Sweta

GP @white_ventures , Angel Investor, Data,Fintech and tech at DBS, IBM, Teradata, Wipro. Always window shopping for interesting ideas!

[Ayush Gupta @ayushGup7]

big life update!

did 5 years of quant and loved it. but i've been writing code since i was 13 and the itch to build something of my own was always louder.

now building at the intersection of ai x personal finance.

hiring founding team. dm me.

[Sweta @swetarau]

@vinayak_agg @sjs_day1 @_surgeahead Wow! Congratulations @vinayak_agg . 🚀
From a founder fresh out of college to $8M ARR, Keep growing!

[Shaivi @ShaiviRau]

Hiring sucks ... well it used to.

@UseLitmus is now live, backed by @ycombinator.

[Sweta @swetarau]

Hiring is the most important decision a founder makes.

[Shaivi @ShaiviRau]

We're joining @ycombinator this summer!

We built @UseLitmus because technical hiring is broken—slow, expensive, & low-signal.

Building a company is a privilege. Doing it with @elenaxzhao makes it really fun :)

Thanks @snowmaker @gustaf for betting on us early. See you in SF!

[Sweta @swetarau]

@dvbydt Congratulations @dvbydt Ashish 🎉

[Amrish Rau @amrishrau]

Today was an exciting and unbelievable day. We got an opportunity to host our Hon. Finance Minister @nsitharaman to explore & understand ideas in Fintech!
It was a full house and our FM was completely immersed in her interactions and Tech discussions!

[Sweta @swetarau]

So thrilled to have been an early partner in Sipay - @WhiteVentureCap Global fintech investment Congratulations Nezih and @sipaycomtr team!! Excited to see their continued growth @amrishrau @guptajiten

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Turkey’s Sipay raises $78M to expand its Stripe-like services into emerging markets https://t.co/Iei1dO9Vtn

[Sweta @swetarau]

Congratulations on launch @sneha8sivakumar & Anushka! Looks neat

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

✨@spur_dev (YC S24) is building an AI QA Engineer that helps users test their websites with natural language.

Congrats on the launch, @sneha8sivakumar and Anushka!

https://t.co/XxgT4lU9vv

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

✨@spur_dev (YC S24) is building an AI QA Engineer that helps users test their websites with natural language.

Congrats on the launch, @sneha8sivakumar and Anushka!

https://t.co/XxgT4lU9vv

[Amrish Rau @amrishrau]

Just got off a call with a friend who has been bit by the entrepreneurship bug. He had the usual question - Is this the right time to Startup? My thoughts back to him:

- India is in its golden years. Economy is doing well. GDP is growing at healthy pace, Per capita income is rising and more women in the workforce. You want to build in times when the economy doesn't weigh your business idea or market down.

- The safety net is all around you. Indian formal job market is strong. International companies and local business houses are investing in digital and if things don't work out, jobs are plenty!

- India focussed VCs are flush with funds and are still searching for that amazing founder with big dreams. So, for the early stage founders the winter isn't coming soon

- The golden 20-30 years for wealth generation is here. Jab Laxmi tilak lagane aati hai, tab ghar pe chup ke nahi rehna. China just went thru their 20 years of boom in enterprenuership. India's time is now.

- While there are great engineers out there, startups are built by entrepreneurs. If you have the domain expertise, business sense, you still have an unfair advantage over those who are new to the sector. Tech & engg will be added advantage

- There are at least 5 startup founders (with now more than 250Mn valuation) who I know, just needed to get their first USD 300K to resign and get started. They didn't have the best answer to the problem, they just needed someone to extend the hand of support to make the jump. Today the market is full of supporters.

- Don't forget the basics: be loans light, your family needs to back you and have friends who have your back. The support infra needs to be perfect before you startup.

Finally, Itna mat sooch. sooch gehri ho jaaye toh buland faisle kamzor ho jaate hai

[Rutvik Rau @RauRutvik]

6⃣ It would be a mistake for companies at this stage to divert resources away from product to optimize a novel RAG system. This is where VecFlow comes in! We study and implement the latest research in LLMs, so you don't have to. https://t.co/BhE5oea0ot

[Rutvik Rau @RauRutvik]

Attended an event on enterprise LLM-powered systems hosted by @arizeai @jason_lopatecki @aparnadhinak with talks from @ilanbigio @OpenAI, @pinecone, @jerryjliu0 @llama_index.

I wrote up my thoughts on RAG and Fine Tuning - https://t.co/lK4qy0m07Z

tl;dr from the event 🧵

[Amrish Rau @amrishrau]

Indian merchants are aspirational. They want this, plus that.

UPI QR spread quickly thru our country. Merchants wanted one device for UPI transaction confirmation and a separate POS to accept Cards. And both at super low prices

[Gokul Rajaram @gokulr]

Hiring an over-senior leader

Just met the founder of a series A company who is having challenges with their VP Sales. The Vp Sales is a super senior leader with great experiences. Unfortunately, the company only has 2 AEs and 2 SDRs., so the leader is a fish out of water.

The single biggest mistake I see founders make on the people front is hiring a leader who is 1-2 stages too senior. Typically this happens with functions that the founders are not intimately familiar with, so they rely on brand name experience / seniority to give them comfort that this person will take care of everything. So non-technical founders make this mistake when hiring a VP of Engineering or Product, while technical founders make this mistake when hiring a Vp of Sales or Marketing.

Hiring a VP level person to lead a team of 5-10 people is like using a bazooka to kill a mosquito. Massive impedance mismatch. As the founder recounted to me, “Post the sales kickoff, we have a bunch of action items, but my VP Sales is unable to execute on them without delegating to someone else.”

I believe in the maxim that you hire leaders for the next 18 months, not the next 5 years. So, founders should start by hiring front line managers, then think of promoting then to manage managers in a few quarters as the team grows.

Investors - when a founder asks you “can you provide me good references for a VP of X role?”, you owe it to them to challenge the premise of the question, that they need a VP at all in the first place.

Founders - hiring a VP or C-level person too early is almost certainly going to be very painful and lead to a lot of frustration (on both sides) and value destruction.

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

I think the number of founders and leaders, especially at late-stage startups quitting will only increase, making it harder for businesses to survive this funding winter.
This is because of liquidation preferences & the disconnect between valuations and business fundamentals 1/8

[Arjun Mahadevan (Mr. LLC 🇺🇸) @ArjunMahadevan]

For any elite athlete, the key to victory is creating the right routines.

Michael Phelps has a secret ritual that helped him become the mentally toughest swimmer in the world and win 23 gold medals 🥇

It's called "get the videotape ready":

[Capital @capitalxyz]

@gokulr We offer banking services to Delaware C Corps with founders who don’t have an SSN.

Founders can sign up today with an international passport: https://t.co/VjuludEcN8

[Pine Labs @PineLabs]

Catch @ravishnaresh, @thebitsian, and @_SambhavJain_ on the X.0 live stream as they feature in a discussion on building meaningful startups for growth.
Register for the X.0 Live Stream here: https://t.co/C6UDi8FcOg

#growth #tech #building #startups #DecodingDisruption #X0

[Simon Sinek @simonsinek]

Divesh is one of the most connected people I know. Charming and opinionated, he advises and invests the fortunes of the planet's wealthiest and most successful people.
So, I wanted to ask him what he’s learned along the way and what we can learn from him: https://t.co/AggN6CBv4D

[Bhavik Koladiya @BhavikKoladiya]

OTPs are painful, problematic and profit-draining for both businesses and customers. We are leveraging "WhatsApp Login" to solve this, without sending one-time-passwords at https://t.co/6tc3Wlf4HF