Interesting Things— Unicorn edition
Last week saw a slew of unicorns being created in the Indian startup ecosystem. Predictably, folks in ‘ordinary’ or bootstrapped companies were unhappy/confused with all the ‘misplaced’ attention.
The likely root cause for such reactions is confusing the median outcome of a startup (failure) with the average as Paul Graham’s Startups = Growth post explains — “If you judge by the median startup, the whole concept of a startup seems like a fraud. But it’s a mistake to use the median in a domain with so much variation. If you look at the average outcome rather than the median, you can understand why investors like them”
I think bootstrapped works great for certain business models and certain types of founders, but businesses that use funding to scale faster are great for the startup ecosystem. They employ more of us too — Hrishikesh runs Flexiple which after 4 years and 1M ARR employs 20–30 according to LinkedIn. My current and previous employers (both unicorns) had 10x more employees at a similar stage. The skills and wealth that these employees will gain will power the next set of startups, similar to the so called ‘mafias’ in the West.
It’s undeniable that there is euphoria in the market — the flood of easy money (low interest rates) has pushed up valuations. And, as Manas Solai points out, valuation is a leading metric, the newly created Unicorns now need to go out and execute and continue grow to justify these valuations.
Everything Else
Makes the point that software disrupts and then at a certain point ceases to be a differentiator (largely because everyone else has adopted it) — https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/3/18/outgrowing-software
Shreyas Doshi on the three types of product leaders — https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1375491623308550144 and the four stages of a PM manager — https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1355405159833038856
https://marker.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-startup-within-a-big-company-c3003615f3bc Written from an acquisition lens but equally applies to new ideas/bets within a large company. TLDR — you will never be able to take brand/reputation and other risks that only a startup can and you will inevitable be tied down to their processes.
Beautiful description of a miniature Mughal Painting, really nice UX as well https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/02/arts/design/shah-jahan-chitarman.html
