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Showing posts from October 20, 2015

Investor red flags- always logical?

A few of my interns recently did a brain-storming session with me. They were all enthusiastic to do something of their own and had many questions. Many of them I met at several accelerator competitions and hackathons. I am not an authority or a VC. So far, I have invested in 9 companies globally- all in healthcare or education. One thing that I have come across in almost every transaction is when seed funded companies go for Series A- Investor raise red-flags about 1. Recurring revenue 2. Team 3. Valuation One such situation came in today when I was asked How do you anticipate growth of 15%-20% YOY when in a force of 200 employees you have only 5 sales guys and 2 marketing people. What are you relying on? Most start-ups find it hard to answer such a question. When you cannot rely on sales and marketing to be your driver of growth, you rely on your customer to be your driver of growth. Hence when the service and the product keep evolving imparting better and sustained value-