Rohit Krishna’s Post

We don't do events & mixers a lot, but when we do we kinda want it to count. Building any startup is hard, but what we've realised over the last 9 years is building something in consumer tech (social/content/gaming/commerce) is harder than most categories. As a founder you most probably start with a MVP & start acquiring users, but VCs want retention. When you have well retained users on your product, the goal post shifts to monetisation. Then you start monetising then you realise at this scale the valuation is not justified, so the conversation breaks down again. The goal of this event is to help founders in the 0 to 1 stage of building a consumer-tech product. We've got three amazing founders of Sharechat, Elo Elo & AppsforBharat who have been building in this space for over 8 years. They've made a lot of mistakes along the way but have got some key elements right, that has guided their business to the right track. Since this is a closed, intimate session, expect to get some unfiltered thoughts. You can apply to be part of the event using the link below. If you feel this is not relevant for you, help us in spreading the word by tagging anyone you know who is building or looking to build in consumer-tech. #consumertech #startup #event #bengaluru

Good on you Akshay Chaturvedi for speaking up. Serves as a reminder for other founders to record & track the conversations they have with journalists. Sad to see the current affairs at The Ken, which at one point was the only publication that conducted in-depth research on the startup ecosystem and had the guts to publish whatever the finding might be. Now though, as you said, I've seen numerous examples of this where they decide a narrative (actually not even a narrative, a headline first :) and then figure out the rest. Their stories nowadays are so loosely held that sometimes there isn't even a single analysis of merit. It's lazy at best and malicious at worst. P.S. I'm not an investor in LeverageEdu nor do I know Akshay personally. Thread --> https://lnkd.in/gNUjpTP7 #startup #news

Social products have always been the most disruptive at a cusp of technological change including Facebook (Internet), Instagram (Mobile) or TikTok (Ability to create & edit videos on mobile). We believe GenAI could lead the next big consumer shift in social products. Thanks Samiksha Goel for carrying our views. #Genai #social #consumer #venturecapital https://lnkd.in/gTruXrtQ

The Napster (or Spotify) moment for AI music is here -> When people realised voices can be cloned and replicated easily using GenAI, it led to two risqué eventualities - one being financial fraud by imitating your loved ones/bosses at work and second being to create ‘fake music’ by the artists that you love. In April of last year, the song 'Heart on my sleeve' was created as if it was composed and sung by Drake which became an overnight hit on most streaming platforms before it was taken down. If this is not reminiscent of Napster of Y2K era, I don’t what is! But just like Napster eventually led to Spotify, could the fake impersonations of artists lead to something big? Enter Suno ai (Interestingly enough, a Hindi word :p), a platform which makes AI generated music using just a single line of prompt. But what makes this interesting is that, it explicitly denies all requests related to imitating styles of specific artists or existing songs. It creates new lyrics and music on the fly while being careful not to cross any copyright law. The founders feel this is a way to let everyone in the world create music, instead of searching for Spotify playlists, you could create new music on the fly, exactly based on how you feel. While typing this out, I used the platform to create music based on this prompt “Song about AI generated music compared to Napster in 1990, punk rock style”, give it a listen! Funnily enough the lyrics says “Hey AI get out of my way, you can’t replace raw emotion, we’ll fight for our freedom!” Oh, the irony! At WEH Ventures, we’ve been big investors in the content & entertainment sector over the last 5 years, some of our portfolio companies include Pratilipi, SriMandir, Simple Viral Games, Slick & Stellarplay. We are very keen to invest in AI based consumer products & we don’t necessarily believe you need to succeed in creating your own fundamental LLMs to build a long term moat. We think existing LLMs are akin to AWS where great products can be built on top. If you’re building anything in this sector, I promise a conversation. I’m reachable at rohit@wehventures.com. #genai #Spotify #VC #startup https://lnkd.in/g-ZCAfZA

Yesterday, Cord Jefferson won the Oscar for the Best adapted screenplay trumping Barbie and Oppenheimer for the same category, and this was his directorial debut! In his speech he calls out, "A lot of people passed on this film and hey I understand this is a risk-averse industry, but you know what $200mn movies are a risk too and it doesn't always work out in the end, but you end up taking the risk anyway. Instead of making one $200mn movie, try making twenty $10mn movies...I promise you the next Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese is out there, they just need a shot" Yesterday, there was also a story on capital being returned to investors by Fashinza and Virgio for not able to find PMF after raising and burning through a ton of money. Interestingly, in venture as well, 'second-time entrepreneurs' or 'proven founders' are supposed to be less risky so they get enormous seed rounds. What's true for Hollywood is true for venture as well, $10mn seed rounds are not less risky than a $1mn round. We, at WEH Ventures, believe & invest in first time entrepreneurs or what we call, 'emerging founders' those who have some previous work experience in a startup (which helps in giving them perspective on how startups could be run) but haven't yet started on their own. Average age of our founding team is 26. We believe in scouting for the 'venture version' of the next 'Christopher Nolan' or 'Martin Scorsese'! #hollywood #venturecapital #oscars2024 https://lnkd.in/gQCySez8

I was speaking to one of our portfolio founders yesterday about how 'social commerce' has never worked in India and why it probably never might. Then came across this gem in Hacker News and I was humbled. What a wild story --> - At Vis-O-Matic stores, customers get comfortable in a lounge seater in front of a screen. They then use the knobs near their chair to move the pictures. - Then you press a button for the products that you liked. Looks like this was a fun group activity back then (does that make it social commerce? :p) - Then the order is delivered to the customer from a central warehouse! - A leading publication then proclaimed "the Vis-O-Matic ordering system is here to stay and the good old mall catalogue is on it's way out. The only bar for rapid adoption? They couldn't make enough of these machines! They even predicted an expansion to Canada's rural areas through trailers while the main stores will remain in urban towns!" - Of course, the only reason it probably didn't scale? This was in 1950, a good 12 years before even the personal computer was invented! I guess timing is everything, just cause something didn't work before doesn't mean it never will and on the flip-side just cause a leading publication covers your product as the next big thing, doesn't mean it is :) #ecommerce #venturecapital #timingiseverything

Most LPs that we speak to are curious about just one thing, why India & why now? Answering this from the funding point of view and saying we'll receive so much in 2024/25, which will pump up the valuation, is a very shallow way of looking at things. We have tried to research on whether if we do have a fundamental edge that'll help us create very valuable companies over the next few years from India. We found one and this is a deep dive on that. #indianeconomy #investing #vc #startup #lps