Ahluwalia: Practo, CommonFloor, and HackerRank emerged from Morpheus
“Some of the known companies out of Morpheus are Practo, Common Floor, Hacker rank.”
Guglani: Morpheus originated by offering 8-10 weekly advising hours for 1% equity
“I came up with this number of one percent and I said, Hey, we'll do one percent equity and me and Nandini will help you eight to 10 hours a week. And basically we do a six months resting so that if there's a breakup in between you know, one can kind of settle …”
Guglani: All Morpheus Fund 1 investors profited and still hold equity
“All of them who invested in our first fund actually made a, have already made a decent amount of money and there is still equity left in that.”
Guglani: Vijay Shekhar Sharma was the first check in Morpheus's third fund
“Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the first guy to give us a check. Rajan was there, Rajan and then Bloom, India Push and Ganesh, all of our LPs, previous ones, they repeated, they brought their friends.”
Guglani: Late-stage funded startups become miserable, dark workplaces obsessed with growth
“From a very happy and light workplace, which is creating magic, it started transitioning into a unhappy, miserable, little, but dark workplaces where there was a lot of focus on growth and valuation without really caring about what was happening to the humans …”
Guglani: Morpheus shut down because ecosystem founders prioritized valuation over culture
“And we tried to talk to founders, nobody was interested. So we took a call to shut down the project. We did not want to be part of that kind of ecosystem.”
Guglani: Startups founded purely for popularity or external validation never go far
“If the reason is an external achievement that I wish to achieve popularity, validation, or certain financial outcome for myself, or I need to prove something in the world. No, that will never go too far.”