From Developer to 2-Time Successful AI Entrepreneur with Exits: Behamics CEO Valon Xhafa (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How did you decide who was going to be the CEO?

Valon Xhafa: It was a common agreement. We didn’t have a concrete discussion about who’s going to be the CEO. For us, the vision mattered more. This was a really important thing. I learnt from my friends that they have a lot of issues with their co-founders about this specific decision instead of focusing on building the MVP.

Having a co-founder with whom you have a common agreement and having open communication is really important. We have different perspectives on different things. My co-founder is more like going step by step and checking stuff. I’m a bit more into going faster and spending more money. We average out in the middle.

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From Developer to 2-Time Successful AI Entrepreneur with Exits: Behamics CEO Valon Xhafa (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do next?

Valon Xhafa: I wanted to start something else. I wanted to build something from scratch. I tried to use different matchmaking platforms for co-founders. I met my co-founder. We matched. I liked his profile. He was doing his Ph.D. in behavioral science. He was talking about how you can incentivize customers in online stores to make specific decisions.

From Developer to 2-Time Successful AI Entrepreneur with Exits: Behamics CEO Valon Xhafa (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: There were two things that you talked about in this case study. One is there are so many developers out there who want to be entrepreneurs. Very often, they don’t know which problem to solve or they don’t have the domain knowledge.

In your case, you went to this media accelerator and met journalists who had a problem they wanted to solve. This enmeshing of non-technical domain knowledge and a technical person creates very interesting company opportunities. That’s one way developers can become entrepreneurs.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital (Part 4)

Naganand Doraswamy: The fourth one is, we want to ensure that we have visibility for $10 million to $15 million. One of the thesis we have in the fund is to enable sub-$100 million exits for product innovation companies in India. If you want to get a $70 million to $100 million exit, you should have $10 million to $15 million in revenue.

Unlike large funds, our goal is, can you become a $10 million to $15 million company. You have an option when you get to that point. We stay with our companies until that point. Our fund can’t participate in Series B. Then we’ll make a call on whether we should exit or stay partially. If we decide to exit, that’s when we help the founders exit.