Sandeep Aneja, Founder of Kaizen Private Equity, reflects on the structural collapse of Wingspring, a Palo Alto tech incubator where he worked during his time at Stanford.
“And, ah, that whole incubator business model was flawed. Although we made some really good investments, that did really well, but the cost structure of an incubator, including a 30,000 square foot facility, and four partners, only seventeen million dollars under management, was not sustainable.”
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More from Sandeep Aneja
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Aneja: INSOFE data science programs rank ahead of Stanford and Columbia
“In India, they're number one by far in quality, and globally they're ranked ahead of Columbia, ahead of Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, et cetera, and they're just a private company delivering such high quality programs.”
Aneja: India is more forgiving of children's learning differences than the US
“Unlike the U.S. Where each child is put into a cookie cutter
And it pre-defines position.
In India, each child who is unique may be considered a naughty or mischievous child for a while before they are put into a category of dyspraxia, dyslexia, Asperger, auti…”
Aneja: Toppr is probably the best AI personalized learning product
“Which provides, ah, tuition and test preparation services in various subjects to students in India today from the age of 12 to 18, and this is probably the best AI driven personalized learning product available in the market today.”
“In India, in particular, it is a rush to whoever you can hire fast, cheap for that day and get things done. And therefore, there's very hard to enforce standards. Therefore, it's very hard to enforce teaching and learning standards.”
Job seekers refuse to pay for employability skills, shifting costs to employers
“Employability is a pain that is, ah, felt really by the, ah, employer, and therefore the willingness to pay on part of the job seeker is limited because the job seeker is of the opinion that they've got a degree or a diploma and that's good enough, and often t…”
Aneja: Rapid fund scaling risks compromising foundational ethos and processes
“If you try to achieve scale very rapidly, ah, then you're possibly giving up on the foundational activities which are needed, which is to build a set of ethos, investment focused processes, and people which are critical for the next 10 years.”
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