• Hands-on & operator driven conversations to help you grow & scale

      20 MARCH

    • 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.

       

      • Sidu Ponnappa, Gojek
      • Suhas Motwani, 
        The Product Folks (Moderator)
       

      10:15 am - 11:00 am

      Trends in UI

      and UX

       

      Trends and current issues around digital products and design for Indian tech startups

       

       

       

      • Ashish Toshniwal and Stephen Clements of 
        Y Media Labs

       

       

       

       

       

      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?

      • Anirudh Singla, Pepper Content
      • Sourabh Gupta, Vernacular.ai
      • Rahul Mathur, BimaPe
      • Mrinalini Arora, LetsVenture (Moderator)

      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

       

       

      • Siddharth Sangwan, Lightspeed
      • Hari T.N, Big Basket
      • Srikanth Iyer, HomeLane
      • Sanjay Jha, MyStartupEquity.com
      • Tarush Bhalla, Mint 
        (Moderator)

      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?

      • Varun Khaitan,
        Urban Company
      • Sanjay Jha, MyStartupEquity.com
       
       
       

      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?

      • Raj Neravati,
        Hug Innovations
      • Shilpa Sharma, Jaypore
      • Sahil Bhagat, Vebbler
      • Syna Dehnugara, LetsVenture (Moderator)
       
       
       
       
       

      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

       

      • Prashant Tandon, 1mg
      • Hari K, NSE
      • S Ramesh, Kotak Investment Bank
      • Nimesh Kampani, LetsVenture Plus
      • Chandra Srikanth, MoneyControl 
        (Moderator)

      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

      • Vineeta Singh & Kaushik Mukherjee of Sugar Cosmetics

       

       

       

       

       

      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

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    • 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

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