Scientists have no time to deal with HR community.

Consultant

Lmao, these founders and VCs would just focus on making big bank and ruin the chances of actual profitable commercialisation of any tech

Software Developer

Every founder out there is for the money they don't care about research or tech

Founder

Hey Viners, I feel that its time Scientists / Researchers working on products partner with good business minded folks to produce Innovative startups in the country and not copycats.  The startup fo...

Welcome to News Discussion's Private Community

Hey Viners, I feel that its time Scientists / Researchers working on products partner with good business minded folks to produce Innovative startups in the country and not copycats.

The startup folks having enough personal net worth can contribute their bit for bringing talented folks onboard. 

The amount of deeptech startups is very less and most of our startups lack real innovation / Moats .

What do y'all think on this ??

Scientists / Researchers in Startups in India

Software Engineer

Scientists / Researchers in Startups in India- Grapevine

Hello everyone,

I'm Varun, the co-founder of Mesa School of Business. We’re Asia’s first startup focused business school focused on fostering the next generation of startup leaders in India.

Prior to Mesa, I was a Sr. Product Manager at Amazon in Seattle, and did my MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

I'd love to chat with you folks about my journey in building Mesa, my thoughts on higher education, 0-to-1 building, amongst other things.

Ask me anything! :)
I'll be back at 5 pm and start answering.

I'm Varun, Co-Founder at Mesa School of Business. Ask me anything!

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Let's not rant over filpkart or others as tech startups. They are Tech enabled. Let's share out some tech startups registered on Indian soil with over 100 million dollar revenue. And discuss, why are you not creating one (if you have a vision and figured problem-solution-market)?

Eg: China in its developing time had many. Phone companies, circuits companies, gadgets companies, LED TV companies, semiconductors, agritech machines, plane manufacturing companies. 

Tik tok was a simple idea, literally most of you could have built the tech, couldn't you? Then, still why weren't we able to carry such big vision and execution. India received funds very well to replicate tiktok, yet they failed in execution and differentiation.

I struggle to accept a few thoughts;

1) We are less disciplined, less dedicated, and less visionary compared to the general population of China.

2) Maybe we are more western than the western itself. We adopted and copied developed nations present and skipped their past hardwork and dedication.

3) We have grown too practical and not ready to hear impractical ideas.

Share yourself similarly on related topics.

Wonder why India has no deep-tech/device startups.

Solution architect

I am building something, say like a social network, for the consumer where they will use it. Now, I don't feel good raising from any VC because of their heinous nature, 

Can I raise pre-seed funding for my startup via equity as tokens worth 1 lakhs- 5 lakhs for my own customers to purchase and minimum hold for 3 years as investment? (Given the value proposition and vision aligns with their customers) 

Is this possible? Ofc. Yes.

Questions: Is this legal? If not, can it be made legal via some procedure like crowd funding? Unlike, ICO.

Can we raise from equity tokens?

I might sound stupid here but please hear me out. 
The market is crowded with so many startups in every domain. Older startups are much more stable, on track to become profitable or are already profitable with a huge market share. Not to forget the legacy companies with deep pockets and years of R&D and experience. Along with the competition, funding is another major pain point now because of various reasons we all know of. 
Also, somewhere I feel we don't face a lot of burning problems we faced a few years back which gave birth to a lot of startups who were actually solving some problem. Most of the new age startups out there are not really solving any problem but just offering premium products or services targeting just the high earning individuals. Most of the new ideas are repetitive with no major differentiation or value add. 
Because of all these reasons, I feel we might see very few new startups in future let alone successful ones. 

Share your thoughts please!

What's the future of start-ups and start-up ideas?

Analyst

Too many instances of global funds entering India. This will be interesting. The big existing ones (Peak, LSIP, Accel, Elevation) will be forced to deploy because the new ones will  have a lot more appetite. 

General Catalyst investing in Zepto for example. Entering with a bang.
Glade Brook, GC, and rumours of the two biggest ones in the US - one that used to exist earlier here.

Interesting times ahead for founders and invest.

Indian VC ecosystem heating up, global funds incoming

Investment Associate

Have been an entrepreneur since college days. Went full time on same idea and worked on it for a good 4 years full time before starting something new, raising some money, later pivoting (fucked up here) and eventually shutting shop last year. 

Life has been tough since then since there is no clarity on what to spend next 2-5 years on - acquisition offer falling apart, tried looking for jobs but didn't finalise and later did a bit of consulting (good pay but didn't really work out).

I now have a few good conversations going on right now - leading product & EIR/Founders Office. What do you suggest would be an ideal thing to do? 

Profile - Solid Generalist. Non tech. Money ain't really an issue right now but can't stay dependent on savings for so long - its stupid.

PS - If you or someone you know is hiring, please reach out. Happy exploring ideas as well.

2 time ex-founder / 6+ years of entrepreneurial experience

What has startups done that has added value to a normal Indian's life? Other than a few.

Obviously, apart from fellow tech bros.

Startup Bros are net negative to society.

After Shark Tank, we have seen Indian Angels and StartAb but I believe the actual problem is still not being solved. Tbh, more than 90% of companies shown in these TV shows are more like businesses rather than startups with not so unique MOAT or tech platforms. Moreover, they are about funding businesses that are already revenue generating and negotiating equity deals with half of the show time is all about equity negotiations only.

Still there are many with some unique ideas in tech landscape who are in search of Tech Co-founders to build the platform and many couldn't find one resulting in not starting their startup. What are your thoughts on a new show completely for Aspiring Entrepreneurs with unique ideas in tech with no revenue or product most for ones seeking help in building product/tech and stories where even an investment of Rs. 1 lakh can bring a big difference bcz even without that 1 lakh they could have never turned that idea into MVP and start that journey

Thoughts on a new reality show for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Product Designer

I love to read about tech and how startups evolved. Have spent a lot of time figuring out how the good product companies in the US got built: Google, FB, Instagram, Snap, Pinterest etc. etc. 

One thing stands out: A lot of these started out as just projects, and not a real startup. 
Instagram was just an idea to make photo filtering better. Reddit was just a project around making a cooler internet.

They set off as projects, and got some traction before becoming funded startups. Because they had devs in the founding team, who were always doing projects as side hustles. 

This wasn't the time when SDE salaries were so pumped up, they didn't want to just become good devs, they probably wanted to solve real problems. 

My takeaway: 

Maybe Engineers shouldn’t be too incentivised to just code. They should be incentivised to think business. 
Thats how FB, Google, Insta etc happened as companies.

In India, high pay endears engineers to stick to coding, do less business thinking.
That’s why we don’t see too many coders posting their side projects on X, Reddit, GV within India. Maybe there just aren’t enough. 

Have just been thinking about this. 

Open to thoughts from the community - maybe my view is limited. Would love to hear.

Why Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley, and why that will likely not happen in India

Corporate Strategist

Hi all,
I graduated from IIT Delhi and have been working at well established startup since. 
So for a while I have been wondering why we don't have any deep tech startups doing innovation. Don't get me wrong, there are startups doing innovations but not the kind of innovation which we would call industry shattering or taking the level up a notch. Most of these innovations are just integrating what others are doing in an aggregated platform. I again wondered this today when I saw cognition launching Devin the AI software engineer. They have a pretty small yet highly talented team. 
We in India too have highly intelligent folks educating themselves in CS, why don't we have this mindset (even I don't have this mindset). 
Is it about the difference in culture or a sense of security that folks in the US have that helps them be free from an economic point of view and try innovative things ?

Why don't we have deep tech ?

willl try my best to be honest, ask me anything

AMA - I work at a VC fund

Anyone building for the media and entertainment industry? Would love to learn if you know anyone who is building for this.

Growth Manager

Get me a Product Management Intern !!!!

Is Getting Jobs from LinkedIn Opportunities just a myth ??

Common "Indian Startups" do your thing🧠👨‍🦯

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?

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

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.

The Death of Indian Innovation: Why Indian Start Ups are failing to Innovate?

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.

Scientists / Researchers in Startups in India

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