leadership

Being entrepreneur to build Angel Syndicate - learning

Coming from deeptech background helped me to understand any startup who is talking about future tech. I can understand them way ahead, my IQ helped me to know some business in less than 2 mins to understand the future model even.
More important, while running companies myself, I understand how business can run and grow. Sales can be increased and marketing can be done with optimised concept and structure. When some startup is asking money for their tech product, it's easy for me to know the exact cost for the same as I've been running tech companies for last 24 years globally. Support theses, not product concepts.

Markets permanently affect the open doors and accessible ways for new businesses Item dreams and ways will change as a business person constructs insight in a space. Success was determined by people's capacity to formulate a thesis and carry it out in a market. Instead of asking about a product learned about an entrepreneur's thesis on how the world is changing and what people need, focus on the people and how they came to their theses rather than the particular product vision they could articulate at the time. • Create investment theses and put money into people.

VCs often think about whether they want to be more opportunistic or thesis-driven. For example, do they want to make a thesis about how the world will change and then invest in businesses that are working toward that, or do they want to be opportunistic about trends and just focus on backing great entrepreneurs?

The markets you choose to invest in and the people you work with are both affected by these. After that, people are everything. • Timing is crucial. It took me some time to fully grasp the significance of timing in investing: crucial for making deals and for a start-up to comprehend why this is the best time to succeed in a particular technology or business. Why now?

Timing, or the sense of why something is important now, is important, but pace, or the sense of how quickly markets, businesses, technologies, and people are moving, is just as important. Be specific about how you define "great" teams and entrepreneurs. A person who is a great entrepreneur possesses the inner capacity and ability to build a great company as well as a unique, differentiated reason for being better than anyone else at executing this business in this market with their team.

• Always and first, listen. It may feel good to tell entrepreneurs what to do, but it's more important and valuable for both entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to listen first and talk second. Before you speak, listen. On the off chance that you don't tune in, you don't learn.

• Take a close look at your biases. Methods for describing how we process new information include stereotypes, biases, heuristics, patterns, and previous experiences and observations. Because it is impossible for the mind to process all of the information from the past and the present in order to make new decisions, we must store the outcomes of some decision processes in our memory so that we can use them in the future. This makes them natural. When meeting new entrepreneurs, examining new markets, and evaluating new products, venture capitalists naturally have biases. While pattern matching is crucial, we cannot be bound by the patterns we have developed.

• Accept what you don't comprehend. Try not to dispose of what you don't have the foggiest idea. The most intriguing and useful concepts draw on emerging user behaviours that we won't initially comprehend. In retrospect, emerging behaviours only make sense. Start-up businesses with venture capital should ask dumb questions You shouldn't let your intellectual ego prevent you from asking stupid questions; Good questions can come from dumb ones. In ways you might not have anticipated, asking questions can reveal new paths and patterns. While you are not required to know the answers, you are required to know the questions. Additionally, in order to provide constructive feedback, you must be able to comprehend and synthesize what you hear.

• Spend time learning. Take the time to learn what you believe and why you believe it, as VCs must believe in things that others do not. If you want to stand out as an investor, you'll need to put in the time to come up with solid concepts and original perspectives. Just like your mind, leave space on your calendar for spontaneity.

• Make up your own mind. Decoupling relational forlornness from scholarly loneliness is significant. It varies from company to company, but interpersonal loneliness is a part of the job and can be overcome by forming networks with great people, entrepreneurs, partners, investors, the media, and others. You are able to develop non-consensus viewpoints and investments if you are intellectually lonely. Rather than focusing on what everyone else thinks is interesting, pursue your own interests. Additionally, making non-consensus investment decisions is preceded by intellectual isolation. Form your opinion, not just an opinion.

• Bias in favour of serendipity, friction, and curiosity. To create serendipity, attend offbeat meetings. Reach out to people who are doing things that interest you. Be willing to make mistakes. Test, experiment, and learn Meeting and evaluating big, new ideas is fun and interesting intellectually, but VC is won and lost on more than just intellectual merit. There is a lot more to venture capital than just making investments; there is a lot of contexts behind an investment that the public will never see; choosing investments is much more difficult and meaningful than analysing ideas; and determining where valuable companies will be built and then actually positioning yourself to invest in them are related, but ultimately distinct activities. The takeaway from this is that obtaining access to excellent investment opportunities is far more important in venture capital than locating outstanding investment opportunities themselves.

A great venture capitalist does not possess the knowledge that these few businesses would become interesting in 2010. It's getting the owners of these businesses to work with you on their journey; that is the struggle.) A feature, not a flaw, is uncertainty. You have the opportunity to make the non-consensus decisions necessary for enormous returns when there is uncertainty.

• VCs are less important than entrepreneurs. Try not to burn through a business person's time. Get ready. Be there. Be punctual. Follow-through. Examine your ego. Get down on your predispositions. Preach, not mentor. Be aware of when you can offer advice and when you cannot. Make appropriate allocations for success (and failure).

• When making decisions, be clear. Say no if it's a no. Be open to talking again in the future if it's a no. It is essential to define your procedure, communicate it to entrepreneurs, and carry out your commitments. I was able to build closer relationships with entrepreneurs by being clear, constructive, and willing to talk about decisions. Which of our assumptions is certain to be incorrect in the future? What do you believe is an issue on which virtually no one agrees? Write down what you think to know. If you want to know what you think, write it down.

• Invest in step-changes rather than trendlines. Prioritize trendlines over headlines. The idea that hard work and little recognition often lie behind the immediate headlines and that you have to build the trendlines to get the headlines is at its core. It's easy to say that something will change in "3-5 years," but it's more satisfying to think about what will cause the changes. Step-change events provide the foundation for enormous returns and signal investment opportunities that lead to exponential growth rather than trendline growth. In the short term, evaluate a VC based on their game play; In the long run, look at VCs' successes rather than their failures.

We will invest in a lot of companies that fail if there are approximately 200 start-ups each year that can be funded by top VCs and 15 businesses that will generate 95% of all economic returns. Investing in a winner is more important than having a high average number of successes. Quality can only be achieved through a large number of investments and the financing of numerous failures. The necessary sporting analogy: Slugging percentage, not batting average, should be used to evaluate a VC.

• Execute on your unique ability to assist your investments in success. Investing in early stages is very different from investing in later stages. Follow investing is not the same as lead investing. Holy messenger contributing is not the same as Series A financial planning. Build your knowledge, relationships, and skills in accordance with the game you're playing and how expectations and rules change. It is also true: The keys to a successful career in the sector are relationships, networks, and the capacity to assist entrepreneurs in meeting their needs by connecting them. Your reputation with entrepreneurs will be determined by how well you can support your portfolio with your experiences and expertise. Be upfront about how you can assist an entrepreneur and establish that relationship right away. Support that is proactive and ongoing is more valuable than support that is reactive and sporadic. Establish open channels of communication. Make use of platforms and tools and clearly define ways to add value to do more than just catch up in a semi-regular and reactive way.

• More important than making the best deals is making the right ones. A company's value in relation to other private or public companies should not be the focus of a market-clearing valuation, but rather the context of financing, i.e., the price an investor paid to invest capital in the business. However, price only matters to a certain extent for VCs who make deals. The overall market climate for comparable investment opportunities and a company's performance both influence price. Even though investing at a lower valuation is generally preferable to investing at a higher valuation, even that only matters to a certain extent. While the economic returns of venture capitalists (VCs) follow a power law, most start-up outcomes follow a binomial distribution: they either succeed or fail.

The valuation of an early round likely has very little effect on the financial returns of the investment if the start-up succeeds; Moreover, regardless of how much you paid, a zero remains a zero if it fails. Or you'll be disrupted. Recognize that entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have traditionally traded with information asymmetry: The venture capital market is on the verge of becoming more open, participative, and productive. Because the game isn't the same as it used to be and won't be in the future, venture capital is being disrupted.

Put in the effort. It requires a long investment to prevail in funding, as it requires a long investment for connections to work, for organizations to develop and exits to happen, for difficult work to pay off. Consider the future. Don't just take advantage of deals that are "hot." Learn how you stand out from other venture capitalists and keep developing your added value. Know why you are supporting entrepreneurs and businesses. Intellectually and interpersonally, be sincere. Take the time to cultivate meaningful relationships over time.

VC is a long-term enterprise: While some businesses achieve overnight success, few actually rise to the top of the market. Although the company now generates a significant amount of recurring revenue and is expanding at a significant rate year over year, it took us a few years to really build out the technology and reach our first enterprise clients. We now serve numerous large clients, numerous start-ups, and numerous massive clients that were not on our approved list of clients, but we partner with numerous leading businesses. Matters of ownership: We begin by concentrating our efforts on a smaller number of businesses in which we acquire much-needed ownership and continue to invest throughout the company's lifecycle. We have three growth funds in addition to our Series of funds, which can write large first checks. The advantage is that we now have millions invested in many of our best deals, allowing us to really support entrepreneurs as their businesses grow.

We led both the seed round and the A round in the case of another struggling business and did not wait for additional capital to be provided. Because we invested in each step, our ownership actually increased over time. I have to admit that until it is time to send them actual cash, there is a strange singing with LPs. Multiples on cash invested are much higher if you invest early and then pull back in the subsequent three rounds than if you keep writing checks. VCs have divergent perspectives and approaches to this. Some would rather jump in, buy cheap, and display a large multiple. At front when we realize we have a high ground, we like to give more capital something to do, which the two assists the business visionaries with succeeding and drives more total monetary returns for our LPs.

Money in Cash: Even though our sector has performed exceptionally well when it comes to paper mark-ups, LPs ultimately desire to see money. In the end, VCs are judged on their ability to return cash to those who have funded us. I mentioned that we sold our stake in a company for more than a billion dollars, but that when we invested, the company generated virtually no revenue. We continued to invest at the same stage as the struggling businesses today and followed it all the way up. With just one deal, we were able to return a total of twice as much money as we had invested when we exited our position in the company. I'm sure you've never heard of these businesses, and many of you haven't either. That's fine; their revenues and customers adore them, and we're perfectly content to support some of the plumbing that improves online business operations.

By having early conviction, following our winners, maintaining ownership, and being patient, long-term capital partners, we have generated a significant amount of cash proceeds over the past 2.5 years (more is anticipated by the end of the year). IP that can be defended: One of the things I always say when asked for advice on our industry by newer, younger VC partners is to look for businesses that have developed IP that can be defended. While I'm referring to technology that is difficult to replicate, it's true that anything could be replicated if a large juggernaut like large corporations wanted to invest all of their resources in it.

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Arijit Bhattacharyya

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