Apparently, standing on the World Startup Convention stage in Noida, are not the investors from Sequoia or Accel, but cops from the Uttar Pradesh Police.
This convention was billed as a mega startup event, with a not-so-implicit promise that startups will have a great shot at raising funds. And seemingly, none of that happened.
Entrepreneurs, who shelled out a huge amount of money to attend, felt cheated and started protesting (one sponsor spent Rs 50 lacs!). That got the UP Police to come and bless the event.
First of all, this whole episode is nauseating.
Second, what is equally nauseating is how the idea of a startup has been totally corrupted. I have written about this a zillion times but I am not done yet.
You once raised VC money to solve real problems. Now you become an entrepreneur to raise VC money.
And this mindset is destroying promising startup ideas. How many entrepreneurs would run their startups the way they do if they were to own their companies forever? Not even 5%!
When we build companies we intend to own, we create real value. But when we build them to sell, we do what looks good to an outsider.
And the end result is that thousands of crores, which could have solved real human problems, are used to fund hubris.
But of course, all I said above can be negated by just one statement — “A free market economy automatically takes care of irrationality.”
Yes, it does. And it is doing so right now (we are calling it ‘funding winter’).
But remember — the free market is brutal. It doesn’t care about the human or financial cost. And in the process, founders suffer like hell!
The word ‘startup’ has now assumed such an intonation of greed that at my startup HabitStrong, my co-founder Nisha refuses to call it a startup — she says, we should just call it a company.
Nothing I have written above will change anything. But it is so sickening that I couldn’t help it.
Disclosure: I am a former PE investor and am not against funding. But when making a quick buck becomes the ultimate goal, it corrupts everything.
– Rajan