GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture Capital. grayscale_vc. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. More information.

Followers. 623.

MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. 10 WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN TACKLE THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS By now you have likely read all the doom and gloom memos and posts floating around in the US tech industry. Sequoia’s Black Swan memo, Fred Wilson’s Market Meltdown post, Mark Suster’s Funding in the Time of Coronavirus slides are just a few of them.. Here is the TL;DR. Is Coronavirus the black swan of 2020 that leads us to a recessionary

phase of the cycle?

BUILDING A ₹10,000 CR B2B MARKETPLACE IN INDIA Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace business in India. To figure out where you need to sit on the map, evaluate the number of potential customers in your industry, take a general rule of 10–30% market penetration, and see how much annual sales per customer you need to be passing through your platform. WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Go Figure by GoJek. 6. GOFIGURE by GoJek. It’s one of the few podcasts coming out of Indonesia. It is also one of the rarer occasions where a growth-stage startup talks about the ecosystem and company building at large. Nadiem Makarim, Indonesia’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture Capital. grayscale_vc. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. More information.

Followers. 623.

MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. 10 WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN TACKLE THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS By now you have likely read all the doom and gloom memos and posts floating around in the US tech industry. Sequoia’s Black Swan memo, Fred Wilson’s Market Meltdown post, Mark Suster’s Funding in the Time of Coronavirus slides are just a few of them.. Here is the TL;DR. Is Coronavirus the black swan of 2020 that leads us to a recessionary

phase of the cycle?

BUILDING A ₹10,000 CR B2B MARKETPLACE IN INDIA Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace business in India. To figure out where you need to sit on the map, evaluate the number of potential customers in your industry, take a general rule of 10–30% market penetration, and see how much annual sales per customer you need to be passing through your platform. WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Go Figure by GoJek. 6. GOFIGURE by GoJek. It’s one of the few podcasts coming out of Indonesia. It is also one of the rarer occasions where a growth-stage startup talks about the ecosystem and company building at large. Nadiem Makarim, Indonesia’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture Capital. grayscale_vc. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. More information.

Followers. 623.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I Want My Money Back. I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of unhealthy coffees at the same time. At this volume of emails, investment decks, business plans, calendar syncing, notes, database updates, founders 2019 — THE YEAR THAT WAS. AND HOW I FARED ON MY In the early stage though, normalcy returned. Starting with India, and focusing on Seed to Series A rounds, India saw a massive increase in investment amount crossing $1B for the first time, with a substantial increase in deal sizes especially at Series A. This was driven largely by global funds such as Tiger Global, Lightspeed, and Accel deploying huge amounts in proven category leaders at a 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman. Let me start with my favourite podcast of all: Masters of Scale.Reid Hoffman’s deep and articulate voice, questioning some of the world’s best entrepreneurs, interspersed with Reid’s thesis and analysis, gift-wrapped with Hollywood-level post production, podcasts can’t get better than

this.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU As many of you would know, Jeff Bezos laid down Frugality as Amazon’s 9th Principle. It’s an important principle, helping Amazon sustain a substantial competitive advantage over other players. “Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and

invention

DEAR FOUNDERS, 6 MONTHS IS THE NEW YEAR Y2K Mania. 2020 feels like a new beginning. With AI taking over the world, stories of boom and bust all around us, and Asia becoming the new power bed for tech economy, “Decade 2020” will have a lot in store for all of us. OUR INVESTMENT IN POPXO, INDIA’S LARGEST DIGITAL COMMUNITY While other tech media companies in India are getting absorbed in sexual harassment scandals (TVF, ScoopWhoop) I am glad that we have a company in our portfolio which is a shining light in these dark times.While the whole startup world is being shaken by the truth coming to light in the recent cases of Justin Caldbeck from Binary Capital and Dave McClure from 500 Startups, this company THE SAAS TISSUE. A SINGAPOREAN TAKE ON THE FAMOUS SAAS A Singaporean take on the famous SaaS napkin. Unless you live under a rock, you’d have heard of Saas Napkin by Point Nine Capital. It’s a back-of-the-napkin table on what it takes to raise capital in a SaaS business and provides a very quick, rough, but accurate guide for founders to figure out metrics they need to hit for future rounds. HOW THIS EQUITY ROUND IS NOT SCREWING YOU UP. There was a short internal conversation within the team. Some one floated an idea of using a note, maybe even a SAFE. I scared a few people with my loud insistence of taking common stock equity, and then went ahead and drafted the term sheet, which is now available on the

website.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture Capital. grayscale_vc. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. More information.

Followers. 623.

MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. 10 WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN TACKLE THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS By now you have likely read all the doom and gloom memos and posts floating around in the US tech industry. Sequoia’s Black Swan memo, Fred Wilson’s Market Meltdown post, Mark Suster’s Funding in the Time of Coronavirus slides are just a few of them.. Here is the TL;DR. Is Coronavirus the black swan of 2020 that leads us to a recessionary

phase of the cycle?

BUILDING A ₹10,000 CR B2B MARKETPLACE IN INDIA Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace business in India. To figure out where you need to sit on the map, evaluate the number of potential customers in your industry, take a general rule of 10–30% market penetration, and see how much annual sales per customer you need to be passing through your platform. WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Go Figure by GoJek. 6. GOFIGURE by GoJek. It’s one of the few podcasts coming out of Indonesia. It is also one of the rarer occasions where a growth-stage startup talks about the ecosystem and company building at large. Nadiem Makarim, Indonesia’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture Capital. grayscale_vc. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. More information.

Followers. 623.

MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. 10 WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN TACKLE THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS By now you have likely read all the doom and gloom memos and posts floating around in the US tech industry. Sequoia’s Black Swan memo, Fred Wilson’s Market Meltdown post, Mark Suster’s Funding in the Time of Coronavirus slides are just a few of them.. Here is the TL;DR. Is Coronavirus the black swan of 2020 that leads us to a recessionary

phase of the cycle?

BUILDING A ₹10,000 CR B2B MARKETPLACE IN INDIA Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace business in India. To figure out where you need to sit on the map, evaluate the number of potential customers in your industry, take a general rule of 10–30% market penetration, and see how much annual sales per customer you need to be passing through your platform. WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Go Figure by GoJek. 6. GOFIGURE by GoJek. It’s one of the few podcasts coming out of Indonesia. It is also one of the rarer occasions where a growth-stage startup talks about the ecosystem and company building at large. Nadiem Makarim, Indonesia’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture Capital. grayscale_vc. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. More information.

Followers. 623.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I Want My Money Back. I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of unhealthy coffees at the same time. At this volume of emails, investment decks, business plans, calendar syncing, notes, database updates, founders 2019 — THE YEAR THAT WAS. AND HOW I FARED ON MY In the early stage though, normalcy returned. Starting with India, and focusing on Seed to Series A rounds, India saw a massive increase in investment amount crossing $1B for the first time, with a substantial increase in deal sizes especially at Series A. This was driven largely by global funds such as Tiger Global, Lightspeed, and Accel deploying huge amounts in proven category leaders at a 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman. Let me start with my favourite podcast of all: Masters of Scale.Reid Hoffman’s deep and articulate voice, questioning some of the world’s best entrepreneurs, interspersed with Reid’s thesis and analysis, gift-wrapped with Hollywood-level post production, podcasts can’t get better than

this.

DEVTOOLS GO-TO-MARKET FROM 0 TO 1 The three pillars of Dev Tools GTM. Dev tools marketing strategies are notorious to be truly bottoms-up. A developer customer tries to go beyond PR bullshit, and only adopts or buys when she sees real value. The following three pillars have evolved over THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU As many of you would know, Jeff Bezos laid down Frugality as Amazon’s 9th Principle. It’s an important principle, helping Amazon sustain a substantial competitive advantage over other players. “Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and

invention

OUR INVESTMENT IN POPXO, INDIA’S LARGEST DIGITAL COMMUNITY While other tech media companies in India are getting absorbed in sexual harassment scandals (TVF, ScoopWhoop) I am glad that we have a company in our portfolio which is a shining light in these dark times.While the whole startup world is being shaken by the truth coming to light in the recent cases of Justin Caldbeck from Binary Capital and Dave McClure from 500 Startups, this company THE SAAS TISSUE. A SINGAPOREAN TAKE ON THE FAMOUS SAAS A Singaporean take on the famous SaaS napkin. Unless you live under a rock, you’d have heard of Saas Napkin by Point Nine Capital. It’s a back-of-the-napkin table on what it takes to raise capital in a SaaS business and provides a very quick, rough, but accurate guide for founders to figure out metrics they need to hit for future rounds. HOW THIS EQUITY ROUND IS NOT SCREWING YOU UP. There was a short internal conversation within the team. Some one floated an idea of using a note, maybe even a SAFE. I scared a few people with my loud insistence of taking common stock equity, and then went ahead and drafted the term sheet, which is now available on the

website.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”. TRANSITIONS IN A VC FIRM. AND INTRODUCING THE NEWEST This week I wanted to talk a bit about dynamics of a VC team and how VC firms think about hiring, transitions, and change. Venture Capital as an industry has VERY long term horizons with each fund looking 10 years into the future. Every 3–4 years when the firm fundraises, the partners have to commit to 10 more years of staying involved to I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I Want My Money Back. I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of unhealthy coffees at the same time. At this volume of emails, investment decks, business plans, calendar syncing, notes, database updates, founders MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. DAYS OF OUR LIVES. A PEEK INTO 24 HOURS OF A VC’S LIFE AND Here’s a minute by minute account of what tomorrow really looks like for me: 7:30 AM Wake up. First thing I end up doing is check my emails. I know that’s bad, I am trying to get rid of this habit THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU As many of you would know, Jeff Bezos laid down Frugality as Amazon’s 9th Principle. It’s an important principle, helping Amazon sustain a substantial competitive advantage over other players. “Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and

invention

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP. CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”. TRANSITIONS IN A VC FIRM. AND INTRODUCING THE NEWEST This week I wanted to talk a bit about dynamics of a VC team and how VC firms think about hiring, transitions, and change. Venture Capital as an industry has VERY long term horizons with each fund looking 10 years into the future. Every 3–4 years when the firm fundraises, the partners have to commit to 10 more years of staying involved to I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I Want My Money Back. I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of unhealthy coffees at the same time. At this volume of emails, investment decks, business plans, calendar syncing, notes, database updates, founders MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. DAYS OF OUR LIVES. A PEEK INTO 24 HOURS OF A VC’S LIFE AND Here’s a minute by minute account of what tomorrow really looks like for me: 7:30 AM Wake up. First thing I end up doing is check my emails. I know that’s bad, I am trying to get rid of this habit THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU As many of you would know, Jeff Bezos laid down Frugality as Amazon’s 9th Principle. It’s an important principle, helping Amazon sustain a substantial competitive advantage over other players. “Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and

invention

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP. CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. UNBOXED VC. THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE RAISING YOUR VC… Cats out of the err.. box. I spent most of yesterday at the wonderful Plug and Play office in Jakarta, Indonesia. The accelerator/incubator just began its first batch and I had a chance to share with the cool teams there how a VC looks/analyses/does DD on a startup and also five hacks/tips to keep in mind when fundraising. CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman. Let me start with my favourite podcast of all: Masters of Scale.Reid Hoffman’s deep and articulate voice, questioning some of the world’s best entrepreneurs, interspersed with Reid’s thesis and analysis, gift-wrapped with Hollywood-level post production, podcasts can’t get better than

this.

WHAT YOU’RE DOING WRONG WHEN APPROACHING A VC The way its done here portrays either laziness or lack of relationship with the referree, both of which are bad for your case. Address the email to the right person (Nikhil Kapur) and the right fund (GREE Ventures) As you can see from Circle 3 above, NSI is a popular fund in the market. @Openspace team, if you are reading this, take a bow and THE SAAS TISSUE. A SINGAPOREAN TAKE ON THE FAMOUS SAAS A Singaporean take on the famous SaaS napkin. Unless you live under a rock, you’d have heard of Saas Napkin by Point Nine Capital. It’s a back-of-the-napkin table on what it takes to raise capital in a SaaS business and provides a very quick, rough, but accurate guide for founders to figure out metrics they need to hit for future rounds. PESKY LITTLE CREATURES CALLED NOTES Pesky little creatures called Notes. Nikhil Kapur. Follow. Mar 12, 2017 · 6 min read. Note on the Notes being used these days. Dammit Doll. It’s so common these days to run into Seed stage companies raising capital on a Convertible Note instead of through Equity. We have done our fair share of such financings at GREE Ventures. NEGOTIATING YOUR SEED ROUND. WAR STORIES FROM THE JUNGLE Negotiating your Seed round. Amidst the chaos of the biggest tech conference of Singapore, I somehow got hustled today into moderating a session with two very cool people from the industry: Tiang Lim Foo from SeedPlus and Grace Sai from The Hub. The topic of the discussion was “How to Negotiate your Seed round” and we tried to do justice

to

HOW THIS EQUITY ROUND IS NOT SCREWING YOU UP. There was a short internal conversation within the team. Some one floated an idea of using a note, maybe even a SAFE. I scared a few people with my loud insistence of taking common stock equity, and then went ahead and drafted the term sheet, which is now available on the

website.

SEA IS FACING A NEW PROBLEM: FUND CREEP These are the average/median deal sizes over the years for the top 5 early stage funds (in order of their activity) in the region. I won’t name them, because it’s bad to name names, but you can do your own CBInsights/Crunchbase research and will get similar numbers.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”. MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. BUILDING A ₹10,000 CR B2B MARKETPLACE IN INDIA Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace business in India. To figure out where you need to sit on the map, evaluate the number of potential customers in your industry, take a general rule of 10–30% market penetration, and see how much annual sales per customer you need to be passing through your platform. 10 WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN TACKLE THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS By now you have likely read all the doom and gloom memos and posts floating around in the US tech industry. Sequoia’s Black Swan memo, Fred Wilson’s Market Meltdown post, Mark Suster’s Funding in the Time of Coronavirus slides are just a few of them.. Here is the TL;DR. Is Coronavirus the black swan of 2020 that leads us to a recessionary

phase of the cycle?

WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Go Figure by GoJek. 6. GOFIGURE by GoJek. It’s one of the few podcasts coming out of Indonesia. It is also one of the rarer occasions where a growth-stage startup talks about the ecosystem and company building at large. Nadiem Makarim, Indonesia’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP. OUR INVESTMENT IN POPXO, INDIA’S LARGEST DIGITAL COMMUNITY While other tech media companies in India are getting absorbed in sexual harassment scandals (TVF, ScoopWhoop) I am glad that we have a company in our portfolio which is a shining light in these dark times.While the whole startup world is being shaken by the truth coming to light in the recent cases of Justin Caldbeck from Binary Capital and Dave McClure from 500 Startups, this company

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”. MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. BUILDING A ₹10,000 CR B2B MARKETPLACE IN INDIA Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace business in India. To figure out where you need to sit on the map, evaluate the number of potential customers in your industry, take a general rule of 10–30% market penetration, and see how much annual sales per customer you need to be passing through your platform. 10 WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN TACKLE THE IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS By now you have likely read all the doom and gloom memos and posts floating around in the US tech industry. Sequoia’s Black Swan memo, Fred Wilson’s Market Meltdown post, Mark Suster’s Funding in the Time of Coronavirus slides are just a few of them.. Here is the TL;DR. Is Coronavirus the black swan of 2020 that leads us to a recessionary

phase of the cycle?

WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. 10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Go Figure by GoJek. 6. GOFIGURE by GoJek. It’s one of the few podcasts coming out of Indonesia. It is also one of the rarer occasions where a growth-stage startup talks about the ecosystem and company building at large. Nadiem Makarim, Indonesia’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP. OUR INVESTMENT IN POPXO, INDIA’S LARGEST DIGITAL COMMUNITY While other tech media companies in India are getting absorbed in sexual harassment scandals (TVF, ScoopWhoop) I am glad that we have a company in our portfolio which is a shining light in these dark times.While the whole startup world is being shaken by the truth coming to light in the recent cases of Justin Caldbeck from Binary Capital and Dave McClure from 500 Startups, this company

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I Want My Money Back. I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of unhealthy coffees at the same time. At this volume of emails, investment decks, business plans, calendar syncing, notes, database updates, founders DEAR FOUNDERS, 6 MONTHS IS THE NEW YEAR Y2K Mania. 2020 feels like a new beginning. With AI taking over the world, stories of boom and bust all around us, and Asia becoming the new power bed for tech economy, “Decade 2020” will have a lot in store for all of us. TRANSITIONS IN A VC FIRM. AND INTRODUCING THE NEWEST This week I wanted to talk a bit about dynamics of a VC team and how VC firms think about hiring, transitions, and change. Venture Capital as an industry has VERY long term horizons with each fund looking 10 years into the future. Every 3–4 years when the firm fundraises, the partners have to commit to 10 more years of staying involved to OUR INVESTMENT IN CLASSPLUS. AND OUR SME-LED DISTRIBUTION These solutions usually take the form of Mobile ERP, CRM, HIMS, and HRMS. Simple UX, Low Feature Clutter, yet Powerful domain-specific products are finding adoption across verticals. Classplus builds on this exact thesis by providing a simple ERP for tutors to manage their business end-to-end. From fee payments, attendance, and batch

management

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU As many of you would know, Jeff Bezos laid down Frugality as Amazon’s 9th Principle. It’s an important principle, helping Amazon sustain a substantial competitive advantage over other players. “Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and

invention

MOVE OVER CONTENT, IT’S TIME FOR COMMUNITY-LED GROWTH 1. An urge to contribute to the community. 2. The perception of benefitting from the community. As you can see, a community differs from a network with the common goal or interest that brings it together. As an entrepreneur, it’s your job to align the goals of this community with the goals of your business. A true community is

characterised

THE SAAS TISSUE. A SINGAPOREAN TAKE ON THE FAMOUS SAAS A Singaporean take on the famous SaaS napkin. Unless you live under a rock, you’d have heard of Saas Napkin by Point Nine Capital. It’s a back-of-the-napkin table on what it takes to raise capital in a SaaS business and provides a very quick, rough, but accurate guide for founders to figure out metrics they need to hit for future rounds. HOW THIS EQUITY ROUND IS NOT SCREWING YOU UP. There was a short internal conversation within the team. Some one floated an idea of using a note, maybe even a SAFE. I scared a few people with my loud insistence of taking common stock equity, and then went ahead and drafted the term sheet, which is now available on the

website.

HOW DO YOU DD A VC WHO ISSUES A TERM SHEET? One of our portfolio company has been fundraising recently and the founder asked me this very important question: “How do I DD a VC who is about to/has offered me a

GRAYSCALE_VC

Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders

deserve it.

ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF Market Standard: Stock options typically convert into Ordinary shares that do not enjoy rights such as ROFR, pre-emptive, anti-dilution etc.Further the shares are subject to drag-along rights from Investors (if mentioned in the Shareholders agreement), forcing the employees to sell their shares in case of a dragged liquidity event initiated by

the investors.

TRANSITIONS IN A VC FIRM. AND INTRODUCING THE NEWEST New Beginnings. I won’t lie and say it has been easy. In fact it continues to be the hardest thing I have done so far in my life. It was easier for me to build a solid team in my previous company because the vision, business, strategy, and tactics were my own, in an industry that I understood well. MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP One of the first few posts I wrote on this blog was about what basic metrics to track and project in your business plan. While these metrics are still one of the first few things I would look at for a deal in our pipeline or even for our portfolio, there is an even better way of keeping a good track of health of your company’s business: Cohorts I suggest you proceed from this point onwards WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. DAYS OF OUR LIVES. A PEEK INTO 24 HOURS OF A VC’S LIFE AND Here’s a minute by minute account of what tomorrow really looks like for me: 7:30 AM Wake up. First thing I end up doing is check my emails. I know that’s bad, I am trying to get rid of this habit HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP. I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year.. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU My wife often complains about my frugality. If you’re Indian, then you’ll find humour in the fact that I’m a Punjabi and she comes from a Bania family. It’s true though, I am frugal. Maybe it’s CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Grayscale VC. Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders deserve it. Venture Capital. STRIVE. Following. Building a ₹10,000 Cr B2B marketplace in India. ESOPS DECONSTRUCTED. 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE MINDFUL OF 1. Please pay $50k to the Company for exercising these options worth $1M. 2. Do remember to pay the $200k tax bill you’ll have to pay on the unrealised capital gains of $1M. But don’t worry, we’ll help you find liquidity within next couple of years and eventually you’ll be a millionaire!”. MUST-DO UNIT ECONOMICS ANALYSIS FOR A STARTUP The company above seems to be getting better over time at retaining revenue. While for the customers acquired in Month 1 the company only retained 60% of the revenue by end of Month 5, for Month 3 customers the company managed to retain 95% of the revenue by end of Month 3. That’s a sign of a healthy business. 2. Revenue Churn. TRANSITIONS IN A VC FIRM. AND INTRODUCING THE NEWEST This week I wanted to talk a bit about dynamics of a VC team and how VC firms think about hiring, transitions, and change. Venture Capital as an industry has VERY long term horizons with each fund looking 10 years into the future. Every 3–4 years when the firm fundraises, the partners have to commit to 10 more years of staying involved to I WANT MY MONEY BACK. I MET AROUND 500 I Want My Money Back. I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year. Phew. Deep breath. Shut down. Restart. That’s an interesting mix of 500 hours of healthy conversations and 500 shots of unhealthy coffees at the same time. At this volume of emails, investment decks, business plans, calendar syncing, notes, database updates, founders DAYS OF OUR LIVES. A PEEK INTO 24 HOURS OF A VC’S LIFE AND Here’s a minute by minute account of what tomorrow really looks like for me: 7:30 AM Wake up. First thing I end up doing is check my emails. I know that’s bad, I am trying to get rid of this habit WHAT A VC STACK LOOKS LIKE. AND HOW WE STAY ON TOP OF OUR Our Stack as of January 2018 GREE Ventures VC Stack. Deal Channels: It all starts with how the deal enters our pipeline.For a cold call, usually the answer is through our own website (yes we read every message dropped on our website), LinkedIn, or any other social media.This is easy to setup and most funds enable this piece well because they know we lose 100% of the deals we do not see. THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUGALITY. AND 10 AREAS OF SPEND YOU As many of you would know, Jeff Bezos laid down Frugality as Amazon’s 9th Principle. It’s an important principle, helping Amazon sustain a substantial competitive advantage over other players. “Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and

invention

CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

HOW THAT “SAFE NOTE” IS SCREWING YOU UP.

GRAYSCALE_VC

Candid views on Asia tech from a founder-turned-VC. Because founders

deserve it.

UNBOXED VC. THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE RAISING YOUR VC… Cats out of the err.. box. I spent most of yesterday at the wonderful Plug and Play office in Jakarta, Indonesia. The accelerator/incubator just began its first batch and I had a chance to share with the cool teams there how a VC looks/analyses/does DD on a startup and also five hacks/tips to keep in mind when fundraising. CAMP BLUE OR CAMP RED?. AND HOW Camp Blue or Camp Red? It’s easy to recognize patterns from this map. You can clearly see the two Camps evolving, driven mostly by the Chinese gorillas (Alibaba and Tencent) who are both building their

arsenals.

10 BEST ASIAN PODCASTS TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DURING THE Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman. Let me start with my favourite podcast of all: Masters of Scale.Reid Hoffman’s deep and articulate voice, questioning some of the world’s best entrepreneurs, interspersed with Reid’s thesis and analysis, gift-wrapped with Hollywood-level post production, podcasts can’t get better than

this.

PESKY LITTLE CREATURES CALLED NOTES Apart from the two advantages discussed, I don’t see much reasons for using a Convertible note. And it’s not just me, almost all good VCs feel the same, including Fred Wilson here.But in case it is really important for you, it’s best to use a YCombinator SAFE or a 500 Startups’ KISS so you don’t run into unforeseen issues. THE SAAS TISSUE. A SINGAPOREAN TAKE ON THE FAMOUS SAAS Unless you live under a rock, you’d have heard of Saas Napkin by Point Nine Capital.It’s a back-of-the-napkin table on what it takes to raise capital in a SaaS business and provides a very quick, rough, but accurate guide for founders to figure out metrics they need to hit

for future rounds.

WHAT YOU’RE DOING WRONG WHEN APPROACHING A VC 10 thing you should keep in mind as a founder when reaching out to a VC. Get a warm intro, refer to the person and keep them in CC or get referred directly by email See Circle 2 in the above email. If you are referring to some one who I know, make sure you put them in NEGOTIATING YOUR SEED ROUND. WAR STORIES FROM THE JUNGLE What terms are most important for founders and VCs? It’s a very basic question that David asked but I feel it’s the most important one. I started off by asking Tiang and Grace firstly what is the motivation of both the founders and the investors when going into a

negotiation.

HOW THIS EQUITY ROUND IS NOT SCREWING YOU UP. There was a short internal conversation within the team. Some one floated an idea of using a note, maybe even a SAFE. I scared a few people with my loud insistence of taking common stock equity, and then went ahead and drafted the term sheet, which is now available on the

website.

SEA IS FACING A NEW PROBLEM: FUND CREEP These are the average/median deal sizes over the years for the top 5 early stage funds (in order of their activity) in the region. I won’t name them, because it’s bad to name names, but you can do your own CBInsights/Crunchbase research and will get similar numbers.

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MY CANDID VIEWS ON THE ASIAN STARTUP ECOSYSTEM

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5 Reasons to join SKALA #2 — the Indonesian pre-Seed program 5 Reasons to join SKALA #2 — the Indonesian pre-Seed program And some fun times from SKALA #1

Nikhil Kapur

Jul 28

Our investment in ClassPlus Our investment in ClassPlus and our SME-led distribution thesis

Nikhil Kapur

Jul 13

Our updated VC stack Our updated VC stack And what’s to come in 2020

Nikhil Kapur

May 5

2019: The Year that will be 2019: The Year that will be Measuring the ecosystems in Indonesia, India, and Singapore

Nikhil Kapur

Feb 18

Not all platforms are the same Not all platforms are the same We’ve all probably seen or heard of startups that say, “we are like the…Uber for X/Airbnb for Y/GDS for Z”, because we’re

building a…

Shannon Lee Chaluangco

Jan 18

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Negotiating your Seed round++ Negotiating your Seed round++ How to be smarter than your VC/Lawyer

Nikhil Kapur

May 24, 2017

How a VC funnel works How a VC funnel works Using real data from GREE Ventures South Asia

Nikhil Kapur

Jul 21, 2017

How that “SAFE note” is screwing you up. How that “SAFE note” is screwing you up. Hidden terms in notes being used in Southeast Asia

Nikhil Kapur

Aug 6, 2017

Operations

I Want My Money Back I Want My Money Back I met around 500 companies face-to-face last year.

Nikhil Kapur

Feb 12, 2017

Must-do Unit Economics analysis for a Startup — Part 2 Must-do Unit Economics analysis for a Startup — Part 2 A deeper dive into Cohort Economics

Nikhil Kapur

Nov 12, 2017

30 Essential Sources of Tech Reading 30 Essential Sources of Tech Reading And how I spend 2 hours of my life every day

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Aug 20, 2017

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