This is why we need Grapevine. This is Ashish Mohapatra, Founder of OfBusiness. Image source: Morning Context

The startup is Accel and Elevation backed. The company raised seed funding because the founder and team is from IIT- Kharagpur, and Accel + Elevation have people from IIT-Kharagpur working in their team. The founder has no prior work experience, no manners on how to speak with anyone (office boy, or women employees) keeps firing people who don’t agree with him, insists on being in the office for 12 hours because he pays us. Hiring criteria is - 1. Single people, so no distraction. He asks are you single or in a relationship (in the interview) 2. No married people 3. Hire women only if they can stay in office till 5 AM (US based startup) 4. Everyone has to be in office for 12 hours compulsory for all 6 days of week He boasts on how the VCs will save his ass even if the product fails, has said that worst case scenario I will make money because I know company will be acquired. He hires domain experts, makes them create playbook and train juniors to do the work, and then fires them saying "We have to stay lean, and this is a bad market". He did this with 3 departments already. How are the VCs not asking him basic due diligence questions? He is now raising 8 million follow up round.

I’ll go first. To me, it’s all about access. Access to authentic ideas. The best search result you get on Google is high SEO but low authenticity. On LinkedIn, there are so many people but everyone is shilling a course or 1:1 resume reviews. Mostly it has become a place which started as vanity signalling Like ( I have started a new role…, I have been accepted at …, I have received offers from F, A, N and G and I’m joining G.) And now people pushing mindless content with “Agree?” or “Comment Interested”. Somehow, everyone is truly inauthentic to please a wider audience and say the exact same generic gyaan to maximise engagement. For now, Grapevine is where people are genuinely themselves and I get to hear interesting things that you get to hear near the coffee machine. Kinda feels like we’re all a big community where we all contribute and learn new things about the professional landscape around us. Godspeed Grapevine. 🚀

Let's ignore what's wrong with startups, keep this an optimistic thread. Which startups make you excited about their future? The ones that have cracked product, GTM, model, or something else. Name the best Indian startups :)

Hi @Grapevine team and Community marketing enthusiast who have worked on 0-1/1-10, We are building a community app related to dating and figuring out unpaid marketing channels what will work or not since we don’t have much money to do paid marketing. How did you started grapevine and manage community effects, did you go to paid channels? Do you believe in grow fast or die or growing slow in community apps is also fine since credibility comes with size of community. What are the effective channels we can explore apart from twitter and instagram? Members even if you don’t have idea please like the post to get it highlighted it will be great help for us❤️

How does 🍇 grapevine earn money 💰💰🤔

Pardon me for being so naive here. I want to understand this new type of startup trend. 1. What’s the source of motivation for their employees to stick to their jobs? 2. How do apps like these think of monetizing? There is no ad, no paid feature per say. 3. Grapevine has probably built some kind of a platform. But how is this different from platforms like twitter, facebook or any other social media platform? 4. How much money do you think has been invested into building apps like this? 5. The DAU of this app based on my wild guess must be around 5K. I may be completely wrong here. 6. What according to you is the current valuation of grapevine? 7. Saumil Tripathi, the founder of grapevine is ex-google employee as per his LinkedIn profile. There is no mention of any other any other startup he owns. 8. Grapevine has a team of 10 employees (as per Saumil’s post a few weeks back) How do these guys make money? I’m awestruck by the guys working in grapevine. Building an app of this quality with no monetization in sight! Pounce on this thread with your thoughts guys!

Hear me out here, Starting up is much more than idea PMF MVP CAC capital etc There are so many basic paperwork questions - how to register company, GST, what all funds can government help with, how to get them, what startup programs Or behavioral questions - friends coming to build business, insecurity, anxiety, non - business backgrounds, job to business journey The top customers are here Many founders too, people who have built companies from scratch Founders who have failed and yet not given up First time founders who built it big, navigating inevitable issues These basic questions could be very helpful