Opinion
Verma: Decacorns relying only on capital as a moat will not endure
“I think there are a lot of crappy companies out there, if you ask me. They just, they all position themselves as decacons and there are no moats in their business other than capital is the competitive advantage. The day that goes away, they're not building a g…”
Opinion
Verma: Most Indian unicorns would collapse without external funding
“If you take out, I think the unicorns in the country, if you take out the external funding today, I don't know how many people, how many of them will stand up on their feet. They can't. That to me is a big, big, big, big red flag.”
Insight
Verma: VC-subsidized customer growth in B2B will not convert to profits
“Otherwise there will be flare ups and blow ups because these companies can't raise money because they don't have an economic model. So there's a lot of subsidization of the customer, which is happening right now by burning through a lot of money. And that's no…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Verma: My investments have returned the entire fund in every fund I've joined
“Every, every fund that I've been a part of so far, my investments have kind of returned the capital of the entire fund.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Verma: Nexus Fund IV looks likely to return over $350M
“We will, it looks very, very, very possible that we will return over three, fifty million dollars of capital from that.”
Assertion Supported
Verma: Postman has 25% developer market share and 8M+ users
“You know, they have a 25% market share in the globally across the developer base, right? Eight plus million developers use their platform. 400,000 companies use their platform. Enterprises use their platform.”
Assertion Contradicted
Verma: Unacademy's revenue run rate exceeds total money spent
“And I think our revenue is much more than the amount of money spent so far in terms of run rate.”
Opinion
Verma: Tiger Global's fast-conviction model is effective and profitable
“It's a good model. I think, you know, Tiger is a, you know, you have to respect them. I think, you know, I don't think they're crazy. I think they've You know, they're, they started out, I think in 2001, they raised 15 funds after that, if I'm not wrong, 15 or…”
Insight
Verma: Corporate executives struggle to build startups due to rigid thinking
“The other thing is that I think I'm also made mistakes where I've invested into people who are kind of Corporate executives. And you know, just thought that corporate executives could build startups. I think those are the things. It goes back to the same rigid…”
Opinion
Verma: Uber and Lyft lack resilient unit economic models
“In some of these businesses, whether you look at Uber, or you look at Lyft, or you look at some of the companies you've gone public, they don't have a unit economic model, which is very resilient. If you look at it, right, they don't have that.”
Insight
Verma: VC partners typically make six to eight investments over three years
“The way, way any of these funds are funds or any generally venture funds are structured is, you know, you would do, you, each partner would do about two to three investments every year. And, you know, And you do that for the, in every fund you would do about s…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Verma: Postman founder had a $1M–$2M buyout offer before raising VC
“He had a buyout offer from a company. At that point of time, which he was considering, which would have made him very rich. I mean rich. It's a relative term, but he would have made a couple, you know, one or two million dollars as a result for just a side pro…”
Disclosure
Verma: Nexus signed Postman term sheet before company was incorporated
“Without a investment committee meeting or whatever, I had another colleague of mine, Sandeep join in for that meeting and we didn't let him leave without signing up the term sheet. So pretty much, so we hold in and close on that term sheet then and there was, …”
What-if
Verma: Indian e-commerce could not have scaled in 2007
“I don't think a company in e-commerce could have scaled as well. If it was in 2007 in India, it would have. There were early signs, you know, the yatras in the, and the make my trips were the early signs of transaction level booking, but the e-commerce came in…”
Insight
Verma: Early-stage VCs tap out beyond multi-billion-dollar scale
“Because we as early stage investors also in some ways tap out in terms of understanding how a company, beyond, let's say a couple of billion dollars will go to the next.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Verma: Growth-stage venture investing will become very cautious by mid-2020
“I think on the growth stage side, again, it's going to become a little bit more cautious. I think that's going to, there's a sort of a lag time, I would say, but I think by May, June of next year, I think things will be very, very very cautious, I would say.”
Assertion Supported
Verma: Nexus manages $1.6B across 11 people as India's largest homegrown fund
“We have three people in the Bay Area right now, and we have four people in Mumbai, and four people in, in Bangalore. So it's an 11 member team, very small. We are India's largest homegrown fund, managing about a 1000000000.6.”
Disclosure
Verma: Reliance Ventures Deployed $34M–$35M and Backed Paytm and Yatra
“We deployed about 34, thirty five million dollars in our life cycle as a fund, not too much. And fortunately for the vintage, when we started out, we did, we ended up doing quite well. Just given how venture works, we had we'd invested in PDM in oh seven, oh n…”
Disclosure
Verma: 85%–90% of Nexus Investments Are Pre-Revenue and Pre-Product
“Mostly, I would say 85 to 90% of my investments
at Nexus have been in pre-revenue, pre-product companies”
Disclosure
Verma: Reliance Ventures' Paytm investment returned the fund over 2x
“PTM you know, that was the top one returned the fund two times, and as far as Reliance was concerned, a little over that”
Disclosure
Verma: Nexus seeded Postman with its first $1M check
“They started off and out of our office in Bangalore. We seated there and wrote them the first million dollar check.”
Disclosure
Verma: Nexus was the first institutional investor in Unacademy
“We wrote the first Series A check to them, our first institutional investor there.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Verma: Nexus signed Unacademy term sheet within 48 hours of meeting
“I met Gaurav for the first time on a Thursday, and I think we signed the term sheet on a Saturday. I think that's how it worked, right?”
Disclosure
Verma: Tiger Global outbid Nexus on Freshdesk Series A round
“Like Freshdesk is one. But I was outbid by Tiger to do the round at that point of time, and I just couldn't get the requisite conviction in the authorship to kind of step up on the valuation at the Series A level.”
