Kishore Ganji

Investor & Mentor at Astir Ventures → backed 500+ early and growth stage startups across India and US | Serial entrepreneur | Avid cricket fan 🏏

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

I stress-tested the AI compute chain: chips → clouds → AI labs.

Data center delays + higher rates + lab revenue at 60% of plan ≈ $1.2T of supplier revenue lost by 2030.

The risk is across the ecosystem including chipmakers https://t.co/DmhjKCa62T

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

@GaryMarcus @GaryMarcus Happy to host you in Hyderabad home to world famous Biryani and largest startup ecosystem via @THubHyd

[Nishkarsh @contextkingceo]

We've raised $6.5M to kill vector databases.

Every system today retrieves context the same way: vector search that stores everything as flat embeddings and returns whatever "feels" closest.

Similar, sure. Relevant? Almost never.

Embeddings can’t tell a Q3 renewal clause from a Q1 termination notice if the language is close enough.

A friend of mine asked his AI about a contract last week, and it returned a detailed, perfectly crafted answer pulled from a completely different client’s file.

Once you’re dealing with 10M+ documents, these mix-ups happen all the time.

VectorDB accuracy goes to shit.

We built @hydra_db for exactly this.

HydraDB builds an ontology-first context graph over your data, maps relationships between entities, understands the 'why' behind documents, and tracks how information evolves over time.

So when you ask about 'Apple,' it knows you mean the company you're serving as a customer. Not the fruit.

Even when a vector DB's similarity score says 0.94.

More below ⬇️

[Patrick Bet-David @patrickbetdavid]

The timing of India & Pakistan war is very interesting.

The moment Apple & others announce moving business away from China to India, this happens.

Tariffs are destroying 🇨🇳 & this is their way of causing chaos for the one country that can take business away from them.

🇮🇳

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

Apple’s Eddy Cue’s testified yesterday that, for the first time in 22 years, Apple saw a decline in its search volume on Safari and that Apple is exploring adding AI search options.

This has set off a wild storm in the tech space as well as in the Wall Street discussions.

For the first time in history, Google has to fight on its core business: search. And seemingly, if this situation is not meticulously thwarted this will soon lead to an actual existential crisis that will shake the very core of Google’s cash cow.

Google currently is a loosely similar position to what Kodak was: Google has been the undoubted reigning champion of search falling several incumbents in their lifetime. But are currently at a juncture where they can see AI advancements eating into their turf at an unprecedented rate.

At this crossroads, will Google go the Apple iPhone way to kill off/ pivot their flagship to ensure sustained relevance? Apple’s introduction of the iPhone has no doubt wiped their then most popular product the iPod; but it ensured that Apple climbed to the top of the tech ladder.

Considering that a good chunk of Gen-Z already resorts to Perplexity/ ChatGPT as a first platform for search; will Google succumb to these advancements and reposition their core search replacing their traditional search results with a Gemini focussed one?

How do you all see this playing out not just for Google but for the industry as a whole, keeping in mind that depending on how search evolves, there will be a tickling snowball effect that will very soon seep into a whole lot of other spaces.

Would love to hear your thoughts and keep this as a open ended discussion

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

Reminder to check in on all those posts you bookmarked on social media 🙆‍♂️

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

Know that most things you do only serve you for a phase. Once you outgrow these phases, learn to cut off those things - habits, traits, people, etc.

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

early-stage startups - no one wants to say this part of the growth journey out loud but -- every day missed is 2-3 days further away from traction

each day not spent executing in the market to engage or talk to customers is a day of not learning putting you 2-3 days further away from revenue

finding the pulse takes 2-3x longer than what most founders expect

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

People who don’t have certain non-negotiables in life are more likely to be on the losing end of the bargain

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

Incentives make the world go round

[andrew chen @andrewchen]

You have to be an optimist about your own product, your own startup, and yourself. That's why when you pitch -- whether to investors, to prospective employees, or partners, it's important to talk about what might happen, not what you are doing today.

There's a whole style to this type of pitch, and it's a futuristic point of view that leans into optimism:

- Emphasize the future, not the past
- What it could be not what it is
- Play up even small bits of proof points
- The big things that might happen, if it works
- The upside rather than risks
- Signs the customers love the product, rather than revenue metrics
- Why this team has the grit and special knowledge to do it, not the credentials and work experience
- A unique narrative about why the world is moving this way
- Why you're starting with a wedge, but your ultimate market is huge

In a previous discussion, I recounted that a few years back, a big group of Nordic founders came by Silicon Valley. When I asked them their biggest learning on the trip so far, they said: We have to learn how to pitch our startup in the “American” way, oriented towards the future and the possibility of success. Unfortunately they told me the investors back home didn’t care for this style. Instead, they are focused on reducing risk, and that starts with asking startups what revenue they have right now, even though the companies were brand new.

The funny thing about this is that this isn't the "American" way of pitching, it's actually specific to the Bay Area tech ecosystem. It's incredibly optimistic and futuristic that founders choose to describe their startups in this way, and furthermore, the people who hear these pitches choose to believe them.

I find this tone admirable, but let me also make the argument that this is the only logical way to convince people to join you on your journey.

First, let's talk about startup investors. a portfolio of startup investments is inherently risky, and the physics of venture math means that the winners have to be really big. It's commonly said that out of a portfolio of ten companies, generally about half the investments will go to zero, three will return a little bit of money, and that the top one or two will return 10x plus and make the fund work. As a result, professional venture investors are trying to understand if you have what it takes to be one of those top two, and if you don't if you'll die trying. A lot of this assessment focused on the market or your numbers, but sometimes the real question is about your ambition.

So they are trying to answer a simple question: Do you WANT to create one of the leading companies in the industry?

Focusing on the future and on the upside shows your will to power. It allows investors to gain a sense of that signal. If you're focused too early on profitability, rather than growth, or retaining your piece of the pie, as opposed to growing the pie as large as possible, that's an important signal. The point of this isn't to mislead investors into thinking that you're trying to do something that you're not, but rather, if you are shooting for something big, you have to really express that in the clearest way possible.

The perspective is often directly reflected (and not) in the slide decks I review at a16z. Does the product slide describe the features of what the app has today, or does it talk about the product roadmap of what's going to be built in the future? Do they user projections or financial forecasts simply show the last year's performance, or does it tell a story about how the business is about to inflect? Oftentimes when founders are too conservative about their story it's hard for investors to understand what they're trying to do in the long run. Instead, I love it when founders tell the big story. Of course I'm going to discount it and round down, and assume that many features are never shipped. But I love to see it.

Second, let's talk about employees. typically when you're hiring your first few employees, you might be able to give out a few percentage points each, particularly for key people (like engineers or designers). but within a few hires, you end up needing to convince people to work for below pay, and for a fraction of a percent of the company. Why would they do this? Why would they work for you instead of either starting their own company or getting a cushy gig somewhere else where they might be paid much more?

The asymmetric advantage of startups compared to many other opportunities, is that they are adventurous and fun. The startup might fail, but the work is generally a lot more interesting than what you can do elsewhere. The responsibility and scope that a junior employee might have might go way beyond what makes sense at any other company.

And of course financially there is upside. For founders to convince high-quality employees to join their outfit, it's often important to lean into a sense of adventure. What's more adventurous than tackling a big huge goal, that might not work, but if it works, it's going to be amazing? For founders to communicate the sense of adventure, they need to be able to weave a narrative. Maybe it's us versus them, or David and Goliath. Perhaps it's exploring the unknown, and going to the frontier when no one else is there. If you can't tell the stories, how can you expect people to follow you? Thus I find it important to tell the futuristic narrative that's ambitious, full of surprises and upside, and has a possibility of failure too. It makes the work meaningful and makes the potential economic upside worth something.

We've talked about investors and employees, but there's actually a long tail of many other constituents that benefit from a futuristic outlook. if you're talking to journalists and pundits, you have to compete with thousands of other companies that they're going to meet this year, and you have to catch their attention. If you're marketing, an event at a conference adjacent to dozens of other events, you have to catch the eye of attendees. An optimistic, futuristic perspective gives you room to tell the story about the problem you're trying to solve, and why your startup will be incredibly important once you get there.

You might say that the world is full of cynics. Perhaps you are from a region or an industry where most people nitpick all the reasons why fail. Maybe they want you to focus on minimizing downside risks, or acknowledging your potential problems, and won't treat you as credible unless you do. If that's your industry network or your social network, I urge to you to escape. Seek out those who share your optimism, and the same values and beliefs about the future. it's one of the reasons why the Bay Area has been such a powerhouse over the last few decades. Yes, there's knowledge and investors here, but more important is the culture.

The last point I make is about yourself. You should talk about what you're working on in an optimistic way to help create meaning for yourself. For those of us who grew up in a generation that adored Steve Jobs, there's always been the goal to put a dent in the universe rather than to sell sugar water. Thinking about the future, and the upside of what you might be able to create, is a great way to give meaning to the nights and blood and tears that we put into our work. If you're simply working on a new product only because it's a good money-making opportunity, I guarantee that your sense of meaning will fade when times get tough. You'll ask yourself, why am I doing this? If you don't have a Northstar to guide you on an inevitably rocky, entrepreneurial journey, you'll inevitably get lost. That's when the FAANG job will seem really appealing.

This is all about the pitch. Of course it's important to simultaneously hold in your mind all the truths about what you're working on. Maybe you don't actually have product market fit yet, or your marketing strategy. Perhaps your unit economics don't yet work, or your team has major gaps. If you're working on a new startup, likely, everything feels constantly broken, and everyone's maybe going to quit.

You have to go and tackle all of those challenges with a clear mind -- while simultaneously keeping a futuristic spirit that motivated people to join you on your journey.

[Hiten Shah @hnshah]

The product itself should be your best marketing tactic.

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

It’s important to unlearn the taboo around talking about failures. It simply takes away its power and helps provide much more structure and perspective with the experience.

Still an art only few have mastered..

[Nick Huber @sweatystartup]

You must avoid analysis paralysis at all costs.

You have to realize that many decisions in both life and business are simply educated guesses.

You don't have all of the info, you can't get all of the info, and you will never have all of the info needed to make the "right" call every time.

I've seen very intelligent folks who can't make a decision to save their lives because they wait and wait and wait until they have what they think is "all" of the information needed to make a decision.

They are used to turning a few pages back in their textbook and looking up the answer.

Life doesn't work like that!

You're forced to make gut decisions with incomplete information all of the time.

Embrace it and don't over-think it.

Move fast.

Nothing kills an organization like a leader who makes slow decisions.

[Leila Hormozi @LeilaHormozi]

Growth requires sacrifice.

We give up what we like to pursue what we love.

[Alex Hormozi @AlexHormozi]

People who can stick to plans are much rarer than people who can make them.

[Alexis Ohanian 🗽 @alexisohanian]

Startups thrive by solving real problems for real people. Before you scale, before you market, make sure you're indispensable to your initial users — retention rates, revenue growth, churn, organic growth, etc. are just a few of the ways to understand how indispensable you are.

[Alexis Ohanian 🗽 @alexisohanian]

In the world of startups, speed is your ally and hesitation your enemy. The real secret is not just in starting, but in moving quickly, learning, and adapting faster than others. The race doesn't always go to the swift, but to those who keep running.

[Kishore Ganji @ganjikk]

Momentum without direction are just accidents

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

Block out 1 hour a day.

Work on 1 meaningful project.

Aim for 1 vision for your future.

Take it 1 day at a time.

You don't need more time, you need more focus.