Earlier last week one of Globevestor’s portfolio startups, Agnikul Cosmos, announced an exciting $11M Series A fundraise led by Mayfield India. This is one of the largest funding rounds for a private space-tech startup in India. And the company received backing from not just all its key existing investors, including Speciale Invest, Pi Ventures, Artha and us, but also from prominent angels like Anand Mahindra, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan and Nithin Kamath.
Happy Women’s Day to our awesome founders! Helping people get jobs, fight pollution, be product champions & manage their wellbeing, to being supermoms, fierce leaders & a voice of transgenders, you do it all.
A few days ago some students at E-Cell IMT Ghaziabad reached out to do this podcast as part of their ongoing series with startup investors. It’s always great speaking with students about entrepreneurship & investing — so here’s a the link to the brief podcast session with the E-Cell team, where we talk about investing criteria, founding teams, student-led startups, valuations & culture.
Q1 2021 has been absolute fire ? at Globevestor! 8 startups invested/under process already, with 3 solid portfolio follow-on rounds and 3 exciting pre-demo day investments in YC W21 across saas, spacetech, brands, edtech, AI – Indian origin founders are killing it globally!
Just a short note to celebrate small things.
There’s something therapeutic about a carefree walk in the aisles of a mall or a supermarket and (window) shopping. Despite all its convenience, e-commerce fulfills ones needs, but not as much the heart. And therefore, although revenge travel has been talked about much more, the time is nearing for revenge retail therapy. Already happened in China as people reclaimed their lives. I’ve been itching to visit a mall and indulge in some revenge spending myself.
Firstly, a happy new year! This new year brings a sigh of relief, a new hope, and a new resolve, doesn’t it?
The black swan events of 2020 changed things. A lot for some, and enough for everyone to change our lives. On personal front, it brought to the fore the importance of our health, family, and savings. And on professional front, it showed us that work can be flexible, more efficient & yet fragile.
One thing to ponder is what would small kids consider ‘normal’ education when this pandemic is over.
As a parent of a kid who’ll enter pre-school soon, I wonder what would start of that journey be for a kid who doesn’t yet understand what a school means. And how smooth would the transition be to a physical school when this ends? What about sensory experiences, social skills & overall development?
Earlier this week, The New Yorker wrote a scathing piece on the VC industry with the above title (link in comments), looking at VCs through the WeWork debacle. If you were a cynic, you could write it off as cherry-picked writing in the “tech Vs media” battle that’s plaguing the Valley.
But it does highlight some issues with VC pretty well. Yet it isn’t saying anything new. The problems in VC are quite apparent — concentration of big capital with fewer funds, a power shift towards maverick founders, VCs becoming less confrontational to be seen as founder friendly, lack of principled & authoritative boards, a growth-only gospel, and an undying hope that continuous scale will trump everything else.
Planning to spend time every Saturday with 2-3 startups at idea/prototype stage, starting this weekend. If you’re a founder ideating or very early in execution & need a small sounding board session, hit me up. DMs are open.
Friends/network: Kindly help reach right founders.
Firstly, a Happy Dhanteras! Today it makes sense to talk about the “money” side of entrepreneurship. Many people have the needed skills, experience & passion to be great founders. Yet they’re unfit to be one. Why?
It’s to do with “founder financial viability”. While there’s an appreciation by most founders for a need to bootstrap & work without market salary for some time, usually they grossly underestimate this duration to be a few months till first round of funding arrives.