Andy R. S.

So many meaningful indicators in this post: On CI: "The process has become so streamlined that the rest of the team jokes about grabbing popcorn and waiting for the magic to happen." On Dev: "In just a few hours, we can turn an idea into an internal test track for our Product Owner’s feedback, creating a feedback loop faster than ever." On Updates: "I almost forgot what RN's Upgrade Helper looked like—it's like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. Expo makes upgrades smoother than a jazz saxophonist on a Sunday morning." This is such a helpful post for developers on "vanilla" React Native apps, looking at the direction that the platform's framework architecture is headed, and realizing how to migrate. Thanks 🚗 Steve Galili for sharing MyWheels experience. Promising outcomes to say the least!

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🎉 Excited to share as an indirect investor that DevRev, backed by Khosla Ventures, has officially become a unicorn. Dheeraj Pandey, CEO at DevRev, puts it perfectly: "At the end of the day, every developer is either building something new or fixing something related to the product. But inefficient systems and processes keep developers further from their consumers. We believe there's a better way to build, operate, support, and grow your business through code. That's why we've embarked on a journey to create the Developer Customer Relationship Manager (DevCRM) that we hope will help makers build the most customer-centric companies on earth." Here are some key points about DevRev: - Co-founded by Dheeraj Pandey (co-founder of Nutanix) and Manoj Agarwal (former SVP of Engineering at Nutanix). - Offers three modern CRM apps tailored for support, product, and growth teams. - Already making waves in Southeast Asia. If you're in the region and have questions, reach out to Jeffin Mathew. 💡 Fun fact: Nutanix was also backed by Khosla Ventures. Congratulations to the entire DevRev team on reaching this incredible milestone in under 4 years! I'm thrilled to be part of the journey as a Limited Partner in 2 | Twelve one of their seed investors.

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Startup decks vs Business plans. It's accepted that a startup needs a deck. Dax Dasilva of Lightspeed Commerce made an important point on 20VC. Writing a business plan - including financial projections - is an important step. It requires discipline. It provides a rigorous framework for thinking deeply about the problem you're trying to solve. Harry Stebbings countered that he doesn't even want to see a deck since it's all dreams. We spent a lot of time and energy on our business plan with the expectation that we would show it to no one ever. The business plan was part of our roadmap for the company. We researched customers - including having 50+ conversations. We wanted to understand them: their background, their interests, their presence on social media. We also wanted to understand how they were evaluated by leadership and how integrated they were with the business of the company they were protecting. We researched pricing both with potential customers and other products in our industry to find out if OpEx or CapEx was a better fit. How did they buy today? How would they like to buy? We did market research to understand the verticals and map the right entry point - we were wrong but that doesn't reduce the value of the research. We looked at competitors in depth to understand what they were seeing that we weren't. Dax is right. This is an invaluable document that should be updated every year - the company is changing, the market is changing, there's more feedback about price and ICP. It's not for sharing with the outside world. It's a map for driving forward. Decks won't get you investment - VCs invest in people. We make decks but we know they don't tell our story. The deck is a calling card. Dax and Harry are both right. https://lnkd.in/e25M82xY

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Join us for a conversation with Peggy Rayzis on building a "Developer Intent led" GTM motion! We explore the key drivers that led to the wild success of Apollo Graph QL... followed by an AMA Link to register in comments. Feel free to share any questions

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7 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HARDWARE STARTUPS It’s hard to understate the difficulty of the v1 launch of a consumer hardware company. I see a ton of new HW startups coming out. Here are some counterintuitive recommendations… 1) Target a small market for v1, not a large market. You need a small number of people to love your product and this will earn you the right to build a v2. You have to understand your v1 will not make you a successful company. Your v1 needs to prove that you deserve to exist in the first place. In the case of WHOOP, we started with pro athletes who were willing to put up with our v1’s short battery life and flaky Bluetooth connections because they so desperately needed Sleep and Recovery data. A broad consumer base would have rejected it. 2) Be great at no more than 1-3 things. If you try to be great at more than that, you will build a hardware that is mediocre at a wide range of things. You won’t think it’s going to be mediocre, but it will be. 3) You want a small launch. Not because you want small sales but because you want to have a steady ramp. It’s much better to do 100k of sales steadily over 12 months than in 2 months with a huge drop off. Keep in mind you need to manage your manufacturing partner and that there’s nothing better or more efficient than steady and predictable. 4) CAC is your enemy. Referrals are gold. The magic of referrals is that they signal high NPS and they help you grow steadily. Again everything that helps you have a steady HW manufacturing plan is good. Building a referral program for v1 launch is a good use of your time. 5) Be excellent at Software. Turns out being good at both Hardware and Software is a hard thing and something that your BIG COMPANY competitor is actually not great at (excluding Apple here). For some reason, there’s such a magnifying glass on the Hardware development, that Software is then overlooked by consumer startups. Don’t make that mistake. You can be great at both. 6) You should spend an unreasonable amount of time and money on ONE aspect of your Hardware. Could be the design or a technical breakthrough. But something needs to be SPECIAL. In our case, we designed a modular battery pack that allowed Whoop to be charged without taking it off your body. This made our development timeline much longer, but it allowed us to achieve something that no other wearable has achieved since: 24/7 health data. 7) Finally, have an unrealistic belief in yourself and your team. You are not supposed to succeed and the odds are stacked against you. Building hardware takes confidence and you’re up against big players who will rip you off. We went so far as to leave a message for our competitors on our circuit board (pictured below). In the case of Amazon and others, the prophecy came true. If you’re building consumer hardware, I wish you nothing but success. It will be super hard, but super rewarding. Good luck 👊🏼 #consumer #hardware #wearable #startup #whoop

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Alphabet-Wiz has one of the highest revenue multiples we've ever seen for large software industry M&A deals. $23 billion is a lot to pay for Wiz. Looking at some specific comparables tells us more about why. (Note: The data isn't a banker-level comp set, so don't make any serious decisions from it. I just wanted to give you some context on where the valuation for this potential deal stands against recent history.) → WhatsApp is in a category of its own WhatsApp is the undisputed champion of the world for billion-dollar-plus M&A revenue multiples. Meta (then Facebook) paid $17.2 billion for ~$30 million of revenue (according to PitchBook, reportedly lower in other sources). That's a 573x revenue multiple (or higher)! It's a consumer app with a completely different business model, though. I only included this example to show how high the ceiling can go with a motivated strategic buyer. → Adobe-Figma is a good recent comp, even though it didn't close The Adobe-Figma deal (RIP) is pretty instructive for the narrative around Alphabet-Wiz. It costs a lot of money to buy a market-leading growth company in its prime — 50x in the case of Figma. Put differently, Wiz is right around this valuation. They're somewhere between a 45-65x multiple on current revenue (current revenue is undisclosed, most recent was $350M). → Other acquisitions with lower multiples turned out to be pretty good deals The rest of this chart looks like a hall of fame for software industry M&A — large acquisitions that mostly turned out well. Microsoft-GitHub is a good example because revenue was relatively similar at the time of purchase. GitHub is now a $1B+ business unit for Microsoft. SAP-Qualtrics also had similar revenue scale. The acquisition didn't last, but it was still a fairly good outcome. Qualtrics was spun off as a public company and later taken private again for $12.5B. --- Alphabet could be paying one of the highest revenue multiples in history to buy Wiz. But deals like this aren't completely unheard of. Buying one of the top startups in cybersecurity is expensive — that's what it takes to make a deal like this happen.

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Truly inspiring to listen to Dax Dasilva tell the story of Lightspeed Commerce on 20VC. With $900M in ARR I was thrilled to learn that Dax bootstrapped the company for 7 years to get to $10M in ARR. I hope it doesn't take us 7 years to get Liquid360 there but it makes me feel better about the 3.5 years we've put in to date. For me these stories are deeply encouraging. When you're building something very big it can take time to get to launch. A couple of weeks ago we met with a global player in the VC world. They were looking to invest $5M - $10M and we said we weren't there yet. We'll get there but it wouldn't be the right move today. They then jumped to another conclusion. The wrong one. I get it. They have a multi-billion dollar fund and capital to deploy. We have a company to grow and too much cash will not help us do it right. We've made good decisions being lean. Our customers are starting at $500K. This is an enterprise/gov't product. We have to satisfy a very discerning customer. No bugs, no glitches. A dependable and reliable product. We are excited by the feedback. We are making the world safer. Harry Stebbings suggested that Lightspeed is one of the most misunderstood companies. It's market cap is $2.6B which seems really low relative to the ARR. Very interesting episode.

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Go West .... Startups based in the West census region captured 62% of all VC raised by companies on Carta in Q1 2024, the highest quarterly figure since Q1 2019. The Northeast, South, and Midwest saw decline. Ironically the job market in startups has stabilized it appears as the companies on Carta laid off more than 28,000 employees in Q1. But job cuts have grown less frequent since January, with March seeing the fewest monthly layoffs in nearly two years. The bad news is valuations down outside early stage and shutdowns are more common if you raised a priced round vs those that have yet to get into priced equity fundraising. Shutdowns rose 133% for Series B companies over the past year. It's not just the smaller ones. Investor appetite for companies that are several years ago founded and have not discovered product market fit are getting squeezed out of the market. Big companies and startups are all on to the next tech. It's a disruptive market that does not leave a soft-landing or M&A event. We saw it in 2008 and here we are again - this time things are way out-sized when compared to 2008 with the sheer number of VCs & startups jumping 4-5X and interest rates putting pressure here too. The soft landings are out there if you have the right strategy and position your company / assets correctly. One that we shut down in Seattle 2009 timeframe soft landed because we could carve it into two assets we could execute a deal on. Getting to work on selling your baby is one of the hardest things ever, but we did it together (I had a Bosworth help me out!) Opportunities do exist. This is a very difficult moment as Peter Walker at Carta says "Hug a Founder" right now. Hugs! There is a lot more color in the full report. Peter's got the math each week. Sign up : https://lnkd.in/gGRM4c8B

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What happens under the hood when you turn on your Android mobile phone When you power on your mobile phone, a meticulous self-test is conducted on all the hardware components. This comprehensive check ensures that every part of your device is functioning flawlessly. Once this rigorous hardware test is successfully completed, the Boot ROM, stored on the CPU, initiates the loading process. The bootloader loads Android OS, validating certain aspects of the initial loading. The kernel loads device drivers and background processes and manages the system resources. The init process loads and mounts directories and files and starts various processes. The Android runtime is initialized and is mainly used by the Android operating system. As the runtime, ART executes the Dalvik executable (DEX) format and DEX bytecode specification. After these system services are started, the activity manager kicks in to bring the user the initial screen to start interacting. Power-On Self-Test (POST): When you press the power button, the phone undergoes a quick self-check process known as POST. This test ensures that essential hardware components like the processor, memory, and battery function correctly. Bootloader: After the POST is successfully completed, the bootloader, a small yet crucial program stored in the phone's read-only memory (ROM), takes charge. It not only initializes the hardware but also orchestrates the booting process, including selecting the operating system to load. Loading the Kernel: The bootloader loads the Android kernel into the device's RAM (Random Access Memory). The kernel is the core of the Android operating system. It manages the device's resources, such as the CPU, memory, and input/output operations. Init Process: Once the kernel is loaded, the init process (short for initialization) is started. This process is responsible for initializing the Android system and launching essential system services and daemons. Android Runtime (ART) Initialization. This is a critical step as ART is the runtime environment where Android applications come to life. It's responsible for a significant task and compiles the application code into machine code, ensuring efficient execution on the device's hardware. This makes ART a crucial part of the booting process. Starting System Services: After the initialization of ART, various system services are started. These services include the Android System Server, which manages core system components like the package manager, activity manager, and window manager. Launcher and User Interface: Once the system services are up and running, the launcher (the user interface that displays your home screen, app icons, and widgets) is started. This allows you to interact with your device and access your installed applications. Loading Applications: Any pre-installed applications and services configured to start automatically are loaded. These may include system apps like the dialer, messaging app.

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What happens under the hood when you turn on your Android mobile phone When you power on your mobile phone, a meticulous self-test is conducted on all the hardware components. This comprehensive check ensures that every part of your device is functioning flawlessly. Once this rigorous hardware test is successfully completed, the Boot ROM, stored on the CPU, initiates the loading process. The bootloader loads Android OS, validating certain aspects of the initial loading. The kernel loads device drivers and background processes and manages the system resources. The init process loads and mounts directories and files and starts various processes. The Android runtime is initialized and is mainly used by the Android operating system. As the runtime, ART executes the Dalvik executable (DEX) format and DEX bytecode specification. After these system services are started, the activity manager kicks in to bring the user the initial screen to start interacting. Power-On Self-Test (POST): When you press the power button, the phone undergoes a quick self-check process known as POST. This test ensures that essential hardware components like the processor, memory, and battery function correctly. Bootloader: After the POST is successfully completed, the bootloader, a small yet crucial program stored in the phone's read-only memory (ROM), takes charge. It not only initializes the hardware but also orchestrates the booting process, including selecting the operating system to load. Loading the Kernel: The bootloader loads the Android kernel into the device's RAM (Random Access Memory). The kernel is the core of the Android operating system. It manages the device's resources, such as the CPU, memory, and input/output operations. Init Process: Once the kernel is loaded, the init process (short for initialization) is started. This process is responsible for initializing the Android system and launching essential system services and daemons. Android Runtime (ART) Initialization. This is a critical step as ART is the runtime environment where Android applications come to life. It's responsible for a significant task and compiles the application code into machine code, ensuring efficient execution on the device's hardware. This makes ART a crucial part of the booting process. Starting System Services: After the initialization of ART, various system services are started. These services include the Android System Server, which manages core system components like the package manager, activity manager, and window manager. Launcher and User Interface: Once the system services are up and running, the launcher (the user interface that displays your home screen, app icons, and widgets) is started. This allows you to interact with your device and access your installed applications. Loading Applications: Any pre-installed applications and services configured to start automatically are loaded. These may include system apps like the dialer, messaging app.

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This hard reset is required for all AI founders from India building global B2B products: Product Innovation > GTM muscle Product innovation is happening at a rapid pace in each of your categories, valley competitors are building thought through features that can help them win customers mid-long term, GTM muscle alone without product differentiation wont help you win in the first half of this AI decade. We are doing this hard reset within BoldCap on what we are looking for in AI founders. Ping us if you are tinkering in global AI B2B products. Shiv Tayal Pratham Chadha Aditi Gera

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Vinod Khosla, a renowned Indian-American billionaire and influential venture capitalist, is a key player in the industry, with a remarkable track record that includes founding Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures. His investments in companies like Square, Stripe, DoorDash, and Instacart have been pivotal. Mario Gabriele shares valuable insights from Vinod: - Remember, you may be closer to a yes than you think. - Focus on getting the goose, not just the golden egg. - Be prepared for resistance to innovative ideas. - Your ultimate task is to sell. Delve into top resources from Khosla to boost your entrepreneurial journey: 1. Pitch the way VCs think: [Link] 2. Master how to solve the Pitch Problem: [Link] 3. Explore "Plausible Tomorrows 2035-2049": [Link] 4. Read "Letters to a Young Founder" by Vinod Khosla: [Link] Leverage these insights to thrive in the realm of venture capitalism and entrepreneurship. #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #Innovation

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"90% of VCs add no value to startups, 70% even harm them." - Vinod Khosla The lesson? Choose your investors wisely. In a provocative assertion, Vinod Khosla challenges the traditional view of venture capital benefits, suggesting that a significant majority of VCs may not only fail to contribute positively but could potentially hinder a startup's growth. This statement is a stark reminder of the importance of due diligence when selecting partners who bring more than just capital to the table. A crucial message for all entrepreneurs: Not all money is good money. The right investors should offer not only financial resources but also mentorship, industry connections, and operational guidance to foster your company’s growth and success. If you’re at the crossroads of choosing a VC, remember that aligning with those who truly understand and support your vision can be more valuable than the capital they inject. PS. check out 🔔 for a winning pitch deck the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel https://lnkd.in/ejp-Bhnu

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INDstocks by INDmoney saw almost 3x scale of concurrent users using the application through the last 3 days. As #India was getting prepared for its much awaited #generalElectionResults, the Engineering team at INDmoney embraced this challenge of getting ready for humungous scale. While many brokers had issues scaling for this traffic surge, primarily on June 3 (Monday), #INDstocks was quite resilient and gave all it's users highly reliable trading experience on all the three days (June 3 - 5). We have achieved this through a lot of best practices in #Engineering. All our Backends are independently scalable micro services, which gives us greater flexibility. We decoupled core components to a large extent, which allows seamless experience to our users on both Apps and website, even in the events of unprecedented scale. On days when volatility hits through the roof, an ultra-efficient square-off system which protects users from going into dangerous circuits and thereby losing money, is of paramount importance. Through our #INDprotect feature, our users' square-off orders were sent to exchanges in under 5 ms, which helped users reduce their losses significantly! At the market open, we saw close to 50% more price ticks from exchanges on June 4 and INDstocks users didn't have to face any latency in viewing the live prices on their web / mobile devices. Our #superFast #Pricer delivered all the ticks to users in under 1ms. #INDmoney #INDstocks #Election #Buzz #IndianEquities #Stock #Market #Economy Ashish Kashyap Nikhil Behl Mourya Venkat vasu choudhary Ashwin Sreekumar Sonu Singh Tejas Chhotani Deepak Gupta Kartikay Aggarwal Tushar Kumar Singh Deepak Pandey Nikhil Choudhary Sivajee Battina Pooja MD Harsh S. Aniket Pathak

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Ethereum contracts and Bitcoin transactions have no way of being reversed. They should not be treated any differently than a physical cash transaction, and it is one of the reasons why they will never be appropriate for trading systems. Systems act incorrectly and people make errors. Trading systems are meant to reflect the actual goals of the market and not allow people to scam the system. [Arguably this is also referencing HFT, dark pools, and front running.] https://lnkd.in/ehcgnpS6

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A debt management company that stopped making the promised payments to creditors on behalf of its customers. ------------- 'According to Crunchbase, Tally raised $172 million in funding during its nine-year run, pulling cash from Andreessen Horowitz, Sway Ventures and other prominent venture capital firms. Its most recent round, which raised $80 million in October 2022, tripled the company’s valuation to $855 million, per a Bloomberg report. Sway partner Ken Denman told Bloomberg at the time that his firm was confident in the company’s “strong metrics and performance,” prompting it to invest despite a difficult moment in financial markets. But since then, fundraising for tech startups has gotten even tougher; higher interest rates make such investments less appealing, and financial tech companies looking to borrow cash face tough payment plans. .... Tally also faced a wave of customer complaints. Dozens of people have reported the company to the Better Business Bureau since March, with many of the comments saying that Tally suddenly stopped delivering promised payments to the customers’ credit cards and raised interest rates on their credit lines. Several mentioned that a class-action lawsuit might be coming; a few called Tally “predatory.”' https://lnkd.in/gc7uDa_C

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