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Ashmeet Sidana

20 statements across 2 episodes · 6 bullish · 3 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Aug 16, 2020 by Ashmeet Sidana · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Ashmeet Sidana's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Everything said about Ashmeet Sidana, oldest first

Aug 16, 2020 negative
Insight
Sidana Rejects Steve Jobs' Claim That Customers Don't Know What They Want
“Steve Jobs often said that the customer does not know what he wants, he or she wants. I don't believe that. I believe that if you spend time with customers and you really understand and really listen to what they are saying, you can identify the problem and yo…”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 43:04 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020 negative
Insight
Sidana: The Primary Risk for Startup Founders Is Feature Gluttony, Not Starvation
“The risk factor for you is not starvation. It is gluttony. You are aiming for too many features, aim for less, and you are more likely to be successful.”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 40:35 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020
Insight
Sidana: The Hardest Challenge for a Product Manager Is Deleting Features
“He understood that the hardest thing for a product manager to do is to delete features, not add features. It is easy to add features. The hard thing is to remove the features and solve only a very narrow problem.”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 39:30 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020
Insight
Sidana: Successful Venture Investing Requires Being Physically Local With Founders
“Investing is a very local business. You really have to be local. You have to spend time in the market. You have to spend time with the entrepreneurs if you want to be a good investor.”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 19:14 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020
Insight
Sidana: Faulty Market Estimation Kills More Startups Than Lack of Funding
“Many, many, many companies fail, not because the entrepreneurs don't work hard, or they don't have a good insight, or that they don't get financed, but because they have not estimated the market correctly.”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 25:56 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020 neutral
Insight
Sidana: Technical Insights Are Necessary But Insufficient For Venture Success
“Most technical insights are actually not good venture-backed opportunities. So it's really important to understand that a technical insight is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to build an amazing technology company.”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 12:39 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020
Insight
Sidana: True Technical Insights Are Non-Obvious to Competent Engineers
“A technical insight means if I tell a good engineer what I'm doing, they will not know how I'm doing it. It will not be obvious to them how to build it, and that means you have an interesting technical insight.”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 3:17 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Aug 16, 2020 positive
Insight
Sidana: Startups Should Solve Very Narrow Problems With Broad Market Applications
“A better approach is to identify a very small problem, a very narrow problem that has a broad application, and then you can build a very big company. That is the ideal way for an entrepreneur to do a startup, and so what I recommend to people is even at the ri…”
Ashmeet Sidana Aug 16, 2020 ▶ 37:11 Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital on Technical insights and building a fund for Engineers
Mar 26, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sidana brokered a seed-stage Satya Nadella meeting, securing a Microsoft investment
“Evinst is one of my companies. The CEO, Naveen, I was the first investor. Naveen came to me one day and said, I want to talk to Microsoft, and he was still at the seed stage... Within four weeks, we had a one-on-one with Naveen and Satya Nadella. Microsoft bec…”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 28:10 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 bullish
Insight
Sidana: A well-run VC fund should pay carry within 10 years
“In a good business, in a well-run business, you should definitely get carry checks in less than 10 years.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 58:19 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sidana has fully returned one fund and received carry checks
“I have already been lucky that I've already, one fund is fully returned. One fund is more than half returned. And another fund is also, you know, some portion returned. So yeah, I've already received carry checks.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 57:45 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Sidana: Engineering Capital avoids scientific deep tech in favor of engineering
“Engineering capital, the name comes from the fact that I invest in engineers who are going to solve interesting technical engineering problems, not science problems. So I don't do deep tech in the sense of science, but it can be technically very challenging.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 16:37 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Sidana avoids opportunity funds, SPVs, and side funds
“I don't do opportunity funds, I don't do SPVs, I don't do side funds, none of those things.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 57:29 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2031
Sidana predicts VC partnerships will always outnumber solo GPs
“Because of social reasons, It's not a stable long-term system, and so we will always see more partnerships than solo GPs.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 59:45 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026
Disclosure
Sidana: Engineering Capital typically vacates company boards at Series A
“I typically leave the boards of my companies at the Series A. There's a couple of exceptions. I stayed on the board of Evinced. It's a Fund II company because, you know, it's a large board, and the company's doing very well, and the CEO wanted me to stay, but …”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 21:24 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Sidana maintained identical portfolio strategy from Fund 1 to Fund 5
“My portfolio construction is identical. Nothing has changed since then I started engineering capital. In fact, as we were chatting earlier, you know, I closed fund five late last year, and I use the exact same slides that I used in fund one, just in terms of d…”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 3:25 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Sidana operates without an admin to reduce portfolio founder overhead
“I don't keep an admin. I schedule my own calendar. my entrepreneurs hear from me directly, immediately when they reach out to me.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 25:55 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 negative
Insight
Sidana: Technical founders fail by 'playing house' rather than finding traction
“One of the very common failure modes of founders, especially technical founders, is what I call playing house. What I mean by playing house is that in any company, and this is related to that prioritization point, in any company, there's a large amount of work…”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 36:23 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Sidana: About 50% of Engineering Capital founders are Indian diaspora
“Again, I don't know the numbers. I don't track things like this. I would say 50%.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 29:19 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
Mar 26, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Sidana: SignalFx sold for $1B and founder chose Engineering Capital again
“SignalFX was acquired for one billion by Splunk. He then started Trastero. He gave me the honor of being the first investor in Trastero after I was the first investor in SignalFX.”
Ashmeet Sidana Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 24:32 Why Rule-Breaking Is the Only Rule in Venture Capital | Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital
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