Puttagunta: Assume competitors are smart and have uncovered unique market insights
Chetan Puttagunta · 20VC: Benchmark's Chetan Puttagunta on The One Question To Ask When Analysing Market Size, How To Compete in Today's War for Talent & Why We Have Seen An Over-Rotation In Running Businesses Based on Metrics · Aug 5, 2019 · at 11:26
Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta advises founders on how to analyze and respond to competition in enterprise software markets.
0:00 / 0:20exact quote · 20.7s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And I think the optimal strategy is to assume that everybody that is competing with you has actually had or has found some unique insight as to why the market is addressable in their unique approach. And so to assume that your competitors are all really smart, that they all know what they're doing, and you go about, and you look at that strategy and say, like, why did they pick it this way?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Chetan Puttagunta
Puttagunta: Hiring remote talent for cost arbitrage is a mistake
“I think that as companies become remote, and as top talented, whether it be developers, or salespeople, or marketing people, have access to remote companies, it's really hard to do a cost arbitrage these days. I think most people know pretty quickly sort of th…”
Puttagunta: The venture ecosystem over-rotates on managing early-stage startups by metrics
“Yeah, I think there's been, frankly, an over rotation into just running businesses simply on metrics.”
Puttagunta: Going public drives operational rigor in software companies
“Having that light and that spotlight on your company just makes the execution orientation of everybody go to another level, and I think it's just a really, really positive force in In the growth of a company, especially in software, and so I think it's just an…”
Puttagunta: Silicon Valley founders increasingly build for 10- to 20-year horizons
“The idea of wanting to build companies that go for 1020 plus years, is something that I think is actually becoming more common than not.”
Puttagunta: Every growing tech startup must eventually recruit from Silicon Valley
“And if you want to attract managers and executives of that caliber, the depth of that talent pool exists in Silicon Valley. And so I think it's particularly important to recruit out of that ecosystem at some point in the life cycle of the company.”
Puttagunta: Historical TAM analysis is a trap; market spend can expand 100x
“And so I think TAM analysis is the first step to that mental trap where you can look at historical or legacy markets and say, well, the last 10 years or the last 20 years, this market has been this small. And the important question to ask then is, well, is tha…”