TBH, the high cash flow from VCs has spoiled us as customers

While I'm proud of these two revolutionising the quick commerce space, I somehow have a bad feeling about this Profits aren't coming, money is flowing Don't know what the VCs are seeking? Why bake a a pie that you can't eat later?

I was leading a team which was involved in launching BNPL for a commodity product( flight tickets/train tickets), and the API we were using to cancel the tickets at the last moment from the 3rd party providers was flaky. It was supposed to cancel the tickets and provide refund back to minimize any losses we had. It was such a hit feature that led to 250% growth in numbers within a week. I was promoted, the star. My manager was promoted too.. But I knew inside something wasn't correct, BNPL just meant people not paying then but still had to pay sometime and 250% growth was just not something I could digest. I asked the team to switch it off for a couple of days, the whole company esp. Revenue teams were baying for my blood. After a month, there was financial reconciliation, and we realised the API was just giving the response of successful cancellation but was never actually cancelling it. The company lost almost 15 cr / day. No one wanted to believe this at all from top to bottom The company never told the investors we fudged up but instead raised more funding by mentioning the 250% growth. From then on I realised most investors are just watchmen. They want to be on the fast deal more than being on the correct deal. Don't believe anything on the internet that you read. Almost all GMV numbers are cooked.

There are essentially four parties in the startup economy: 1. The Consumer 2. The Enabler(read, Startup) 3. The Service Provider 4. The Investor Now let's look at Game Theory motivations: 1. The Indian Consumer wants to minimise money spent per unit value extracted, the Western Consumer wants to maximise value extracted per unit money spent. (There's a massive difference.) 2. The Startup depending on the stage wants to maximise User Growth and Free Cash Flows. 3. The Service provider wants to maximise financial incentives. 4. The Investor is wants to maximise the XIRR of their fund. For this they need to reach a multibagger liquidity event. Now let's look at what happens when: 1. The Consumer gets f'ed over: The startup attains pricing power through deep competitive moats allowing for monopolisation. They can jack up the prices to ensure nice FCF, greater rewards for Service Providers and great returns to their investors. (Think, Uber can charge anything to you now) 2. The Startup gets f'ed over: The users get bang for their buck, the service providers get good incentives, the investors push for higher growth but unfortunately the startup does not have enough capital to service their Cost of Operations through their unit economics, so they will either run out of cash or investor patience. Either ways, they are doomed. (Think every legit startup that failed) 3. The Service Provider get f'ed over: This is the likeliest scenario as they have the least power in this dynamic. Rewards will be reduced over time or made harder to achieve. They have no option because they got no option for sustenance. (Think any on-demand service providing app) 4. The investor gets f'ed over: Now imagine there is a startup that can balance the act very well. They have a service that users are willing to pay a margin on. They pay their service providers fairly and have decent unit economics. Now, the investor will do halla about destruction of shareholder value from little growth. (Is this the case with BluSmart?) Maybe that's why building in India is tough.

willl try my best to be honest, ask me anything

Asking this on behalf of many founders like myself, wanted to collate across multiple inputs: what is it that VCs really want to hear/see from a startup? Would love to get inputs from VCs and other founders alike - basis your experience on what has worked what hasn't worked. The usual suspects: obviously the founder credentials, TAM, insights, metrics. But, what else? Look forward to informed answers.

All the naysayers who said this is ridiculous will slowly be proved wrong

Hi Grapeviners, creating a thread where you can post the name of a toxic culture company along with which department. This thread is created as a one stop place to know about Toxic Culture Companies whether it, Early/Seed/Growth Stage/MNC . #community