I’ve had the privilege of building a strong network of founders and operators in growth stage companies like Facebook, Uber, Hike Messenger, and Netflix, from my team at these organisations. I have been an active angel investor with seed investments in MyGate, Mobile Premier League, The Healthy Cravings Company, OckyPocky, among others. This syndicate will look for the three signals in all investments:
We will look for large markets which are either under served today or have not been disrupted and organised through the use of technology and the internet.
We will invest in businesses that have at their core products that differentiate through experience because core to our thesis is the belief that experience makes or breaks businesses on the internet and is the only lasting competitive advantage.
We will back founders who come in teams and founders who have demonstrated expertise in the markets they’re building for. The founding team needs to have people who have designed, built, and engineered products from scratch, in the past, and understand how to move mountains to achieve product market fit.
We will invest in startups which meet all the above criteria and have the core team in place. I don’t want to shy away from being the first investor in founding teams with nothing more than a laptop as long as we get strong signals on market, product, and the founding team. Our ideal allocation will be ₹50 lakhs in priced rounds of up to $2.5 million.
We are, for founders, by founders.
All deals will be sourced through my network of past and present founders and operators in high growth companies in India, Singapore, and the US. I foresee most of the syndicate’s allocation being filled through this network. Our goal is to create a vehicle that allows this network to become a sourcing engine for deals and allows these founders and operators to act as LPs.
There will be occasions when the strength of our conviction will require us writing larger than our average cheque. In situations like these, we will be open to opening a deal up to the larger AngelList universe of LPs.