Somani: Recent graduates should not enter venture capital without operating experience
Amit Somani · Reverse Brain Drain, Reality Of Venture Capital And India’s Next 10 Year Explained By Top Indian VCs · Jun 23, 2024 · at 40:16
Amit Somani, Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, argues against hiring fresh engineering or MBA graduates directly into early-stage venture capital.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 26.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I don't think young people should get into VC, especially of the, you know, just coming out of IIT, can I come join, you know, Neon or Prime or whatever. Because I think, and certainly the way we practice the boutique art, right, form here at different, you know, different strokes for different form. Because I think unless you actually build something or sold something or been in an environment of utter chaos, which is the environment that you're going to invest into.”
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 Amit Somani
Somani: Marginal product improvements favor incumbents; startups must be 10x better
“A lot of companies and products which are 20, 30, 50% better. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's bettering the state of the art, but that's better for an incumbent. That's better for somebody who already has distribution, already has cash flow, already …”
Somani: Founder pedigree like IIT/IIM is strictly second and third order
“So we actually don't have any preconceived notions on whether you're a first time founder, you're an older founder, you're an IIT, non-IIM, it doesn't matter. If you have a deep understanding of the market, If you have deep customer empathy, if you have, you k…”
Somani: 90% to 95% of 100x startups address express demand, not new widgets
“All that said, 90, 95% of New startups, even the ones that are successful and go scale up a hundred X are often even an express demand, which is not identified early enough, right? So you don't need a proxy. I mean, you have that thing that people are trying t…”
Somani: Founders do not need sustainable 100-hour workweeks to succeed
“I'm actually not a believer in the, you know, Jack Ma, nine, nine, six philosophy. Yes, you should work hard. You have to work hard as an entrepreneur, right? But I don't think you need to you know, put in a hundred hours a week sustainably for, you know, two,…”
Somani: Mid-career professionals in their forties are increasingly launching startups in India
“A lot more people are even at mid-career wanting to start up now because we have so many successful role models. So many, you know, folks even in their forties are beginning to start up, which was very rare, ah, earlier, right.”