Startups

I've started to realize that there is a shortage of high-quality essays on starting a company in India Started a new newsletter focused exclusively on people who want to start, are in the process of starting up, or already have. Each essay in the link chronicles a stage in the journey of a founder: 1. Should I Even Start a Company?: What you should consider when starting up (https://lnkd.in/d3kPmHcj) 2. Are You Solving a Real Problem?: Many founders end up solving unreal problems (https://lnkd.in/d8SduM5s) 3. Do You Need a Co-Founder?: Solo founders are more common you think, including yours truly (https://lnkd.in/djunPDMd) 4. Do You Need to Raise VC Money? 99% of businesses in India operate without raising any money, raising VC is not a necessity (https://lnkd.in/drsx7TaN) The fourth edition dropped earlier today at 9:30 AM. This is exclusively a newsletter via email, which you can subscribe to directly from any of the essays Over time, I plan to unspool the entire founder journey, including incorporating, fundraising, hiring, how to sell, creating financial plans and even managing personal finances as a founder I plan to leverage my decade long journey investing and working with hundreds of founders to distill learnings for anyone who wants to understand entrepreneurship The journey of a founder is one of courage, and this is a nudge that helps you take the leap

Only 1 in 5 founding teams at VC-backed startups own 50%+ of their companies after a Series A round. AKA raising venture is pretty damn dilutive. Not sure where the idea that founders should expect to still be majority owners in the business after Series A came from (though I do hear it repeated frequently). But the data is clear that's the minority case. Of course this does NOT mean that investors take control after the A because the employee option pool sits in between the founder and investor stakes. Add up founders plus the option pool and the median is neatly at 50%. Data below is from 3,500+ startups that have raised venture rounds in the past 18 months or so. All US companies, no deep tech included. 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗢𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 (𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝘀) • Seed: 55.1% • Series A: 36.6% • Series B: 23.5% • Series C: 17.5% • Series D: 10.9% The dilution between rounds has been fairly consistent over the past few years (20% seed, 20% sold at A, 15% at B, etc). But the rapid rise in SAFE rounds means the initial priced financing is a heavier dilution point that many founders anticipate. The big question: does AI change this? If it becomes viable to build venture-scale companies with only a round or two of venture money, founders come out as winners. Throw in fewer employees and maybe the returns are even more attractive (although I'd love to see increased ownership on a per-employee basis if the teams are going to be tiny). As always - go in prepared. VC can be great, not-VC is great, only mistake is not understanding the game you're about to play. Share with a fundraising founder 🙏 #startups #founders #founderownership #VC Lots more data on founder equity in the Founder Ownership 2025 report: https://lnkd.in/gGWpFpEm

💡 If I were graduating today, I wouldn’t spend hours on job boards. Thousands of candidates apply every day, and most resumes get lost in the noise. Instead, I’d follow a proactive approach that actually works: 1️⃣ Track startups that just raised funding Check out venture capital firm pages on LinkedIn or their websites. Startups that recently secured funding are growing fast—and they need talent. 2️⃣ Find the founders and founding team They know exactly what their company needs, making them the ideal people to pitch. 3️⃣ Send a thoughtful, personalized message Introduce yourself, but more importantly, show that you’ve done your homework. Mention 1–2 things you genuinely admire about their product, mission, or recent achievements. 4️⃣ Show the ROI of hiring you Instead of sending a resume, explain how your skills can solve their immediate challenges or accelerate growth. Your outreach should say: “Here’s how I can add value,” not “Hire me.” Fun fact: one month before I graduated, I didn’t have a job. I got tired of applying through traditional channels, so I messaged every founder I knew, explained how I could help them grow, and landed my first Product Manager contract without a single job board application. 🔥 Opportunities don’t always come through the standard path. Sometimes, you have to create them yourself.

Which country has the best government–startup relationship in the world? It’s a surprisingly rich question. And one with no single answer. Last month, the UK government appointed Alexandra Depledge, MBE as its first Entrepreneurship Adviser. Her task: tackling the key barriers faced by startups scaling in the UK - no small feat. Other countries have taken different directions. 🇮🇱 Israel: The Yozma model was decades ahead of its time, producing the world’s highest startup density per capita. It combined government risk-sharing with private VC through programs like Yozma, which offered matching funds and favourable buyouts. It helped create Waze, Mobileye and many NASDAQ-listed firms. Much of this was backed by Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist (now the Israel Innovation Authority), a central force in early-stage tech funding and public-private innovation bridges. 🇪🇪 Estonia: e-Residency turned a small country into a digital powerhouse. Entrepreneurs can set up EU businesses remotely — attracting 120,000+ founders and €67m+ in tax revenue. 🇸🇬 Singapore: The most systematic approach. StartupSG grants and equity (with public/private funds), tax support, and structured business services. It’s the full package. 🇨🇱 Chile: Pioneered the government accelerator model, offering equity-free funding. It’s helped launch 1,800 international startups and build a talent pipeline into South America. 🇨🇦 Canada: Immigration, immigration, immigration. Entrepreneurs securing backing from designated investors can qualify for permanent residency. 🇦🇪 Dubai: Appointed the world’s first Minister of AI and launched innovation-friendly zones like DIFC and Dubai Future Foundation. Policies focus on frontier tech, digital commerce, and global talent. 🇺🇸 USA: Still the gold standard for scale and ambition. While lacking a central startup policy, R&D funding, DARPA, SBIR, and visas like the O-1 create a strong base. Crucially, its risk culture and VC depth do much of the heavy lifting. And then there are the UK and France... one with a new Treasury adviser, the other with unofficial founder back-channels (Xavier Niel and others DMing President Macron). So what works best? Successful models typically: ✔ Share risk (rather than grant cash) ✔ Provide regulatory clarity ✔ Build ecosystems, not just startups ✔ Attract international talent (and support local champions) ✔ Leverage national strengths (digital ID, military tech, tax regimes…) What doesn’t work? Overfunded but underambitious granterpreneurs relying on government rather than markets. Bureaucracy. Pilot programs that never scale. Would love your views. Which countries do this best? And what can the UK learn from them?

Job titles mean nothing when working in a startup 🙅🏼♂️ I meet many founders and startup teams who proudly state, "I’m the CFO" or "I’m the Chairman" or "I’m the Director of Operations", and I often wonder if they will dive in to support other areas of the business. Titles are irrelevant when building a startup because, as anyone who has launched a startup will know, most of the day-to-day challenges require collaboration from everyone on the team to solve. Rather than getting hung up on giving your team titles that assign them to specific business areas and impact their ability to bring fresh perspectives to challenges across the business, encourage them to define their titles through their unique skill sets, experience, and networks. A great example of not being wedded to a job title comes from Under Armour founder Kevin Plank who jumped between two titles in the early days of Under Armour. One business card read 'Kevin Plank, President'. The other business card read 'Kevin Plank, Sales Manager'. The President title let Kevin convey to potential suppliers or vendors that he was the guy who could make the big decisions. The Sales Manager title let Kevin negotiate with customers better as he was “just the sales guy and the big boss won't budge on price”. Don’t get caught up in the trap of issuing job titles that limit your team's ability to submerge themselves in every area of your startup. #founders #startup #teams #hiring

90% of startups don’t fail because of: Bad marketing, a weak team, or even a poor product. They fail because they lack a repeatable decision-making process. Here’s the framework I use to make better, faster decisions in business. I call it “The Iteration Loop.” It’s a structured way to identify what’s working, what’s broken, and what to do next, without getting stuck in endless guesswork. It gives you a systematic way to eliminate bottlenecks, optimize execution, and scale with clarity. Here are the 6 phases: 1. Bottleneck Identification 2. Clarifying the Goal 3. Solution Brainstorming 4. Focused Execution 5. Performance Review 6. Iterate & Improve 1️⃣ Bottleneck Identification Before you can fix anything, you need to identify the real problem. Most entrepreneurs spin their wheels solving the wrong issues because they never dig deep enough. To get clarity, ask: + What's the biggest constraint stopping growth right now? + What metric, if doubled, would create the biggest impact? + What’s preventing us from getting there? If you don’t identify the root problem, every solution you apply will be wasted effort. 2️⃣ Clarifying the Goal Once you know the problem, define the exact outcome you’re solving for. I use a simple Three-Part Goal Formula: 1. What are we trying to achieve? 2. By when? 3. What constraints do we have? Vague goals lead to vague actions. Precision forces progress. 3️⃣ Solution Brainstorming Now, generate every possible solution—without filtering. Most people limit themselves to their existing knowledge, which is why they get stuck. Instead, ask: “If there were no rules, what would I do?” This opens up better, faster, and often simpler solutions you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. 4️⃣ Focused Execution Don’t test everything at once—test one variable at a time. Most teams waste months by making too many changes at once, leading to messy, inconclusive results. Instead, break it down: 1. Test one key assumption. 2. Measure one KPI that proves or disproves it. 3. Execute for a set period, then review. 4. Speed matters. Complexity kills momentum. 5️⃣ Performance Review Your data isn’t just numbers—it’s feedback on your decision-making process. Your job is to analyze: + Did the solution work? + Why or why not? + What does this tell us about our business? Every test refines your ability to make better future decisions. 6️⃣ Iterate & Improve Most companies don’t fail from making the wrong move—they fail from making no moves at all. The only way to win long-term is to keep iterating. Instead of fearing failure, build a culture that rewards learning. Failure + Reflection = Progress. If you aren’t improving your decision-making process, your business will eventually hit a ceiling. That’s why I built The Iteration Loop—so every problem becomes an opportunity for better, faster execution. P.S. If you want the scaling roadmap I used to scale 3 businesses to $100M and beyond, you can get it for free from the link in my profile.

Being a business owner is just the starting point. The level above that is where you truly become an entrepreneur—someone who doesn’t just work in the business but works on it, designing something that will outlive them. To say "I am a founder" is more than just a title—it’s a statement of vision and responsibility. It means recognizing that what I have built must exist beyond me. True founders don’t just create businesses; they create systems, structures, and cultures that can sustain themselves for generations. This is the difference between a business and a legacy. A business dies when the owner steps away. A legacy enterprise thrives because it was designed to be bigger than one person. For many in our communities, this is where we struggle. We start businesses, but we don’t always create transferable value—something that can be handed down, scaled, and preserved beyond the original founder. That’s why generational wealth remains rare, and why we must rethink how we approach ownership. The real test of entrepreneurship isn’t just, "Can I run this?" but "Can this run without me?" That’s the founder’s mindset—the shift from short-term success to building something that will last for generations.

Pakistan bought F-16 fighter jets from America. But if there's a war, they can't use them. They own the hardware. They don't own the permission. A lot of early-stage startups work the same way. Someone else's licence. Someone else's regulatory permissions. Someone else's compliance framework. It speeds you up. On the surface it looks great. But the incentives are completely misaligned. The licence holder wants minimal risk and a steady fixed payment. They don't want you growing aggressively or pushing into new territory. Your growth is their liability. As a startup, you want to move fast, experiment, and scale. That's the whole point. At Cur8, we started out operating under someone else's regulatory umbrella. It's the standard playbook. Faster to get going, less upfront cost. But over time, you realise you don't fully control that part of the business. Someone else's risk appetite shapes your decisions. So we made the deliberate decision to pursue our own FCA licences. It's not quick and it's not cheap. But the payoff is real. We save somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 per year in overheads on each licence. We have greater control over how we run that part of the business. And ultimately, it's better for our investors. Sovereignty is expensive upfront. But renting someone else's infrastructure has a hidden cost that compounds over time. If you can't use the fighter jet when it actually matters, you don't really own it.

Switzerland leads the way in deep tech globally. Today Deep Tech Nation Switzerland and our partners published the Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026 which confirms what we see every day: Our innovation ecosystem is working on a global scale. Three important developments are: - Capital Focus: Deep tech is core to our innovation model. 63% of all Swiss venture capital flows into this space, more than any other nation, including the US and China. This is a deliberate long-term strategic decision. - AI & Robotics: Artificial Intelligence has transitioned from the niche phase. It is the structural foundation of new startups. AI and robotics have been the strongest growth engine of our ecosystem since 2022 and today, one in four new deep tech companies is built around AI. - Academic Excellence to Market: Our universities are world leaders in translating world-class research to commercial impact. ETH Zurich and EPFL are leading the way with Europe’s venture-backed deep-tech spinouts. That pipeline is a major competitive advantage.  I witness this momentum firsthand as a partner and president of the board of trustees of Deep Tech Nation Switzerland. We’re not just a world-class research hub anymore. We’re building the place where global technology leaders are born. But that international leadership is never a given. To really take these companies global, we need to combine our technical innovation with long term growth capital and a shared ambition to build global category leaders here in Switzerland. 👉 Read the full Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026 here: https://lnkd.in/e9JdS-Xd 

Another African startup has shut down after raising millions of dollars. This time, it’s Okra — the Nigerian fintech that pioneered open banking across the continent. They raised $16 million. Built a cloud platform. Expanded. And now… shut down. This isn’t just about one company. It’s a reflection of our continental priorities. We keep funding abstraction over foundation. Fintech is not the enemy — farmers absolutely need mobile payments, digital wallets, and inclusive credit scoring. But we are over-digitizing a continent that still can’t process what it grows. We’re building APIs and cloud-native banking systems… while exporting raw cashew, soy, sesame, cocoa, maize, shea, and coffee — only to import the finished products at ten times the price. Before another startup raises millions to build another financial layer, let’s ask: What if that $16 million had gone into: • Agro-processing plants for cashew, cocoa, soy, maize, coffee, and sesame? • Roasters, crushers, presses, dryers — infrastructure that powers real transformation? • Traceability systems to ensure transparency, food safety, and ethical sourcing? • ESG-compliant value chains that meet the standards of global buyers and climate-conscious markets? • International certifications like HACCP, BRC, Organic, Fairtrade, and FDA that unlock premium export potential? We don’t just need software. We need factories. We need standards. We need systems that make our agricultural products globally competitive. Africa will not be transformed by code alone. It will be transformed by turning what we grow into what we consume — and what the world demands. Let’s rethink what we’re funding. #AgroProcessing #AfricaRising #ValueAddition #Traceability #ESG #FoodSystems #InternationalTrade #Fintech #StartupLessons #IndustrializeAfrica #Agribusiness #Cashew #Cocoa #Soy #Coffee #Sesame #Maize #DuapaAgri