Newsletter #2 - Founder Frenzy
Spotlighting the Innovative Minds Behind the Next Big Thing with relevant market insights, actionables, learnings, and stories
Week Highlights
New funds / Launched Funds / Pitching Competition / Investor Events / VCs callout for a specific industry startups (ex - they focus on specific sector at a specific time to invest)
B Capital Announces the $2.1 billion final close of its third fund
The fund will be used to mainly target early-stage and growth investments across enterprise, fintech, and healthcare sectors globally, with a particular focus on the US and Asia.
Notable Funding News
Upsurge (https://www.upsurge.in/)
Industry - Edtech
Innovation - Gaming Platform to enable financial literacy and Life Skills in GenZ
Fund Raised - USD 370K
Round - Pre-Seed
Investors -
Lead - JCBL India
Prepseed
Industry - Edtech
Innovation - AI Platform enabling educational institutions and students to identify better and address the difficulty levels of the students’ vis a vis their courses and subjects
Fund Raised - USD 247K
Round - Seed
Investors -
Lead - Chiripal Group of Companies
100x.vc - Class 08
Startups - Zeron, TheLittle Farm Co., Credwise, Adsys, Shyft, Sukham, MetaShop, Rocca, AlpyneLabs, ThinkMetal, Vodex, 50Fin, GreenKin, ByajBook, Metabrix, Swasthya.ai, Minifeel, DAOstruct, Aliste, Dolf, Plug, Dr.Mantra, OpenOffers, Luzo, and Zing.
Fund Raised - USD 154K
Investors - 100x.vc
D-Nome Pvt Ltd
Industry - Biotechnology
Innovation - Next Generation PCR Sequencing Diagnostics Company
Fund Raised - USD 1.5Mn
Round - Seed
Investors -
Lead - Campus Fund and Ankur Capital
Social Boat
Industry - Healthcare
Innovation - Affordable and Personalized fitness & health programs for women
Fund Raised - USD 200K
Round - Angel
Investors -
Lead - Plan B Capital
Participation - Abhijit Kane (Co-founder, Postman), Videt Jaiswal (Co-founder, Airblack), Bhuvan Gupta (Co-founder, OfBusiness) and Prateek Sharma (Managing Partner, AheadVC), Neeraj Gupta (Angel Investor) among others.
Book of the Week
The hard truth about hard things by Ben Horowitz
Takeaways by Dansilvestre
When Things Fall Apart - The secret behind successful CEOs is the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves. When faced with the Struggle:
Don’t put it all on your shoulders. While you may not be able to share every burden, share every burden that you can. Get the maximum number of brains for the problems that your company is facing
It’s chess, not checkers. There is always a move to be made
Play long enough and you might get lucky. If you stay long enough in the technology business, you might get the answer that is impossible today
Don’t take it personally. Everyone makes mistakes so don’t be too hard on yourself
CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is - Why CEOs should be transparent about their company’s problems:
Trust. Without communication, trust will break. As the company grows, trust becomes its biggest challenge
The more brains working on hard problems, the better. The company will lose if (all) employees do not work on pressing concerns
Culture. Employees are normally aware of the issues that kill companies way before the companies go under. A good corporate culture encourages them to speak their mind
Take Care of the People, the Products, and the Profits In That Order
Taking care of people means making your company a good place to work. When organizations grow in size, important work can often be overlooked and hard-working employees can go unnoticed.
Happy employees deliver great products. A good place to work values employees and their contributions. They know that if they get their work done, good things will happen for them and for the company.
On the other hand, in poor workplaces, people spend most of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. Their job mandates are not clear and they have no way of knowing whether they are getting their jobs done.
Why It’s Hard to Bring Big Company Execs Into Little Companies -- Big company executives face two mismatches:
Rhythm mismatch. Big company executives are used to things moving faster
Skillset mismatch. Running a big company requires different skills than those needed to build and run a company
Peacetime and Wartime CEOs
Wartime CEOs are present when the company is trying to fend off an existential threat to their existence while peacetime CEOs are focused on market consolidation and expansion.
During peacetime, CEOs are called upon to broaden and maximize current opportunities. They should encourage broad-based creativity towards achieving a set of objectives. Meanwhile, wartime CEOs have a singular focus on achieving a particular goal.
Top 3 Articles of the Week
Market Analysis as per “Digital Bazaars” Report by Accel and Bain
Indian eCommerce and Marketplaces (food delivery, and ride-hailing platforms)
Current
$100 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV);
200 million to 230 million online shoppers;
$150Bn - $200Bn Enterprise Value Created
and offering logistical and financial support to more than 6 million micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) .
more than 3 million jobs .
Projected growth in the next 5 years
More than $350 billion in GMV
400 Mn to 450 Mn online shoppers
Creating $400 Bn to $500Bn in enterprise value
enabling 15 Mn MSMEs
Creating 7 Mn Jobs
Addressable Market in India is expoding
$1T B2C Retail Market
~5% online penetration
$2T B2B Market
~0.5% online penetration
200 Mn to 230 Mn online shoppers
~30% of internet users
~15% of Total Population
65Mn+ MSMEs
~10% active buyers / sellers online
Community Call
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If you are a founder looking to join a community, that will help you get to $10 million in revenue, without funding, please join here 1000founders.in