Yeh raaz bhi competitors ke saath hi chala gya

Product Manager

What is the most alpha/dick move that your startup did to its competitors?

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Startup dick moves to competitors

Consultant

Startup dick moves to competitors- Grapevine

What are some unethical thngs your funded company founders and core nepotism team.hve done??


Ex my ex company founder hired wife, sister, and friends as board of director giving 4 seats to the family itself + fancy designations like cfo, coo  cmo and ceo. All took 5 lakhs per month each as salary which means 20 lakhs going home from VC funded money per month. 1 million fundraise goes home in about 3 - 4 years used to set up paralell businesses, etc and no money made in core business

Unethical things by startup founders

Growth Manager

The Startup that you had an offer from but did not join, and then it went big? (Let's take a word from VCs, how they like to use anti portfolio lists on their sites - cos they got an opportunity to enter but missed)

What's your anti-startup

Hi, Grapeviners


Can anybody tell me where can I find /apply to remote jobs of startups based out of US.

I'm an Ex-founder with 4+ years of experience, just closed down operations of my company , looking for a full time role in product roles 


If Anybody can help , suggest, guide, that would be great.

Thank you so much

Remote jobs

Project Manager

I have evaluated a lot of startups as part of my work. My approach has changed from being optimistic to being suspicious of a lot of founders, even before the process starts. 

The sheer number of founders that I come across that try to game metrics/play around with data to make the startup look good. 

Most commonly:
1) Completely changing the definition of margins, repeat rates, etc. and never clarifying that they are using different definition. 
2) Often giving rebates/discounts to key stakeholders but finding ways to hide it from their P&L so that it’s not visible. THIS IS SO COMMON - lot’s of them start showing revenues, and then you will see another cost item rising at the same pace, and lot’s of times it will just be money moving around
3) Sometimes completely giving the wrong picture of how their product works on ground. You then speak with their customers, and they describe something completely else.

Things like these are eating up the ecosystem. These founders also end up fooling some VCs, and then capital get’s kept away from actually good founders who have good intentions.

There was a recent major investment in the commerce space, and that is another one such example of a startup doing this. Needs to stop.

RANT: Founders who fake metrics

Product Owner

I've a great idea and it's validated after talking to more than 50 founders/head of sales.

Questions -
1. What's the process of getting a domain/and checking if the domain/product name is not a brand name globally anywhere?

2. Wrt raising funding, any founders here who can throw some light on how much salaries you used to take? I am not very inclined towards bootstrapping rn.

3. What were the challenges wrt starting your website, getting it validated by running ads etc? Maybe some D2C founders can help me out here.

4. What tools did you use for your first MVP launch?

Thanks

Thinking of build my own startup. Have questions?

A lot of folks working at startups seem to be "passionate " about their job. Some of them possibly, truly are. Some foolishly reverse engineer this passion because they're paid really well and they've been doing a good job and it's good personal PR to say "passion".  A few reality checks.

1. Your cool Bangalore lifestyle is a result of investment risks/bets taken by VC's .

2. Your salary is as much about the market demand as it is about your " passion " and talent.

3. Startups will generally lower the bar for hiring processes to meet their demand for talent. Why need so much talent? Because the startup  needs to spend that 100M$ Series C that just made them a unicorn. That's how they convince the VC to give more money. "We are going to 2x revenue by 2xing our salesforce and buying 10M$ worth of Saas that will increase our productivity by 5x. " And boom ...100M$ transferred into you SVB bank account.

4. You are as replaceable as a garbage bag on your dustbin. The HR is probably flirting with 10 other like you over linkedin.


5. The "values" this startup apparently espouses are mostly nothing but a honey trap and positioning to lure talent.

It's great to have a nice tech job that pays well and allows you to gloat on twitter like a techbro but don't let it fool you into getting an inflated sense of entitlement. You're probably living on borrowed time....and money. :)

" Passionate " Startup folks

Currently I’m in the stage of building the MVP of my idea. Idea is not something unique. Already has a lot of competitors. In that scenario what is the chance of somebody investing in my startup. And I am also not from any tier 1 colleges or not an ex employee of any unicorn startups. In fact  I am a college drop out from a tier 3 college. What is chance of I’m getting funding?

How to raise angel funding for my startup?

Software Developer

Another one bites the dust. Alpha Wave is too big, and this is fucked up for the ecosystem. They were really one of the heavy weights. Another big wallet with growth funding ability, just gone...

Alpha Wave Global to stop startup investments in India 🚨

They have big pockets but very cunning and power hungry people. They promote cut-throat ruthlessness. They are being smart now and backing out early so that later they can wash off their hands form being one of the primary players to have destroyed the startup ecosystem. The OG falcon had at least little bit of honesty, business savvyness and heart. From the time it became alpha wave and some terrible incompetent people took up important roles, it has been a downhill.  
  
 Someone from alpha -  be the whistleblower. But unlikely there would be anyone who has the guts to speak up. Their leaders have ensured to hire only weak yes-people.

Investor

Investment Associate

Was looking for automation solutions for my startup, came across an early stage AI startup that had 3-4 meetings with us and showed us screenshots of their product, but delayed product demo and signup.

Few days later said they're shutting down because they couldn't raise funds and had no MVP ready to use. But they didn't tell us that earlier, all they said was "we are in early stages, still working on product, need info from you"etc.

While their vision seemed good enough, not having an MVP while pitching for clients is weird and a waste of time tbh. No one will know or learn anything unless they try using an actual product, including themselves. And it isn't hard to build one either, i think I have the gist of it and might already be in production by other startups in this space. Decent low hanging fruit in SaaS with good long term potential.

Doing things that don't scale doesn't mean you don't put in the required amount of work before approaching clients. Don't want to name them, they probably learned as much by now.

Got pitched by a startup with no MVP 😂

Link for actual thread and comments - 

https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/15p8qrx/my_0100m0_in_5_years_story/

Must read for startup folks today

Computer Operator

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 :)

Blind is officially in India now!

[Thread] You get massive seed funding: What do you don’t do?

Came across this post on X recently, the point sounds valid in my opinion but wanted to know from the community cuz I recently took a decision between a unicorn b2c start-u which is super popular vs a b2b SaaS startup which is known among the tech community.

Post link: https://twitter.com/amuldotexe/status/1738243872231428484?t=V2-6pMSYCvl7L-w_f8IggQ&s=19

A big name in tech Vs 0-1 high growth place

It was a pretty tense situation at the office. 

Nearly all engineering managers were laid off, most of the SDE-2s who were not the core engineering team and a lot of SDE-1s who had just joined this year. Even the interns were let go today.

Pretty scary scenario today. Just putting out an update. Apparently it was done to please the investors for the next series of funding. Can't say for sure though.

CityMall conducted layoffs today.

DevOps Engineer

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

I know sometimes we refrain from saying too much about our company. But exes can usually be talked about, since there's not much holding back.

Maybe it helps someone else avoid a mistake you did, or gain a new learning :p 

Shoot.

What's a secret from a previous workplace you worked at? 🤫

Not my workplace, but true story. 
  
 giant american retail company (assume it's W*) hires one giant indian IT services company (assume it's H*) for some maintenance work now this H* company has offload this work to small Indian IT services company (assume it's M*) which has a employee named R* who's one assigned to actually do the work but R* is smartass he's scouting internet for freelancer to fix the issues. He gets one junior guy P* to work for few thousand rupees and shares his credentials, vpn provider etc and our P* now messes up , in the whole scenario there's no safety lot's of mess total grey zone. 
  
 From knowing this incident, I'm like no one gives any fucks about anything, only if people weren't so bad.

Backend Engineer

Corporate Strategist

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

First of all that event with sam altman was embarrassing. The aftermath was even more embarassing, leading the embarrassment squad was https://twitter.com/C_P_Gurnani/status/1667140990413537284?t=dei0Qm2UKg8SZNb4fHEAmA&s=19 

Dude accepted the challenge while paying his engineers 2.5LPA, running a service based company. After this he wants to compete with a proper product. 

His following tweets are just BS inspirational quotes and generic tweet about ramping investment in R&D. But how are you going to compete with open ai? Nothing has been said.


As Indians we have a very big ego, instead of accepting something as feedback why do we always go all out and try to match the other person by words and not action. Then these leaders will go and say action matters a lot more than words.

Admittedly, Sam didn't even mean that indian companies are hopeless. It's just that with 10M he said it's hopeless to compete on foundational models of open ai.


We don't have a tech leader or an ecosystem where we can say that we can take on open ai. We don't even have a global product that competes with big tech. So why are we full of anger if somebody points out a fact.

In comments, can we discuss a solution to the tech ecosystem being shit so we build the foundation on which we can eventually compete on a global level?

Embarrassed with our CEOs

Software Engineer

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

Founder

What's the craziest reason someone got fired?

Here's mine at my previous job. A collegue of mine was fired for smoking weed in the bathroom. He got back to his laptop and he was high as fuck, I am pretty sure he didn't even understand why he was getting fired.

Startup dick moves to competitors

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