Insight
Kapur: SaaS startups must rely on founder-led sales until $1M ARR
“Initially, till that first, maybe even a million dollars, right? Like, it should all be done by the founders. And if the founders themselves don't have the skill set to do it, then either they should learn it, or they should bring another founder, co-founder o…”
Insight
Kapur: A startup's true moat is its go-to-market engine, not product
“Most of the people, they think, you know, my product is my mode, my data is my mode. Actually, if, and this is something that A-sixteen Z wrote about also recently, that your mode is your GTM. Your mode is like the channels that you build, the sort of capabili…”
Opinion
Kapur: Most Asian VCs overlook the importance of local SaaS
“Mentioning the second bucket, which is as important as the first one, and probably a bit more overlooked by most VCs in, in this part of the world. And this bucket is what we call local SaaS.”
Opinion
Kapur: Indonesia's tech startup ecosystem lags India by 1-2 years
“Applying similar sort of thesis to the Indonesian market, because from a tech wave perspective, they're probably one or two years behind India in terms of sort of the entrepreneurs and what they're building from the business point of view perspective.”
Insight
Kapur: VCs must build software themselves to truly evaluate developer tools
“Only when you actually build something yourself, you realize sort of the nuances of technology, and, you know, code bases, and stacks, and technical stacks, and hence you're able to see, like, where a particular solution fits in.”
Insight
Kapur: Startups only truly validate market demand after crossing $1M ARR
“Only once you've crossed a million ARR, like, that's when you really know that you're on to something, right? And I think the speed at which a company crosses that million dollar line from zero to one that also gives us an indication of, like, how solid is thi…”
Disclosure
Kapur: STRIVE rejects traditional venture hierarchies for 'full-stack' individual investors
“What we've done is we've sort of twisted that model and we've created internally what I call full stack VCs. So we go sort of play the role, each one of us, all the way from a partner to an analyst to even like administration of the fund. Completely full stack…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kapur: Classplus commission revenue is growing 10x faster than SaaS subscriptions
“And the, this commission business model is actually as big as the subscription business model that they already have, and is growing probably 10 times faster than the subscription business model.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kapur: Classplus will reach $200M-$300M in annual revenue at scale
“So at scale,
We expect Classless to be making maybe 10,000,020 million dollars on the subscription business model, but we do, what we really expect them to do is to go and make like a billion dollars of transactions happen through their platform and then make…”
Insight
Kapur: Modern software go-to-market strategies require building strong user communities
“I realized that the power these days, or the right sort of GTM these days, is mostly built on the lines of a community. And pretty much every company in the market has to now go and build a very strong community along sort of the core set of users, who become …”
Disclosure
Kapur: I halve my time with portfolio founders after $1M ARR
“Once they're beyond a million, I think I reduce my time spent with the company. Not saying that it goes down to zero, but it definitely goes down to, let's say, half of what I was probably doing earlier. And then, you know, I make sure that, you know, I'm touc…”
Assertion Supported
Kapur: Classplus onboarded 5,000 coaching institutes in its first two years
“They have more than 5000 coaching institutes now using their platform across India, it's, you know, been built in less than two years, right, so really growing fast, right, and of course the COVID tailwinds are helping them.”
Assertion Supported
Kapur: 98% of Indonesian businesses have fewer than 10 employees
“Indonesia is mostly led by micro businesses and 98% of Indonesian businesses are actually micro businesses, which is less than 10 employees.”
Disclosure
Kapur: Hasura was operating as a dev shop when first pitched
“When I met actually the Hasura founders they were building or they were planning to build a backend as a service. And at that time, they were running what, you know, we guys call like a dev shop.”
Assertion Partly supported
Kapur: Hasura reached 18,000 GitHub stars within one year of open sourcing
“And this was started around a year ago and, you know, from zero, they went to 17,000, I think now 18,000 GitHub stars, which is a lot, right? Like, I think, if I'm not wrong, Kubernetes total has some 30,000 GitHub stars. So, like, that shows you, like, how, h…”
