Kapur: A startup's true moat is its go-to-market engine, not product
Nikhil Kapur · Nikhil Kapur, STRIVE Ventures on different SaaS models in Asia · Aug 10, 2020 · at 43:05
Nikhil Kapur, Partner at STRIVE Ventures, discusses how startup defensibility is derived from go-to-market execution rather than underlying product features or data.
0:00 / 0:21exact quote · 21.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 capabilities that you build on going to market, rather than any data that you're collecting.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Nikhil Kapur
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”