Innovation or lining your own pockets

Two months ago I posted this rant on Grapevine (https://share.gvine.app/CLkpBuEqcCvrzKvx6) which I think is one of the most viral posts on the platform. Since then I took a break, learned Vipassana, went to the mountains, read, and reflected. Here are some truth bombs that have been exploding in my head 1) There is a leadership crisis Is it me or do today's self-proclaimed leaders just suck? Look around Grapevine: insecure toxic managers forcing people back to the office, overhiring CEOs who don't know WTF to do, and founders just abandoning ship. "Leaders" and founders today are about as disconnected from reality as the political class, because like politicians most of them are privileged, sheltered, and already wealthy. 2) Technological innovation doesn't mean progress. I couldn't laugh harder when I saw the Indus Valley report basically saying that maybe all of us VCs overestimated how much money we could make funding lending and consumer apps. Maybe funding lending apps that "open up credit for the poor" isn't sustainable when the rate of interest is >18%? Technological innovation doesn't always mean real-world progress. A lot of times, it just ends up perpetuating and amplifying pre-existing inequality. 3) Endless growth toward nothing Most of India's startup money comes from the West. Most of that money was just printed to repeatedly get out of an economic crisis. That's it. There was no great vision to fund the future of humanity behind all this new capital. Just Central Bankers and Presidents pressing the "Create Money" button to delay the inevitable. Most of us here owe our wealth to Easy Money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpMLAQbSYAw PS: A book, that completely flipped my worldview during this time is this: https://www.amazon.in/Debt-First-Years-David-Graeber/dp/0143422715. I urge all fellow foot soldiers of capitalism to read this. Until the next rant, stay sane, safe, and debt-free!

Kya dikat hai bhai, udane do paisa. Tumhare thodi hai. Good firms genuinely perform well and return money. The ecosystem is not forgiving -- you don't survive very long if you don't create any big wins. It's an extremely high stress job with very little WLB. You do make money but it comes at a cost. Layoffs are sad but at least those jobs existed in the first place? They wouldn't without VC money. India's VC scene is extremely young and it'll take time before we produce a Google. Entrepreneurs are not always right, they are not always nice either; but they definitely are courageous.

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.

I am Thankful to the funding winter it has revealed true colors of so called Founders, who would not stop talking about culture, Growth, scale etc on Twitter and LinkedIn Take Byjus, for instance, they claim to be revolutionizing education, it's all a facade! All they care about is squeezing every penny out of parents' pockets. Putting large amount of people in debts they didn’t even signup for. And let's talk about Dukaan, shall we? The absolute 🤡 of a founder with zero empathy( 90% staff laidoff and the guts to project it as some AI ML innovation) These startup founders have lost touch with reality. They've become obsessed with valuation and funding rounds, completely forgetting the essence of why they started in the first place. It's all about becoming the next "unicorn" and impressing investors, while the customers and sellers are left in the dust. Gone are the days of genuine innovation and passion for solving real-world problems. It's all about the money now, and they don't care who gets hurt along the way. The startup ecosystem has become a rat race, with everyone trying to outdo each other and sacrificing ethics and integrity in the process. It's sad to see the true colors of these startup founders shining through, and it's high time we demand more transparency, accountability, and genuine value from these so-called "disruptors." Enough with the facade, At the end all these founders will get an exit with generational wealth, the employee and people who have built it will be left in Dust. My laanat to all such founders and company. May the boat sink and hopefully someday we have accountability in place for these people.

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.

For the folks working in startups, do you actually think the leadership is working towards making a profit or just playing pleasing the investor game by doing layoffs and building products that don't sell just to get the next round of funding?