Building a CockroachHow to survive and thrive in 2016

Recap of last 12 months

• Public markets killed some Private market valuations (thank you Box, Square, Twitter, Linkedin, Alibaba)

• Series B, C, D valuations affected

• Series A bar much higher (fewer deals)

• Flurry of angel and seed deals

• More copy-cats than innovations raised money

Is it all Gloom & Doom ?

Current Environment

• Valuation correction and markdowns in larger companies

• Round-size shrinkage• $100 Mn rounds in Series A / B stage will be history for a bit

• Pre-Series A & Series B extension rounds

• Strategics more active• Many Angel / Seed funded businesses will get acq-hired

• Cash-flow and profitability

• Unit-Economics & Sustainable Growth

Enter the cockroach

• Lasted the dinosaur extinction millions of years ago

• Can live for six weeks without food

• Not choosy about what they eat

• Move fast and can hide during storms

• Adapt to environment / surroundings

• Lack glamour and do not look for limelight

• Can Fly when needed

The ixigo story

• Started in 2006, Bootstrapped, Launched 2007.

• All Indian investors say No despite 100k+ non-paid visitors in 6 months

• Lost a co-founder in late 2007

• Seed round in Feb 2008 from Singapore-based fund

• Series A deal fell through weeks before Lehmann Brothers did

• Survived the downturn with team’s, landlord’s & investors support

• Continued innovating & growing through difficult times

• Raised Series A in 2011, Series B in 2015

• 90% users non-paid, growing user-base 2x YoY and revenue 3x YoY

Lessons from every downturn

Money buys a company

time but not the ability to executegrowth but not product-market fit

revenue but not viable business modeltraction but not real customer love

techies but not innovationVPs & AVPs but not passion

schwag but not culture

Focus on the core value to users

Hire Great PeopleSet Lofty Targets

Get Out of the Way

Spend very little on marketing till organic growth & monetization

take off

(Do not fake growth)

Unit-level economics matter(Don’t discount more than what you earn)

Growth Hacking(mix of art & science, intuition & data)

Creative engineers not MarketersStory tellers not content writers

FB videos not TVSEO not SEM

Killer Product & Content = #1 Growth HackWord of Mouth = #1 Marketing Channel

Learn to use PR & Media(but don’t waste time reading competiton’s PR –

only track why people use their product)

Raise money whenever you can(Don’t overdilute for your stage though)

Right-size sooner rather than later

Revenue is VanityProfit is SanityCash is Reality

Build a great culture(it lasts the test of times)

Macro : India still rocks !

• In the next 15 years, India will see more people come online than any other country in the world

• Smartphone penetration is still at 20%

• Only 40 Mn transacting users on e-commerce => 10x upside in next 10 years

“The very best companies get built in a down market”

Facebook, AirBnB, Uber, Tesla

aloke@ixigo.com