Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Amazing blog by Shashank Mehta- founder of Whole Truth

Software Developer

Amazing blog by Shashank Mehta- founder of Whole Truth- Grapevine

All founders are a**holes

Excellent blog from Shashank (Whole Truth founder), on why most founders are a**holes

Founder

Any new age consumer / D2C brands that you are fond of? Looking for inspiration on how to build a brand

Help a new founder

Product Manager

👇🏽 who are some founders/leaders that you actually like and believe will be able to make great things happen. 

They don’t need to be famous.

🪡 Founders - who get it right?

Sriharsha from Swiggy. Doesn’t believe in personal pr, branding. Busy in building.

Head Of Growth

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Recently reading up on a few things. Thinking of taking an year off to start something new. Let's see.

Drop your favourite blogs/newsletters/editorials. I want to see what I can learn.

Advice from HubSpot, Ahrefs, Intercom, Slidebean, and Webflow

Content-driven growth

[Thread] What are some of your favourite blogs in Product Management?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_2-L0MNdbt/?igsh=MTFrcG1yM2swcjU2cg==

Good morning! Sharing e lafda

For me - Mokobara, Chaayos, Chumbak
Looking to understand Indian brands that have done really well, and understand if it's the product being superior or brand/marketing being an outlier

What's a D2C brand from India that you really like?

The whole truth. absolutely amazing protein bars

Software Engineer

Just trying to understand which influencer do you love and why? Could be an artist/entertainer/knowledge influencer on any social media platform.

Which Indian influencer do you like the most?

Generalist

Is anyone coming for @protosphinx's meetup tomorrow at BIC

Protosphinx's meetup

Welcome to Get Motivated's Private Community

Saw this on X, absolutely spot on!

Every time a startup faces backlash from community or users, the founders just go to YourStory to white wash their image.
Saw OLA's founder Bhavish oozing gyan and patriotism, Zomato's founder Deep come and answer cute simple questions and now Mamaearth before IPO.

They used to do candid reporting but long gone are those days

YourStory has become Startup Washing Machine

Most startup’s are not founded with great altruistic purpose to elevate human condition. Most startup’s are founded where founders know they can make money or earn status points through little schemes of leveraging their network of investors. 

Most of them know they can earn more income by just raising some money from friends or VCs. Build a small tech tool and burn through money trying to acquire and retain customers. All this while hiring 100s of employees selling false narratives. 

What bugs me the most isn’t the thousands of people getting laid off, salary corrections or bankruptcies, it is the mafiaesque organisation built to “create wealth for some by exploitation of countless others” 

Most startup founders use brute force of content and media coupled with ignorance of people to perpetuate this cycle. 

It’s the virtue signalling and holier than thou attitude of most founders and VCs justifying all their mindless brutality in the name of strategy and growth which destroys aspirations and outcomes for the many. It’s more relevant in India because of large scale ignorance about money and large scale trust on educated individuals with the right college tags! 

If you have seen sopranos, most founders are like Anthony soprano - summarily violent, manipulative and ruthless behaviour primarily driven by selfish greed but juxtaposed with moments of vulnerability and struggle justifying his action with a facade of providing for his family. 

*Replace Anthony soprano with your founder/ceo name* 


1. VSS was playing fast and lose with rbi regulations resulting in stock crash and layoffs 
2. Byju’s systematically destroyed his own company and wealth of his employees just to ensure he retains majority control 
3. Ashneer G and his wife manipulated company books
4. Zerodha founders cheated in chess match or lied about their system failures which lost a lot of capital

PS: I refer to most founders because there are few exceptions who don’t fit into this narrative.

Startup founders are mafia bosses!

Incredibly myopic and pessimistic view. I'd suggest trying to be a founder yourself once before judging them. 
  
 Not every startup needs to elevate human condition, plus you still need money to make that happen. 
  
 Most founders don't actually earn much compared to jobs they could've had in companies. All you see is the flashy idiots like Kunal Shah and Byju. Not the bootstrapper shutting down their 10th project for xyz reasons. Because no one likes talking about their failures, and no one listens to people who fail. Only those who succeed.  
  
 You have a problem with the human condition buddy, not founders. Humans can be real shitty given the right kind of conditions. Everyone's fallible, even you.  
  
 If you think you can be a better founder than some of the names you mentioned, then you're only indulging in holier than thou behaviour, which you allegedly hate about founders.  
  
 I do agree with some of the things you said, but much of it is way off.

Consultant

Have previous experience of writing book also. My book "How to Bunk 101" was huge success back in my collage days.

Thinking of launching a book "How to be a toxic founder 101" need your input and suggestions...

Anything from marketing to sales to tech and finance. I would love to know yours.

Newsletter that actually add value!!

This influencer with a massive following on YouTube laid me & my team off within a week of hiring since apparently they have deferred their Series A. Bro, why didn't you figure it out before I joined. They bumped off Sourcing, D2C sales head, Finance, Offline Sales head, etc as well. Apparently - they still have the HR head drawing the salary of probably more than 50L pa since they need to build 'culture' for a team size of less than 25 ppl now.

Business model: D2C business launching products in partnership with Influencer to leverage their following

Founders couldn't Figure Out fund raise

Bro there's Sham in the name.  What else did you expect.

Sales Manager

Mine are:
Shreyas Doshi (tweets)
Manas Saloi (blog)
Paras Chopra (blog)

All 3 have shared superb content for free in their blogs/tweets

years of wisdom summarized for consumption

I don't read books often
so am grateful to people like these compress so much knowledge in a consumable form

Useful PM accounts to follow on twitter

Who’s your favourite Entrepreneur?

Growth Manager

Sharing frustrations with starting up a business. In my career I have raised over $30m over multiple rounds.

Co-founders in non-business roles get pushed out by politics. Sharing control with co-founders is messy, inconvenient, time consuming. Money lets you hire people who have to answer to you.

If you are not the main ‘Business person’ in a startup high chance you are disposable, no matter what skills you have. And it sucks to spend so much effort only to get bullied out and left with nothing.

Some investors will follow you on social media, if your business is not growing QoQ don’t post anything on social media that implies you are not working every weekend. They will ask why you are not working.

 If you are CEO, be ready for every random person to tell you how to run your business. Not in a ‘friendly advice’ kind of way, if you are the CEO you have a target on your back.

 Investors don’t know about your industry or have very dated knowledge. Some will just say random tips like ‘try web3’ or ‘try SaaS’ and blame you for following their advice when it fails.

 Your progress is measured against fraud companies who fake numbers, or the 1 in thousands who succeed. Get made to feel like you are failing to live up to super high expectations constantly.

 Employees work half your hours, off sick usuall one day a week, deliver next to nothing and expect 20% hikes every year because that’s what their friends make, or they read some dumb startup hires freshers at 20LPA. 

Smooth talking people with the same idea as you, no traction, never shipped a product in life, will raise a huge seed round due to 'pedigree' and spend it all on self promotion. You will always be compared to these clowns who find ways to lecture others while building nothing of value.

Dark side of starting up.

So much truth in everything you’ve written 
 “your progress is measured against fraud companies who fake numbers”  
  
 This has become just more prevalent over time. Confidently advice learnings from startups that are faking GMV or PMF metrics :)

Investment Associate

Investor

Kudos to him for speaking up on this issue. 

As a founder you feel working anything less than 365 days is a crime 

Link: https://analyticsindiamag.com/kunal-shah-tells-entrepreneurs-to-take-two-days-off-a-week-to-think/ Kunal Shah Tells Entrepreneurs to Take Two Days Off a Week to Think

Kunal Shah says something that’s not widely accepted in the Entrepreneurship world 👏🏻

What are some of the articles which are a must read for someone who is part of the VC ecosystem or aspiring to be a part of the VC ecosystem in India

Amazing blog by Shashank Mehta- founder of Whole Truth

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Saw this on X, absolutely spot on!

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