Alka Gupta

🔥 Attention: Visionaries & Builders in MENAP region 🔥 🚀 This call is for all Aspiring VCs and Angel Investors in the MENAP region! Are you ready to level up your Venture Game? Join us for this value packed, invite only, 2-part Masterclass - Venture Investing for Angels - where we’ll dive deep into the essential principles of venture investing. Gain insights that can save time, money, and risk as you navigate this exciting space! Masterclass Details: 📅 Dates: December 13th & 14th @ 4pm (KSA/Egypt), 5pm (UAE), 6pm (Pak) & 9pm (SG time) 📍 Platform: Zoom 🎙 Host: Angel School 🤝 Partner: YouPitchLive Register Now ➡ https://lnkd.in/gsR38CB7 Jed N. who is the founder of Angel School is a self-taught angel investor with 2x unicorns in his portfolio and millions invested, He’ll share his top strategies: 1️⃣ First Principles of Angel Investing 2️⃣ Venture Math Essentials – Fundraising, Dilution & Valuations 3️⃣ Startup Evaluation Frameworks – Making confident, data-driven decisions Don’t miss out on building your strong foundation in venture investing. See you there! Register Here ✅️ https://lnkd.in/gsR38CB7 #startups #angelinvestors #venturecapital #vc #angels

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Some things that could be done in Singapore: 1. Curated dinners with startups and VC Folks 2 Singapore Tech and Startups Week - Host various side events 3. Walk and Talks 4. Conferences, 1 Day events 5. A space for builders to co work out of or a hacker house here on the weekends Who’s building or trying in any of these areas? Feel free to DM me if you are building in any of the above areas Or comment on this post

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Four stages of startups founder growth according to someone I read recently: First time founder cares about product. Second time founder cares about distribution (marketing). Third time founder cares about retention. Fourth time founder cares about finding a big enough market. My favorite market in the adtech/martech industry is cashback. It’s huge! Probably because it just goes so well with e-commerce - whatever you buy, it’s better with cashback. Anyway, recently we closed a deal with Qoala. The guys are about all things smart shopping and I love it https://lnkd.in/ekGpzp6x

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Calling all #mentors and wannabe mentors! Join me for a chat that won’t be fireside because I don’t have a fireplace! 🤪 🌟 Ready to dive into the exciting world of mentoring early-stage startups? Join us for a session where we’ll explore the ins and outs of making a real impact as a mentor. Whether you're already a startup mentor or just considering it, you'll gain invaluable insights and practical tips to elevate your mentoring game. 🗣️ We’ll discuss the best ways to connect with startup teams, share success stories, and even tackle some of the challenges mentors face. This is your chance to learn from seasoned SBC mentors, discover new strategies, and contribute your own experiences. 🤝 Online or in person, we've got you covered: ⭐️In-person Session with Trevor Townsend , CEO Startupbootcamp Australia on Thursday 30th of May 4:00 - 6:00 PM AEST ⭐️Online Session with me! Jacqui Bloom Growth & Investment Director Startupbootcamp Australia on Wednesday, 22nd of May 4:00 - 5:00 PM AEST 🎟️Secure your spot here: https://lnkd.in/gKCTeVcM

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How my VC background has helped me build Aquaria in 3 powerful ways: 1) Manage capital better — Raising capital is just the start, then we have to execute in the right direction. I understand which parts of our business we need to de-risk at each stage, and what milestones we are working towards. 2) Manage human capital — getting other people excited to work with us is a long-term strategy for Aquaria. Fast and nimble teams that are 120% dedicated moves mountains. 3) Prioritize — it's clear to me what order I need to prioritize things like marketing, sales, R&D, etc. My own ability to create massive output in the beginning is crucial to success. Most would say my background is unique. And they’d be right. Aquaria’s mission is unique. And appropriate leadership is needed to make it a reality. — If you’re a DeepTech investor looking to support a company working on one of the most overlooked climate issues (water), send me a DM on LinkedIn. Happy to have a chat.

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#TechCrunch2024 Day 1 Recap! It was everything I hoped. Started the morning strong with a track session. ↳ Then headed straight to the TechCrunch event. And it did not disappoint. Highlights included: 1) Insights on scaling startups with world-class leadership by Clayton Bryan. 2) And maximising investor relations with Brent Murri. 3) Watched M C Spano own the stage on the Startup Pitch Battlefield. Also had the pleasure of having lunch with the amazing Semra Ezedin; ↳ Great convo; even better company. → Attended FOUR post-event networking parties. → Booked meetings with 3x people. → Got in a driverless car to get to an event. (yes they exist, and it was like something out of a sci-fi movie!) I'm so ready for Day 2. #TechCrunch2024 #StartupLife #Networking

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This is so important to call out Chang (CK) Kim. It’s such a rat race in the Valley. When you surround yourself with people working in corporate big tech who are paid big salaries and stock, you can feel so small and broke as a startup founder trying to build something. You envy them for them for their stability and income, but they envy you because you’re pursuing your dreams. You can often feel like a failure because you can’t provide the same things for yourself or your family. At least in Silicon Valley there are many other founders around and people understand what you are doing. I remember when, in places like New York or Los Angeles, saying you’re a founder at a dinner party might as well be saying you have an infectious disease or are unemployable. I remember turning down invites to glamorous weddings in exotic destinations because I just couldn’t afford it on my startup budget. It wasn’t until I started surrounding myself with other founders who could relate to my experience that I was able to be in a better mental space and stop questioning my self-worth. Of course you will still compare yourself to your founder peers when they raise a new round or have an exit, but you’re rooting for them at the same time, because you hope that will be you someday. There’s a fellowship among struggling founders, because they’re the only ones who understand the rollercoaster of emotions you go through every single day. You can literally be happy one moment because you closed a huge deal and terrified the next because a key employee hands you their resignation letter. This is the biggest reason I started the Asian American Founder Circle, because we as founders had a whole separate load of baggage we had in common. Find your people, you’ll be better off when you realize you’re not alone.

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UPDATE: For anybody who hasn't received the link: https://bit.ly/3XF773C Raising funding? Here’s an alternative.  +200 Non-VC Funding Sources for SaaS Founders With a list of:   🔹 Accelerators 🔹 Incubators 🔹 Crowd Funding  🔹 Angel Investor Groups Here’s a sneak peek: 🇺🇸 Lair East Labs: 10-week accelerator program for US startups accessing Asian markets, with access to Silicon Valley founders, mentors, and investor networks experienced in Asian markets. $50k investment accelerating 10-12 startups yearly. 🇺🇸 Halo Incubator: Incubator program for early-stage female entrepreneurs, offering mentorship and education on business plans, strategies, and raising capital. 🇺🇸 MassChallenge: Non-profit accelerator program for high-impact, early-stage startups. Accelerated 2.3k startups, 136k jobs created, $2.7b total revenue, and over $5b raised to date. 🇭🇰 Brinc: Global venture accelerator program for tech-focused startups, offering support, mentorship, and investments. 🇧🇷 Wow Aceleradora: Brazil’s largest startup accelerator with over 153 startups, 380 investors, R$53M invested, and 13 exits. 🇳🇱 Rockstart: Early-stage accelerator-VC for agrifood, energy, and emerging tech startups, providing access to capital, market, and expertise through mentors, partners, corporates, and the wider Rockstart network with over 350 startups and €1.3bn value. 🇺🇸 Start Engine: US leading equity crowdfunding platform, hosting over 1.1k successful funding rounds with a community of 1M strong. 🇺🇸 Atlanta Technology Angels: Non-profit angel investor association investing in early-stage tech startups in Georgia and the Southeast. 🔍 Discover the perfect funding match: 🔹 Filter sources by type and location. 🔹Transparent fees and pricing on crowdfunding platforms. 🔹 Gain insights on offerings, including funding, mentorship, legal support, office space, and demo day opportunities. And even direct contact information! Interested? Comment 'FUNDING,' and I'll send you the full list (more countries covered!) Credit: Dan Martell Want to reach out to these investors with a clear, solid pitch? Let's talk! Book a call here. #Startups #Investing #Fundraising #Entrepreneur #Business

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*Update on Version One Ventures thesis* We back mission-driven founders who are early in new areas. --- We review our investment thesis every few years so that we are 100% aligned on the North Star that guides and keeps us centred amidst all the noise in early-stage VC. Our current investment thesis, “backing mission-driven founders at the earliest stages,” was introduced back in 2020. It perfectly encapsulates our focus on backing a certain type of deeply passionate entrepreneur… and backing them at such an early stage when few people might believe in them. Pre-seed, seed, first check, inception… that’s where we believe we can provide the most value. But the other element of how we look at early-stage investing are the rare opportunities where a founder is creating a brand new category. These opportunities are fringy and emerging (some might call them crazy, weird, whacky or wild). There’s nothing obvious or inevitable about it. They’re building something the market hasn’t yet imagined and doesn’t fit neatly into an existing market category. But if they’re right, then the fringe picks up momentum and ultimately becomes a wave. When you’re early into a large wave, there’s so much more design space for a startup and founding team. There are no natural competitors, at least early on, and you’ve got a chance to define and lead the category. One of the easiest ways to assess market maturity is if there’s a branded category with widely accepted terminology. When AirBnB was first starting out, there was no “sharing economy.” Once a category is branded and VCs are lining up, it’s usually too late for an early-stage firm like V1 to invest. Going forward, we’re evolving our thesis to be even more explicit about the why now and why not: We back mission-driven founders who are early in new areas.

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How do you step away from your own creation, or muster the courage to pivot or even start something new? This is a universal dilemma across industries and life paths, but I want to focus on startup founders today. A few weeks ago, I shared my thoughts on Japan’s small-scale IPO trend (you can read this on my featured tab from my LinkedIn profile). While many factors contribute—VCs seeking IPO track records in a complex market, or the relatively lax listing standards of the Tokyo Stock Exchange...I believe there’s an underlying reluctance among founders to pivot their company’s direction. To be clear, this hesitation is entirely understandable. Founders pour their emotional, financial, and physical energy into their ventures, betting everything on their vision. However, this passion can sometimes evolve into tunnel vision, making it difficult to recognize when it’s time to stop, pivot, or redirect. This isn’t just a challenge for founders. As VCs, we also share responsibility for helping founders avoid these traps. One potential solution might be grounding decisions in data. Let’s take SaaS companies in Japan as an example: 1. Money Forward, Inc.: Offers personal financial management services and SaaS accounting softwares. It was the first SaaS company in Japan to IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2017. It currently generates ¥18 billion (≈$120M) in ARR with a valuation of ¥2,800 billion (≈$18.7B). 2. freee.k.k.: Offers cloud-based accounting software provider targeting SMBs. It generates ¥28 billion (≈$186M) in ARR and has a valuation of ¥2,000 billion (≈$13.3B). Both companies manage around 20 products. Simplifying the math, their ARR per product lands in the range of ¥0.9–¥1.4 billion (≈$6–10M). For SaaS founders, this could serve as a practical benchmark for understanding the growth ceiling of a single product before considering a multi-product strategy. Of course, global aspirations will shift these numbers significantly, but leveraging public data like this can help founders make informed decisions about when to expand, pivot, or even wind down a product. It’s easy to become ensnared in the emotional and operational complexities of startups. But I believe that with the right frameworks and open dialogue between founders and investors, we can set realistic yet visionary goals. This way, founders can decide not just how to start, but also when to stop. #VentureCapital #Startups #Japan #EastAsia #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Goals

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Early in my journey with Quuu.co, we had a bold vision of changing the way people share content on social media. But like all great ventures, we hit a wall. We needed to figure out our product-market fit, and it wasn't pretty. In the beginning, we thought we knew our audience. We thought we understood their needs. But the data told a different story. Customers weren’t engaging as we had hoped. Instead of throwing our hands up in frustration, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We started talking to our users, conducting interviews to dig deeper into their pain points and needs. It wasn’t easy to hear that our assumptions were off, but we embraced the feedback. We refined our offerings based on what we learned and, just like that, the engagement began to soar. What did that teach us? Product-market fit isn't just a number or a metric; it's about truly understanding and connecting with your customers. It requires relentless conversations and a willingness to adapt. The truth is, you can’t please everyone, and trying to is a surefire way to fail. So here’s my advice: don’t shy away from hearing the tough stuff. Embrace the feedback, iterate, and pivot if necessary. Stay clear on your vision, but be flexible on how you get there. It could be the difference between fading into obscurity and creating something monumental.

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A No Fluff Business Podcast My first in person podcast in Singapore W/ Sina Meraji of Learning Loop - Sina shares advice and insights on many different topics DM me to get early access to 1-2 clips from this episode w/ Sina CC: buildspace Ask: For context: I am participating in BuildSpace and looking for feedback on what I have created with Business Podcast by Roohi thus far: Here are the questions below- feel free to answer whichever ones you are comfortable with 1.what’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced when trying to learn about startups and venture capital? 2. how do you currently find reliable information about the startup world? 3. what do you wish existed to help you better understand the startup and vc space? Feel free to DM me or reply to this post with your answers

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How's the busy summer season in the startup world like? Screening 400+ early stage deals with NUVC.ai, doing 10+ VC funds' DD for Asian Investor Club. All thanks to AI and all my friends, and finally after 3 months of hardworking, meeting investors and founders, I would love to share one new addition to of the 2024 vintage of my alternative investment portfolio: 🪽 Exciting news – I’ve just invested in Pretty Privilege and joined their Advisory Board! Empowering younger generations through community building is one of my core investment thesis: #Impactinvesting Pretty Privilege is revolutionizing the concept of “Pretty Privilege” by bringing exclusive influencer perks to an entire generation of young women. With over 21,000+ Gen Z and millennial members, the fastest-growing lifestyle club in Australia is partnering with 70+ top brands in beauty, fashion, wellness, and lifestyle to offer exclusive giveaways, events, and premium discounts. The business is already seeing explosive growth, with 10,000,000+ organic social media views in the past 90 days and a strong, engaged community. With an A+ team and a proven model, Pretty Privilege is poised to become Australia’s next unicorn. And don‘t forget the recent ESIC early stage innovative company accreditation by the ATO providing tax benefits to investors. Thanks so much to the founders and can't wait for this next phase of growth. Watch this space! 🚀 Message me if you want to know more. www.prettyprivilege.club https://lnkd.in/g7ardbNV #angelinvesting #angels #earlystage #startup #melbourne #femaleinvestor #girlpower

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The fastest way to profitability is doing things that others continually overlook.

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🙌 Welcome back to Startup Wednesdays, featuring #VC, #founder & #operators here in SEA. For this week, we have Jecky Pelaez, AVP at Kickstart Ventures 💭 What inspired you to transition from law to VC? My grandparents owned one of the largest shoe manufacturing/retail brands in the 🇵🇭 in the 1930’s & survived for ~60 years until it closed due to various management, labor & macroeconomic factors. I was quite young then but as I grew older I wonder how this could have been prevented. This curiosity & desire to figure out problems led me to law, gaining broad exposure to addressing problems such as commercial, labor or tax. After working with clients, I became more interested in how their businesses were being run & managed. Wanting to transition to the business side, I took up an MBA & went into VC. 💭 How did your degree in law help in your role in VC? Due to my legal background, I tend to have a “worst case scenario” mentality, which leads me to take an evidence-based approach when reviewing companies for investment. I think lawyering & exposure to the myriad ways in which people can cause legal problems sharpens your BS meter & gut sense in assessing people & founders. On the practical side of my legal background gave me the experience & discipline in doing due diligence through years of poring over data rooms full of commercial, corporate & financial documents. When negotiating complex deals, corporate structuring has also been another useful skill set. Finally, our portfolio companies are able to reach out to me as a resource person whenever they have legal or structuring issues. 💭 What is the biggest challenge that startups face in Phi? Understanding cap table mechanics & valuation. At times we’ll meet startups in the pre-seed/seed stage & founders are super diluted or the startup had taken many convertible notes with unfavorable terms that it makes it unattractive for new investors. For companies that have received funding, fiscal discipline vs growth strategy execution is a tough balancing act. The idea of getting funding is to scale or try out new revenue streams/markets or expand the team, but having that extra discipline on spending capital wisely or reallocation of resources to stretch runway gives you that extra buffer against external upheavals. 💭 What advice do you have for someone looking to break into VC? Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a traditional finance background; VC is more than just running numbers & returns. Although understanding & knowing how to run the numbers is important, having operational experience or a unique perspective from previous work enriches & adds diversity to discussions. Having an openness & genuine curiosity to learn about founders, startups & the space in general will allow you to grow exponentially. Finally, understanding the role of investors to support startups will have an enormous effect on how you view your job & deal with founders & co-investors.

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Feeling fortunate to catch Gokul Rajaram at 500 Global today sharing his insights 🔥 with the accelerator batch. Some of his opinionated insights that stuck out to me: - Don’t cut sales and marketing. Once you’ve lost your growth, it’s very hard to reignite it. - Founders should sell their first 5-10 customers themselves. Don’t outsource it.  - Engineers should focus on speed not scale. It’s ok to build monoliths and replace them later.   - Raising Series A is not just about revenue, it’s about the perception you’re the leader in the space. 

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I often get DM's and comments from founders that something I shared has been super useful to them and helped them wrap their head around some gnarly problem they were grappling with. Something as simple as how I validated an idea initially, what to ignore when you are too early, how we hired at zoko etc. If you were starting your company today or working on an early stage one, what would you like me to talk about?  Drop it in the comments. I'll either reply in comments or write more in-depth posts over the coming weeks, considering your input. Your input will help shape what I share, so don't hesitate to ask about any aspect of starting a company you're curious about.

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File this under "impossible startup product decisions". Stat Legend Super Customer 1 wants to be able to gift cards to other families and friends. So we would need to build a gifting program. Estimated build time 4 weeks. There are many other use cases for this gift card solution. Stat Legend Super Customer 2 wants to be able to make team packs and cards. Our team at Stat Legend deeply understands this workflow because we have manually done this process for 5+ teams. Estimated build time is 8 weeks or more. There are many teams wanting to build team packs and cards. Which one do you build? Why?

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Founders: Can I interest you in lunch on us? Yes, we’re back with another ecosystem initiative from Tin Men Capital Namely: TINFLUN (There is no free lunch until now) It’ll be held in a unique format: 🔸5-6 VC funds across investment stages will be in attendance. 🔸Fundraising founders get to seat with a GP/VC investing in their stage/sector. 🔸Only 6-8 founders per table. 🔸Conversations will be had, deals could be made. The best of all? Lunch is free for founders! All thanks to our amazing sponsors. For those fundraising from Seed to Growth (Series A/B) stage, It’s a nice opportunity to meet VCs in a casual setting. Especially in the current fundraising climate where interest is tougher to find. As with any of our events typically (and even more so for this), This event on the 30th of August will likely be oversubscribed very quickly. 🥲 Bring an empty stomach and your fundraising-hat. Murli Ravi , myself and our other participating VCs Hsu Ken Ooi , Arshad Chowdhury , Tanuja Rajah , Karan Mohla look very much forward to see you there. P.S. Will leave the link in the comments - more info there. Credits to John T. for the funky name.

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