Krishna Srinivasan

I first met Mike Maples, Jr in 2010, when Founders Network was just an idea. Over the years, Mike and his team at Floodgate (special shoutout to Arjun Chopra) have been great mentors, sharing their insights and guiding our founders. Most recently, their advice played a pivotal role in helping us launch Founders Network Fund. Today, Mike shared the key ideas with FN'ers from his new book Pattern Breakers (https://a.co/d/buKBd5O ), which explores the insights he’s gained from backing companies like Twitter, Twitch, and Okta -- and which put him on the Forbes Midas List 8x. This is the most important book on startups in the last ten years, according to Steve Blank. My notes on the key concepts of his talk: 1) Inflections – "not a trend but a change event that represents a turning point in our ability to provide empowerment." e.g. The GPS chip in iPhone 4s 2) Insights – "a non-consensus and right insight about the future that's powerful and non obvious and leverages inflections." e.g. Lyft = GPS + strangers driving you 3) Founder future fit – "Living in the future before other people live in the future and then try to build what's missing in the future." If you're a founder, check out the book. Grateful for the impact Mike and Arjun continue to have on both me and the Founders Network community!

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What Really Makes a Founder-Investor Relationship Work? 💡 Engaged Participation: The best investors don't just attend meetings; they immerse themselves in the startup journey. I recall working on our GTM strategy and facing three tough choices. One investor suggested, "Why not try all three and see what works?" That advice broke down mental barriers and led us to new opportunities. 🤝 Building Trust: Trust grows through genuine, agenda-free conversations, empathy, and a true interest in personal connections. I genuinely appreciate discovering the person behind the purpose. 🗣️ Authenticity and Transparency: Absolute openness is crucial. Discussing dealbreakers and having tough conversations early on leads to smoother sailing later. 🌐 Extending Networks: Aligned investors broaden a startup's reach, introducing key partners and customers, strengthening the network. At FEBE Ventures, we aim to be the first call founders make when challenges arise. We take pride in being trusted advisors to the entrepreneurs we work with. How do you think investors can make a meaningful difference in your journey? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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I had a lot of fun recording a podcast episode with Shiva Singh Sangwan. We discussed the evolution of Humba Ventures & Susa Ventures; tips for raising and building a fund; how to improve investment sourcing & picking; the role of luck in investing, and so on. https://lnkd.in/eiqsStej

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I recently saw this metric from Carta’s 1Q24 VC Fund Report, which is very concerning. DPI... is nowhere to be found in earlier vintages that probably should start showing DPI. Funding early-stage projects is great, but ultimately, these venture dollars need to exit their investments and pay back their limited partners. That’s where the metric Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI) comes in. While managing a fund, we get interim measures during the life of the fund (e.g. IRR, MOIC), but ultimately, “you can’t eat IRR.” If you want to build a lasting venture capital organization, you need to start showing DPI for your fund. Keep in mind that this is traditional VC data from Carta, and is not strictly crypto venture. Crypto venture tends to get liquidity earlier (tokens) and things tend to go parabolic sooner (faster, more unicorns) - but I’d wager that the data here is somewhat similar for Crypto VCs… Not as much DPI as there should be from these earlier vintages. Read the full article, as well as a recap of all the crypto fundraising rounds for August, here: https://lnkd.in/g3eVJ-iF

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Excited to announce Frist Cressey Ventures' investment in Qualified Health and privileged to partner w/ SignalFire, Healthier Capital, Town Hall Ventures and others!   Healthcare costs are increasing at a faster rate than ever before, with the US spending nearly twice as other wealthy countries and still ranking bottom in outcomes. It's a story you've all heard - - US healthcare is known for astronomical inefficiencies, waste, workforce supply constraints, fragmented access, appalling patient experiences, and driving patients and businesses into debt.   Yes these problems present opportunities. But opportunities are limited to the system's appetite for change, desire and incentive to try something new and the innovation available. At FCV we believe we've hit the trifecta with Generative AI. Generative AI has given us truly transformational tools in the toolkit and the healthcare ecosystem is demanding to absorb its benefits. This perfect collision of supply and demand means healthcare is poised for big change.   Generative AI is everywhere, it's buzzy, it dangles hope and opportunity. But many things need to be true for the Gen AI transformation in healthcare to take hold, such as but not limited to:   💡 Patient lives and data need to remain safe: We believe in a highly regulated and human life-touching sector such as healthcare we must ensure Gen AI can drive to unrivalled savings and improvements in the quality of care WHILE not putting patient lives or data at risk.   💡 Systems need to own their utilization of Gen AI: We believe systems will use some hybrid of external partners and homegrown solutions but importantly will want full control of data provisioning and utilization as well as the ability to solve an unlimited number of nuanced issues and not cookie cutter algorithms.   💡 Costs need to be looked at on an enterprise level: We believe the speed of innovation in Gen AI means costs will continue decreasing dramatically but at an enterprise level this will still not be a small detail. Systems will want the ability to understand costs and delegate as needed for the outcomes desired at the organizational level.   Enter Qualified.   We knew when we met Justin Norden, MD, MBA, MPhil and team we were standing in front of changemakers. These individuals have lived and breathed the true application and implementation of Generative AI far before we were asking ChatGPT to write our emails. In fact, if you’ve ever driven in a Waymo you’ve benefited from past products this team has built.   Qualified Health is on a mission to enforce governance in Gen AI, allow systems to rapidly build for their needs, monitor and make decisions for all GenAI (homegrown and external) and accelerate the value the sector can glean from these new technologies.   Huge shout out to William T., Tommaso Auerbach and Jamie Kuntz for their hard work!

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Wow, great stuff on this first episode. I got the run down from Ataes Aggarwal and Arya Satish, and I see that critically important business and life topics will be covered in this podcast series. Follow, tune in, and spread the word. PSA: Some super thoughtful and practical content to be had here with this podcast. 🙌

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A very succinct representation of energy / power as it relates to our daily lives. Very useful and helpful in all sorts of ways for all whether you are thinking your business economics, operational planning, carbon footprint. But most of all in big picture perspective.

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Kettleborough VC has been active for ~6 years, invested in ~30 companies, gone through ~80 funding rounds, witnessed ~12 exits including ~4 instances of partial principal erosion, seen ~4 seed to $100M journeys, tracking ~29% XIRR across the portfolio. A couple of IPOs from the portfolio surely seem very much in line ahead.

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In the latest article, "Bridging Boardroom Divides: Conflict to Consensus," the intricacies of boardroom conflict resolution processes and their significant impact on corporate governance are explored. This piece provides insights into effective boardroom management and how strategic conflict resolution can enhance decision-making and governance. It discusses how transforming inevitable conflicts into constructive dialogue can strengthen board dynamics. Discover more about navigating boardroom challenges and fostering a conducive environment for organizational growth. #CorporateGovernance #BoardroomDynamics #BoardConflict #ConflictResolution

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The Council's first SPV of 2024 is down in the books and oversubscribed. Running SPVs where we have pro rata or extra allocation in fund deals is a muscle we are building pretty late in the game as a firm. As a solo GP with a tiny team, it's crippling to think of the extra work required and risk of not meeting platform minimums to run an SPV. But 7 of our port co's have recently raised follow on funding where we had pro rata. These are awesome deals for our LPs, angel members, and syndicate community. We simply can't afford to let them slip through the cracks. These allocations are only becoming more valuable as our firm grows, so we must start NOW! Proud to say this one went off without a hitch and our syndicate community is small but THRIVING. Wish us luck as we keep building. Note our SPVs are now on Sydecar. The best way to get access is to know someone on The Council Fund team and be on our SPV email list. **What's an SPV?** An SPV is a Special Purpose Vehicle. It allows multiple angel investors to pool together into one larger investment into a company. This helps the founder keep paperwork and investor relations to a minimum (less names on the cap table = simplicity!). When people say they're investing with a "syndicate" or they are "syndicating a deal," SPV is the entity and process by which they do that. A "syndicate" is like a community of people that invest via SPVs together.

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To many of us in the world of startups – or extreme endurance events for that matter – there is a continuing desire to explore any new intervention that can enhance our personal or professional lives. We devour books, articles, podcasts and TED Talks on things like habit, grit, happiness, fitness, meditation, morning routines, etc. - always keen to find another tool to accelerate our personal growth and effectiveness. But so many behavioral changes will not benefit us in the short term. That can be particularly true for nutrition and exercise. These can be challenging to tackle and weeks or even months into a new routine, there will be little indication that anything positive is happening. That, in turn, can cause us to give up on something that could have made a meaningful difference in our long-term health and well-being. I believe that the “Slight Edge” concept can be of critical assistance in sustaining progress. First articulated in a book by Jeff Olson, the “Slight Edge” argues that to improve or grow in any area of our lives, it is important to first recognize that there are no quick fixes. Instead, seemingly small actions executed more or less daily will yield enormous benefits months and especially years down the road. One of the author’s favorite illustrations of the slight edge concept – and one in which the effect can be objectively validated – is reading 10 pages a night of a useful book. Done faithfully, this will translate into 15-20 good books read each year. The slight edge framing applies nicely to healthy eating and regular exercise. Saying no – or yes, for that matter – to a calorie rich dessert or a workout, a single time, makes no difference in the larger scheme of things. But repeating that decision consistently, over a period of years, will have an enormous impact. That impact can be either profoundly positive or negative, depending on the direction in which you are making the slight edge work for you. The” Slight Edge” concept has strong application to the world of endurance sports. Faithful adherence to a structured training plan can reliably take a healthy person from the couch to a 10K. Longer term plans can then take you to the half-marathon and beyond. A similar progression will also work for triathlons. In each case, it is faithful execution on a daily basis, repeated over time, that drives increasingly dramatic progress. More than a decade after adopting a largely vegan diet and 14 years after taking up endurance sports – I have seen the dramatic impact that seemingly small daily actions can have.   Whether we like it or not, the slight edge is always working in our lives. I believe the key is to recognize that fact and to consciously think about how to make it work for you, rather than against you. #mondaymotivation #leadershipdevelopment #personaldevelopment

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My Entrepreneurial Kickoff for 2025 In 2024, a dream of mine came true: co-founding my own startup with my childhood best friend, Aayush Shah. We incorporated our company, kickstarted beta development, tackled compliance hurdles, and laid out a multi-year roadmap. Now I’m stepping into 2025 with a positive outlook—knowing we’re just months away from our beta launch! Our startup, Zennoia, is transforming how early-stage ventures interact with investors — from the very first pitch to long-term collaboration. What type of content to expect from us: • Bi-weekly updates on our journey • Short videos & reels to share behind-the-scenes moments • Candid conversations about both the highs and lows of startup life This year, Aayush Shah and I will both be sharing content from our unique perspectives—though not limited to just “tech” or “business.” As an engineer, Aayush Shah will talk about coding challenges and product development, but he’s also diving into the business side of things to understand how engineering decisions align with market realities. Meanwhile, I (Sharvil Ved) bring a business perspective, but I’m immersing myself in the technical foundation that fuels our vision. Each new insight shows how engineering decisions shape strategic outcomes—and how real impact arises when business insights and technical execution work in tandem. If 2025 is your year for bold moves—whether you’re starting something new, scaling up, or stepping outside your comfort zone—let me know! I’d love to cheer you on or swap stories. Where to Find Us Zennoia • LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit: @zennoia • X (Twitter), YouTube: @zennoiaofficial Sharvil Ved (Me) • LinkedIn, instagram and youtube: @sharvilved • X: @sharvil_ved Aayush Shah • All Platforms: @shahaayush1999 Here’s to turning big ideas into realities and celebrating every step along the way!

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What if there's a way to raise millions without relying on #VC funding? Aakash Shah's journey with Wyndly (YC W21) proves it's not just possible—it's potentially game-changing for your startup. From leveraging customer prepayments to learning finance tricks from restaurant owners, Aakash's story is a masterclass in creative capital strategies. He's turned conventional wisdom on its head, showing that sometimes the best funding doesn't come from Sand Hill Road → Leverage Your Customers "How Annual Plans Became Our Secret Funding Weapon" → Learn from Other Industries "Restaurant Owners Taught Me More About Finance Than VCs" → Rethink Your Cash Flow "The Power of Negative Cash Conversion in Healthcare" → Explore Alternative Financing "Why We Chose Revenue-Based Financing Over Traditional VC" → Optimize Your Balance Sheet "It's Not Just About P&L: The Balance Sheet Secret VCs Don't Tell You" → Negotiate with Vendors "How We Turned Our Suppliers into Unofficial Investors" → Think Beyond Software Margins "Applying SaaS Strategies to a Non-SaaS Business" → Build a Support Network "Why Fellow Founders Are Your Best Fundraising Resource" → Stay Flexible "The Day We Realized VC Wasn't Our Only Option" From Y Combinator to creative financing, Aakash's journey shows that success isn't just about raising VC money—it's about smart capital strategy, relationships, and knowing when to pivot. Remember: If you can avoid fundraising, you should do that too. Every business is different, but there are always alternatives if you're creative enough! Check out my full interview with Aakash Shah on Episode 51 of Fundraising Demystified.

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its not just about VC/investor appetite for more mature start-ups where the risk is relatively less, its the turn now of VCs being treated the same by LPs. very likely to happen in India as well if not already happening. The infamous long tail in VC universe is very much going to be a reality.

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At Forum we look at thousands of deals each year across our Accelerator and Pre-Seed funds but only end up investing in a little over 1% of those startups.  As an early stage VC, I am in the business of saying no to nearly every startup I meet, and while there is nuanced rationale for many of the startups I pass on, a vast majority of businesses that don’t meet the qualification to get funded typically fall into one of two buckets. ▪ First time founders have a tendency to go out to market too early to raise pre-seed capital ▪   I’m sure most founders have heard some iteration of this from VCs that ultimately pass on their business.  In some cases it's a blanket excuse covering up for other pass reasons- perhaps a VC doesn’t believe in a team or isn’t bullish on the market opportunity - but in many cases founders simply haven't proven enough to the market to warrant an investment. I meet many teams with an articulate vision for the product that they want to build, but they either haven't performed enough customer discovery to prove demand for their initial wedge product, or need to raise pre-seed capital to build out an MVP.  In those cases, pre-seed investors are unwilling to underwrite those risks.  To be default fundable, teams need to be able to keep costs low, perform extensive customer discovery, and ship some version of an early product - pilots and early paid customers are key. A huge piece of this is having founding engineering talent on the team. ▪Not every startup is a venture opportunity ▪ By definition, a venture backed business is solving a problem within a market opportunity so massive and so desperately needed, that its growth rate is off the charts.   It spreads like a weed, absorbing almost unlimited amounts of capital to fulfill demand within its customer base.   Each year there are maybe 20 companies launched that ultimately have venture scale outcomes. The bar to reach this rarified air is unfathomably high and the reality is the vast majority of founders simply aren’t building for opportunities that have the potential to be one of these generational companies. Many startup founders view VC as the only viable option for capitalizing their business, but not every great business is a venture business, and most successful founders never take VC dollars.  In order to reach an IPO/acquisition large enough to generate venture returns, a startup needs a credible path to $100s of millions in revenue. This is the standard by which early stage opportunities are evaluated. The flip side to this, and I share this feedback often with founders I meet that are building interesting business in non venture markets, if you are able to scale to $10- $20M in revenue that can be a massively successful outcome for a founder.  There are investors who focus on these type outcomes, namely lower middle market PE shops, and the typical path to those deals is a bootstrapped business or a friends/family capital raise.

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I am always amazed when someone discovers whitespace in B2B SaaS that is eligible for pre-seed funding. It's interesting to see that Chiratae Ventures led Pre-Seed round for Pepsales. Pepsales is trying to help B2B SaaS companies improve their sales by creating personalized product demos using AI and ML. The pain point they are trying to address is that most demos don't impress buyers because they tend to be generic and one-size-fits-all. Congrats Ajay Singh and Abhinandan Sahgal! Source: INC42, Entrackr, VCCircle #VentureCapital #B2BSaas

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🧬 This week's Austin Bio & Health Roundup highlights exciting exits, partnerships, insightful conversations, & updates from across Texas Bio Triangle 🧬 💸 Venture Exits SuperTruth has acquired imaware, the at-home testing and infrastructure platform, marking a significant step forward in catalyzing better health outcomes with data and AI. Huge congrats to Jani Tuomi, Brodie Flanders, and the entire imaware team! 🤝 Partnership and M&A KdT Ventures has licensed NGM313, a Phase 2-ready asset, from NGM Biopharmaceuticals. KdT formed a NewCo around the asset, with Managing Director Cain McClary, MD stating, “We believe this drug has the potential to alleviate suffering in a large patient population who currently have no disease-modifying treatments.” Babson Diagnostics expanded its partnership with BD, integrating BD’s MiniDraw System with Babson’s Betterway technology. This expansion now includes health systems and larger provider networks. Keep up the momentum, David Stein, Eric Olson, and the rest of the Babson team! 💡 Insights from Local Builders and Innovators It’s always inspiring when two smart friends share ideas. Micha Y. Breakstone 🇮🇱🎗️ joined Taylor Capito on The GenBio Podcast to discuss cell engineering and the future of biotech. I sat down with Ian Wendt and Na-Ri Oh on The RealPharma Podcast to discuss TechBio, business model disruption, and Austin's role in this shift. 🤠 Texas Bio Triangle Dallas-based SpinSci Technologies LLC secured $53M to expand its AI-enhanced patient engagement platform. Congrats Rajit Kumar! Rice University and Houston Methodist announced the launch of a Digital Health Institute “showcasing the transformative potential of combining medicine and engineering to shape the future of health care” What’s Next?

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