Ankit Arora

Was on a VC fund website today. Their “thesis” (and I am not kidding): “We invest seed stage in post-PMF startups.” Seedha bolo bhai- “We don’t invest. We have no intention to. We just like calling ourselves VCs so we can look important on LinkedIn.” Like seriously, 1. Post-PMF and seed stage? You can count them on your fingers. 2. And if one does exist, they’re not waiting for your cheque. Sequoia, Accel, and 20 angels are already camping outside their office with term sheets.

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I've been thinking a lot about what separates exceptional founders from the rest. It's not vision or execution alone; it's how they choose to immerse themselves in the problem. Anjali Sardana could easily run Pronto from a sleek corporate office. Instead, she operates from supply hubs, working alongside the very people her platform is designed to empower. It's how she understands the nuances of India's domestic services market that others miss. Anjali is building the infrastructure for home services that works for both families and workers. Her shift-based model creates predictable income streams while delivering the reliability urban households desperately need. What strikes me most about Anjali is her clarity of thought combined with genuine urgency. She sees the massive opportunity in India's expanding urban centers and understands that domestic services must evolve from daily uncertainty to dependable infrastructure. That's why General Catalyst is co-leading Pronto's seed round. At GC Seed, we back founders building entirely new categories that solve everyday pain points. cc: Rahul Garg, CFA Rahul Humayun

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One of the biggest mistakes founders make is being adamant about building a scalable startup from day one. Yes, scalability matters - but not at the cost of solving a real customer problem. If you try to keep everything “ops-light” from the start, you might miss out on what actually drives value. Look at food delivery: -> Grubhub (2016): Had 65% market share but was adamant about not handling deliveries. They let restaurants do it, leading to quality issues. -> DoorDash (2024): Now owns 60% of the market because they took control of logistics, ensuring better service. Grubhub’s rigidity cost them the market. DoorDash, despite being operationally heavy at first, built what customers actually needed. India saw the same story - TinyOwl stuck to a hands-off model, while Swiggy owned deliveries and became a $10B company. The takeaway? Don’t be adamant about scalability too soon. Be adamant about solving the problem first. If you do that right, scaling will follow. #founders #learnings #startups #entrepreneurship

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Everyone's pointing fingers at Soham Parekh for working multiple startup gigs. Let's cut the BS and address the real issue: The companies that let it happen. Several YC-backed startups, with solid funding and strong pedigrees, still failed to notice someone moonlighting across 3-4 teams. That's not a Soham problem. That's a leadership problem. I've seen this sh*t happen before. It happened to me at Nolte. Each time, it forced us to level up: → Improve hiring processes → Clear deliverables and expectations → Implement weekly check-ins that actually matter Look, if someone can work multiple jobs and still deliver results - that's a different conversation. But if they're hurting outcomes and going unnoticed for months? That's 100% on leadership. Don't just blame the engineer. Fix your systems. Build real visibility into what your team is actually doing. We did - and it saved our asses more than once.

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