The Exchanges

Q You mentioned a few reasons why startups that you were involved with, uh, from the investment side failed. Can you name some things that you saw startups do that caused them to be successful?

A I would start with the industry, industry expertise, because especially now existing technology is, is pretty low. So, and everybody is sort of like on the same, on the same ground. So industry expertise is what make a difference. So, so you, usually we look at people who spend Yes, or even tens of yes, uh, like in the specific industry, for example, in healthcare and logistics or financial services, it means it's, you know, this industry set out, so they made connections. Uh, they may know their potential clients, uh, potential investors, uh, other people doing similar businesses, so they, they can look for a synergy. So this is a very important for us. The second thing, um, Yeah, I would say it's an entrepreneurial or a founding experience. Uh, that's also very important because, yeah, when you just left your corporate, uh, uh, yeah, and we know that all founders are very smart people, very energetic, and, uh, they usually, like, get things done, but it usually takes some time to figure out how to do, how to run a startup. It's different from your corporate life. For example, before you work at some food and beverage company, and now you're running some startup in this industry as well, but yeah, that's completely different. So you've had pretty big budgets before. Right now you have pretty limited resources. Uh, you need to attract really high quality talent. At the same tim…

AI assessment note: “I would start with the industry, industry expertise”

Q What did you learn that startup founders would be able to value this information?

A The first lesson learned would be that look at the trends and follow the trends. Uh, the second thing is I think that sometimes, uh, startups failed because of the, uh, really, uh, bad, uh, team dynamics within, uh, with, uh, startup founders. And sometimes, uh, I think that at that time, like every, everything was on the raise and the market, uh, like was very hot. Uh, so that's why startups attracted, uh, raised a lot of funding. I think the same happens in the U.S. like five years ago, and the set of founders, like, Uh, assign them like very high salary, like just would imagine like very big amounts just compared to the finding the raised and just, yeah, let's spend this money. And, uh, uh, and feels like the, like most of them lost motivation. And yeah, I know that one, the setups failed, uh, because of this, uh, the, the couldn't, uh, motivate, uh, themselves enough, uh, To compete with the top companies, for example, like Russian, I mean, the booking or Airbnb. So it was one of these companies that failed. And the last lesson I would say was, uh, yeah, I mean, the founders thought, I mean, this situation would last forever. So just, yeah, there was thinking at the set, the market was really hot. There was very few startups.

AI assessment note: “The first lesson learned would be that look at the trends and follow the trends.”