Don't believe the numbers just as is

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.

You can mention current/ex company. Or don't mention. Just say the scam. Let the common things be known.

I'm a Product Manager at a SaaS firm drawing in a CTC of about 18-20 LPA. I'm 22 years old. Is this the standard in the industry?

I was into a founder’s office. Working closely with the leadership team of a funded Agri-tech startup (Which shall strictly remain anon in this post) Does it happen to others the same way as it did to me? I was one of the first FOs in the org and I was trying to figure what is up with this startup. About 21 days in to company, I was helping a co-founder with a report that has to go out to investors. I open up the metrics dashboard to enter numbers when he said “he knew the figures by heart”, so we began entering metrics like GMV and others. These were 5x of my range. I said we should just double check ? He said there are factors in the formula that I have not considered at all and I finish the report as per the numbers he gave me. Confused, I later dared to ask the lead PM how are we computing GMV. And told him about my dilemma to tell the founder we need to just double check his calculations. Bless my naiveté. He had a nervous smile and told me we report numbers that keep the startup exciting and afloat. We will catch up very soon with them. The next morning, the founder also took me for a meeting and explained how doing this is important for everyone in the company to succeed. I was very scared but lived in an autopilot of nervousness for 6 months. Part-took in it while being scared of going to prison myself. I felt a terrible dread in my stomach in every interaction with with the admin and CA teams since in my first interaction I came across what I sensed to be a big fake bill. Was I blind to miss everyone in the office get a new chair the last month? I never asked doubts on the money numbers the CA team gave me. But had reasons to doubt it basis other business data I had access to. Everyone seemed to be on the same kind of auto pilot, good people who had never done anything wrong before this as far as I knew. Everyone considered leaving the culture and toxicity every week. The day I left, I had the email of the investors of the company since I’d emailed them countless decks and reports. I really wanted to drop an anonymous email revealing what I knew to them but I was afraid of the following repercussions to my career and I let the matter go.

This is an interesting trend fully driven by VCs/board

Company was inflating GMV by 60%

Today raised $22m series B. No revenue. Video streaming app with Less than 1m daily users in india is valued over $100m... So every random person in india is worth over $100? Lol. Competition, Chingari, Rooter, both in trouble. Eloelo has worse engagement than both (I looked on data.ai) Definitely faking numbers to investors, why else would anyone invest.

I know this might be a one off, but even if they are close to profitable/break even quarters, this can become a strong business

They were backed by Elevation and Accel, had raised ~$7mn Seems like getting transactions to happen was too tough, despite building a network. Getting money out of Indian SMBs, a consistently tough model. Link to post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-long-anar-farewell-reflection-nishank-jain-oifxf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via