1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many of those 11 investments are in EdTech?

Rahul Chandra: Just one so far.

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to talk about that?

Rahul Chandra: We have not announced this one, but I can talk about it. The premise is similar to what I’d said. There is a two-dimensional, non-interactive nature to online classes. Online classes is an outcome of COVID with schools shutting down. The best possible solution was a video class with very little interaction.

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Colors: Surf Moon, Montara

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today –  Surf Moon, Montara

Surf Moon, Montara | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor | 9  x 12, On Paper

From Hardcore Techie to Unicorn Entrepreneur: Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Going from a techie to an entrepreneur, I presume you did a lot of founder-led selling. What was that transition like?

Dheeraj Pandey: One is just humanism. Business is about people. You have to connect with people. Difficult words like negotiation – if you replace this with building trust, it’s much easier. People want to give you a chance if you are authentic. At the same time, this idea of not overpromising but underpromising and overdelivering. That’s the way we built trust.

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures (Part 2)

Rahul Chandra: One of our companies is called Jar. There is a very big question about whether the segment of 400 million UPI users that Jar is targeting and investing for is just a dream. For them, investing needs significant capital saved in the bank. India is a credit-hungry market. Are people even thinking about saving?

We took that chance with Jar. Jar has built a product that allows you to download the app, open it, do a login, and come out in 45 seconds with even one Rupee saved. Jar married these two concepts which are lower than what is considered an investment. It’s in gold but it’s in digital gold. The transaction is super friction-free. It’s almost like me saving so smooth that people feel great about it. It, very quickly, becomes a habit.

From Hardcore Techie to Unicorn Entrepreneur: Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you decided to start Nutanix, what was your understanding of the problem that you were going to go after? Did you have a clear vision of the problem you were going to solve?

Dheeraj Pandey: We had an idea based on our skillsets and passion for distributed systems. If you look at my pattern over those 10 years, I was just building distributed systems. Reliability, availability, serviceability – all these were etched into my fabric. I was like, “Let’s figure out a way to bring this out through an idea.”

Colors: Himalayan Winter III

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Himalayan Winter III

Himalayan Winter III | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

Roundtable Recap: April 7 – Spotlight on Pre-seed Funding

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest, Anupam Rastogi, General Partner at Emergent Ventures, a firm focused on B-to-B tech investments.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Art.com Co-founder on Bootstrapping First, Raising $30M Later

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Art.com Co-founder Josh Chodniewicz bootstrapped for 10 years before raising a $30 million first round of funding. Read on to learn more about his journey.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raise, and in what kind of background?

Josh Chodniewicz: I was born in New Jersey. I am the oldest of seven kids. My parents had seven kids in nine years.

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