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 41 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Prime Venture Partners is very unlikely to raise a $300M fund
“Well, you know we have a philosophy that says in early stage and with the approach we have, right, there's only, we're limited by our bandwidth, right, so as it is, as you said, you know, 25 companies, and you said only, I was saying, wow, we're 25 companies t…”
Swami: Prime's dollar loss ratio is quarter to half its failure rate
“Our dollar loss ratio is actually .5 X or .25 X, right? Because we have not Poured in a lot of fall on capital, just blindly because we own so much, the next round is happening.”
Acharya: Flawed market sizing is the primary reason early-stage startups fail
“And what happens typically is that the overwhelming reason why a particular company does, you know, doesn't end up doing well is that some of your assumptions around the size of the market do not work out. I would say that just happens to be the overwhelming I…”
Swami: Kunal Shah's Second Venture Will Be An Order Of Magnitude Bigger
“Yes, there is someone like Konal Shah who had an amazing outcome the first time and is going to have, you know, a couple of orders bigger outcome, you know, perhaps the second time around, right, certainly one order more.”
Acharya: Predictable and Repeatable VC Exits in India Remain Unproven
“The things which I would say as a private market venture investor, which people are still have question marks on, is around liquidity and exits. So, of course, part, ah, limited partners who are investing money in India want to have a view of when they are goi…”
Swami: VCs make money on winners but build reputations on failed startups
“So, there's a famous quote, I think you used to tell me, I don't know who you are spending it to, but you make your money on the winners, But you make your reputation on the ones that don't pan out, right? And so we end up, you know, it seemed like an expressi…”
VCs raise Fund 1 on partners, Fund 2 on founders, Fund 3 on returns
“He said that your first fund is raised on the reputation of the partners. The second fund is raised on your reputation of your founders. And the third fund is raised on the performance of the funds.”
Monthly VC check-ins offer founders general platitudes, not meaningful help
“And you cannot help a company if you actually are just meeting once a month. I mean, that's just our belief. And so if you intend to support, then you need to have more context. Otherwise, it just becomes more platitudes and general gyan.”
Standalone digital wallets make no sense if bank transfers are seamless
“Wallets on their own don't make sense, because the bank account is the wallet, if you can take money in and out of it, you know, seamlessly.”
High partner engagement is incompatible with large VC portfolio sizes
“The thing is that you cannot both say I'm going to be, Highly engaged with the company, understand it, have the bandwidth from all the partners, and work closely, and help with the fundraise, and have a lot of companies. I mean, it just is a inconsistent parad…”
Western and Chinese models cannot solve India's problems
“The Western models, the Chinese models, the Israeli models are not what's going to solve India's problems. And the entrepreneurs in India have a unique opportunity To get down here, you know, and just focus on solving India's problems first, which may very wel…”
Swamy: Western, Chinese, and Israeli business models cannot solve India's problems
“Western models, the Chinese models, the Israeli models are not what's going to solve India's problems.”
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…”
Bhushan: A $120M fund does not need multiple blockbuster exits
“So let's say a fund like us, a hundred twenty million dollars, we don't need multiple blockbusters to generate returns, right?”
Prime VP Takes 4–5 Weeks Per Deal and Avoids Trophy Founders
“The fund where I'm part of now, actually because we don't do a lot of investments every year, and we take more measured approach to investing, we need four to five weeks. And I think four to five weeks in most deals you will get. Unless you change what we inte…”
Somani: Founders fail to test customer willingness to pay early enough
“I think people don't do enough of this willingness to pay experimentation early on, right? In terms of what will it take to get to it.”
Prime VP invested in just seven companies from its inaugural $8M fund
“Yeah, we did seven companies. Actually, we're very concentrated, as you know, and we continue to be a concentrated fund, which is a different topic we can discuss perhaps.”
Indian startups now hit $5M-$10M revenue in 12-18 months
“This is something that was not there 10 years ago, you know, getting to five, ten million dollars of revenue was itself a big achievement, but now we're seeing that happening, you know, in 12 to 18 months in some cases.”
Sanjay Swamy: Founders hurt startups by staying after losing their belief
“And that's something for an entrepreneur, right? If your heart is no longer in it, if you no longer think you can build the biggest company on the planet. Probably the best thing I did was leave then and there, right? And because I would have done the company …”
Somani: Producing a podcast requires a product management mindset and distribution rigor
“And what we learned is it is almost like doing a product, like in product management. There's a lot that goes into the podcast. It's not just like you said, audio recording shared on a G drive or LinkedIn. It's about the, you know, the cadence of the podcast, …”
Somani: Prime avoids ops-heavy, feet-on-the-street businesses due to lack of expertise
“We have traditionally focused much more on digital tech oriented businesses rather than things that require heavy duty on the ground, feet on street ops. Sales, et cetera, right? So that's been either a conscious trade-off in the one hand or an Achilles heel, …”
Somani: 17 of Prime's first 20 portfolio companies raised Series A
“If I had to take the remaining 20, I would say 17 would have raised series A, B or more.
I don't have the exact breakdown between AB or more.
Of the remaining three two are breakeven.
One is handsomely profitable like in the millions of dollars kind of pro…”
Somani: Prime saw only one failure across its first 23 investments
“Invested in 23 companies one didn't work out, and that was in the early days of twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen. By and large, all the other companies have done well.”
Somani: Prime rarely takes business model risk or requires Day 0 revenue
“So we rarely take a business model risk, right? We always have some line of sight to what the business could be. Can this be a viable business? Can there be Some monetization potential in what way and what is the proxy or the validation of that thesis, right? …”
Somani: Prime provides specific, multi-point rejection feedback after extended founder meetings
“For people that we do date and meet several times. We think we are one of the few investors who will actually respond to you with Here are three reasons why we're not investing in your company. It's not a generic, like, Hey, this sector is not of interest to u…”
Somani: The best products attract both intense customer love and hate
“As a product management theory, I'm a real big believer that some of the best products which have a lot of customer love will also have a lot of customers that hate that or prospects that hate that.”
Bhushan: Founders used to give up 20 percent for a $500k seed
“Raising an angel round of three to four crores is far easier now than 10, 12 years ago, there was no concept of an angel round of four crores. You will straight away go to a VC and say, give me 500 K, and you'll take 20% ownership of 500 K.”
Somani: SaaS Company Tracxn Generates 70% to 80% of Revenue Abroad
“Even we as Prime had a modest IPO, but of a very successful company called Traction. And that's a completely tech global company, SaaS company. I would suspect 70, 80% of the revenue is abroad and they're still very successfully in India.”
Prime VP secured full commitments for its $45M Fund 2 in months
“Those funds, I think it took, ah, I would say by the time we had, ah, commitments fully would have taken four to six months.”
Prime VP meets with its active portfolio companies on a weekly basis
“We met our companies very regularly. It's weekly. We continue to do that with our active companies now, now as well.”
Prime VP did only one extra deal above normal pace in 2021
“So we are also impacted by the craze to actually invest, but with not much. So we probably did one extra deal than we would normally have.”
Prime VP raised $70M for Fund 3 and $120M for Fund 4
“And then the fund three was 70 grand of million. That's correct. Of current fund one 20. One 20. So it's been a great ride, right? Eight, 45. 70 and 70 I also believe would have taken 10 companies. Yeah, it's about, it's closer to 15. Closer to 15 and the curr…”
MyGate scaled from 40 to 600 gated communities in eight months
“When we raised money from Prime, we were at 40 Gated Communities. And then in a span of six months, right? We went from 40 to 600 gated communities, right? I would say not six months, but almost seven to eight months, right? We went to 600 gated communities.”
Somani: Prime prefers investing in complete teams with a validated MVP
“The ideal stage is when you have your team complete and you probably have at least a little bit of an MVP that you've got some early validation. I wouldn't even say traction or metrics, but just so you've got the team, you've got an idea, you know what market …”
Somani: Prime makes only four to five startup investments per year
“The reason we make time for you is we only do four to five investments a year. All partners will work with every company, whatever it takes.”
Somani: Prime invested in MyGate when it operated in just 20 apartments
“So MyGate, you know, when we invested in it, they were in 20 apartments literally a security system to enter and exit.”
Somani: Prime has never sold secondary shares in any portfolio company
“We've never actually yet I think sold any secondaries or anything in any of our companies, and we're typically the first professional investor in the company.”
Somani: Prime takes two to six weeks from introduction to investment
“So if it's an area that we know about, it can be as quick as two weeks. If it is something that we are absolutely newbies in, that might even take as long as six weeks. So our sweet spot is probably like four weeks, two to six weeks is, is kind of the range.”
Ahluwalia: Rejected by hundreds of VCs, including Prime Venture Partners
“I had myself been rejected by hundreds of VCs. Including Prime Venture Partners when I was pitching to you.”
Ahluwalia: Podcasting network led directly to jobs at Prime and AWS
“And for me personally, podcasting has given me a rocket ship of growth, a network of venture capitalists. You know my, I landed a job in prime because of podcasting and later in Amazon web services because of that, because of the network and the meaningful rel…”