Dear Friends, This is one of the better ventures I have come across, leveraging the power of community to empower entrepreneurs. Its a matchmaking project, connecting entrepreneurs who need loans with lenders who can offer loans. If an entrepreneurs needs Rs. 50,000 as loan, he can receive it from multiple lenders , maybe in smaller […]
Facebook: Really using the Social Graph
The number of Applications on Facebook has risen continuously since Facebook announced its Developer API in mid 2007. While there has been a slew of applications, it is very easy to see a clear trend. As much as 50% of the applications on Facebook are identity definition applications like Characteristics and Compare People, where people […]
Druvaa inSync
Druvaa launched a new Enterprise Laptop Sync solution called – Druvaa inSync. And within 4 weeks of the launch (of version 1.1), initial response and order books are looking good. Idea – Fast, simple, secure synchronization for Laptops to an central enterprise server over LAN/VPN/WAN. The inSync client software monitors changes on configured folders and […]
Forbes Column: The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur
Here’s my latest Forbes Column: The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur. What is touching, is that the entrepreneur profiled here is also infinitely humble, embarrassed by this sort of attention from the media. In my private exchange with him, I have expressed my deepest respect, and the reason I want to feature this story repeatedly is […]
Startups do fail. What’s New?
I am seeing a flurry of activity among the tech blogs who’ve caught on a interesting topic to latch onto. Failed startups. If you ask me, I am not sure what the big fuss in this is about. Birds fly. Fishes Swim. Deals Fall through and Startups Fail. This is the natural order of things. […]
Team, Product or Market
It been a while. I just read a couple of posts on the relative importance of Team, Product and Market that motivated me to write. Here are the post. The first is from Marc Andreson (Netscape fame) and the second is in response to Marc by Paul Buchheit (Gmail fame). I think both are worth […]
Stock compensation in early stage start-ups: Shares or Stock options?
I have a question regarding compensation for key employees in early stage start-ups. From an employee and company standpoint which one is better? Shares or stock options? For example: Consider an early stage venture that has total share capital of say Rs.5Cr (50L shares at Rs.10 par value) post first round funding. They would like […]
How did you fund your startup?
In the US it is quite common for a startup to get its 1st round of funding from SBA (small business association) or an overdraft of $100K from the neighbourhood bank. After that if cash flows can support you should be able to get more credit from the bank. Then there are Mezzanine funds which […]
What’s a great team?
Well, this came out of a comment on our fund announcement post. Someone asked, what do we mean by a great team. While it is almost impossible to provide a precise definition of the same, I would like to offer some things that we look for. Every team might not have all of them, but […]
Canaan closes $650M fund
Happy to report that we have announced closure of our eighth fund at $650M. The fund will continue to focus on early stage technology businesses in US, India and Israel. India could account for upto 25% of the fund commitments. For our India operations, this is a significant increase in commitment. We started investing in […]
Back to vortals
Remember vortals from the dotcom hey days? For those who dont recognize the term, it stood for vertical portals – go after a particular target group, and provide range of services to them – our first business before we gravitated to jobsahead was a “vortal” called zipahead for Indian youth! Well, the vortal is back. […]
The Death of Indian Outsourcing
“Are you kidding? No way!†In 2008, the IT and IT enabled services (ITES / BPO) industries are supposed to be the major drivers of India’s economic growth. According to Nasscom, the two industries combined will employ 4 Million people, account for 7% of GDP, and 33% of foreign exchange inflow. Death of this industry […]