Sramana Mitra: One of the observations I have about the global startup ecosystem is this position of looking for paying customers is not at all unusual. I would say the vast majority of investors are looking for paying customers at this point. It has become so much easier to bootstrap companies. There’s a lot of methodology and knowledge about how to bootstrap a company.
The point that you’re making of wanting to see validated companies that already have product-market fit and customers does not come to anybody as a surprise at this stage of the game.
>>>Recently Atlassian (Nasdaq: TEAM) reported its second-quarter results that continued to surpass estimates. The company is focusing on building its AI capabilities through acquisitions and partnerships with other smaller ventures.
>>>Eva Yazhari, General Partner at Beyond Capital Ventures, discusses Impact Investing in Africa and India.
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Jonny Grubin: Aside from that, there were a couple of things that led to its failure. The way we executed was not great. The whole idea behind what we were trying to do was about making the process of shipping a physical item easier. When we went back and looked back, it was a 26-step process to send an item to another person. We were making it much harder. It just really affected the adoption rate. It wasn’t because nobody was interested in the concept; it was because it was a long-winded experience to use our product.
The third is that the timing was wrong. We could have launched exactly the same thing years later and would have had better success. The reality is the way we structured the team, the way we executed things wasn’t helpful.
>>>We previously analyzed 10 Indian Unicorns. Many are unjustifiably overvalued, some are not. However, if the founders can keep their heads straight and execute, thereby back-filling the valuations, invaluable infrastructure could get built in sector after sector.
Here are 10 more:
The IT Service Management (ITSM) applications market is expected to reach $6.8 billion by 2025, from $6.3 billion in 2020. ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW), one of our picks for 25 Cloud Stocks to BUY for 2022, remained the largest vendor in the space with a 40% market share, followed by Atlassian and LogMeIn. Recently, it reported its fourth quarter results that continued to outpace market expectations.
>>>Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures, is an active angel investor in Indian startups for the past decade. Wonderful conversation.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s catch up a bit on what has been going on in our collective universe and how you see the world based on all these years of observing the ecosystem. How do you see the Indian startup ecosystem evolving?
>>>Jonny started as a solo entrepreneur, bootstrapped with a paycheck, and has built a $15M+ revenue global business with a small amount of funding. Excellent story!
Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
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