All posts by Mukund Mohan

My discipline will beat your intellect
Entrepreneurship, SaaS, Tips

Startup Idea: Shopify for SaaS companies

17 Comments

There are over 20,000 SaaS companies in the world and growing (source). They are the new “software ISV” of the 1990’s. Growing like weeds. Getting users, building niche applications and growing revenue.

Every SaaS company builds a “specific application” for a “specific user”. They are the domain experts on that application.

Every SaaS company development team though, needs to pay a 15-25% tax upfront. Sometimes more.

Every one of them has to develop a sign up process, a user cancellation process, a payment process, a refund process, a login process, a password retrieval process, etc.

Trust me, we are going through this and its an absolute PAIN. It gets in the way of building useful benefits and capabilities for the user.

Its plumbing and it should be standard and out of the box for 90% of startups.

What if you provided a “Shopify” like sandbox for SaaS companies? Provide all these capabilities out of the box. Let SaaS developers focus on building their app. Not do plumbing.

Please dont tell me AWS is one, they are an infrastructure provider. You will still have to code a bunch of processes on top of AWS.

Requirements:

1. This platform has to be “developer friendly” – but not like Magento. That’s too steep a learning curve. Think like Mixpanel or Stripe “developer friendly”.

2. It has to provide simple API (hooks) to the developer’s own application.

3. It has to (obviously) be hosted.

Is it a billion dollar opportunity?

I dont know.But I will put my money where my mouth is. Show me a good team, and show me how you will do this and I will put angel money into this.

This is Heroku 2.0 (they got bought for $212 million). Go beyond platform and infrastructure and actually build application plumbing.

No one is doing it.

Other

How to come up with metrics for quality blog posts versus quantity?

17 Comments

My 2012 goal was a year to dial back. Write more, focus and attend fewer events.

So far, that’s been good, and I am on track to write 100 blog posts for the year.

At the beginning of this year, I thought 100 was a good number. So I focused on that metric and started writing in earnest.

Halfway into the year, I realized the number was meaningless. I mean 100 blog posts of poor quality was still as good as not writing at all.

So I wanted to write 100 quality posts.

How do you measure quality of a blog post though?

Is it the number of people reading it – either visitors or RSS feed readers? Or the number of people commenting on it? Or # of people retweeting on Twitter, or sharing it on Facebook? Or getting the post on Hacker news or techmeme? Or is there some other measurement?

So I decided I should have a few role models. Bloggers I really admire for their quality, consistency and insights.

1.  of asymco tops that list. Sharp, analytical and always thoughtful, he’s such a delight to read. If you dont read his blog posts you should.

2. Jean-Louis Gassée of Monday Note is a close second. I met him a few years ago when he was running Be. He’s also a very astute observer, does deep analysis and his posts always make you think.

3. Chris Dixon was the founder of Hunch (among other things). He writes about startups, entrepreneurship and his simple style of presenting facts in consumable bite-sized chunks is admirable.

4. Jason Cohen of A Smart bear helps put key questions entrepreneurs have in the forefront and his tips are always practical, simple to experiment and usually provides insights after careful consideration of a few possible outcomes.

5. Niel Patel of Kissmetrics writes mostly about marketing techniques. I really like how he dissects a topic which he’s looking to provide some advice on. He’s got a very prescriptive style which helps you understand formulated thoughts in a cohesive easy to read way.

There are others that write more infrequently and long form articles, but these 5 are by far that I consider to be the best in the business. The way I define them to be quality is the amount of effort that goes into their post and the way they frame their arguments.

When I started to focus on writing blog posts in Jan, the average blog post would take me 1 hour to think though and about 30 minutes to write. The new posts from July are taking me 2-3 hours to think though and 1 hour (or longer if you include edits) to write.

I am still unclear about the metrics to measure quality blog posts. I’d love some help from you if you believe you have figured it out.

Other

How to disrupt the Venture Capital industry

13 Comments

There are 3 main things VC’s claims to provide – money, connections and strategic advice. For the last 3-4 decades that’s worked fairly well for them since they have made good money from the management fees even if their returns have not been spectacular.

If a VC firm rises a $50 Million fund, and has a management fee of 2% per year, with 2 partners, 2 associates and a swanky office, they still get to take over $250K per year in salary and upside on exits.

The work was primarily evaluating companies and entrepreneurs, providing strategic board advice, governance to existing companies and networking.

That model assumed investments in about 10-15 companies and among the 2 partners, (7 board meetings per person), so time was tight, the only advice that could be provided was “strategic” in nature, or “connections” to folks.

There were a few top tier VC’s who would help recruit key employees or help in closing key deals, but those were rare.

What if however VC’s were entrepreneurial in nature?

What if they needed to provide marketing advice, help in structuring sales compensation and help determine product direction besides other “strategic” input?

That’s what Andreessen Horowitz is doing right now. They created a executive briefing center, staffed it with a seasoned pro (disclosure: Mark Cranney is a good friend, and others in A16Z were colleagues as well) in sales who is helping drive sales opportunities, hire sales professionals and helping entrepreneurs develop sales compensation models.

This is what YCombinator is doing as well, with their hiring of key technology folks not just the traditional “VC” material.

They can do this because their fund size is large and the founders have already made a lot of money, is the common criticism I hear from valley VC’s.

If other VC’s dont do this however, they are going to be disrupted.

VC’s everywhere have to go beyond their comfort zone, hire more professionals in technology (how about a CTO who can help invested companies with technology hiring, scaling etc.) marketing (strategic content marketing plan, etc.), sales (hiring, sales compensation, building and scaling a sales team) and operations.

What would that mean?

Lot more involvement with portfolio companies, multiple touch points besides the CEO alone and closer involvement with the companies. They’d still be busy: as much or more than they were before. This would also mean they would have to get a mile deep and few inches wide as opposed to a a inch deep and a mile wide.

VC’s would make less money in their annual salary, since the management fees would remain the same, but more people would be involved in the firm, which lowers the amount of money per person. Their chances of success with their portfolio companies should improve, which means they would make the same money as they did before, but with more of it coming from carry (the right incentive anyway).

They would possibly have to invest in fewer companies, since they just wont have the time to spread themselves thin. The problem is that VC’s  still think 1 in 10 companies is a hit, 2 return money and 7 go bust. I think to improve those odds, they will have to focus more on picking those that have some early traction, and are going after a proven market. All other VC criteria remain the same.

Entrepreneurship, India, Venture Capital

Who are the “early adopter” Venture Capitalists in India

28 Comments

Like you, I assumed that all VC’s are risk takers. I mean as an asset class if you have to provide the highest returns over the long term, I would suspect you have to take big risks to get big returns. The average Indian bank has been giving around 8% annual returns on FD (source), real estate returns about 13%, and gold loan providers will give you close to 15% I am told. So, VC as an investment class should offer higher returns given how ill-liquid they are and how risky they tend to be.

So, how do you really measure if a VC is an early adopter versus a late adopter? (lets keep it simple and only put them into 2 categories).

My thinking is the only way you can do that is to look at their investments (portfolio companies) and find out the categories of companies they invested in. Then find out if any other VC’s invested in another company in that category after the “first” VC did. There are other ways to do that, like ask entrepreneurs who responded the fastest when they were looking for funds, but those dont evaluate who puts their money where their mouth is.

Why is this question useful to answer?

For entrepreneurs who are innovating in a new area, this list of early adopters will help you determine who you should go to first versus who should you expect will fund a possible competitor.

Lets define our methodology and assumptions:

1. We will look at all their websites and make a list of the Indian VC portfolio. Fortunately we have that list of over 50 VC’s in India.

Flaw: Many dont update their website as frequently so there may be a 20% (or higher) error, but I have tried to be comprehensive.

2. We will then categorize their investment into 5 buckets – Media and content, eCommerce, Business to Business, Mobile and other (Education, Healthcare, etc). This is important so we know not only which VC’s are early adopters but we can also try to find that out by sector.

3. Then we will look at the announcement dates of their funded companies from press releases, Unpluggd, YourStory, ET and VCCircle. We will give them 2 points for every investment done in a sector before any other VC did.

Flaw: Most (I suspect over 50%) of companies report their funding 3-6 months after they have raised the money, so this will be a large flaw, but lets do the analysis anyway.

4. Finally look at stage of investment. If a VC puts money in the series A, I would give them two points in the early adopter bucket. If, however they participated in series B or later, they get one point in the late adopter bucket.

First let me give you the results (not in any order other than early adopters vs. late adopters).

Early adopters VC’s.

  • Accel (eCommerce, B2B) – 78 points
  • Indo US Venture Partners (B2B) – 56 points
  • Saif partners (Mobile, eCommerce), but they are late adopters in B2B – 49 points
  • Venture East (B2B) – 45 points
  • Sequoia (Media) – 46 points
  • Seedfund (Scored enough, but dont have a clear winning category) 42 points

In the middle

  • Blume ventures – 40 points
  • Nexus Venture partners – 36 points
  • Helion – 36 points
  • Ojas ventures – 34 points

Later adopter VC’s – all scored less than 30

  • Bessemer Venture Partners
  • DFJ
  • Cannan partners
  • India Innovation fund
  • Inventus Capital
  • Footprint ventures
  • IDG ventures
  • India Internet Fund
  • Lightspeed partners (but have done well in Education)
  • Norwest
  • Sherpalo

What I hope this list will do?

1. Make Indian VC’s think about being innovation catalysts rather than ambulance chasers. I understand you have a responsibility to provide returns, but you also have a responsibility to grow the Indian startup ecosystem. Might I suggest a 5-10% of your portfolio towards risky, “first time this is going to happen” investments?

2. Make Indian company founders announce their funding. Unlike the US, here entrepreneurs are loathe to do so. I can understand the competitive pressures, but not doing any announcement is just lame.

3. Educate Indian entrepreneurs on their target VC list. Depending on the opportunity you are trying to pursue, please target the right VC firm. The only thing you have (and dont have) on your side is time. Use it judiciously.

P.S. I have confidence in the methodology but I would be the first to admit its neither comprehensive nor scientific. If you are an eager MBA / Engineer / analyst and would like to help make this methodology and analysis more robust, I’d love your help. You can take all the credit. In fact, I can convince many publications to give you credit for the work if you desire and if you keep it updated every 3-6 months.

P.P.S. If you are a VC and not in the early adopter list, or you are not happy with the analysis I’d also welcome your associate’s help in making this analysis robust.

Angel investing, Entrepreneurship, India, Venture Capital

How to get a job as a Venture capitalist

11 Comments

I get an email or two a week from folks wanting to be a Venture Capitalist. Usually its to ask for introductions to a VC firm or to forward their resume. Most of these folks have a technical background and some have an MBA. Since most people sending the email dont ask me how they could really get a job at a VC firm, I thought I’d outline that for them.

There are broadly 3 operating roles in a VC firm – General Partner (GP), Associate / Principal (AP) and Operating partner (OP). There are other roles such as Venture partner, but those are fairly rare. Limited Partners LP’s) are not part of a VC’s fund’s operating roles, they are investors in a VC fund.

Most VC firms have between 2-5 GP’s, and 2-5 AP’s and 1-2 OP’s. (source: PDF)

GP’s take the most risk, since they raise the fund from institutional investors so they tend to get the highest salaries and profits the firm makes from the investments. To be a GP you should have enough capability to raise funds (the most important aspect) and deploy those funds to provide a better return (which is: invest in startups and ensure they have great exit). Most GP’s (over 60%) I know have a degree from a top notch school (think Harvard MBA, Stanford MBA or in India IIT and IIM). Please see list of VC firms (below) in India. My analysis of GP’s in those firms indicates unless you have been an entrepreneur before with a successful exit OR from a IIT / IIM, with over 10+ years of experience OR you can raise money from other investors, your chances of being a GP are very low (less than 10%). Unless you can raise money to be a fund on your own, you will have to spend 10+ years being an AP and then graduate to being a GP.

AP’s are usually junior folks, and of the ~120+ AP’s in the list of firms below, more than 69, (> 50%) are from IIT, IIM, McKinsey backgrounds. So if you are a fresh grad or someone with 2-5 years of experience, and not from a top school, your chances of getting into a VC firm as an AP are not high. Its not impossible, but there are only 400+ firms in India and so a max of about 1500 AP positions, which means a best case of about 700 (<50%) positions. The good news is over the last 5-10 years the % of IIT, IIM grads as AP’s has dropped from over 80% to less than 60%.

Operating partners are usually CFO’s or Legal advisors, so your technology background wont qualify you for a role there. More likely a legal degree or a CPA / CA certification is required.

So how do you get a job as a VC if you are not from a top school or you dont have ability to raise money?

1. Be an entrepreneur first: Most VC’s who are not from top schools end up being one because they made money for the VC firm that invested in them. If you are an entrepreneur and you raise money from a VC firm, and then have a successful exit, the chances of you becoming a VC improve dramatically. Surprisingly, even if you dont have a successful exit, your chances of getting into a VC firm improve many fold. If you had a successful exit however, you can possibly raise your own fund, and write your own ticket.

2. Help rich investors make money: As I point out before a key part of being a VC is the ability to raise money. Most folks who I get emails from are like me (15 years ago). I did not have the network to raise funds at that time and neither did I have a lot of money myself to start a VC fund. Raising money from other rich people involves them trusting and knowing you (they are friends, family, etc.) OR you having made money for them before. I suspect like me, most of the folks emailing me dont have very rich uncles and aunts, so the best strategy is to help rich folks get richer. This might include introducing them to startups which need investment and then exit to make your investors a profit, or making money for them via the stock market and generating enough returns to both satisfy them and to make a tidy sum for yourself.

3. Work yourself into that role: VC’s dont recruit by going to campus interviews or by posting on job boards. If they do, be vary, and run away. Most good VC’s I know only hire from their network or trust a executive search firm to help them get the right AP candidates. Get to know and help executive search (Kornferry or Stanton Chase) recruiters get other candidates (for other roles) and keep your name on their radar. They might come to you when a VC job comes up.

The other approach is to network with VC’s so they will let you know when their firm has an opening for an AP. To be on their radar, help them source and talk to great entrepreneurs and send them good quality companies to invest in. Alternately if you have an uncle or aunt at a VC firm, you can get that AP role fairly easily.

Of course the easiest way to be a VC is to bankroll the fund with your own money, if you have that much money, then this post is largely useless for you.

List of VC firms (sorted by no particular order), where I have a connection, so if you want an intro, I can help you.

DFJ http://www.dfj.com/cgi-bin/cgi-networkportfolio/search.cgi
IUVP http://www.iuvp.com/portfolio.htm
Bessemer Venture Partners http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/Default.aspx
Saif Partners http://www.saifpartners.com/portfolio
Cannan Partners http://www.canaan.com/home/companies/india/
Venture East http://www.ventureast.net/Portfolio.html
India Innovation Fund http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=53252
Nexus Venture Partners http://www.nexusvp.com/companies.asp
Inventus Capital http://www.inventuscap.com/portfolio.html
Helion http://www.helionvc.com/portfolio.htm
Footprint Ventures http://www.footprintventures.com/portfolio.htm
IDG ventures http://www.idgvcindia.com/global_portfolio.htm
Ojas Ventures http://www.ojasventures.com/portfolio.html
Naukri InfoEdge http://www.infoedge.in/ir-financial-fys.asp
Accel http://accel.com/company/sector.php?sector_view=122100
Nirvana Ventures http://www.nirvanaventureadvisors.com/
Everstone Capital http://www.everstonecapital.com/
Epiphany Ventures http://epiphanyventures.in/team.asp
Seed Fund http://seedfund.in/investees/
Silicon Valley Bank http://www.svb.com/india/
India Internet Fund http://www.indiainternetfund.com
New Silk Route http://nsrpartners.com/portfolio/sector
Sequoia http://www.sequoiacap.com/india/early
Lightspeed Partners http://www.lightspeedvp.com/Portfolio/Default.aspx?i=1&t=0
Greylock http://www.greylock.com/portfolio/portfolio/
Benchmark http://www.benchmark.com/companies/
KPCB http://www.kpcb.com/portfolio/portfolio.php?communication
General Atlantic http://www.generalatlantic.com/en/companies/region/4
Ascent Capital http://www.ascentcapital.in/
Reliance Venture Asset Management http://www.relianceventure.com/portfolio.html
Intel Capital http://www.intel.com/about/companyinfo/capital/portfolio/index.htm?country=india
IFCI VC Funds http://www.ifciventure.com/Success%20Stories
Matrix Partners India http://www.matrixpartners.in/portfolio.php?category_id=8
Kitven http://www.kitven.com/port.htm
Rajasthan Venture Fund http://www.rvcf.org/portfolio.html
Norwest Venture Partners http://www.nvp.com/NVP%20India.aspx
Clearstone Venture Partners http://www.clearstone.in/content/html/portfolio-location.htm
ePlanet Capital http://www.eplanetventures.com/team
Artiman Ventures http://www.artimanventures.com/team.html
Indavest http://www.indavest.com/portfolio.html
Sherpalo http://www.sherpalo.com/portfolio/index.php
Catamaran Ventures http://www.catamaranventures.com/
Battery Ventures http://www.battery.com/portfolio/international.html
Qualcomm http://www.qualcommventures.com/team
Blume Ventures http://blumeventures.com/
Mayfield Fund http://www.mayfield.com/
Andreessen Horowitz http://a16z.com/
First Round Capital http://www.firstround.com/
Union Square ventures http://www.usv.com/
Khosla Ventures http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/default.html
Other

Monday morning thanks to 3 people that keep me blogging

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Short post – mostly thanks.

I took a conscious decision to blog more and attend fewer events this year. So far, I am keeping the blog end of the bargain.

I have found that to have the discipline to do something frequently you have to get people to help support you. Three people have done that by consistently commenting frequently and most importantly giving me alternative perspectives and made me think.

Ravi Srinivas, Vikram Janardhan and Sangeetha Bajaj – thank you very much.

Thanks you to I look forward to writing half baked posts, just so I can get some reaction.

Angel investing, Community, Entrepreneurship

Unpluggd: a Quick take on Uber Labs

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I was the first speaker on the Unpluggd series a few years ago. I have very fond memories of the event, which was held at Honeywell offices. A little over 50-80 people joined us at a fairly small lunch room converted into a hall.

I attended the latest Unplugged on Saturday at MLR convention center. The first thing that came to mind when I walked up the steps to the auditorium was “You’ve come a long way baby“.

First off, kudos to Ashish, Kunal and Pratyush and the many others who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get this to happen.

There were between 500 and 600 people at the event and it was buzzing. The first event had 2 sponsors, and Honeywell sponsored the location. This event had standing (or sitting in the aisles) room only even for the last talk in the day and top notch speakers and sponsors.

I was very impressed with both the quality of the 10 companies that presented (disclosure: Vinita, my wife presented her company GitGrow at the event) and the quality of the speakers.

One company in particular, UberLabs talked about their product gazeMetrix. One word – awesome.

No other words.

I have been to 5 demo days in India and over 11 in the US. This product in any of those demo days would have been among the top 3. The quality of the idea and its execution was crisp.

The entrepreneur in me says – just fund this entrepreneur. The investor in me says – get ready for a tough slog for the next few years. The product is good, but the challenge is going to be distribution. B2B companies targeting India alone struggle even with the best products. Targeting US (the primary market) for this out of India is always a challenge. What they will end up doing I suspect is to go Westward (like InterviewStreet, Orange scape and others).

That’s no necessarily a bad thing, but I just wish we had more early adopters both in the consumer and business side to help companies like Uber Labs thrive in India without having to leave India.

Other

Rant alert! How Silicon Valley is becoming more like Bollywood

8 Comments

There are many things I like about Silicon Valley. The things that need work though, is that it chases the shiny new thing faster than the fashion industry. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but its the me-too”ness” that bugs you after a while. Kinda like Bollywood.

Take storytelling for instance. Every incubator and startup now has a “storyline” that they adhere to. Similar to Bollywood.

The Bollywood stories are boy-meets-girl variety garden romance, or the 5 different variations of someone’s been wronged.

Silicon Valley now has their “storyline” – “I was doing <something inane> and I faced <this really silly problem> so I decided to build <this toy> because I am passionate about <something they really are not passionate about>.

Take this from ex Admob founder Omar

“The idea originated when my wife was shopping for a coffee table. She spent of bunch of time browsing the web, collecting her options in a gmail draft, and then sent me an email of blue links that I was supposed to click on one by one to form an opinion. By the time I got to the fourth one, I had forgotten what the first one looked like, what the prices of any of them were, and certainly had not checked reviews or anything else that would help me give her a more informed opinion. At the same time, my family was planning a vacation with a group of friends, and all of our decisions from hotels, to activities, to areas to visit, were all being made in roughly the same way.”

The pez dispenser story is so 1999 was my thinking, but every startup’s got the same story going. Scratch your own itch is what its called.

Here’s another one from Pair

We had a problem. We had just moved to Mountain View, but our girlfriends were still in Canada. We tried using text message, and Facebook to stay in touch, but we really felt like there should be a better way to stay in touch with our partners. We realized that we were sending over 90% of our messages to a single person using tools that were designed to send messages to everyone you know. There didn’t seem to be a better way. So we made one 🙂

There’s nothing wrong with it per se, but its very cliche and sounds construed and fake.

What’s your take? Is it lame or does it really “make the company more human and personable”?

Other

Startup Idea: Blackbox flight recorder for startups

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How do you figure out which events matter and which dont in your startup?

Some events in your startup journey are obviously huge. First version of product shipped. First customer payment. First hire. First funding (maybe). Others are more innocuous. They slide by many times without any fanfare. Like the first time a customer logs a complaint. There are many cynics who might say

“Yes, because if every second of your <startup> life isn’t documented then it doesn’t really exist, right?”

Yet those same cynics might not understand that most entrepreneurs dont know which seconds are important and which ones are not. Most of these are better evaluated in hindsight.

What if you could “record” your startup’s seconds? Automatically?

You actually can, if you use the Cloud – since everything in on the cloud its easy to record.

What’s needed is a “black box flight recorder for startups“.

It helps you “login” to all your cloud services and automatically categorizes these events into buckets.

Then it helps your figure out what triggers something.

It can be a huge help for incubators.

It could also help create a framework for decision making.

So, please – build one already.

Other

Big disruptions in the recruitment industry

There are 2 interesting links today that are worth reading. One from Pando daily says Angel List is helping match 600+ potential hires to startup companies each week. That’s a huge number.

“Rather than operating like a normal job board, it matches people who failed to raise money or whose startup didn’t work out with companies that have yet to raise money.”

Second, an article on LinkedIn about how recruiters now use LinkedIn as their primary sourcing tool.

“LinkedIn enjoys a vast sweet spot between those two extremes, helping fill high-skill jobs that pay anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000 or more a year.”

Search agencies now get less than 2% of Adobe’s business in the Americas. (Compared to 20%)

I love it. Larger companies are going to LinkedIn to bypass recruiters and smaller companies are being introduced by more effective job boards. Granted this wont work for 100% of the companies, but it will work for 80% of a certain type of roles.

So what happens to the traditional recruiter?

The same thing that SaaS did to enterprise sales people. The quality sales people who built relationships will be enormously successful. The mediocre ones will be relegated to a inside sales position with vastly different jobs. They will focus on nurturing their prospective employees instead of spamming them with job descriptions.

Hiring for startups will never be the same again for sure.