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Mehra: Silicon Valley's AI lead is only three to six months
“Sure, Silicon Valley is still ahead, you could argue, but if in the world of SaaS, Silicon Valley was five years, 10 years ahead, I mean, it's probably three to six months ahead.”
Mehra: Anthropic and OpenAI will steamroll standalone developer tooling startups
“The parts which I think I would say we are less excited about. Is generally things around the SDLC right now. Because the challenges in SDLC, you're in the way of anthropic and open AI. So hard to underwrite anything on what direction they'll take. And honestl…”
Mehra: India-US startup corridor will produce many more winners over next decade
“If we produced a handful of winners, I see no reason why we should have many, many more in the next 10 years, right? So the first part of the thinking is, hey this corridor is really going to prosper.”
Mehra: Many VCs passed on early Anthropic rounds over valuation fears
“I mean, a lot of people also passed Anthropic at Seed and Series A and Series B and Series C. For them, Anthropic was very expensive.”
Mehra: Idle AI startups lose product-market fit within a quarter
“Everything is moving so fast that if you actually sit idle you will basically be you will lose your PMF within like a quarter, right? So I do feel that that velocity and that sense of urgency is one of the most important traits in AI as compared to, let's say,…”
Mehra: Founder ambition separates $500M outcomes from $10B outcomes
“The difference between a company with a half a billion outcome and a ten billion outcome is just purely the hunger, ambition, and fearlessness of the founder.”
Mehra: Bangalore founders face no skill or network disadvantage versus US founders
“Like whether a kid is moving from you know, New Jersey or Georgia or Bangalore, I mean, they have the scale skill set and they are coming here with the same network. So from that perspective, I don't think founders are at a disadvantage of any kind.”
Mehra: Most US platform engineering teams are actually based in India
“Most action platform engineering teams, even for us companies are probably sitting in India. So they are the ones who are dealing with a lot of this infrastructure.”
Mehra: Bangalore's tech ecosystem is far deeper and richer than Paris's
“So, I mean, at least the Bangalore ecosystem is far deeper and richer than Paris.”
Mehra: Indian tech and go-to-market talent is now world-class
“The quality of talent in India is top notch. And, you know, not just like EPD building talent, but even on the GTM side, India has actually made one of the strongest muscles for both marketing inbound, outbound, even AEs who are closing deals sitting from Indi…”
Mehra: $50B outcomes look like $500M companies at the seed stage
“A fifty billion dollar outcome doesn't look like a fifty billion dollar at seed. It probably looks like a half a billion dollar outcome. And then you'll find that, oh my God, this is continuing to gather momentum and it is much bigger than it is.”
Krishna Mehra: Most investors passed on Innovaccer's early rounds
“InnoVacer, I remember clearly because I was involved. Most people passed them at like Seed and Series A. They were like, you guys are sitting out of India and going to build a healthcare company in the US.”
Krishna Mehra: Elevation indexes heavily on pedigree over thesis at pre-seed
“We are by nature a very selective fund. So what that means is oftentimes we look for both the found, the team's pedigree as well as the thesis and our conviction around all of it to truly drive conviction far more at obviously series A where you have more proo…”
Mehra: High Shipping Velocity Is Rare Among Vertical Domain Teams
“The shipping velocity and ability to move very fast, which is not very common with these vertical teams.”
Mehra: Founder Learning Slope Between Meetings Drives Venture Conviction Most
“At the end of the day, what really drives that conviction is that direct one-to-one interaction with the founders, and if we see that founder truly growing in every meeting, and, you know, every time you meet them, they have a new set of answers, and you feel …”
Mehra: Portkey Has Signed Customers Like DoorDash and Epic Games
“They got some of the most discerning customers on the planet, right? So, people like DoorDash, Epic Games, Albertsons, Community Bank of History PG&E.”
Mehra: Vertical SaaS needs customer proximity, while AI infra problems are universal
“Let's say as you compare to a vertical thesis, the challenge in verticals is unless you are here close to the customer, how can you build for verticals? But the person sitting in India actually has a very clear visibility of the latest and greatest problem tha…”
Mehra: Salesforce and ServiceNow horizontal shift creates startup opportunities
“The, in the Salesforce ecosystem and the ServiceNow ecosystem, there's so much development happening. Those guys are trying to go more horizontal. So there's more opportunity for new players to emerge.”
Mehra: Short trips to the Bay Area don't work for founders
“Definitely worth spending extended time in the Bay. I don't think like short three, four days, two week trips help because you need to let serendipity happen. You need to come spend some extended time, go to a bunch of events. Many of those events will be low …”
Mehra: Raising VC too quickly traps founders in unconvincing ideas
“Sometimes that is actually much worse than the counterfactual. Because if I, let's say I start with an idea I'm not passionate about. And I don't think it's gonna work. But maybe like a big name VC comes and invests in that. Then there are two problems. One, I…”
Mehra: Outlier startups succeed via 10x founder spikes, not box-checking
“These outliers are created not because of the founder checked all the boxes, but because the founder was just 10 x better at certain things.”
Mehra: Elevation Capital Invested in Synthia Labs Before Any Revenue
“So a company called Cynthia labs they sell into pharma commercial and, you know, Started with some voice AI, but actually our full suite of products for the pharma commercial use case. And this was, I think, a lot more of a founder bet than anything else becau…”
Mehra: Elevation Capital invests in 1 to 2 of every 100 companies seen
“See, we don't generally manage stats like this, but I think I would say if I look at the funnel, if I'm meeting a hundred companies, I think we probably spend more time on somewhere between 10 to 20. We will do more deeper evaluations. And let's say if we spen…”
Elevation Capital Has Built an AI-Driven Startup Tracking Suite
“We've actually now built a full AI driven suite to do a lot of our you know, tracking and things like that.”
Elevation Capital interviewed 30 to 35 customers and competitors during Portkey diligence
“I think we must have talked to at least 30 to 35 customers of Portkey and their competitors to truly understand the space.”
Mehra: 30 to 35% of startups met build infrastructure
“If I meet a hundred companies in a month, I mean, I would say there's at least 30, 35.”
Mehra: Cohesity's largest customer accounted for $50M in annual revenue
“Our largest customer was a fifty million a year account.”
Mehra: Cohesity Still Lacked Full VMware Coverage Seven Years In
“Even like six or seven years into building the product, we had, for instance, not managed to cover all the use cases even for a VMware.”
Innovaccer reached nearly $1M ARR selling data to universities before pivoting
“When I had first met them, they were sitting in Noida and they were actually doing this you know, data packaging and data sales to universities and they had scaled to like,
You know almost a million ARR just doing that.”