choose and build a sales team like a drag and drop and they work for you. With a profile of the person visible to you. Would you like to have a service offering like that. 

Seeking opinions from founders of the startups of any stage like self- funded or bootstrap or VC or PE rounds ...

Do the startups lack in hiring efficient Sales and Marketing team?

Business Development Manager

At this point it's just Boot Licking Delivery app founders.
How come the opinion of a sample size of 1000 *young people* who are not even gig workers, get to be representative of whether gig worker unions should have right to bargain wages.

Everyone knows how harsh and unsafe the working conditions of delivery partners/gig workers are. On top of it now these companies are squeezing their wages to become profitable.

Not trying to moral police folks who order food and groceries online(even I do it), but this is just not sustainable. Sometimes it just feels wrong someone is traveling 5+ kms just to deliver me food and the guy/gal is not even being compensated properly.

And the below article is definitely not journalism or even reporting.

Link to article: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yourstory-com_most-indian-workers-say-no-to-gig-drivers-activity-7121039458933620736-qRVQ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

Another low from YourStory

There was some call around 9 AM today, some folks are laid off. Didn't know the % yet.

Meesho started layoffs !!!!

Software Developer

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

For most part of last decade, product managers commanded a healthy premium in compensation over their business counterparts. This is largely how tech companies globally have operated, and what we have mirrored. But as the Indian tech ecosystem has matured over the last few years, a couple of the underlying assumptions have changed:

One, ten years back, there was an explosion of startups and they were all in the market for "experienced product managers", and in a still nascent tech industry, such talent was in scarcity - thus triggering a premium positioning. Now, arguably, the equation has reversed: there are far more people entering the trade / in the profession with <5 years experience, than there are open roles in the market. And more critically, the growth rate of "product positions" has stagnated: particularly since product is a high-leverage function and does not scale linearly with company growth (but instead only with growth in # of companies).

Two, most Indian startups / tech companies are not product-led unlike Silicon Valley ventures. Instead, a vast majority are operating businesses. These companies tend to have dedicated business teams who take up primary ownership of the business goals and thus, call the shots. In such setups, product managers play second fiddle as a bridge function to tech. Worse, product managers who scaled in such environments, they end up playing that part too: too focused on tech / design execution with not as much depth on the business understanding. In post-covid boom, we got the tailwind of being an engineering-adjacency in a techno-optimistic market. Now the same tides have turned and as a "generalist tech function", we are under scrutiny for wage-bill pressure.

Do you foresee a correction in PM salaries? How soon (1y / 3y / 5y), and to what extent (10% / 20% / 30%) will the market correct itself?

Is PM salary due for a correction?

Investor

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Folks in Marketing and Growth. We all know the pressure we have to deliver numbers week on week. But do we get paid enough? What else do you do, or how do you plan to increase your income?

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Lately, I have been thinking very deeply about my college days when the Flipkart story had inspired the entire lot of my batch at IIT-D. We were starry eyed college kids who wanted to do something innovative in India and break away from the "three" most popular moves after IIT:

1. UPSC
2. MBA
3. MS/PhD abroad

I proceeded to then work in various Indian startups and noticed an alarming thing. I began to realise a pattern across all my stints:

The initial founding team does exceptional work innovating, they excel at what Thiel calls "Zero to One", the act of creation. I will concede that although most founders fail to innovate by often copying what worked in the west but the initial founding team usually excels in execution. It allows for initial traction as it breathes a fresh breath in the\ space that they are operating in.

Almost always, when Product Market Fit is "achieved"(whatever that means), the founders begin to deploy insane amounts of funds into growth. 

By definition, Growth is not a bad thing. But, I have been noticing that across all startups I have worked at( all raised funds from the largest global funds) that it comes at the expense of product building. And during this era of hypergrowth, the product starts to stagnate while focus becomes marketing and sales. 

I often felt that this was temporary. That once we reach enough scale, we would start to innovate again. 
But time and time again, the ability to innovate atrophies over time.
Rather than building something that has enduring value by executing faster than anyone, the focus becomes achieving growth at all costs. 

This ultimately leads to two outcomes:
1. The startup cannot sustain this growth and retention begins to look dire. The churn becomes unbearable and the startup goes out of business.

2. The startup gets acquired by someone bigger, allowing founders and investors to believe that they created value where none existed in the first place.

I am completely dejected at this.

The Death of Indian Innovation: Why Indian Start Ups are failing to Innovate?

Luckily I was checking Groww during the dip and when I tried to add money to buy the dip, there was an error in Groww. The service was down and i wasn't able to add money.

While Kite was posting the spike in DAU, Groww missed the huge opportunity of positive marketing and ended up with negative reviews everywhere. 

Expecting a down trend in active users for Groww as the platform proved unreliable for any major event days.

Growth sellers unable to Grow

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