Software Developer

My favourite: The most valuable personal finance asset is not needing to impress anyone.  
  
 Wiser words not spoken.

Growth Manager

https://collabfund.com/blog/afewthingsimprettysureabout0923/

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

https://collabfund.com/blog/a-few-things-im-pretty-sure-about-0923/

Hard truths

Hard truths- Grapevine

What's a sad truth you've come to accept?

Software Engineer

This is without a doubt a very lucrative career, possibly even a little underrated with new workforce, provided you're able to meet quotas and are good at it.

3 things I've learnt so far are:
1. Client doesn't care what your product offers 90 percent of the time
2. U gave to establish a trade-off between long term and short term goals
3. Things are slow, day to day is super operational. Impact creation is always a hit or miss

Let me know yours!

People in tech sales: Share 3 points of advice/hard truths about the field.

Account Manager

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

I've been in startups for the last 8 years. From Series B/C onwards to even a unicorn, over time worked at 3. 
One of them was an outright scam, raised many millions of $s from top investors, and then ultimately died. 
Also close with CXOs at decent sized startups, and there is a pattern out there. 

A few thoughts:
1. Being a startup founder is tough. There's pain. Some people thrive in pain. AKA Masochists. Know how to spot a founder who works 15 hours a day because they love their vision vs. somebody who works 15 hours a day because they're masochists. These people thrive in pain, and hence love to see you miserable as you slog away the hours under their leadership. 

There is absolutely no vision for the future that they have. They do it for the fame, money, and cause a lot of pain in the process. Nothing good comes out of it. Investors love this breed.
   
2. I wish I'd done more than just leave the scammy startup. At the point, I decided against whistleblowing. Because I thought there's so many people employed here, they would all be impacted. Over time, 200-300 people more joined after I left. Once the scam was caught, all of them lost their jobs.
   
3. I'm not a coder. I'm a generalist. Over time, my pay grew but not in line with my peers who went into consulting/VC and then came back to big tech/startups. Over time, you disadvantage yourself if you stick around as a generalist in startups for too long. The next team pays you at some premium over the last one, there's no step jump. 
You need to somehow find a successful startup early, and genuinely, that is impossible to game - even VCs have to bet on 20 to get it right.

These are a few disjointed thoughts. I hope they give some insight.
My only takeaways:
- If you work at a scammy startup, don't stand it. At least, don't stick around. 
- I earn lesser than my peers (tier 1 undergrad), but I regret nothing. I love my work, and I'll never get over the kick. I cannot imagine working at a larger company ever again.
- Ultimately, you have to be optimistic. Believe that India will grow, good founders will come around, magic will happen ❤️

PSA: What 8 years in startups have taught me

A startup with experienced folks and a well defined set of roles and responsibilities >>> one where we're all "a family"

Founder

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.

Generalist

Consultant

You are 35. What have you stopped believing in that you totally believed in when you were 25?

Life lessons

Business Analyst

sometimes it gets tough, but we pull through 💪

Senior Software Engineer

Alright folks, time for some real talk. I fucked up. Big time. And I'm here to share my story so you don't make the same mistakes I did.

Back in 2021, I co-founded a web3 startup. Yeah, you know where this is going. I was caught up in the hype, the FOMO, the promise of changing the world through DAOs. Spoiler alert: We raised more than $5M in seed funding, burned through half of it, never hit product-market fit, and ended up shutting down and returning the remaining capital to our investors.

Here's how it went down:

It all started when I fell down the web3 rabbit hole. I read a few whitepapers, watched some YouTube videos, and suddenly thought I was the next Vitalik Buterin. I had this "revolutionary" idea for a DAO that would democratize venture capital. Sounds cool, right? I thought so too.

Now, here's the thing - I'm a great pitcher. Give me a deck and 30 minutes, and I can make almost anything sound like the next unicorn. So, armed with buzzwords and a slick presentation, I hit the VC circuit.

And holy shit, did it work. We were a great team, stellar credentials so were able to close the fundraise pretty quick. I still remember the day we closed the round. Popping champagne, dreaming of TechCrunch headlines once we did our Series A, all the jazz.

But here's what I didn't realize at the time: I had zero conviction in what we were building. I was so caught up in the excitement of raising money and being part of the "next big thing" that I never stopped to ask myself if I truly believed in what we were doing.

Reality hit hard and fast. As we started building, I realized I didn't really understand the problem we were solving. Our target users weren't as excited about the product as we were. We pivoted, then pivoted again. But nothing stuck.

Eighteen months in, we had burned through $3M, had no clear path to revenue, and my co-founder and I were at each other's throats. That's when it hit me - we needed to shut this down before we wasted any more of our investors' money.

Making that call was the hardest thing I've ever done. Telling our team, our investors, our families - it sucked. But it was the right thing to do.

Here's what I learned from this expensive and humbling experience:

1.⁠ ⁠Hype is not a business model: Just because something is trending doesn't mean it's a good business opportunity. Do your own research, understand the market deeply.
2.⁠ ⁠Raising money ≠ Success: It's easy to get caught up in the vanity of a big round. But money just buys you runway, not success.
3.⁠ ⁠If you can't explain it to your grandma, you don't understand it well enough: I couldn't clearly explain our value proposition without resorting to buzzwords. Red flag.
4.⁠ ⁠Team alignment is everything: Make sure you and your co-founders are on the same page about the vision, not just the potential payout.
5.⁠ ⁠Listen to the market, not your ego: We ignored early signs that users weren't as excited about our product as we were.

But the biggest lesson?

You need 100% conviction to run a startup. Not 90%, not 99%. 100%.

Building a company is hard. Really fucking hard. There will be days when everything seems to be falling apart. If you don't have absolute conviction in what you're building, you won't have the resilience to push through those times.

Looking back, I realize I was more in love with the idea of being a founder than with the problem we were solving. I was chasing clout, not impact.

To anyone out there thinking of starting a company: Please, please, please make sure you have unwavering conviction in your idea. Make sure you're solving a real problem that you deeply understand and care about. Don't do it for the hype, the money, or the status. Do it because you can't imagine doing anything else.

As for me? I'm taking some time off to reflect. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll make damn sure I believe in what I'm building with every fiber of my being.

I sort of see this happening now with AI, please take a pause. Let's learn from each other. Because trust me, learning this lesson the hard way? It ain't fun.

Keep building!

Raised $5M+ for web3 startup, shut it down. Notes on conviction vs hype 🧵

I will never understand this phenomenon of people getting funding based on pitch decks , while startups like mine with actual revenue and paying users will never get funding because we don't have IIT IIM tags or flashy stuff that catches investors.  
  
 Pisses me off to no end tbh. People like you and VCs like this make the whole ecosystem look stupid af. 
  
  I know it's not completely your fault either, it's just how things are. But I can't help it tbh. I've seen too many deserving startups die due to lack of capital, including mine. It's hard to read such stories and empathise because it's pure privilege in the hands of a few, wasted away for no good reason.

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

IIT grad here building a venture backed startup. I think 99% of folks here believe that venture backed founders are super entitled and in a much "cosier" position than employees

Just sharing a few facts about our journey so far if it helps anyone improve their perspectives-

1) Paying ourselves 33% of our campus salary & 60% of what we are paying to our employees (Talking about Pure Base Salary here, not including ESOPs)

2) Insane stress - You basically have to raise money to build (esp if its deeptech because of the high fixed costs) and there are predefined metrics you have to always chase, sometimes just beyond yourselves. 

Your product will be copied if it's good because well, they always have more money than you. You work 7 days a week for insane hours, chasing metrics required to be "afloat" 

3) 99% of venture backed startups result in 0 liquidity gain for founders. So basically in all likeliness, everything is for a net negative return compared to if we took the campus job

So, when you wholeheartedly bash founders as if they are sitting On a goldmine while you are toiling for THEIR gold Treasure, just understand that more likely than not, there is not really any gold but rather an irrational hope they are clinging to

Also, Yes-we pay above market to our employees (100% hike for the last one) but the truth is some startups just Can't afford it. And ironically, there is a much higher looking down on these startups with meagurely paid founders rather than giants like Tech Mahindra paying peanuts to their employees while having a 1000% salary hike for the executives. 

Yeah, most startups need to do better but please appreciate if someone is atleast trying to do better because trust me, it's INSANELY HARD.. 

The number of posts I see about Flipkart making hundreds millionaires is way too less than the ones I see about pinpointing at every single mistake early stage startups do & I just wanted to express my opinion on it

Peace!

People way overestimate the life of founders

Oh no poor founders, they have to pay fair salary to their employees.

What can be improved? Not people specific, but what you feel is wrong about us consistently across most conversations you've had?

Founders/Ex Founders on Grapevine, what can VCs get better at?

Hey Folks,
I’m in a phase where I have decided to move out from my present company. My present company is very dear to me as it gave me the taste of what success looks like. Honestly, I would have never made it had I not received the support and backing that I got here.

I don’t know if I am making the correct decision. Emotions are literally overflowing. One side of mine tells me that I am making the wrong decision whereas the other side is excited to see what future holds for me. 

Literally anxious of all the thoughts that are crossing my mind. What if , I am not able to perform at my next company ? What if , they decide to hire me and then not honour their offer letter ? What if, the company has a mass layoff and I am impacted ?

All these thoughts are literally eating me from inside. Any suggestions on how can I handle the same ?

How to handle emotions while switching companies

This is such a wholesome emotion.
You are not doing anything wrong. Growth makes things uncomfortable because you are leaving your cocoon. 
Next job may or may not be as great, but you will learn so much on your journey.

Plus, great companies are made by great people. Keep in touch with your present colleagues beyond this transition. Hold on to all the best people you find along the way!

All the best in new role, you'll be fine!

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mayank-bidawatka-028b2a1_you-may-have-read-some-recent-articles-about-activity-7108305482867515394-JTMO?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

Koo Reality - Co-Founders Post

What kind of questions I can expect in final round with Partner for an VC analyst role in early stage investment firm?

VC Analyst interview Partner round

Product Manager

1. Fancy talks from founders such as ownership, independence, building for next generation, speed etc
2. Learn new tech
3. Glofiying working at odd hours
4. Don't talk about stress and anxiety 

Start ups are not for weak heart and normal humans who have life after work. It's only for people who will give up their life to build somone else dream. Prove me wrong.

An ex ola person cried infront of me for the workplace stress and unrealistic push

Startup are brutal

Lawyer

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

Is this guy for real?

Product Designer

Hi folks,

I got laid off today from a YC-backed startup (W23) citing a shift in product focus. Was part of the core team since Oct '21, initially as an intern then later converted to FTE in '22. Got a decent (30%+) increment this year. I was leading the mobile platform but currently, I'm on a notice period. CTO is supportive and helping me via their network.

I'm a recent graduate and this is my first time experiencing a layoff. What should I do now? What things should I keep in mind looking for the next opportunity? 

Also, if you are hiring and looking for a full-stack engineer, do reach out via https://t.me/GrimBeard75

Got laid-off from a YC backed startup

Product Engineer

Something as a founder I have decided over the years.
Everywhere around you, you hear stories of founders who worked 16-18 hours a day, made their team work as hard, were assholes, shouted at people, made people cry.

You start to think, that's an absolute must to succeed. 
I don't think it is. For every 2-3 founders that are toxic, there's the one good natured founder who succeeds. They're rare, but they do exist. 

1) I've been in many toxic jobs. I've hated them, and had some form of anxiety. To become successful, if I subject people through the same, what was all of this for? 
2) I'm not saying I'll keep it too chill at my startup. I actually expect people to work harder than typical corporates, but only if they have good ESOPs in the early days, a chance to actually learn and do well (and that should be pre-aligned) 
3) But what about the mission? Don't you want to make sure your mission becomes true, whatever you're chasing actually reaches 1000s/millions of people? Sure. But it solves for many vacations for me, and maybe better lives for my kids, and perhaps some problem gets solved. But what if it doesn't. It cannot come at the cost of miserable lives for my team. I'll never be proud of my work if that happens. 

We all have a decision. Why just be a successful founder? Why not have a higher aim... be a successful non toxic founder? You'd be truly 1 in a million then. 

That's how I'll always see it, I hope.

Note: Okay with failing, will not create Toxic Culture

Your true test will come when investor pressure arrives at your doorstep.

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