Startups

For 13 years, I’ve been on the frontline of the B2B data wars. Here are the 5 strategies startups can use to defeat larger incumbents in their battle for market share: BACKGROUND: When I was VP at ZoomInfo they outflanked D&B by going after SMB. When I was President/COO at Apollo I saw them build a self-serve PLG engine to take that very same SMB segment from ZoomInfo. In the coming years, some B2B data startup will do to Apollo what they did to ZoomInfo, and ZoomInfo did to D&B. That is the nature of the beast. Here are the 5 ways I've seen new companies defeat incumbents: 1. Capture Attention Better Than Your Competition -  Only companies with the ability to cut through the noise succeed -  No matter what you do, there are likely over 20 teams doing the same -  Lower the search cost for the buyer. Nurture a community, develop a memorable brand, think about market virality early on, invest in an Inbound flywheel 2. Just Be Different - There’s always room to innovate - Innovation can be in GTM or packaging (doesn't have to be product) Example (Packaging): ZoomInfo differentiated from D&B by selling a self serve tool for $5K/year; when most data vendors were selling data dumps for $100K+/year. Apollo differentiated from ZoomInfo by selling a self serve tool for $99/user/mo to SMB; when others were selling $25K/year plans to enterprise. Example (GTM): ZoomInfo innovated in GTM with efficient inside sales teams as opposed to D&B’s field sales staff. Apollo innovated with PLG for the data business as opposed to ZoomInfo’s inside sales team 3. Refuse To Copy Your Dominant Competitor - Most entrepreneurs have so much respect for the dominant competitors that all they can think of is playing catch up and aim for feature parity - By the time you copy a feature, the dominant player will build 5 more and the gap widens - Instead, craft your own path. Identify an audience that your competitor is ignoring and roadmap that will make you look distinct 4. Relentless Focus On Optimizing The Low End Of The Market - Most disruption comes from the low end of the market - Zoominfo went after the SMB, which D&B was willing to forego without a fight - As the ZoomInfo business grew, they moved upstream and Apollo went after the low end of the market that ZoomInfo did not care as much about anymore - It’s only natural that Apollo will find going upstream more attractive as the business scales, paving way for a NewCo to acquire the SMB market once again 5. Be the best at something and don't try to be good at everything - Every team can be exceptionally good at something - Identify what your superpowers are - Is it Product, Sales, Marketing, CS? - Double down on your strengths, ignore your weaknesses - Do more of what you are good at to create a competitive edge TLDR: 1. Learn how to capture attention 2. Be different 3. Don't copy your competitor 4. Focus on low end of the market 5. Be the best at something P.S. Have questions? AMA in the comments. 👇

I started my first venture when I was in college. I bootstrapped it to over $1 million in annual revenue and sold it to a large company for millions of dollars when I was 26. I am now onto my new venture GreyLabs AI, and six months ago, I raised $1.6 million for assembling the best AI team for Financial Services in India. Here are some of my key learnings about building and leading teams:  1. Hire generalists in the early days. In a startup’s early stages, you need people who can wear multiple hats and figure things out. As Mark Zuckerberg says, “Hire people who are generally smart.”  2. Hire smart people and trust them. Once you’ve hired smart individuals, empower them. Focus on the "outcomes" you want, and let them decide "how" to achieve them. 3. Don't micro-manage. Smart people thrive on autonomy. Micro-management not only wastes your time but also demotivates them. Instead, set clear goals, define weekly or fortnightly milestones, and sync up regularly to track progress. 4. Communicate the bigger picture. Keep sharing your company's vision and larger goals. The more your team understands the big picture, the better they’ll align their work to achieve it. 5. Understand individual strengths. Spend time learning what each team member is great at. Creative individuals often excel in product and design, while great storytellers might shine in sales. Play to their strengths. 6. Build a culture of trust. Trust your team members. If someone breaks that trust, part ways respectfully and kindly. Offer a severance package and help them find a new role if possible. 7. Simplify job profiles. Avoid creating too many job profiles. Each one needs a well-defined description, salary band, objectives, appraisal criteria, etc., which can complicate things. Keep roles focused and meaningful. 8. Encourage experimentation and accept failures. Innovation comes from genuine experiments. Create a culture that encourages moonshot thinking and embraces failure when efforts are genuine. Penalizing failure kills creativity. 9. Support your team holistically. Help your team not just succeed in their roles but also grow in their careers and lives. When you take care of your people, they’ll take care of your customers - and your business. Building great teams is an art, and I’m still learning every day. What are some of your biggest learnings about leading a team? Let’s share and learn together in the comments! 👇 #startups #business #entrepreneurship #leadership #teamBuilding

Product-market fit is overrated. Too much hype has gone into the idea of product-market fit over the last 5-10 years. The skill of identifying it by VCs before others did and pre-empting Series A financings was a big driver in the go go times of 2020-2022. I believe startups need to find 3 "market fits" in order to be successful and oftentimes Founders and investors (including myself in the past) aren't focused enough on the other two. The harmony between all three is what truly leads to success. 1. Product-market fit 2. Channel market fit 3. Pricing market fit Marc Andreessen popularized the term product-market fit in a 2007 blog post, where he wrote that it “means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” The key to this statement is a "good market" What makes a good market aside from the obvious things like large TAM and strong macro tailwinds? 1. The ability to reach your customers efficiently and predictably AKA Channel-Market Fit Do you have the ability to build a strong top of funnel in a repeatable and cost efficient way? Does the channel convert at a high rate? Will it work in one channel or many? What is the depth of that channel? 2. The customers will pay enough money and on the right payment terms to enable the business to scale in a capital efficient manner AKA Pricing-Market Fit You can have an incredible product, but if your customers aren't willing to pay enough for it you're in trouble. Payment terms can be sneaky here as well because it can create a cash drag on the business making it less capital efficient to scale, which can make things more challenging from a fundraising perspective. Markets with long paybacks are tough to raise for today. The harmony between these three things is critical. You can have a great product, but if you can't reach your customers effectively or cheap enough then the business won't work. However, if the perceived value of the product is incredibly high and people are willing to pay a lot of money for it you will have more margin for error to test additional channels of acquisition. Meanwhile, if you've found incredibly strong and cost effective channels you will be able to charge less for the product and potentially be able to scale even faster to land grab the market. Finally, plenty of companies have had good but not great products early on but figured out both channel-market fit and pricing-market fit and been able to scale fast and continue to improve their product over time. VCs have a saying First time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution. The point I'm trying to make is be sure to be super thoughtful about how you're going to get your product in peoples hands and what are they willing to pay for it? My Advice: 1. If you can figure out industry benchmarks for CAC by channel before you go all-in on starting the business then do it 2. Make sure you talk to customers about pricing before you launch

Lately, my feed has been full of advice telling founders to focus on early revenue, and I’ve got to say: this is wrong for most startups. At the earliest stages, your priority should be nailing product-market fit, not squeezing every possible dollar out of your product. Chasing revenue too soon often leads to short-term decisions that hurt your long-term potential. It’s a trap. Some of the biggest companies in the world—Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram—didn’t prioritize revenue early on. They focused on building something their users loved. They knew if they captured hearts and minds, the money would follow. You need to build traction first. A product people can’t live without. Focus on user engagement, retention, and growth. When you have that, you’ll be in a far stronger position to monetize. So forget about chasing revenue too early. Build something people love—and then the dollars will follow.

Why Early-Stage Startups Should Avoid Individualized Sales Compensation: I'm frequently asked by founders about structuring early-stage GTM compensation. Having been part of foundational go-to-market teams at both Slack and OpenAI, I've witnessed firsthand the benefits of keeping sales teams on full salary for the initial few ~years. Here’s why I strongly believe early-stage startups should steer clear of individualized sales comp plans: 1/ Customer and Company First: When compensation isn't directly tied to individual quotas, team members naturally prioritize what's best for customers and the overall business. Traditional comp plans can inadvertently incentivize behaviors that aren’t aligned with long-term goals. A full salary ensures a mindset of "customer first, then company, then self." 2/ Enhanced Collaboration and Mentorship: Without the constant pressure to meet individual targets, salespeople can dedicate more time to mentoring teammates, developing playbooks, and contributing to company-building efforts. At Slack, my early role included pitching investors, endless interviewing, crafting JDs, onboarding new hires, and numerous strategic projects—actions far more impactful to the business than simply closing deals. These are the type of behaviors you want your early GTM members focused on. 3/ Team Harmony: A unified compensation structure eliminates territorial disputes over accounts and discourages gaming of the system. It creates alignment within the team, fostering an environment where everyone consistently acts in the best interest of customers, colleagues, and the broader business. 4/ Difficult-to-Predict Targets: In early stages, forecasting accurate sales targets is incredibly challenging. Individualized comp plans based on these uncertain numbers often result in significant overperformance or underperformance through no fault of the seller. Removing comp tied directly to targets avoids unintended fairness issues stemming from unpredictable market dynamics. 5/ SPIFFs (Spot Bonuses): In my experience at Slack and OpenAI, implementing SPIFFs—spot bonuses for specific achievements—proved highly effective. These bonuses reward top performance on clear, measurable goals (like closing the largest deals), adding healthy competition without undermining the team’s overall alignment around base salary. It's essential to still have clear numerical goals to rally and celebrate around, but they don't need to directly dictate individual paychecks. Founders should provide individualized or team quotas as motivational benchmarks rather than compensation metrics. Evaluate and reward your team members through regular performance conversations based on their comprehensive contributions—just as you would any non-sales role.

Most startup founders don’t truly understand their business numbers. And that’s a big problem. We talk about building, scaling, and fundraising — but what if the core numbers aren’t clearly defined? I’m sharing this post for every founder, early-stage investor, and curious learner. If you’re building a product, these 8 metrics can decide your business's future. Let’s talk real fundamentals. 1. Bookings ≠ Revenue Bookings mean the customer has signed and committed to pay. Revenue is counted only when you actually deliver the product or service. Verbal deals or letters of intent are not bookings or revenue. 2. Recurring Revenue is everything One-time fees may help in the short term. But recurring product revenue shows long-term value. That’s why ARR and MRR matter. And they must keep growing. 3. Gross Profit shows real health The top line may look good. But what’s left after the delivery cost tells the truth. Please just keep your costs clear. Know what you’re including in gross profit. 4. TCV vs ACV TCV = full contract value (can be 1, 2 or 3 years). ACV = what the customer pays you every year. If your ACV is growing, your product is becoming more valuable. 5. Lifetime Value (LTV) This is not just revenue. It’s the net profit you expect from a customer over their journey. LTV helps you decide how much to spend on getting a customer. 6. GMV vs Revenue GMV shows the total transaction value on your platform. Revenue is what you actually earn from it. Investors always check what part of GMV you’re keeping. 7. CAC — Paid vs Blended Always track CAC for paid marketing separately. Blended CAC hides the cost reality. If you know your true CAC, you can scale more confidently. 8. Churn tells the real story High churn = leaking bucket. Gross churn tells you what you lost. Net churn tells you what you lost after upgrades. Both matter. Don’t hide behind upsells. You can’t run a business with only a gut feeling. You need sharp data and a sharper understanding of that data. These 8 metrics can help you see what your business is actually doing. Every serious founder must know them. Not just for investors. But to lead the business the right way. Let’s make better businesses. With truth. With clarity. And with numbers that actually make sense. #businessstrategy #startuptips #founderlife #entrepreneurship #financialliteracy #AbhishekVyas

We’ve received 7000+ seed pitch decks over the last decade. Here are the most common mistakes we see: 1. Not putting the team slide upfront. Quality of team is a key signal at seed. 2. Missing market sizing calculations. Don’t just quote a TAM – derive it from scratch. 3. Don’t mix advisors and founders on the same slide. And be clear with who is FT and who isn’t. 4. Not referencing the competitive landscape. A market map shows you’ve done your homework. Also, “We have no competitors” makes investors nervous. 5. Be transparent on the traction slide. How many of your clients are paying vs non-paying? Better to say you have zero ARR than stretch the truth. 6. How much are you raising? Decks that don’t mention the raise size are half as likely to get a response. 7. Be clear on valuation. Every investor will ask. By calling it out upfront you’ll filter out a lot of noise. 

If you actually want to find product-market fit, the right question to ask isn’t: - who has the biggest problem / most pain? - who can we provide the most value/ROI to? - who wants/needs this product? - or even: who has already bought it? Because: - people with big problems can do nothing about them (and often do) - people have many valuable things they could be doing, but aren’t doing - people who want products often don’t buy them (and people often don’t want products they wind up buying) - people who bought it might have been OK not buying it, or might have bought for the wrong reasons I think the right question is closer to “who is in a situation in which they need no convincing to buy, where it would be weird if they didn’t buy?” The nature of this situation is almost always: “prioritizing X right now but constrained by Y” People in this situation will buy *despite* the state of your product, your effectiveness at sales, etc. People in other situations need to be convinced - not just to buy but to use, expand, renew, etc. The former is what all startups with PMF find. The latter is reality for most startups. This is, I think, the least understood and most important thing that causes PMF or not(PMF), and I wish somebody had taught it to me years ago

Releasing Chapter 2 of my PMF Playbook today! In this chapter, titled ‘The Pick’, I cover how to pick or select your startup idea / problem to go after. If the pick is done well, it can improve your chances of achieving Product Market Fit (PMF) disproportionately. Thus the importance of the pick. If you are an aspiring startup founder then you will find this chapter invaluable, for it gives you a framework to approach your startup ideation exercise. Bonus: there is a section on how to pick your cofounder(s) too! Highlights of the chapter (this one is ~20k words long!) 1/ The pick or the problem space you will work in is the single biggest early stage decision, for it sets the ‘constraints and boundaries’ of what you are going to be working on for the rest of the 2-10+ years. Also a founder has at best 3-4 picks in their career. So, take your time to get the pick right. The best founders don’t hesitate to invest a lot of time here. 2/ To get the pick right evaluate how they rank on these three criteria:  - a/ large attackable problem (reflecting the VC question ‘why this?’) - b/ inflection points / timing (VC query: ‘why now?’ - c/ founder-problem fit (‘why you?’) Make sure your pick hits at least two if not all three of the above criteria! 3/ To arrive at the pick, founders can take any of these four routes - Personal pain (e.g., Zomato, Uber) - Personal experience (Freshworks, Coinbase) - Prospecting or systematic exploration (MakeMyTrip, Vanta) - Opportunism (Ola, DealShare)  Finally you can also arrive at a pick by pivoting from a different initial pick. 4/ The process of arriving at the pick goes through two sequential phases - a/ Problem discovery: where you expand the set of problems to pursue, through primary and secondary research, and hone in on a problem or two or three to pursue.  - b/ Problem validation: where you again conduct conversations with customers, and do desktop research if needed, to validate that the problems you have picked are meaningful to explore. At this stage you can start building a solution / MVP. 5/ Finally on picking cofounder(s): If you aren't able to find a cofounder organically, there are frameworks, playbooks, orgs to help in cofounder dating. But it is not the end of the world if you still don’t find one. There are ways to convince investors, and supporting mechanisms and ways to make solo founding work. If anything, the risks of a cofounder with whom you have a conflict is far more dangerous for the company than being a solo founder, so don’t rush into a cofounder partnership. Lots more in the chapter! Link to Chapter 2: https://lnkd.in/gNFnYhsU If you liked the chapter, do share it widely, and feel free to hit me up for any queries you have.

Every time I reread these four books, I find a new leverage point I couldn't see before. They're not on most startup lists because they're not about startups. That's why they work: 1. Seven Powers by Hamilton Helmer This isn't a "strategy" book in the loose sense. It's an index of durable powers (scale economies, network economies, switching costs, cornered resource, branding, counter-positioning, process power) and when they actually bite. The point isn't growth for its own sake but asymmetric advantage - growth that widens the moat as you scale. Takeaway: Pre product-market fit, only counter-positioning (attacking incumbents with a model they can't copy without self-harm) and cornered resource (exclusive access to something critical) are real. Post product-market fit, scale economies become available. Choose one primary power and kill any project that doesn't reinforce it. 2. Obviously Awesome by April Dunford Positioning is frame control. If you don't set the frame (the category where customers mentally place you), the market will do it for you and you'll be benchmarked on the wrong axis. Dunford gives an operational process for defining your competitive set, value narrative, and the "best-for" claim that makes price comparisons meaningless. Takeaway: Run her 5-step exercise: competitive alternatives → unique attributes → value themes → who cares most → market category. Then rewrite your homepage copy and pricing page to match. 3. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Phil Knight's memoir about building Nike from selling shoes out of his trunk to a global empire. Don't read it as a hero's journey. Read it as a case study in creative constraints. Knight turned cash scarcity into competitive advantage through the Futures program (getting retailers to commit 5-6 months ahead) and creative financing when banks wouldn't lend. Takeaway: Map your biggest constraint. Turn it into a differentiator. Nike turned cash scarcity into advance retailer commitments that gave them predictable revenue when competitors couldn't. 4. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows Many leaders optimize parts without seeing the whole. Systems thinking reveals where small changes create cascading effects - like how improving onboarding can paradoxically reduce retention if it brings in users who churn faster. Takeaway: Draw your growth loop as boxes and arrows. Find the one constraint that, if removed, would change everything else. That's your only priority. The best books should be reread at different stages. Each time through Seven Powers, different powers become available. Each time through Obviously Awesome, your positioning gets sharper. What book changed how you make decisions? Not how you think about them - how you actually make them.