Shravani Vatti

Zepto raises $665 million at a $3.6 billion valuation. Here's why this raise is exciting for the Qcommerce space and startup ecosystem: Zepto's repeated fundraising success is impressive. > Pioneered the 10-minute commerce game. > Reached $1 billion GMV in under 2 years. > Founders are among the youngest in the startup world. > Built an exceptional team quickly. > Raised significant funds despite strong competition from Swiggy, Blinkit, BBNow, and others. > India is leading in aggressive Qcommerce growth. Reflecting on my TinyOwl days in the early FoodTech space, competition was fierce, and investors were cautious. However, things are different now: > Markets have scaled, unlocking multi-billion dollar opportunities. > IPOs are now viable, even for third or fourth ranked players with strong financials. Investors may feel relieved, but the Qcommerce space will remain highly competitive for the next few years. Consumers, meanwhile, are spoiled for choice. Interesting times ahead.

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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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MVT before MVP: Founders should do Minimum Viable Testing before building any Minimum Viable Product, whenever possible. Someone said his biggest regret was to build an app right out of the gate, while he could have tested some of the key product concepts easily using existing software tools. Alex Kwon is the master of MVT. He pushes out quick experiments on Warpcast (which allows building small apps, such as short text prompts with buttons, on their feed) and applies the findings and learnings to his product. This works because human psychology works the same in any app. You like what you like, you choose what you prefer, whether it’s a button on a Warpcast post or a button on a mobile app that was developed by three senior software developers. So it’s a good idea to do MVTs before (or even during the process of) building the MVP. (Hat tip to Pete Cashmore for inspiration for this post)

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From Vision to Execution: Insights from My Journey as a Product Manager at Google (Part 3)🌟 As promised in my previous post of this series here is what I’ve learned about Product Strategy at scale. Scaling products at Google has taught me an unexpected truth: rigid frameworks often limit innovation rather than foster it. Take the idea of a “single source of truth”—it sounds ideal, but at a global scale, we’ve learned to balance perfect consistency with practical reliability. For example, when building AI-driven automation tools for small businesses, we discovered that embracing controlled data variance helped us deliver more personalized and impactful user experiences. Here are three principles that guide my team: 1️⃣ Mind Your Strategic Debt Just like technical debt, holding onto outdated strategic decisions creates drag. Regularly auditing our strategy assumptions ensures they still serve our users’ evolving needs and business goals. 2️⃣ Enable Rather Than Direct The best strategies create guardrails, not prescriptive paths. Autonomy empowers cross-functional teams—including UX, engineering, and data science—to respond quickly to user needs while staying aligned with the broader mission. 3️⃣ Reality-Check Regularly We frequently compare our strategic vision with ground-level decisions in team discussions. This helps us spot misalignments early and adapt based on real user feedback. Recently, this approach uncovered surprising use cases for an advertiser targeting feature, showing us how users innovate with tools in ways we hadn’t anticipated. These principles have helped me scale products for diverse user bases, from small startups to global brands, without losing sight of simplicity or innovation. ❓👉 What strategies have you found effective for balancing strategic clarity with adaptability? #ProductManagement Google #PM #ProductStrategy #AI #UserExperience #Teamwork #GoogleJourney #Series

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Google asked yours truly about what it takes to succeed in today's market. ...And like a broken 💔 💿 record I had to talk about my "anti-lean startup" thesis. Here's the issue I see with lean startup thinking: 1️⃣ Encouraging rapid experimentation risks neglecting compelling strategy, leading teams to work on ideas without proper analysis, and crafting games they find fun but that is not enough to succeed in the current market. 2️⃣ MVPs prioritize quick release but often result in premature pivots from potentially strong ideas, failing to impress players due to their unpolished state. 3️⃣ Overemphasizing testing can stifle innovation, discouraging radical ideas. When resources are limited teams play it safe with incremental improvements. 4️⃣ Focusing on product over growth overlooks critical aspects of successful games, like planning for growth from the start. Relying solely on solid KPIs for marketing teams to scale games is insufficient in today's market. Suggest reading the more interesting thoughts about AI by Tomi Huttula and Belinda L.

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40 questions for pre-PMF founders

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After the incredible response to our AI fundraising deck, we decided to try to tackle another document - the PRD - we (especially Product managers) spend countless hours on. People have low attention spans, and honestly, so much of what we consume today is visual. No we don’t need “PPTs”, but why not bring that sense of concise, visual, easy to digest detail to the world of product management. Here’s our Criya AI PRD template not just to improve our workflow, but to improve how all product leaders communicate their vision - both internally and cross functionally ! This AI-powered solution goes beyond static documents, offering an interactive experience with ability to introduce video demos, quick Figma visuals. OH AND! Every web page has a kick ass Presentation mode. I’ve added the link below. Go to the footer, click the “DUPLICATE” button and test it out with your team! Drop a comment saying “CODE” to upgrade to access our full template library. #ProductManagement #PRD #Teamwork #Criya #Innovation #ProductDev #StartupLife #Collaboration #CriyaAI #Pitchdeck

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“Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground. One theme I noticed both in Brian's talk and when talking to founders afterward was the idea of being gaslit. Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides — by the people telling them they have to run their companies like managers, and by the people working for them when they do. Usually when everyone around you disagrees with you, your default assumption should be that you're mistaken. But this is one of the rare exceptions. VCs who haven't been founders themselves don't know how founders should run companies, and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world.”

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A haunted house, but it’s Product Management edition: 👻 Feature bloat Adding every requested feature without a clear strategy —> a product that feels more like a Frankenstein than something users love. Less truly is more. 👻 Chasing competitors When your every move is a reaction to competitors, you’re always one step behind. Instead of following their roadmap, focus on understanding YOUR users and solving THEIR problems. 👻 The “set-in-stone” roadmap As we learned from the webinar with David Pereira (link in the comments), rigid roadmaps are often a trap. When plans can’t adapt to evolving customer needs or market shifts, teams lose agility (and users lose interest). 👻 Process over progress Processes are essential, but too much emphasis on frameworks can hinder agility. The process should serve the product, not the other way around. 👻 Endless backlog An overflowing backlog can feel like a house of horrors. Without regular pruning and prioritization, it’s easy to get lost in an endless loop of (low-impact) tasks. 👻 Ignoring customer feedback When customer voices get lost in the noise, you’re not on the right course. Skipping regular feedback loops haunts even the best-laid product plans. 👻 Shiny object syndrome Chasing the latest tech trends can pull resources and focus from your core product. Stay grounded in your vision. 👻 Data without direction Data is super powerful, but without a clear understanding of what you’re measuring and why, it’s just a distraction. Make sure your metrics serve your strategy. Any other ghosts haunting you? Share in the comments, please. 👇🏽 😁 There’s no product management nightmare quite like these ones! 👻 And the solution to these haunted product management fears? airfocus of course 🙃. Happy Halloween 🎃 Thanks to Mina Mesbahi for the inspiration 🙌🏽. #productmanagement #halloween #airfocus #productghosts

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These folks gambled their careers on Larry & Sergei's search engine startup, and walked away with millions. Where are Google's first 10 non-founding hires now?  👇 They wrote Google's first lines of code. Sold its first ads. Grew its first teams. Let's see what they're up to today: Employee 1: Craig Silverstein Craig was Google’s first hire, not including the founders. He joined Khan Academy after 14 years at Google; he’s now their Dean of Infrastructure. He and his wife Mary also signed the Giving Pledge a decade ago, committing most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Employee 2: Heather Cairns Heather hired the first 200 Googlers. After Google, Heather went to grad school for painting and became an angel investor in women-led companies. Now, she’s running a real estate development firm. Employee 3: Ray Sidney Ray took a sabbatical in 2003 — when Google went public, he ended up retiring instead. He became a triathlete, got his pilot’s license, donated to public causes, and learned about eco-friendly housing. He came out of retirement to become a sustainable housing developer via his company Big George Ventures. He’s also the Co-Owner at The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain. Employee 4: Harry Cheung Harry's nickname at Google was “Spiderman" – he worked on the ‘spiders’ that crawled the web, looking for new links to index. He became an angel investor, then co-founded the home lending platform Roostify (acquired by CoreLogic last year). Employee 5: Amit Patel Amit and Gmail creater Paul Buchheit came up with Google’s slogan, “Don’t Be Evil.” Not much is known about him post-Google — he’s a private person with no public-facing social media accounts. Employee 6: Urs Hölzle Urs started as Google’s first search mechanic. He’s still at Google today. He was the SVP of Technical Infrastructure until 2023; he’s now a Google Fellow working on the infrastructure powering Google & Google Cloud. Employee : Georges Harik Georges joined Google as a software engineer, eventually becoming a Product Management Director. Now, he’s the co-founder of hslabs, an open-source AI research lab. He’s also an angel investor in the AI/ML space. Employee 8: Salar Kamangar Salar led the development of AdWords, and pushed for the acquisition of a 2-year-old streaming site named YouTube. He's still at Google/Youtube in an advisory role. He was Youtube’s CEO from 2010-2014, before Susan Wojcicki (Google employee 14) took over. Employee 9: Omid Kordestani Omid joined Google as an SVP, leading biz ops from their first dollar to $20B in revenue. He returned in 2014 as Chief Business Officer, before leaving to join Twitter. Today, he’s a Chairman and Board Member of Pearson and Klarna. Employee 10: Steve Schimmel Steve joined Google as a founding business team member. After Google, he “temporarily retired” while angel investing (investments include HireAthena and Crowdise.) Now, it looks like he’s working on something new in stealth mode.

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The current YC Fall 2024 batch includes a lot of "AI startups" something like 87% based on data report by Gravity (https://lnkd.in/gxxJnGSV). The takeaway for a lot of people is "wow, AI focus is overheating," but I actually think something different is going on: the way software is being built has fundamentally changed. It makes sense to consider AI tooling and capabilities from day 1 for any company building in the software space, because it can make your product and operations better in an undeniable way. Practical use of AI is not a nice to have, but a requirement if you're going to build something new and novel moving forward...so I think this trend continues and maybe the new normal is 100% of companies are "AI startups" the way 100% of tech companies consider using the internet. 🤷‍♂️ Great chart/stats by Gravity below, which includes a number of YC companies from Fall 2024 using Rippling to build their business and make the administrative junk relative to payroll, benefits, IT, and spend happen in the background, so they can focus on product, sales, customers...rinse and repeat. Here's to everyone operating in Founder Mode! 🙂 🚀 "AI-focused" YC batches over the past 2 years: - 87% in Fall 2024 - 77% in Summer 2024 - 70% in Winter 2024 - 57% in Summer 2023 - 32% in Winter 2023

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Learnings as a First Time Founder - Save time building your Product Going from 0 to 1 takes a lot of effort. Spend enough time researching from -1 to 0, and it will save you the most time. One of the most critical phases in product development is Product Discovery, where the goal is to validate ideas before investing significant resources. Here are some of my learnings as a first-time founder: 1. Identify the Problem and Measure it Start by understanding the problem you intend to solve. Engage with your target audience to gather insights. Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups to identify pain points and unmet needs. Use this information to clearly define the problem your product aims to address. 2. Develop Hypotheses Formulate hypotheses around your product idea. These are assumptions that need to be tested. For example, if your product is a new project management tool, a hypothesis could be: "Small businesses struggle to manage projects efficiently with existing tools." Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your hypotheses. 3. Create a Waitlist and Speak With Users Instead of building an MVP, create a landing page and start a waitlist. Share it with potential users and providers.  Get letters of intent showing they are interested in paying for your product. This process will teach you a lot before you even create an MVP, helping you identify your target audience and HOW to reach them. 4. Iterate Your Idea Validate your hypotheses and iterate your product idea. Go back to number 3 when necessary. 5. Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) An MVP is a simplified version of your product that includes only the core features necessary to solve the identified problem. The goal is to launch quickly and gather feedback. The MVP should be easy to modify based on user responses. 6. Iterate and Improve Based on the feedback, make necessary adjustments to your product. This could involve adding new features, improving usability, or addressing any issues that were highlighted. The iterative process of testing, analyzing, and refining is crucial for developing a product that truly meets user needs. 7. Scale Up Once you've validated your product idea and refined it based on user feedback, you're ready to scale up. Develop a full-featured product and plan a broader market launch. Continue to gather feedback and iterate even after the launch to keep improving your product. There's a significant amount of effort required to go from 0 to 1. Dedicate enough time to this process, and it’ll ultimately become the greatest time-saver of all! #ProductDiscovery #Startup #ProductManagement #MVP #UserFeedback

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Messaging: It’s short. It’s not 11 typed, single spaced pages. Ideally, you can print out your brand messaging framework on one page and glance at it while on an interview with a journalist if you’re doing a phone call. A framework is not meant to be the novel of your startup’s entire past and its future, though so many founders get tripped up on how condensed this one page can be. Don’t fret. Here are the elements I like to see: ✔️ Vision  The vision of your startup is usually at the top of a branding messaging document. It’s the incredible superb thing you see for the world if your startup is successful. Airbnb’s is: “Belong anywhere.” Amazon’s is a bit meatier: “Our vision is to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices." ✔️ Mission  Next is your mission which is what you’re going to do to make that vision actually happen. Instagram’s mission, for instance, is to: “Capture and share the world’s moments.” NVIDIA's mission is to, “develop high-performance computers that scientists, researchers, artists, and creators from around the world use to create the future and improve lives.” ✔️ Brand promise You might then have a brand promise or a value proposition conveying what you guarantee to a customer. It’s like a pledge as you accomplish your mission. My favorite is Geico’s, which is: “15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance.” ✔️ Target audiences There are usually a few to perhaps five audiences you’re aiming your messaging towards, and it certainly shouldn’t be “the world.” Plaid, for instance, targets “financial partners” in the automotive, banking, financial services, crypto, real estate, and health care sectors. Audiences may also include your employees, investors, and regulatory groups.  ✔️ Tagline This is a catchy, quick, and ideally, unforgettable phrase like Apple’s, “Think Different” or Google’s former “Don’t be evil” phrase. A tagline is like the written version of your brand. As soon as you say it, people should say, “Oh, that’s X.” ✔️ Tone of voice  This is how your brand sounds. Cybersecurity startups, such as CrowdStrike, are often steel-y and strong, whereas creative companies like Canva are more lighthearted. Canva’s tone of voice is, “inspiring, empowering, and human.” ✔️ Supporting proof/differentiators This area is reserved for the numbers, data points, and explicit reasons why your startup stands apart from others. A lot of founders get mixed up here, as they want to say there are 18 reasons why they stand apart from competitors. This area of your brand messaging framework should answer a reporter’s question that sounds like, “So what makes you so different from X and Y competitors?” #vcstartups

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Hello Product #Startup Founders, You might have a dysfunctional engineering team if any of the following is confirmed: 1. There is no single point of contact with the marketing, sales, or customer support teams. 2. Engineering leadership spends more than 10% of their time in meetings. 3. You prefer using WhatsApp for communication over email and collaboration platforms. 4. More than 20% of the team's work falls outside the scope of the planned roadmap. 5. Daily stand-ups focus less on work updates and more on new surprise tasks that need immediate attention. 6. There is no product roadmap in place. 7. You have a product roadmap, but nobody pays attention to it. 8. Meetings resemble a wrestling arena, where everyone seems more interested in attacking each other. // Image by pikisuperstar on Freepik

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Sometimes I see team members in startups row in different directions, or the target keeps changing, or worse, the CEO blows in with a fresh and shiny idea and redirects energy away from work already in progress. These are all symptoms of needing a more thoughtful approach to setting priorities. Some prompts below to help leaders think through how to talk about this subtle but important part of the business:

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Converting PoCs to Contracts - A Lesson in Difficult Conversations Like going from dating to co-habitating, moving your first customer from pilot to contract is a Big Leap moment for early stage startups. Waiting too long to have the conversation is the most common mistake. You are afraid of rejection, so you never learn if your product is making life easier for your customer, let alone how much they will pay. The truth is, once your pilot is launched, you can't be too early in discussing what it will take to move to a contract. I just got off the phone with a startup CEO who told of countless meetings, waiving integration fees, hiring a dedicated employee and more all to get their first customer live. After several revised timelines and a reorg, the engagement was going sideways until he said "We can't do this for free anymore. We need to move to contract or we are done here." At first, the customer balked. But once they assessed the situation and realized how crucial the software was, they changed their mind. The startup is now on track to sign their first big deal. That wouldn't have happened without a difficult conversation. Early stage startups are fragile. Moving from pilot to contract is the first real test of so many things - your product value, your customer success, and the real competition. Unless you test your relationship by taking the leap, you'll never figure out if you've got something real.

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The big mistake first-time technical founders make is to build the product first and start marketing later. We need to start both parallelly. It helps you to reach more potential customers when the product is ready. #startup #productmarketing

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Back in 1997, The New York Times highlighted a “Roundtable in Multimedia” attended by senior media executives. They lamented that apart from a few exceptions like pornography websites and Amazon, no one had cracked the code for a viable 'interactive' media business model. Fast forward to 2024, and Fable has launched Showrunner, a revolutionary platform known as the “Netflix of AI" , which allows users to create their own TV shows with just a few prompts. 📺✨ The way we create and consume content has evolved dramatically. But what does "interactive media" really mean today? We break it down, exploring how it intersects with massive shifts in technology, culture, and new media. And how with a growing "Swipe before Type" generation, there is now an ingrained expectation of interactivity in all digital experiences. We dive into the future of interactive media and gaming and see where we're headed next! Link in comments. #InteractiveMedia #Gaming #AI #TechRevolution #ContentCreation #NewMedia

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