As the title says. Happy to answer any questions you might have about starting up, raising capital, or scaling up your business.
Bit of background in tier 2 college. Running startup for 5 years. Have never invested in one. Team of ~40.
I'll share only brutal and honest opinions.
I’m building a mobile app in fintech domain (MVP in progress). How should I reach out to investors? Also I need integrations with bank. How to reach out to them? Any help is appreciated. Thanks
If you're a solid team ie founders with good pedigree and have worked at fintech companies then you're most likely to get pre seed/ seed easily.
If you're not then your proof of concept should speak for itself. Reach out to investors once you've first 10 customers (assuming that you're building something with high AOV).
Again this is very generic advise. Strategy to reach out to investors would be to do it via warm connect. Ask your founder friends who've already raised to give you an intro.
Every investor maintains a track. Depending on the track you're in they'll give higher or lower priority.
For mobile app have strong practices around utilizing analytics. Mixpanel gives first 6 months free. Push notification is critical. Good luck
how much salary do you draw yourself? who has a say on this? how much of your personal expenses are budgeted in business expenses?
It has always been a tricky and hotly debated question.
Ground rule- take your board into confidence before deciding.
Here are a few ways I've thought about it:
1/The salary you take from your startup should not be your way of creating wealth. Else you're just an employee. Your outcome should be tied to equity.
2/You take what is enough to sustain. This depends on what phase of life are you in - if you're married you may take a bit more, or have a huge emi, if you're single you may want to take a bit less. It's usually 1 percent of what’s available in the bank account that year.
3/Most of the founders lose money and come out poor from startup experience. I honestly don't mind that. Leverage and learning compensate for money.
Was raising VC money worth it? Why or why not?
VC money is like jet fuel. You either fly or crash. You can't be conservative, it is because of how the incentives are aligned.
If you want to have conservative growth and need a lot of time to figure out what you're building, try not to raise VC money or raise some patient capital via family offices or angels.
VC money is a lot of pressure. You honestly get involved in boardroom politics. And yes chances of you getting fired are high.
Naval wrote a book on it a decade ago - it's about how you want to have control of your company and your board. I can share the link if you need it.
Please share the link sir
What do you know about your user (& problems) so much that gave you confidence you build a startup for them?
Variety of ways you can look at the problems and talk about them confidently
Most of the time insights are simple but no one looked at the way you looked at it.
What’s your approach to retaining top talent in a competitive market?
It is tough. I don't negotiate if they've another offer. It ideally means they already made up their mind.
I've raised enough to pay people according to market standards. Raises are generally based on company performance.
One thing you've to be careful about - is making them responsible for important line items, and giving them space to operate. Most of the cream talent doesn't like being micro-managed.
