Customer Marketing – Your Most Important Lever in a Down Cycle

by Alok Goyal | Jul 11, 2022 | Functional Notes

Why Existing Customers Matter I sold enterprise software for 10 years at SAP and Siebel during the license era. If you look at the core economics of that business, the upfront license revenue from a customer is offset by the cost to acquire. Implementation services...

What lies beneath? The tech behind banking

by Dilipkumar Khandelwal | Jul 5, 2022 | Founder Network, Functional Notes

Banks know that technology is the foundation for future growth. And accelerating the adoption of tech is one of their biggest priorities. It’s impossible to think of banking without technology. Most financial institutions offer digital services that are quick, safe,...

How B2B Marketplaces Should Think About Solving Their Working Capital Issues

by Naman Lahoty | Feb 7, 2022 | Functional Notes

In the last few years, many B2B marketplaces have emerged globally across various verticals. Two types of marketplace models have become most prominent – (1) Open marketplace models: where buyers can choose which supplier to work with based on the availability...

Slintel: Learnings from Building a Data as a Service (DaaS) Business

by Arpit Maheshwari, Alok Goyal | Jun 10, 2021 | Functional Notes

Our portfolio company Slintel recently closed its Series A round; the round was led by GGV Ventures, with participation from existing investors (us, Accel and Sequoia). We partnered with Slintel about 2 years ago, in the middle of 2019, and our excitement levels about...

Decoding Product Marketing for B2B SaaS

by Arpit Maheshwari | May 31, 2021 | Functional Notes

It’s safe to say that Indian SaaS companies have started making some waves in the global market in recent times – SaaS revenue for the Indian ecosystem has been pegged at ~$ 3B, growing at >30% CAGR; few companies have crossed the $ 100M ARR threshold, and...

Startups must uphold their ESOP promises

by Ritesh Banglani | Mar 23, 2021 | Functional Notes

At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, my close friend was let go from his position as Vice President at a large, well-funded startup. As a participant in the company’s Employee Stock Option Plan, or ESOP, he reasonably expected to walk away with a certain number of...