NextBigWhatSelect

The journey, from getting a new client to setting up your first office to getting the “big” client, is intense and filled with unmatchable highs. The lows, well, while not forgotten, are not dwelled upon.

Offering silver-bullet prescriptions that are blindly lifted from the playbook of countries like Singapore is a wasted opportunity and a pointless exercise akin to jerking off in the dark and convincing yourself that you have scored!

To handle such challenges, it’s critical to measure, and to do systematic root cause analysis on your successes and failures. Like in programming, it’s a good idea to execute smaller and manageable pieces first, and then build complexity incrementally on top of that.

Our discussions with them were progressing at a rapid pace when they asked, “Why are you moving so fast on this deal?” I think it is one of the smartest queries relating to a VC’s evaluation process– entrepreneurs should ask questions not only when a VC is moving too slow but also when they are moving too fast!

If you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making things fast and not making people think.

The thin line between spending time doing research before taking the plunge and buying time to make up mind to get ready for risk is really thin and could take forever to figure out.

A large majority of deals do happen once they reach the term sheetstage; hence it’s a serious milestone. Its usually a 3-4 page document that founders can Google and decipher on their own and with a little bit help.

I have come across examples where the difference in in-app CTRs has been to the tune of 2X between custom dashboard and Google Analytics. A deeper dive into the code of one such case revealed that the click event was being counted twice in the custom dashboard!

In most of the cases, the salary is almost 3-4 X of what a startup is willing to pay for. Is that worth it? Maybe, but what about the baggage they bring along? My guess is no.