-Pranam Shetty, Investor at Axiomatic Ventures

Team 100X interviewed some of the top investors across the globe about their venture investing journeys, startups, and India.Here,Pranam Shetty, Investor at Axiomatic Venturesshares his responses.

Q1. What is your motivation to be in venture investing business?

My top 3 motivations to be an angel investor are;
 1. To meet and learn from some of the smartest people in the country.
 2. To support, and watch from close quarters, the growth of enduring businesses.
 3. To create wealth in the long-run.

Q2. Help describe your investment thesis and ideas you would like to back.

I back customer-obsessed founding teams in enterprise SaaS, fintech, gaming and edtech.

Q3. What are your 5 key learnings from your experience as a venture investor?

1. Very few market trends actually translate into sustainable opportunities for venture creation.
2. Market forces can and will override business logic in the short run.
3. Ventures that are built only with the intent to be sold / scaled fast are always at the mercy of funding cycles.
4. Building a sustainable venture needs a founding team that is consistently pragmatic and irrationally patient.
5. Meaningful exits are rare; and aside from riding along on the journey, as an angel you have very little control over them.

Q4. How do you support your portfolio companies?

I help founders at the earliest stages of venture creation with crafting product, go-to-market and financial strategy.

Q5. Top 5 advice you would give to startup founder.
1. Always keep your ears to the ground - Customer obsession will help you adapt to constant market changes.
2. Start by building the blueprint for a sustainable business; wealth creation will follow ultimately.
3. Execution keeps getting harder as the business grows; your responsibility is to flatten the odds by attracting great talent.
4. Understand whether you are in a peacetime or wartime industry; build a team around you accordingly.
5. After a certain point, as a founder, you need to stop working in the business and start working on it.

Q6. Books or Blogs you would like to recommend entrepreneurs.

Paul Graham's essays
Warren Buffett's shareholder letters

About Pranam Shetty:

Pranam Shetty is an angel investor at Axiomatic Ventures, he earned his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he was a Deustchman Venture Fellow.He builds partnerships with the venture & angel investing ecosystem, mentors startup founders on building customer-centric operations, manages private equity allocations as an LP to PE & VC funds. In the past Pranam has led operating teams at small businesses across industries such as Financial Services, IT Training & Transaction Printing, developed enterprise applications for a bulge-bracket investment bank, consulted for global financial services clients as a UX researcher and designer, founded an education startup that taught math, vocab & logic skills through games.