What's your anti-startup

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.

Back in 2018, I had an offer from a fast-growing fintech startup. The salary was lower, the hours looked brutal, and the whole thing seemed risky. I chose to stay at my comfortable Big Tech job instead. Fast forward to now: that startup just went public, and early employees are instant millionaires. Meanwhile, I'm still grinding away at the same desk, wondering "what if?" Has anyone else passed up a high-risk, high-reward opportunity for security? How do you cope with the regret?

There are so many startups failing all around. Many which I thought were doing something great also have been duds. Some epic surprise failures would be dunzo, pharmeasy, etc. It looks like there will be many more such revelations in coming days 😐😐 Please share list of some stable and good startups (Series B and beyond) which I should be targetting.

VC here. Doing this for fun. Don't take all views seriously.

What an absolute shit show https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/fraud-threats-sexual-harassment-zilingos-ankiti-bose-files-fir-against-co-founder-ex-coo-12706929.html

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.

These would be the companies that has a great team attacking a real large problem with a vision or roadmap to also grow profitably as a business + great culture (and not necessarily chasing the valuation game and dressing up the company for investors or for eventually dumping it to common folks in IPO). Place where problem+product+people+profit have a much higher focus.

Go ahead, ask if we pushed founders to commit fraud.