I’m backed by Vinod. Every founder who raises from Vinod knows the deal.
Could he try to fire you from your own company if he thinks that’s what the company needs?
Yes. That’s not a secret. We even joke about it.
But making this entire drama about “firing founders” misses the point.
The point is that Vinod will always make the call he believes is right for the company, no matter how uncomfortable it is.
And there are 2 sides to that coin.
If he thinks you’re in the way, he’ll move you.
If he believes the company should win and you’re the person to make it win, he’ll move mountains for it. He’ll pull strings, take the hard fights, and push harder than almost any investor would.
The ruthlessness that makes him dangerous is the ruthlessness that makes him exceptional.
That’s the deal with him. Vinod is not founder-first, he’s company-first. And if that makes your uncomfortable, you should probably pitch someone else.
Vinod Khosla is not for everyone. I’ve known him from Zambeel days.
He won’t coddle you. He won’t waste your time. He assesses fast, tells you straight, and stays ruthlessly fixed on one thing: what’s right for the company.
Sometimes that lines up with the founder. Sometimes it doesn’t. He’ll be the first to say so out loud. I’ve sat on both sides of that conversation with him.
Founders who put the company above their own ego will value him for exactly this. The ones who don’t will resent him for exactly this. Same trait but two reactions.
Startups are not a thing everyone should attempt. Your capacity to grow runs about as far as your capacity to take hard feedback, including the times it arrives in a form you’d never have chosen.
@Tiny_Fish has no investment from @vkhosla, in fact he has invested in a company that overlaps with us. Nothing to gain here, just calling it as I’ve seen it.
As Grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa makes history becoming the 1st Indian to win the Norway Chess title, I’m reminded of this gem of a picture of his mum Nagalakshmi watching him being interviewed a few years ago.
Imagine her today. ♥️
Im sorry you were traumatized by Vinod falling asleep in your meeting. But he founded one of the pioneering companies of the modern computer industry (Eric Schmidt worked for him there), has the highest ever multiple and IRR at exit in Kleiner Perkins history ($7B return on $3M invested in only 3 years) and while everyone was investing in SaaS throughout the 2010s, Vinod was funding the first round of companies building battery tech, rocket launch, fusion, genomics, carbon tech and a little AI research lab called OpenAI. And he did this while hitting grand slams and raising multi billion dollar funds. He is one of the truest VCs to ever do it.
Today might be my favorite day building @sifthubhq.
Because this is the launch our customers kept asking for.
Today, we're launching SiftHub Pulse.
There's a moment in every enterprise sales call when a buyer throws a curveball the rep doesn't have an answer to, and the rep says what every rep says, "Let me get back to you." And we know what happens next, the deal loses momentum, the urgency goes away and the buyer's confidence drops.
We call it dead air, the gap between a buyer's question and the rep's answer. Those six words have probably killed more enterprise deals than any competitor ever has.
Almost every customer we spoke to shared a version of the same problem, and added, "The SE can't be on every call."
Somewhere along the way, we've normalized dead air.
A few months ago, we decided to change that. We decided that reps shouldn't have to leave a call to find answers. Because the answer to almost every buyer question is already somewhere inside the company, it just never makes it to the meeting when it's actually needed.
So we built SiftHub Pulse.
Pulse listens to live sales calls and surfaces sourced, contextual answers on the rep's screen the moment a question is asked, tailored to the deal in front of them: the account, the competitors involved, previous commitments from your team, and more.
And I'll admit it, watching Pulse in action on a live call still gives me chills! SiftHub already powers sales and presales teams at Saviynt, Quickbase, Parloa, Sirion, and many more. We are seeing some teams now handling 30-50% more deals with 5-10x faster sales processes and seeing win-rates increase by 15-30%.
It's one of those products that feels obvious the moment you see it. If you'd like to bring Pulse to your sales calls, reach out to me or the team. No more dead air.
We're excited to launch @MillionsApp, the newest offering from the Raise ecosystem. 🚀
Built for Gen Z and first-time investors, Millions offers a simple way to invest in Mutual Funds, Stocks, and IPOs.
With Millions, Raise takes its next step towards making investing more accessible for India's next generation of investors.
Google which is cash surplus, just announced an additional capital raise of $80 bn.
Google annual profit is $160 bn, last quarter $62 bn, and market cap $4.5 trillion. That is close to total profits and market cap of all Indian listed companies put together.
It’s a wake up call to all companies to invest into the future, whatever the present maybe.
Now that IPL is done and dusted, time for India to focus on business of business.
I’m on my way to India to visit the World Heritage Site of Hampi. The site covers over 40 square km and is FILLED with mystery - including a green diorite step well, monolithic doors, a giant lingam and evidence for lathing technology. We’ll spend the next four days there. Stay tuned!!
31 May 2020:
I was on the road, staring at failure at the start of my 40s.
1 June 2020:
6 years back, on this day I started my journey of building Raise (@RaiseTheBarHQ) from zero.
The day before, I held a fancy title of Founder, Managing Director and CEO of a financial services company, was an industry pioneer and a leader, built and scaled a product that redefined how India invested online, that made mutual funds popular, and introduced direct mutual funds to the masses. Built a venture that managed few billions dollars and was possibly valued as much as.
Next day, I had nothing. No titles, No power. No team. No salary, No stocks. Practically made no money from the venture I gave everything to for 3 years to make it a grand success. Founders like me are emotional fools & immature beings who trust easily and take a word as a word, only to realise one day - the world doesn't work the way one thinks it works.
Tried to raise money from venture capital, which I thought would be a easy thing to do but it was not. Almost every VC out there rejected me. Few influential people made raising capital a bit difficult. Many VC & partners who promised term-sheets, stopped responding to emails / chats or just backed out.
All of this happened during peak COVID times. I was staring at failure at the start of my 40s. I had no idea what the future would hold for me. Job was never an option, I am too practical and also much of a straight-talker to survive in a corporate life. I had started up 3 times earlier, and was more or less a failure. Somehow gathered courage to start-up again just because giving up again was never an option.
Times have changed since then!
Today we are a team of ~650+ builders and believers at Raise.
Only thing we care about is building the best consumer experiences across all the products we are building - @DhanHQ@ask_fuzz@Upsurge_club@Stratzy_HQ@FilterCoffeeHQ and few more ventures in insurance, wealth and investing that we are building.
5 years back value of everything was Zero. Today for whatever it means, Raise is a unicorn valued at USD 1.2 Bn. At some point, I was offered good money as some sort of settlement which of course I never took. This is why I say that as founders, some of us are emotional fools who keep taking chances even after losing it all!
Looking back, even after this crazy journey and tons of luck by my side, I am still more of an emotional & introvert founder fool. We are still in our early days of building and are far from where we want to be.
Once again, there's no inspiration or gyan here for anyone. Tu tera dekh le bhai, yahaan mein khud bhagwan ke bharose pe hoon..
I post this just as a reminder to myself - never forget where & how we started from.
More importantly to express my gratitude to all those who stood by me and supported us in my tough times - as co-founders, team members, colleagues, believers, supporters, cheerleaders, well wishers, investors, friends and most importantly as our customers.
Thank you, I wouldn't have made it till here without you 🙏
This 4,500-year-old terracotta dice from the Indus-Saraswati Civilization is a powerful reminder of India’s living heritage. Dicing is also mentioned as a popular game in Rig and Atharva Vedas (two of the four sacred Vedic scriptures).
From symbols and craftsmanship to rituals, yogic practices, and collective memory, numerous elements of ancient Indian civilization continue to thrive in the daily social and religious life of Indian society across regions and communities.
Civilizational inheritance is not just about geography or ruins, it is defined by living customs, symbols, rituals, and unbroken cultural consciousness. India is the enduring living continuity of the Indus-Saraswati Civilization.
#IndusSaraswatiCivilization #AncientIndianHeritage
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has fixed the retail price of 30 drug formulations, including Vitamin D3 Oral Solution, Calcium, Vitamin D3, Methylcobalamin, L-Methylfolate Calcium, Pyridoxal-5 phosphate and others.
For Washington, an ideal India would be one that: leases military bases to the US, purchases-35s, offers near unlimited military interoperability, rapidly retires Russian equipment, operates on GPS, refuses to build its own LLMs, spends next to nothing on indigenous R&D, buys American oil and LNG, cedes large parts of the North East to a sovereign Kuki-Zo state, restores Article 370, encourages immigration of Bangladeshis into the country, and allows unfettered access to foreign missionary groups. Wonder how many points on this list have been mentioned by the podcast guest.
India won’t just adopt the next wave of tech. India will build it.
We’ve launched Finserv Intelligence: our applied research & innovation initiative. We’ve partnered IIT Bombay on AI, cybersecurity and quantum & we are committed to backing deep tech founders with Rs. 1,500 crore-2,000 crore investment over 5 years.
Beyond financial services, we will expand into health & climate technologies.
We’ve chosen to build. In India. For India & the world.
#MadeInIndia #DeepTech #FinservIntelligence