Yash Bhati

Fintech and Product Management Currently MBA @KelloggSchool | Prev Founding Team @gokwik

[can @rosbergcore]

being f1 world champion used to mean you were the best driver in the world

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@anmolm_ When has he ever let facts get in the way of a good narrative

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@_subiii_ Bschool classes are even more unserious when it comes to math

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@anmolm_ The $74mn rev with a 10%+ ebitda number was honestly surprising

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@Achillesdespair Sleep is for the weak (also for those with healthy lifestyle choices)

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@monali_dambre Axio and Fold are both pretty good if you don't spend in cash

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@anmolm_ Bessemer?

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@anmolm_ Any idea how this works? They are not buying the individual funds/portcos but just the brand, if so how would you even value a VC brand, and where does the management fee/carry from old funds flow?

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@sajithpai @udayan10 @_kaushalshah Not sure how breeze does it but we at GoKwik don't show both of them together

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@CorpKarmchari I googled for both. This just looks like a company trying to wipe it's hands off a politically hot brand

The charge against PnG is that they run a R&D centre Tel Aviv. They did shut down the plant near the Ariel settlement which was a good move since settlements are illegal

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@anmolm_ @MorningContext @Kanwal_fireside Interesting point on ealry revenue growth and PMF becoming decoupled v/s a few years back

https://t.co/HquNQACY7a

[Sajith Pai @sajithpai]

Long post alert.

(Net) Revenue alone is not enough to estimate product strength of a consumer brand

When we first started looking at consumer brands in Blume in early ’22, thanks to @apurvavc who joined us to drive our focus on consumer brands / d2c, we used annualised revenues upwards of $500k / ₹3.5crs (25-30L+ monthly net revenue) as a criteria for diving deeper into a pitch. We saw revenues of 25L+ and CM2 +ve as some signals of early PMF and product strength / customer validation. We told brands that were lower than this number, to hit us up when they neared or reached this benchmark. Was it perfect? Oh no, but did it help us filter startups that were more appropriate for our stage? You bet.

That sieve for startup pitches soon turned out to be less finer than we thought. We started seeing more and more startups that were pitching us, at 50L+ monthly revenue and soon 100L+ monthly revenue. One reason was that Marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart (and Myntra for apparel) were driving considerable revenue for consumer brands, far more than their own website did.

We then said we would now use $1m / ₹8crs annualised revenues as a criteria, and started using the sieve of ₹1cr / month as a revenue benchmark for early signs of PMF and product strength. Now even that sieve has proved ineffective, as startups riding on Quick Commerce’s growth and benefiting from access to Blinkit, Instamart, are coming to us with monthly revenues of ₹1.5-2crs+. Quite a few of these are not CM2 +ve as well.

What does increased revenue led by marketplaces / QCommerce indicate?
One challege is that I dont know if the increased revenue is an indicator of the product’s intrinsic strength, or early access to Quick Commerce / preferential access to Marketplaces. Is the revenue led more by distribution than PMF-led growth? Especially when the platform is not intrinsically native to your product genre - for instance, for a food brand, Blinkit is more native than an Amazon. For an electronics brand, Amazon may be more native than a Blinkit. So when I see an electronics brand where Blinkit is 50% of revenues, I worry. Clearly Blinkit is trying to drive up AOVs and is using the electronics brand to support this strategy. Tomorrow it may move to another category and drop it suddenly.

There is a parallel to this in Zynga and how it rode Facebook’s growth, until one day in 2012, Facebook decided to end the partnership. Now I dont necessarily see such a dramatic turn of play here, but at some point QCommerce and Marketplace platforms are going to a) suddenly change their strategy b) increase their commission to extract their pound of flesh c) use the data they have to build private labels etc.

3 signals that matter
So in this context of distribution access driving revenue growth, what signals matter to determine product strength and PMF? One could be own website revenue and offline growth, and seeing if that is increasing. That is insurance against any potential rugpull from the Marketplaces or QCommerce platforms. Second would be repeats, and seeing this manifest in CACs holding somewhat steady as a percentage of revenue (as the rising CAC for new users is balanced out by higher repeats and LTVs of the older cohorts). Finally margins, and if you are able to see sustained CM2 growth and are able to hold margins.

TLDR: Revenue alone isn’t enough to determine product strength and PMF. Yes, growing revenue is an important signal but it needs to seen along with own site revenue, repeats, stable or declining CACs and margins to arrive at a complete picture.

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@CorpKarmchari unironically a good idea for a feature, would have to see if it actually drove conversions

[Kaashvi Saxena @kaashvisaxena]

My neighbour is hospitalised after delivering twin babies recently and is in ICU due to multiple organ failure. She will have procedures that need blood units everyday.

If you can donate pls help out!
A+ or any other blood group as replacement.

Patient is Krishnaveni at SICU, Apollo Hospital, Bannerghatta
Attendant Suresh [phone]

RT please🙏

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@stonksqween Most EU/UK degrees don't have good ROI. People do get jobs but it's harder because of language + difficult economy post-COVID. No prior work ex makes it even harder. Know people who did MiM/similar degrees and had to come back and realise those degrees aren't valued well here

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@avgspacelover Also the slovakian PM is not dead, he was shot by some leftist poet. And it's super reasonable that Biden calls an emergency meet if heads of government are dead, it's literally his job

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@avgspacelover like I said, conspiracy brained anons are not serious people. There's no indication at all of any US/Israeli interference (unless you count the sanctions which prevented this model from being maintained). US FP has been fellating Iran for a few years and this is bad for them

[Yash Bhati @yashbhatii]

@stonksqween Old picture but still pretty much the same