Verak turns 1 today

3 product cycles, 2 financing rounds, Y Combinator, 31+ team members & much more over a 12 month period.

Exactly one year ago, a small team (Abraz, Eashan, Kunal, Nishant & I) started work on the ‘BimaPe’ product — a few weeks after I junked a previous product idea for BimaPe (basis market feedback) — which was in the run up to our Y Combinator W21 pitch day (30th October 2020).

Our founding team — VERAK is the 1st letter of the 1st name of each founding team member.

I still don’t know how we got into YC with very basic “tool” (not even a product) — all I remember is that Vishrut joined us on the YC pitch day and that I fell asleep right after the interview (which means I only learned about our admission the next day!)

Our “Tech” Team — you’ll soon meet our Sales & Broking team in December

Building a company is not easy — I have never worked this hard before but I have never enjoyed work this much before in my life.

As we turn 1 year old today, I thought I’d pen down some pointers for everyone outside our company.

Fundraising

We’ve raised a Pre-Seed and Seed round with a great roster of investors such as Lightspeed India Partners, Y Combinator amongst others. Our process (the lop-sided barbell) is written about here.

The only myth I’d like to dispel is that large funds don’t spend time on small portfolio companies. Our experience, confirmed by those of our peers, is exactly the opposite — large funds have the manpower (associates & support staff) to have weekly conversations — which can go very deep into the business.

I wish I could show you the investors from our unannounced Seed round — but, sorry, “strategic leverage” is key.

Pivoting

I’ve been part of this twice in the previous ~15 months. Once while I was all alone testing concepts and the second time when we made a hard pivot from ‘BimaPe’ to ‘Verak’ (more here)

Get buy-in

Don’t treat the pivot as a military marching order OR as a committee decision; it is your decision (as CEO) but you need to lay out facts in front of your team — explain market dynamics, opportunity size and key insights.

We did the formal internal pivot only AFTER circulating a written memo with the above facts, hosting a team-wide video conversation and then following-up 1:1 regarding questions.

Offer people a chance to move out

You don’t need to remind them but you should remind them — this is very different from what they signed up for. Even today, some of our team are only just ramping up into project work.

Most early stage hires join a company (team of people) — not necessarily a product (what is being built today).

Cut your losses early

Everyone speaks about this — it is NOT easy. We should have pivoted in March 2021 when we got enough capital (financial & talent) to chase the ‘Verak’ concept — but we stuck with the ‘BimaPe’ offering due to the sunk cost fallacy.

BimaPe → Verak was a high & low point for us as a team.

Remote company building

I have yet to meet 2 of our founding team members — Abraz (Designer) & Kunal (Software Engineer) after working together for over a year.

Our current team is located in ~11 different cities in India. The youngest member is 20 — the oldest member is in their 50s. Someone just bought their first car — another hasn’t figured out driving yet.

I was initially apprehensive about building a company fully remote — but, the no-commute & no relocation is a HUGE bonus for hiring in today’s market.

Meeting some of our team members in-person after months of remote work — feels different but not reason enough for us to co-locate except for major events.

Remote work tends to attract a certain type of individual — one who wants to wrap up work and then focus on other obligations (children, parents, further education or hobby’s). And, I personally love the fact that we aren’t trying to act like family — I have my own family to take care of.

Remote work needs discipline — written documentation, focused meetings & self-paced work. And, this discipline needs to come from both top-down and bottoms-up.

Closing thoughts

We’re quite transparent about our dealings as a company via Twitter & LinkedIn. But, we’ve been silent for the past few weeks since announcing the switch to Verak.

There is a reason for the same — we’ll share all the details with you in December 2021. Until then, it is back to building for us.

In the meantime, please feel free to follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter to get real time updates from our end!

Until next time — for now, it is back to building!