The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 52 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Reddy: India backs me-too copycats instead of novel behavior creation
“And it's because of new behavior creation that incredibly long, large long-term value gets created in the world. And India is almost the antithesis of it. All the large-term value you're trying to create is in Me Too's. Right? By pumping more money and trying …”
Fafaria: Blume's Fund II is tracking toward an 8X to 10X return
“So when I say dragons, I mean each of these four unicorns are dragons also. So if sold at that point in time, they return the full fund. So what you're talking about in terms of eight X and 10 X funds, fund two looked like that kind of a promise. And even toda…”
Lunia: Indian seed funds haven't found unicorns in crowded hype sectors
“None of us, you know seed funds have discovered a unicorn. Ever in these spaces, right? So if you look at you know, our good friends Karthik at Bloom, Orias, Rehan, none of us have so far got a unicorn, right?”
Reddy: Indian VC funds must target 5x returns to offset slower exits
“We don't want to be shooting for less than five X funds. In India, things take time, so I have to adjust for a time factor that things will take two years more, so that hits your IRR. We're measured by IRR. And so, don't want to take an easy way out and say, t…”
Reddy: Consensus themes are dangerous for seed funds seeking Series A
“So the more common themes that get picked are dangerous in some sense for a small player like us, because then you're always under headwinds, because there's a bigger guy who says, you know, I've already made a bet in the space or adjacent space. I won't fund …”
Reddy: Indian VCs will make the most money backing edge cases, not copycats
“Those risky bets are the ones which are going to make the most money. Like my LPs tell me, historically, you were shying away from that. It's probably true. It was basically, you didn't know what's going to work, what's going to take off, so you're hedging, ma…”
Fafadia: GreyOrange returned an entire fund without being valued as a unicorn
“So gray orange is a dragon. That's the difference. It is not a unicorn, but it returns a full fund.”
Fafaria: Dollar-denominated capital would have halved Blume's early fund returns
“And today when we talk about the dollar rate, we are in the eighties. Right. So, it's, Almost doubled. That means if we, thankfully we were not having dollar capital, but if we had dollar capital, our returns would have halved.”
Shivku: 90% of Blume's Exotel Seed Term Sheet Was 'Nonsense'
“The kind of terms and conditions that I had then accepted. Looking back, 90% of the term sheet was nonsense.”
Pai: Early-stage startups should focus on customer friction over moats
“I think at very early stages you shouldn't worry so much about moats as much as a consumer friction you're solving for. If the consumer friction is compelling, then in the consequence of operating, you will gather enough data, which could become a moat, or you…”
Pai: Early-stage investors should prioritize problem size over initial product
“And I would say that the biggest thing that I've unlearned is don't worry about the attack vector. Worry about the size of the problem. Don't worry about how they're solving for it. That can change. Maybe that's not even important at this stage. Don't worry ab…”
Pai: Almost every great VC investment decision is inbound, not outbound
“I think almost every single great investment decision typically is inbound. It's not outbound.”
Reddy: Venture firms cannot build enduring institutions with $20M-$30M funds
“You can't build a team. You can't build an institution with twenty million dollar funds, thirty million dollar funds. It's tough. It's a lifestyle business as we tell other people who come and pitch to us. You can make it a lifestyle business, but you can't in…”
Reddy: Blume Ventures aims to reach $500M AUM by 2024
“By the fifth fund, which is maybe five years away and that's how far we've thought. So I don't know about 10 years, but five years is what we've thought. I want to be able to have five hundred million under management. That's when, that's 20, 24, right?”
Reddy: Blume opposes secondary exits before companies hit $1B valuation
“Philosophically, I don't believe in it. So until a company kind of reaches a billion dollars in valuation, and then I've lost track of why the hell they're raising more money or why they're mindlessly raising more money.”
Reddy: Purplle is Blume's only surviving vertical commerce bet
“The other thing I would argue where we failed quite a bit was trying to do vertical product commerce. Got onto the cycle too late. That entire commerce engine works as a herd mentality. Either everybody's making bets or nobody's making bets. And then you would…”
Reddy: VC herd mentality will not disappear due to follow-on dynamics
“So, I don't think the herd mentality is going away, right? Because effectively, It's led by how you think the next check writer is going to think. Right? And which automatically means by then the herd mentality is forming.”
Reddy: Founders cannot build large businesses without storytelling capacity
“But I think to say that you can actually build a very large business without a capacity to storytell is fooling yourself. It has nothing to do with VCs. How do you sell? How do you sell to your customers? How do you sell to your employees?”
Reddy: Blume Sets KRA to Bring Exited Founders Back as LPs
“The KRA is that if you can't get your exited founders back as LPs, then we've screwed up somewhere.”
Reddy: I saw no carried interest or extra savings for eight years
“I still don't have, I've not seen a rupee of carry. I've not had extra savings for like eight years.”
Reddy: Startups must build for IPO rather than rely on M&A
“You bloody well built to a proper IPO-able business, or don't bother is my take. Even the US market is saying that, and they've been doing it for 60 years. There's no hacks to that, right? Eventually, if you want a great cash exit, that's how it will happen is…”
Fafadia: Carbon Clean Returned Blume Ventures' Entire First Fund
“Even today when we look at our fund one, we have one company that is one time the whole fund. It's a dragon outcome. Okay. So this is carbon clean. And it has done incredibly well.”
Fafadia: Founder friendliness means honest partnership, not conceding to every request
“Founder friendliness of Bloom does not mean that We are exceeding to the founders request all the time. It's about a partnership and the founder respects our feedback, even though it might not be what he wants to hear. And the friendliness is about the best in…”
Fafadia: Relying on outside investors not on your cap table is disastrous
“Leaving it to a fate of an investor means you can you create a bridge around which is enough for this cap table to support you? That is okay. But it is a disaster to leave the fate to an investor who is not on the cap table.”
Fafaria: Blume plans to cap Fund V at $250M-$300M
“Fund four is two 90, fund five need not be five hundred million. You will go with the two 50 to three hundred million dollar story at that point in time, maybe as well.”
Pai: Breaking into VC mid-career without existing relationships is much harder
“It's very hard for you to kind of get into a VC firm. I mean Without knowing some folks or without having created a brand for yourself especially if you are under, like, you know, late thirties, early forties someone like me who's been incorporated did not hav…”
Pai: Great investments come from serendipity, not rigid planning
“All great investment opportunities come out of these serendipitous circumstances, and what you're really doing is creating the conditions for that to happen.”
Pai: Crisis-driven startups must solve access for non-consumers to be sustainable
“If I have to invest in a company which was solving for this vacuum thing, I really want to see that are they solving for a temporary or permanent one? And in the permanent one they're solving, are they solving problems of access for historically non-consumers?”
Tailwind-driven startups must capture share while headwind startups ruthlessly cut costs
“I think what I would suggest to founders is that if you're in a lift sector, which is positively structurally favorable, then you want to dominate, you know, win market share keep customers with you. If you're on the other hand in a tougher sector, then you wa…”
Cost and team morale are the only variables founders control in downturns
“It is the only internal variable, which we believe in also. It's the only internal variable that you can control is your cost, your cash, right? You can't control how, how much your gamer is going to spend, you know, for your game, Or the enterprise sales, the…”
The supply of gig workers will definitively increase post-COVID
“I think you know, on the supply side, which is the supply or the number of gig workers, I think will definitely go up.”
Reddy: Niche market startups must exit at 2x-3x or risk failure
“There's market conditions. So the crowd space gets super crowded and then the number of check writers disappear. There is niche markets, which we are guilty of funding in the first fund. Nobody seems to care about it after us. So then you're at two, three X, i…”
Karthik Reddy: Startups need institutional seed funds to bridge angel rounds to Series A
“And then I saw that there was a huge gap between the large series-ish funds, which were all above a hundred million, and the angels. And so we said that there's a huge gap here. It can't be that every company miraculously takes a few angel checks and becomes a…”
Reddy: Mettl returned as many dollars as TaxiForSure due to ownership
“So amongst the hits we've had, metal has actually, surprisingly, delivered the most dollars, as much as taxi for sure, because though the size was much smaller, my stake was much larger. So fund one is a very funny fund. We had three percent in one and 10% in …”
Reddy: 75% of Blume portfolio startups lose a co-founder by Series B
“How many, I think, 75% of our companies have lost at least a minor co-founder by the series B, series A.”
Reddy: Why Blume Ventures passed on investing in OYO's early round
“In the case of OYO, we had something remotely competing when Ritesh met us first as O'Revel even before the Thiel Fellowship. He was saying, I do like an Airbnb for India, right? And he said, yeah, but we have like a vacation rental place in our portfolio. How…”
Reddy: All four Blume B2B exits sold for $30M to $40M+
“The others were all very promising businesses to a global buyer who either wanted India or emerging market access or wanted access to the product portfolio to take global and thought this little Indian company out of a Bloom portfolio was best in class, right,…”
Reddy: Why Blume passed on Swiggy's predecessor Bundle
“Similarly with Swiggy, when I can't remember which two founders I met on the rooftop of UB, but they were selling more of a courier aggregator. It's called Bundle, which is the original name of the company. It's still used today. And I said, no, I don't think …”
Fafaria: Blume achieved 15% DPI on Fund I before raising Fund II
“We had a 15% DPI. We got to that point where some small exits had happened.”
Fafaria: Six institutions provided $82 million of Blume Fund III
“Here, in fund three, six investors constituted eighty-two million dollars of the capital. So, in fund two, you had sixty million dollars. In fund three, you had six institutions pretty much rounding off to eighty-two million.”
Fafaria: Blume Fund II was 85-90% institutional and two-thirds international
“Two third came outside of India. One third came from India. And that is one way to divide this. The other side of the two by two is how much was institutional and how much was retail. So for us out of the sixty million dollars, almost. 85, 90% was institutiona…”
Fafaria: Blume reduced fund portfolio sizes from 70 to under 30
“From a portfolio construction of 60 odd companies, almost 70 companies, We were now at fund two, 45 plus. Fund three, not even 30.”
Rayapati: Blume's largest check was over $1M into Minjar
“Bloom put in all their largest checks. So, so Bloom's largest check was in Minja. Which is a more than a million. They have never done such checks.”
Blume Ventures Invested ₹2.5 Crore at a ₹10 Crore Exotel Valuation
“I raised about two and a half crores, little less than two and a half crores at a 10 crore post money valuation. So they got a chunk they walked away with Almost 25% of the company”
Guglani: Vijay Shekhar Sharma was the first check in Morpheus's third fund
“Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the first guy to give us a check. Rajan was there, Rajan and then Bloom, India Push and Ganesh, all of our LPs, previous ones, they repeated, they brought their friends.”
The 2020 downturn will release massive amounts of top-tier talent
“There's going to be a lot of talent on the streets now, the good talent. Either from layoffs or from pay cuts or for whatever reason, the entire company is going down.”