Vijay A M

Voicing out my likes and dislikes. Usually economics, business, politics, tech, cricket....in that order

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@Rahul_J_Mathur Do you do endurance sports? That RHR and V02 are what most ameteur runners/cyclists have.

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@MuraliSrinivasa More power to you. Jai Hind

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

Nishant from Avataar did the same thing for us at Capillary. When he came on the Board, he cut down the meeting to 1.5 hrs from earlier almost a full day exercise. This increased efficiency of our BMs

[Gokul Rajaram @gokulr]

GREAT BOARD MEETINGS VS NOT

Took a walk with a repeat founder / exec today.

Their first board had a legendary VC. "He ruthlessly edited the meeting to focus the entire meeting on one topic -- the ONE topic you wanted to avoid discussing but yet was critical to shine light on. It was traumatic and great at the same time. The board meeting was a key reason for the success of the company."

They currently are on a board of a PE owned company. "The board meeting is 3 days long each quarter. 80% of the management team's bandwidth throughout the quarter is spent preparing for the board meeting. The deck is 120 slides long, with the sales pipeline itself taking 10 slides. The board meeting is a key reason the company is not succeeding."

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

Gigaom was the OG of Tech newsletters.

[Dev Khare @dkhare]

Sad to hear about Om Malik’s passing. One of the original voices in the early days of the Web and ever since, he had a way of naming the zeitgeist and staring it straight in the face. With GigaOm and at True, he practiced his craft at genius level. Got to know him here in the Bay Area as well as on his visits back to Delhi. May his soul rest in peace. 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
@om

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@ManeeManjunath La Damai, Chikmagluru. Recently opened. Great for kids. Had been there recently

[Vijayaraghavan Venugopal @veira_veira]

Samuel Moutoussamy - The Muthuswamy in this Congo player made me inquisitive! How global can football be!

"His mother is Congolese and his father is Indo-Guadeloupean of Tamil origin; his surname comes from his father. The Indo-Guadeloupean community descends from indentured labourers brought from South India to the Caribbean during the second half of the 19th century. The name Moutoussamy is of Tamil origin, from muthu ('pearl') and sami ('lord' or 'god')"

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@aviralbhat For most of the countries good Medical and Schooling is taken care of. That isn't the case with India.

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

Most other countries have a similar taxation on stock options. Globally, tax is on "income" and esops earned are treated as "salary income". Indian should change this - (i) Tax ESOPs as "capital gains" & (ii) tax it on sale than exercise. Similar to founder stake; why make a diff

[Chinmay A. Singh @chinmay]

How babus harm Indian Engineers:
I ran a US based startup. My engineering team was in India. Not in Bangalore or Delhi, but scattered across small towns and villages around UP/Bihar/Assam.
They were some of the best engineers I have worked with anywhere. The only thing they lacked was the ability to speak English like someone who went to a Delhi private school. That one accident of birth kept them off the rosters of every shiny startup.
I turned that into an advantage. I go find them. And I pay them exactly what an English-speaking engineer in Bangalore would get, without making them move. Same code, same salary. English fluency was never the skill I was hiring for.
Now I wanted to give them what my US team members had: ownership. A real piece of what they were building. For a young dude from a village in Gonda or Chapra, that can be generational, life-changing money when we exit.
But I could’t.
The moment an Indian employee exercise their options (convert them to shares), without selling anything they get taxed on the paper gain as salary (I have heard it could be as high as 42%). For a private company, no buyer, no liquidity, no cash. But they get slapped with a tax bill, sometimes larger than their salary, on money they haven't earned.
So, if I gave them equity, the choice I wd have forced on those engineers was: pay lakhs out of pocket for shares they can't sell, or give up the equity.
In the US employees pay nothing until they sell, and if they hold long enough, they may pay almost nothing at all (federal).
I have heard that in India , there is a "deferral" now. But if my info is correct, it covers ~2% of startups. Like most other startups, mine wont qualify.
The fix is one line: tax the shares when they are sold, not when they are bought. Every developed country does it. India could do it tomorrow but it does not.
Why?
Due to babus (not Nirmala S).

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@niketrajdwivedi Which club is this

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@ayushmitt Tax laws are always lopsided towards the powerful capitalists. ESOPs are treated as income! Even the exemptions recently given under start up India is a mere window dressing. Time to make ESOPs taxable purely on liquidation.

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@ShekharGupta The most important thing is that she's just 19. We don't often see Indian athletes at world stage at this age. This gives her sufficient time to take her to greater heights (literally!). More power to her

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@puneetiitm I met a top tier investor in SF last week who burnt his hands in India gaming industry. He said he stopped all his further India investments. Says regulatory uncertainty is too much to digest.

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@sajithpai Rs 10 in HSR. The intri person did not hike after moving from charcoal to gas. Maybe due to my loyalty points.

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@tomaspueyo Why isn't this region rich with oil? As the lab masses crushed should it not have trapped a lot of sea life in between them?

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@sufirunner No Bangalore?

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@ips_patil @KarnatakaCops @BlrCityPolice Congratulations Sir

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@KaeCapital Building Enso. Revenue platform for Usage/Outcome-based billing. https://t.co/kRpMPe7Rqw

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@kmr_dilip We are a foundation that works on grassroots sports. Would love to connect and know more.

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@nikunj @infoxiao Well said. I say the same thing about Bangalore.

As a first timer what should I do to make myself stay here? And not be someone who just comes once a year

[Vijay A M @iamalsovijay]

@kishorelive Would love to understand the economics of this Kishore. Given that you are bootstrapped, I'm sure it worked very well for you that you came back for more.