ABOUT
Founders First is a LetsVenture initiative designed to help startup founders get domain
and stage specific insights because we get that one-size-doesn't-fit-all
In this edition of #FoundersFirst the focus is on
Product & Design, Hiring & ESOPs and Exits
Founders First was launched in August 2020 where we had 150+ founders (early to growth stage) attend and 1000s benefit from the conversation and post conference material. In the first edition we had founders like Yashish Dahiya of Policybazaar, Nithin Kamath of Zerodha, Abhiraj Bhal of Urban Company, Aakrit Vaish of Haptik, Anand Jain of Clevertap, Vidit Aathrey of Meesho and investors like Rajan Anandan of Sequoia, Hemant Mohapatra of Lightspeed, Anjali Banal of Avaana Capital, Priya Ranjan of Silicon Valley Bank, Sanjay Nath of Blume Ventures and Pratik Poddar of Nexus Venture Partners join us.
SPEAKERS ON MARCH 20
Balaji Srinivasan
Angel Investor & Entrepreneur
Anupam Mittal
Founder & CEO
People Group
K Hari
Chief Business Officer
NSE
S Ramesh
MD & CEO
Kotak Investment Banking
Hari T.N.
Head of HR
BigBasket
Ashish Toshniwal
Founder & CEO
Y Media Labs
Stephen Clements
Chief Creative Officer
Y Media Labs
Siddharth Sangwan
Director & Head - Talent Strategy
Lightspeed
Shilpa Sharma
Co-founder
Jaypore
Prashant Tandon
Co-founder & CEO
1mg
Raj Neravati
Founder & CEO
Hug Innovations
Varun Khaitan
Co-founder
UrbanCompany
Srikanth Iyer
Co-founder & CEO
HomeLane
Sourabh Gupta
Founder & CEO
Vernacular.ai
Vineeta Singh
Co-founder & CEO
SUGAR Cosmetics
Kaushik Mukherjee
Co-founder & COO
SUGAR Cosmetics
Sahil Bhagat
Founder & CEO
Vebbler
Sidu Ponnappa
SVP Engineering, Internal Products
Gojek
Anirudh Singla
Founder & CEO
Pepper Content
Rahul Mathur
Founder & CEO
BimaPe
Suhas Motwani
Founder
The Product Folks
Shuchita Baranwal
Head of Design
Gameskraft
Chandra Srikanth
Editor: Technology, Startups and New Economy
MoneyControl
Tarush Bhalla
Assistant Editor
LiveMint
Mrinalini Arora
Investment Manager
LetsVenture
Sanjay Jha
Co-founder
MyStartupEquity
Syna Dehnugara
Chief Brand Officer
LetsVenture
Shanti Mohan
Co-founder and CEO
LetsVenture
Nimesh Kampani
President
LetsVenture Plus
AGENDA
Opening Keynote
The power of decentralisation and India's place in the world. A free wheeling conversation with an entrepreneur, investor and futurist.
Balaji Srinivasan,
Entrepreneur & Angel Investor
& Shanti Mohan, LetsVenture (Moderator)
09:30 am - 10:15 am
Product Led Growth
How do you reconfigure the marketing & sales mix to let the product lead the way? Learn how your product itself can be used as the main vehicle to drive growth.
10:15 am - 11:00 am
Trends in UI
and UX
Trends and current issues around digital products and design for Indian tech startups
11:00 am - 11:45 am
Campus to Company
What have been the steepest learning curves for these 1st time founders as far as company building is concerned?
12:15 pm - 12:45 pm
Hiring, Talent & ESOP
The most underrated, but most important part of any business - figure out the best practices to retain talent and make ESOPs go beyond paper money
12:45 pm - 1:15 pm
ESOP: Let's Get Practical
- How do you create an ESOP policy that scales with your startup?
- How much ESOP should you give out at various stages?
- How should you approach ESOP liquidity & buybacks?
1:15 pm - 1:45 pm
Ask Me Anything
with Anupam Mittal
Angel Investor & Founder of Shaadi.com
2:15 pm - 2:45 pm
Why I Sold My Startup
What are some of the important things to think about before selling your startup?
2:45 pm - 3:15 pm
Road to IPO for Indian Startups
What will it take to get Indian tech startups to list in India? A 360 degree view from founders, regulators & key stakeholders
3:15 pm - 3:45 pm
Some Hard Truths
From starting up to crossing the valley of death and from fundraising to scaling - it's definitely a school of hard knocks
3:45 pm - 4:15 pm
FOUNDERS FIRST - EDITION 1
When to take a SaaS company
cross-border?
Priya Ranjan, Silicon Valley Bank
How do you sell cross-border?
Anand Jain, Clevertap
Getting to $10 M in sales
Manav Garg, Eka Software
Do's and dont's of community marketing
Suchita Salwan, LBB
What are the COVID-19 positive sectors?
Anjali Bansal, Avaana Capital
Raghunandan G, TaxiForSure
The founder-VC relationship
Vidit Aatrey, Meesho
Why is choosing the right investor a big deal?
Aakrit Vaish, Haptik
About LetsVenture
Founded in 2013 LetsVenture makes the process of fundraising (early and growth stage) easy, efficient & transparent for both startups and investors. In the last 7 years, LetsVenture has helped 300+ early stage startups raise over $200 M on the platform from 28 active Syndicates, 6500+ investors from 52 countries, 100+ micro funds and 150+ family offices. LetsVenture also has a SEBI registered Angel with AUM of $35 M. LetsVenture works with startups and investors from discovery, personalised connects, syndication and paperwork closure, followed by quarterly portfolio reporting. With LetsVenture Plus we are facilitating growth stage investment in startups from UHNIs & Family Offices. Startups from India, Singapore and USA also use our SaaS product MyStartupEquity to manage their cap table and ESOPs.
Got a Question?
Email us at foundersfirst@letsventure.com