How long before we have a company having single digit employees generating >1B $ revenue. I bet within this decade

Imagine this: You are leading WhatsApp, and you've been tasked with achieving a revenue target of $100 million for the fiscal year 2024-25. Let's discuss this in the comments!

Can anyone here tell me what exactly went wrong with Dunzo... I was working on a case study related to the same... Would certainly help me a lot

I have been following the Indian startup scene for a while now, and I have to say that I am not impressed. It seems like most of the startups here are nothing more than people chasing quick bucks and the entire scene is a circlejerk of people doing everything, attending these stupid conferences and gatherings than actually building something game-changing. Every founder is chasing nothing more than a valuation just so they can exit and there’s nothing wrong with it but don’t sit on a moral high ground talking about building business etc. There’s a reason we don’t see startups here penetrating west because most of the founders in the Indian ecosystem reek of ego and it’s all because we don’t judge business on merit but based on the degree the founders have. We all can count stupid startups draining money all because they are from some IIT or IIM or now some fancy degree from Ivy and yes it takes effort and hard work to reach there. Still, it automatically doesn’t translate to you naturally being better than a guy working his ass off to make up that difference. Also, just because you used your dad’s money to start a 'Venture Firm or be an angel investor after college doesn’t mean you’re an expert at everything. You’re just adding to the noise and the hype that is already too much in this space. You’re not helping anyone but yourself and your ego. So a friendly reminder can we all actually focus on building things based on hard work and merit instead of glorifying this circlejerk. Can we stop being obsessed with funding rounds and valuations and start being obsessed with solving real problems and creating value for customers and society? Can we stop being influenced by the media and the hype and start being influenced by the data and the feedback? Can we stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution?

While I'm proud of these two revolutionising the quick commerce space, I somehow have a bad feeling about this Profits aren't coming, money is flowing Don't know what the VCs are seeking? Why bake a a pie that you can't eat later?

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?

There are essentially four parties in the startup economy: 1. The Consumer 2. The Enabler(read, Startup) 3. The Service Provider 4. The Investor Now let's look at Game Theory motivations: 1. The Indian Consumer wants to minimise money spent per unit value extracted, the Western Consumer wants to maximise value extracted per unit money spent. (There's a massive difference.) 2. The Startup depending on the stage wants to maximise User Growth and Free Cash Flows. 3. The Service provider wants to maximise financial incentives. 4. The Investor is wants to maximise the XIRR of their fund. For this they need to reach a multibagger liquidity event. Now let's look at what happens when: 1. The Consumer gets f'ed over: The startup attains pricing power through deep competitive moats allowing for monopolisation. They can jack up the prices to ensure nice FCF, greater rewards for Service Providers and great returns to their investors. (Think, Uber can charge anything to you now) 2. The Startup gets f'ed over: The users get bang for their buck, the service providers get good incentives, the investors push for higher growth but unfortunately the startup does not have enough capital to service their Cost of Operations through their unit economics, so they will either run out of cash or investor patience. Either ways, they are doomed. (Think every legit startup that failed) 3. The Service Provider get f'ed over: This is the likeliest scenario as they have the least power in this dynamic. Rewards will be reduced over time or made harder to achieve. They have no option because they got no option for sustenance. (Think any on-demand service providing app) 4. The investor gets f'ed over: Now imagine there is a startup that can balance the act very well. They have a service that users are willing to pay a margin on. They pay their service providers fairly and have decent unit economics. Now, the investor will do halla about destruction of shareholder value from little growth. (Is this the case with BluSmart?) Maybe that's why building in India is tough.

AI is unlike any other past technology revolution. It is going to make cost of intelligence trending toward zero. Going by exponential curve of AI growth, in next 3-4 years, we are going to have an AI model which can code better than 95% of coders... Deep mind already has model Alphacode which can code better than 50% of competitive coders. People are living in fool's paradise by thinking that AI will create massive amount of job.... It won't because it will make cost of intelligence near to zero making coding, analyst, consultant, product management job redundant.... What takes 100 coders to build a product won't take more 10 coders in few years from now...

Link to article - https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/11/blackrock-cuts-byjus-valuation-by-95-to-1-billion/

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