Pieter Kemps’ Post
8:06 - 8:12 9:12 - 9:16 16:41-16:47 What are these? Time email sent - time reply received. Same founder. Showing speed. Urgency. Bias for action. Surge hadn’t made the investment yet, but this was already a very good sign. Reminded me of my first week at Amazon Web Services (AWS). I was spending a week in Silicon Valley with my colleague doing many meetings every day. After each meeting, he was frantically typing on this phone. “What are you doing so urgently?” I asked. His answer? “TNT" He explained: “TNT. Today Not Tomorrow. Everything I can do instantly, I will. Make an intro. Update CRM. Fix an issue. Kick-off a project. I can all do it TNT”. And he did. Every day. After each and every meeting. TNT sounds logical and easy. It is not. Requires a lot of discipline and bias for action. Not easy at all. I've tried ever since I heard about it. But I often failed. I still do. Glad that the super fast response time of this one founder reminded me again of the importance and impact of TNT. And guess what? Surge ended up investing in this founder. She is off to a very strong strong start. Consistently demonstrates strong execution. Speed. TNT. You should try it too. Today, not tomorrow! 👊 #TNT #BiasforAction #Execution #GetReadytoSurge Sequoia India Surge
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See other posts by Pieter
Relationships between spouses have some clear characteristics: - Transparency is key to build trust. To build something that is enduring - You need to answer to someone about key decisions you make - It’s not about you. You’re now responsible for other people and not just yourself - Money can be a huge deal breaker if you don’t plan to use it wisely together - Authenticity matters a lot. No matter how hard you try to dress up, your true colours will always show up eventually. - Goals can only be achieved if you both run in the same direction Would you agree? Now read this again. But now as a founder. And think about your co-founder. Is it the same? I bet it is.
A Chaos Monkey "If only we would have had a Chaos Monkey." That is what many startups are wondering these days. "Then we would have been prepared." For the current market turmoil. Demand going down. Uncertainty going up. Valuations dropping. But what is the Chaos Monkey? The original Chaos Monkey was a software tool developed by Netflix engineers to test the resiliency & stability of their Amazon Web Services (AWS) stack. It simulates failures by randomly 'unplugging' virtual servers, databases, etc. It was named for the way it wreaks havoc like a wild, armed monkey set loose in a datacenter. Why would Netflix let loose a dangerous monkey in their datacenter? Because they realised that you never know what happens. What will hit you. And when. The Chaos Monkey helped Netflix to 'design for failure' and to always, always be prepared. Think of the Chaos Monkey as a smart mechanism to stress-test a system. Or a company. And that's why many startups now wished they had a Chaos Monkey. So they would have been prepared for today’s tough market. Fortunately, there are still many things you can do. Be decisive. Realise that simplicity scales, complexity doesn’t. That speed of execution is one of the greatest business strategies. And that your entire business should rally behind three simple objectives: drive revenue, preserve cash, and reduce risk. Right now, the chaos is real. When this is behind, think about creating your own Chaos Monkey. So you’ll always be prepared. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Netflix #startups #resilience Sequoia India Sequoia Southeast Asia PS. The picture below was taken on stage at the AWS Summit in Bangalore, July 5th 2013, just 2 years after the Chaos Monkey was born at Netflix
The world will have to invest anywhere from US$3T to US$9T per year on average to reach net zero by 2050, says Grace Sai of Unravel Carbon (YC W22) https://bit.ly/3e1lwoi #e27stories
He was just staring into the void. For two and half hours straight. Doing nothing but staring into the void. We were flying back from Saigon to Singapore and I was busy being busy: working, reading, watching. But whenever I looked over, my colleague was just staring into the void. He wasn’t doing nothing. He was thinking. Deep, long, intentional thinking. I thought about this last week when a friend told me he was trying to slow down. Not doing less, but bringing in slowness. Slack. Time to think. I thought about this when a founder just told me he blocks out one day a week where no one can book meetings with him. Just to create time to think. After all, he explained, “My main role as a founder is to think.” It looks like after COVID, everyone is rushing again. Rush back to the office. Rush back to work. Rush to meetings, events, travel. Everything fast. But at times, slow is good. At times, just stare into the void. cc. Surge Shailendra J Singh Kunal Shah Aakash Kapoor
For the last 3 years or so, the main meeting room in our office, the ‘boardroom’, has been called Federer. After all, he embodies so much of what we all aspire: ambition, performance, endurance, humility. This week, sitting in that meeting room felt ever so special. His retirement. End of an era. Then seeing him at the Laver Cup, tearing up, holding hands with Rafa, adressing his wife in the audience…what a legend! I hope we can all get a bit of Federer each time ‘we meet in Federer’
"Pieter, you are clueless. I wish I were negotiating with someone else'." Wow. Did she really just say that? What was happening here? We were in Istanbul meeting with the amazing Hande Cilingir, Founder & CEO of Insider. We had had breakfast that morning on the Bosphorus. Got lucky and spotted some rare dolphins in the waters. We had completed our initial diligence and had made an offer to invest. And were now negotiating the term sheet. The Insider team had been extremely hospitable. Had shown us around the city. The atmosphere was super collaborative and friendly. Then she suddenly calls me clueless. I was taken aback. But the smile on her face made me pause. So rather than an emotional knee-jerk reaction, I calmly asked: "What do you exactly mean with 'clueless'? Her reply: "Well, your face doesn't give me any clues. I have no idea what you are thinking." Ah. That's what she meant. A pokerface... It had felt like an insult. But she wouldn't do that. I had come to know her as incredibly smart, determined, and authentic. And so indeed, it was more like a joke. Maybe even a compliment. All good. This is how conversations often go off the rails, especially when we negotiate across language and culture barriers. My mother tongue is Dutch, hers is Turkish. We both get things wrong every now and then. What can you do? Assume good intent. Clarify before jumping to conclusions. And practice your pokerface for the moment someone calls you clueless ;-) PS. This was in 2017. Since then Hande, Serhat Soyuerel at the rest of the Insider team have expanded to 25+ markets and 100's of employees, and raised over $150M.
Last year, we launched the Sequoia Spark fellowship program with a $100K equity-free grant & immersive mentorship to support aspiring female founders in India & Southeast Asia! Today, we’re thrilled to open applications for #Spark02. Read more, apply using the link below! #Spark01 kicked off in Jan'22 & includes 15 startups powered by 20 female founders building across SaaS, web3, edtech, #fintech. 53% of 01 has collectively raised $34M in seed/Series A so far. Excited to see the ecosystem come together to change the game for #femalefounders. #Spark02 will run for 4 months with an intense curriculum & includes mentorship from seasoned founders & specialists across human capital, #marketing, product, legal, etc. #Founders will also be mapped to an investment advisor, who will work closely with them. It also includes curated in-person and online workshops, AMAs and masterclasses on critical areas of company-building and the opportunity to meet and connect with the broader #startup community, industry leaders & professionals through mixers, meetups, and events. Female founders, we are eager to meet you! If you're building in/for India & SEA & solving hard problems across SaaS, fintech, sustainability, climate tech, consumer tech, Web3, health tech etc, apply to #Spark02! Know female founders? Spread the word, #SparkTheFlame. Shout out to our #Spark01 mentors - Ashwini Asokan Divya Gokulnath Hande Cilingir Jitendra Gupta Julian Artopé Kunal Shah Lalit Keshre Prukalpa ⚡Rohit Chennamaneni Shinta Nurfauzia Siu Rui Quek Tanushree Nagori Upasana Taku Vidit Aatrey Wan-Ling Winnie Lee Aakash Kapoor Abheek Anand Anandamoy Roychowdhary Anni Cai Ashish Agrawal Ravishankar G V Ishaan Mittal Johan Surani Kriti Gupta Mayank Porwal Mohit Bhatnagar Pieter Kemps Prachi Pawar Rajan Anandan Rohit Agarwal Sakshi Chopra Shailendra J Singh Shailesh Lakhani Shraeyansh Thakur Tejeshwi Sharma https://lnkd.in/gPf4Vsn9
Sequoia Spark Opens Applications For Cohort 02
https://www.sequoiacap.com/india
Wonderful to see #Surge07 come together in person and kickoff their journey togther. Exciting to see what these founders will build 👊💪
Thrilled to welcome Surge 07 to the #SurgeFamily! 🎉 37 accomplished #founders across 15 startups leveraging tech to drive innovation in #India, #SoutheastAsia & the world! We’re blown away by the diversity of sectors and founders as well as the scale of their ambition. #Surge07 companies are tackling #climatechange; helping people with no design experience create #3Danimation anywhere in the world; allowing startups to build #machinelearning projects in minutes and days versus months; facilitating one-click checkouts in SEA; building #Indonesia’s first #fintech company for teenagers; building full-stack tech solutions for Indonesia’s agriculture sector; enabling the next 10 million developers to enter the #Web3 space, and much more! One-third of the startups in this cohort have at least one female founder. These dynamic women bring a wealth of experience and insight to the Surge community. It was a blast connecting with this cohort #IRL as we kicked off #Surge07 in person (we haven't done that since we kicked off #Surge02 in 2019!). Can't wait to spend the next few months learning, sharing & building with our founders, Surge team, Sequoia India and Sequoia Southeast Asia team, and our speakers! 💛 https://lnkd.in/gXim63sV