StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Anu Hariharan

Founder & Managing Partner, Avra · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderengineer@anuhariharan ↗LinkedIn ↗avracap.com ↗

Anu Hariharan is the founder and managing partner of Avra, a firm providing growth funding and scaling programs for startups. She previously served as managing partner at Y Combinator's Continuity Fund and as an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

13statements → 4claims → 0claims resolved → —average certainty → —average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 9 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Anu argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Hariharan: Zapier reached default alive after raising only $1.5M
“Zapier, way from Zapier, Never believed in fundraising, and I think that's why he hit default alive with one and a half million. He's never had to raise money. He doesn't need to because he prints cash.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 24:07 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Hariharan: PostHog converted only 30 of 30,000 signups when launching paid tier
“There's another company that went through YC called PostHog. It was one of the most successful open source product analytics launch that they did through YC. Top number one on Hacker News. 30,000 signups. James was extremely confident that when he turns on the…”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 23:19 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan

Everything Anu Hariharan said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Hariharan: Founders should only hire sales reps after demos become boringly predictable
“You hire a salesperson when your sales call and demo calls become extremely boring and repetitive because that's when you've figured out what your go to market motion is.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 18:15 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Slow growth after hiring sales leadership usually stems from product deficiencies
“The most common mistake is you hired a VP of sales, they've cranked up your team, you have all these sales accountants, but your growth is slow. And the root cause of that is not that the sales motion isn't working, your product is not appealing enough.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 19:47 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Startups with $5M-$10M in ARR should be default alive
“I usually say if you have hit five to ten million ARR, you cannot get killed. You should be default alive.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 20:49 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Fast hiring before PMF creates resistance to product changes
“If you hire too fast before you have product market fit, now you have a bunch of people whose jobs depend on you not changing the product.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 2:43 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Startups lack PMF if under 40% of users would be very disappointed
“And if at least 40% of your customers don't say very disappointed, you probably don't have a good enough product. It's just moderately appealing. So we say a rule of thumb is at least 40% of your customers will be very disappointed if your product goes away.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 5:05 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: True self-serve PMF overwhelms a team's inbound response capacity
“If your product is really good, you probably are not gonna be able, you don't have enough people on your team to respond to inbound queries. That's when you have strong product market fit.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 6:40 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hariharan: Nearly 100% of YC startups underprice their products
“The second mistake, which we've seen pretty much hundred percent of YC companies do, including the founder who's going to talk after me, which is Josh and Gusto, you should ask him, is they all underprice.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 8:26 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Raise prices 30% to test whether customers are underpaying
“The best way I often tell you, tell founders to test is increase your price by 30%. And if your customer's not blinking twice, then you probably have underpriced a lot.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 12:11 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Assertion Partly supported
Hariharan: Gusto finished year one with 100 customers and 80 NPS
“So for the first entire year, I was actually shocked at the stat. Can anyone guess how many customers Gusto had? Any guesses? Two thousand? 50? That's a wide range. What's that? One million. Okay, from your mouth to God's ears, we still have to hit a million. …”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 14:51 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Adding features to capture new segments fails 80% of the time
“If you assume that just adding a feature will help you scale to the next segment, that doesn't work. That doesn't work eight out of 10 times. You may get lucky with a one or two, but that doesn't work eight out of 10 times.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 17:24 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Insight
Hariharan: Founders need 100 to 200 customer calls to validate product quality
“You have to do a hundred to 200 customer calls, customer conversion to know whether your product is good enough.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 18:32 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Assertion Contradicted
Hariharan: PostHog converted only 30 of 30,000 signups when launching paid tier
“There's another company that went through YC called PostHog. It was one of the most successful open source product analytics launch that they did through YC. Top number one on Hacker News. 30,000 signups. James was extremely confident that when he turns on the…”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 23:19 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan
Assertion Supported
Hariharan: Zapier reached default alive after raising only $1.5M
“Zapier, way from Zapier, Never believed in fundraising, and I think that's why he hit default alive with one and a half million. He's never had to raise money. He doesn't need to because he prints cash.”
Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 ▶ 24:07 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan

The other half of the tape: Anu Hariharan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on the Official SaaStr Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jason Lemkin 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112022episodesmentions
0112022episodes it came up in
000.50.5112022episodesmentions per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Lessons From a Second-Time Founder: How Brex Went From 0 - $1B in Under 2 Years Apr 22, 2019 7m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Anu Hariharan was played rather than Anu taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan Sep 29, 2022 22m aired address
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 400 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more