JasaRodio

In conversation with Richard Parker, a distinguished M&A expert, who has led successful acquisitions of 13 companies, ranging from $50K to $200+ Mn.

Richard shares his valuable insights on:

• Why should you only buy an existing profitable business?
• How do you source potential businesses, and conduct due diligence?
• Finally, how do you integrate it successfully within your business?

Rachel Turner

• Co-founder at VC Talent Lab, UK
• Author, The Founder’s Survival Guide

Sharing her insights on:

1. She shares a brief background about herself and the inspiration behind "The Founder's Survival Guide."
2. Key challenges most founders typically face as they scale their businesses from 0 to 1.
3. What strategies should the founders apply to navigate these challenges and grow their businesses?
4. Why do entrepreneurs lack in this transition from founders to CEOs?
5. The board's role in coaching their portfolio founders is to improve their leadership skills.
6. A real-world example of a founder, whom she helped in his entrepreneurial journey to build a great business?

In conversation with Blake Hutchison, the CEO of Flippa, where we discussed:

The current trend of buying and selling SaaS businesses.

When and why should founders of SaaS startups consider an exit?

Prevailing exit revenue/profit multiples for the SaaS businesses.

How should SaaS founders maximize the value of their startup, and ensure a smooth transition to an exit?

Finally, the key challenges involved during this process of buying and selling SaaS businesses?

India, being the 3rd largest startup ecosystem is fraught with frauds too.

There have been several instances of corporate governance lapses in startups like BharatPe, Zilingo, Trell, and GoMechanics.

This time it's a cloud kitchen startup, namely Bigspoon Foods.

The fraud was exposed in an article titled "How a cloud-kitchen startup misled investors and left unpaid bills in its wake?" which appeared in the e-magazine The Ken, on 28 August 2023.

The podcast covers, how BigSpoon misled into believing that they had closed a Series A round, when in fact it hadn't.

Things started to spiral downward in the last 2 months, almost leading it to bankruptcy.

JasaRodio | Episode 76 | Venture Debt 101: A Guide on the Why, What, and How!

Guest: Punit Shah, Managing Partner - Alteria Capital.

Sharing his insights on:

1. What is Venture Debt, and how it differs from other forms of financing?
2. What are the key benefits of Venture Debt for startups, and how can it complement future equity rounds?
3. When should startups explore Venture Debt, is it the right choice for specific needs (e.g. bridge rounds)?
4. What does a typical Venture Debt term sheet look like (i.e. interest rates, repayment schedules, warrants, collateral/security, etc)?
5. Advice for founders/startups exploring Venture Debt as a financing option?
6. What do Venture Debt players look for during due diligence?
7. Any limitations/drawbacks to Venture Debt that startups should be aware of?
8. A brief on Alteria Capital, with some examples of startups they funded with Venture Debt.

A 3-part podcast series, in partnership with OfBusiness, India's youngest profitable unicorn!

The Third (and final) part of this series covers:

• Summary of the journey, and mistakes made by the founders.
• The importance of customer feedback for startups.
• Some of the key challenges that startups usually face?
• How did technology/platform really evolve at OfBusiness?
• Advice for the B2B founders/startups building a marketplace or a 2-sided platform?
• How should founders secure funding from Seed to Series A or subsequent rounds?
• On funding winter and IPO?

A 3-part podcast series, in partnership with OfBusiness, India's youngest profitable unicorn!

This Second part of this series covers:

1. Advice to the B2B Founders?
2. Create and track 2-3 relevant KPIs for your startup.
3. How did OfBusiness achieve Product/Market Fit (PMF)?
4. Their strategy for customer acquisition and growth.
5. Their Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy to acquire and retain customers.
6. How to hire best talent and use ESOPs to create a performance-driven culture?

A 3-part podcast series, in partnership with OfBusiness, India's youngest profitable unicorn!

Background:

• OfBusiness is a B2B procurement and fintech platform, which is the youngest profitable Indian unicorn that has crossed over $2 bn in revenue in FY2022-23.
• The 7-year-old startup which turned unicorn in July-2021 has leapfrogged with a $6+ Bn valuation, operating across 20+ countries. It has impressive backing from top global investors like TigerGlobal, Norwest, Softbank, etc.
• Both co-founders, Nitin Jain and Vasant Sridhar will share valuable insights based on their own journey of building OfBusiness into the profitable unicorn that it is today.

The first part of this series covers:

1. How did the idea of OfBusiness evolve?
2. Key pain areas/challenges that founders observed in the procurement sector?
3. Composition of their founding team and complementary skill sets?
4. Some of the challenges founders faced in the early stages, and the way they overcame them?
5. Advice for the founders/B2B startups that are at the initial stages?
6. Key milestones in the early growth of OfBusiness, and how did they navigate their first fundraising?

Ashish Kumar

• Partner, The Fundamentum Partnership (growth-focused VC Fund)

Sharing his insights on:

1. As a part of a VC firm, what got you interested in the healthcare sector?
2. You had assessed several players in the pharma space, what were the 3 key factors that stood out for PharmEasy?
3. Besides the team, what other factors drove you to commit to PharmEasy?
4. In general, what makes a team shine over others when it comes to investment?
5. Coming back to PharmEasy, you tweeted about channel relationships, margins, and supply chain as key differentiators, can you elaborate on that?
6. So quite a cliche question, did you ever envisage that PharmEasy would turn up as a unicorn someday?
7. From the founders' perspective, what should they focus on at the early stage, to become a leader in any sector?
8. Finally, tell us about "Fundamentum Partnership," and what's your investment thesis?

Ryan Breslow

• Founder of 2 unicorns: Bolt and Eco.
• Sharing his own experiences, Ryan talks about the 10 Sales Tactics that Truly Work!