Insight
Mohapatra: Venture capital kills more startups than it helps survive
“So if you think about hundred companies that get venture funded, I think maybe 10 survive. And I'm speaking anecdotally here, but I think venture capital leads to a lot more startup death than it leads to startup survival, and that is what the model is optimiz…”
Insight
Mohapatra: Indian SME and logistics startups require full-stack solutions, not pure software
“To win a market, software is not going to be the only thing that will work. We keep talking about, at least in logistics and SME, we talk about full stack solutions where you have to own the journey of the buyer because it's an unsophisticated buyer. If you th…”
Opinion
Mohapatra: India lacks the experienced middle management layer found in US startups
“The middle layer is is where I think India lacks quite a lot, and the U.S. Is very, very, very, has a very, very thick middle layer, which is the VP and the directors, you know, especially in product sales and engineering. There are a lot many more Shelly Sand…”
Insight
Mohapatra: Top companies succeed through distribution engines rather than superior products
“Most of the best companies, best by that I mean, the most well-known companies don't always have the best product. They have the best engines to put the product in the hands of consumers, and iterating on that quickly to improve the product.”
Insight
Mohapatra: Investment theses should evolve from founder conversations, not top-down VC research
“My philosophy is that entrepreneurs will almost always, not almost, I think they will always and always know a lot more than you about the market and where the market is moving and where the white spaces are. So my preference there is to not think a lot about …”
Insight
Mohapatra: To Win and Profit, Operate 80% Gross Margin Businesses
“Ended up realizing, after spending six years there, ended up realizing that, you know, you have, if you want to win and make money, you have to be in a 80% gross margin, you know, business versus a 20% gross margin business, which is what chip design and chip …”
Insight
Mohapatra: Indian founders now build for global markets from day zero
“A lot of the founders now, they have evolved to think about world on a, the globe on a local scale, right? So, they think about, they used to think about India as the first market, now they think about India plus Southeast Asia as the first market, or they thi…”
Opinion
Mohapatra: Building SaaS in India for APAC is highly promising
“We think that while that model is, is definitely, you know, working for us across multiple companies we have made investments in, the model of building in India for the APAC market is also very, very interesting.”
Opinion
Mohapatra: Andreessen Horowitz structurally struggles to invest in hardware startups
“Hardware, I think they will find it difficult in general to sort of make investments in hardware companies.”
Disclosure
Mohapatra: Lightspeed India decides on investments within at most three founder meetings
“On average, to optimize for not wasting the founder's time, we keep our meetings to three at most. First meeting could be with a partner. Second would be with at least one more partner to just get another pair of eyes on that deal. And third could be with the …”
Insight
Mohapatra: Founders must transition from execution to resource deployment after 18 months
“You should do a lot of things that are unscalable in the first year, first one and a half years, but beyond that, You almost have to level yourself up and elevate yourself to almost like a chess master, right? So where you can see the entire board and you are …”
Insight
Mohapatra: Real company culture allows junior employees to overrule the CEO
“Would somebody junior in your company win an argument with a senior most person or a CEO of a company if this junior person says, I disagree with you. Why? Because this is not Adhering to our principle of doing right by the customer, and would this person win …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mohapatra: Google balance-sheet investments require strategic alignment and run slower
“Google itself where, at least I was trying to make investments out of, ah, there's always a strategic angle to those investments, so they are slower in process a lot of things have to add up, not just economic, but, you know, like strategic value to the compan…”
