Nikila Srinivasan

Bilt Rewards went from $0 to $1.5B valuation in under a year post launch. I had the pleasure of hearing Ankur Jain, Bilt’s founder and CEO, speak at FintechMeetup. It was extremely inspiring and I had to dig deeper. What is Bilt? The core idea of Bilt Rewards is simple and compelling. Why can’t your rent payments contribute towards home ownership in the future? Most of us pay rent through our bank since paying with a credit card adds an additional 2.5-3%. With the Bilt MasterCard, you not only avoid fees but earn points on your rent payments: redeeming 1 point for every dollar spent up to 100K points per year - that you can apply towards your down payment. Fascinating tidbits: 1. Before Bilt, you weren’t legally allowed to use points towards a down payment. So Ankur and team spent 18 months working with regulators to create the regulations required to make a system like this possible. 2. Ankur worked on the idea by himself for a year, pitching to real estate owners and finessing the model before even hiring the first employee. 3. Almost every real estate owner Ankur pitched to initially was opposed to the idea. Over the course of 4 years, Bilt built a distribution network of 4M+ rental homes that allows residents to pay with Bilt. Ankur shares lessons valuable to every entrepreneur: 1. Distribution and customer acquisition strategy needs to be at the forefront of your pitch. 2. Creative relentless vs hard-headed relentlessness: “No just means ask again differently. Slightly different changes. Slightly different approach. Slightly different person you are asking. That’s the key. Doing the same thing over and over again will only get you the same results.” 3. A great product will not sell itself. To break through change aversion and transform consumer behavior, you must out execute with relentlessness: “The irony is when you think about building a company, you’ve gotta have the right product to solve a real problem. You have to have the core business economics and all that stuff. But what people don’t talk about - it doesn’t matter how good your idea is or how perfect the timing is. If you are not relentless at taking no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no over and over again and still being willing to come to the plate, it doesn’t matter. That is the single most important trait I’ve found. Because for whatever reason, the world likes to reject change. There is such inherent resistant to anything different. So you have to literally will your idea into existence. It’s exhausting but fulfilling.” Keeping especially the last takeaway in mind as we forge new paths ✨

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I participated in a “SMART MANUFACTURING” panel with Gayathri Radhakrishnan, Rohini Chakravarthy and Abhijit Supekar (moderator) last week at TIECon 2024. The coolest part of the panel was 3 Women VCs talking about a topic that has not traditionally been discussed by women. I never imagined I’d see this in my lifetime. Things have indeed changed! We had a very lively discussion of whether we can expect lights out factory in 5-10 years. Automation is happening in all stages but full automation manufacturing is tough because it requires human like adaptability. It is not converting text into instruction or code - it is about precision. Robotics + AI is making this happen and we will get there. AI is going to bring the cost down for complete solution for example: there are robotic arms that can do more tasks and learn like a human and not just some specific tasks. Also check out our portfolio companies Micropsi Industries and RGo Robotics that are making it happen in this space. Thanks to Anshu Bahadur Hrishikesh Sathawane Nilesh Dixit for organizing the panel and Anita Manwani and Surbhi Kaul for making this happen! #TiECon2024 #AIUbiquity

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Starting a new fun project with Victor Lee - an AMA series with early stage founders. There are many podcast shows featuring successful, famous entrepreneurs. But what about those who are still relatively early in their journey, perhaps just one step ahead? The zero-to-one founders who have recently cracked the product-market fit and raised Seed or Series A capital. They may not have figured out everything yet, but they have fresh, relatable tips and advice to share. We’ll invite early-stage founders for a one-hour AMA session. Afterwards, we’ll create a public webpage featuring each Q&A session with media clips and transcriptions. This will be 100% free and open to the public. Our first AMA (June 11 1pm PST) will feature Will Drewery, whose company (Diagon) recently raised $5.1 million in Seed funding. We’ll get to know Will better and cover topics such as tips on raising funding in this tough environment. It will be a fun AMA, and you can register for free using the link below. RSVP now!

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My latest investment is rooted in a profoundly unique insight in one of the world largest industries, and I could not be more excited about it. Meet Kashmir Intelligence. We’re leading a $5M round alongside our friends at Jigsaw VC, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, Material Ventures, firedrop and TrueSight Ventures. The ideal Stride.VC deal requires (a) a unique insight in (b) a fundamentally interesting market with (c) a scalable business model and (d) a team of founders who can reshape their industry and (e) intentionality. This opportunity delivers on of all of these. The downstream oil industry is what our world runs on. Optimising the performance and output of existing infrastructure is one of the most immediately impactful things we can do to address the climate crisis. Additionally, delivering effective infrastructure in the face of the Russia crisis is a geopolitical imperative of profound importance. Oil refineries have a major data problem - they run millions of miles of pipes generating terabytes of sensor data they cannot move to the cloud, and their inability to harness this intelligence is hurting their efficiency. Enter Orbital - an edge infrastructure AI layer that delivers cloud-beating deep learning capabilities into downstream environments at a fraction of the cost, with none of the security risks. Founder Samyakh (Sam) Tukra stumbled upon this issue whilst building digital twins for refineries and immediately realised he'd come across a strategic issue plaguing heavy industrial environments in general and the oil industry in particular. Refineries are completely unique beasts with complex optimisation requirements in data-constrained, high security environments. Hence the solution here would require a complete different approach to deliver the predictive optimisation results that these companies need. Figuring out how to address this multi-faceted issue delivered the unique insight on which this company was born. Sam partnered up with repeat founder Callum Adamson and together they kickstarted Kashmir. Quite the duo. Callum and I share a habit of meditating on our own death and Sam is both charming and so talented I'm not even sure he's really human; the chemistry between all of us was excellent from the word "go". The company is emerging from stealth with real world performance underway at ExxonMobil / Gruppo API and ABB/ICL facilities and are excited to formally launch Orbital at Global Refining & Petrochemicals Congress 2024 in Delhi on the 27th of June as part of their Indian market focus. I'm excited to be part of this important company's journey as we strive to make industry more efficient. Big Data needs a sharp Edge, and we’re looking forward to showing you what Orbital can do. Thank you Pietro Invernizzi for the intro and assist! Onward. https://lnkd.in/eWJmft2w

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Hey Friends, Today we're revealing the biggest launch in the history of Superhuman: reimagined for teams!! I would greatly appreciate your support if you could upvote us on Product Hunt https://lnkd.in/gX_b3PVi (if you haven't already, update your Superhuman version to get access the game-changing features)

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🎨 📺 Sharon Roth is a Product & Design leader who’s built her career in the lab, across different modalities, to bring more creative product experiences to life 📺 🎨 It's W3 / Q3 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Sharon who serves as the Senior Director of Product Management at Quantified.ai, the AI-driven flight simulator for sellers. The app feels as real as your next video call, scales across teams, programs, and companies, and ramps reps 42% faster. Sharon is leading Quantified AI’s Product & Design team after previous roles in Product leadership at Tamr & Honor Education. She’s excited to be back working in an Enterprise focused company, leading Design alongside Product, focused on strategic & execution based discipline. ❓Questions Are Your Roadmap ❓ It’s popular to encourage new hires to ask a lot of questions. But it’s always a good time to ask questions! When a member of your team comes to you and says “we really need to build X feature”, they’re coming to you for good reason. Dig into the why to understand how often the issue comes up, when it happens in a customer conversation, and why they’re asking for it in the first place. Is there an even better way to build a solution? Also, people are always excited about getting to a solution. By delaying the solution discussion to first get everyone to agree on the problem, you can coordinate a better response. Sharon has been in rooms where stakeholders can’t agree on the problem they’re trying to solve, which can sometimes be even more painful! By asking better questions and articulating the underlying issues thoroughly, they can work together as an organization to chart a better path forward. 3 Career Insights / Learnings 🙋‍♀️ Seek New Challenges - “Trying new things is how you learn and grow. At a startup, there are so many opportunities to try new things. As startups evolve, you need to embrace all that’s going to happen and make it a positive thing. Otherwise don’t go to a startup!” 🤝 Act with Integrity - “Do your best, show your work. But also treat others with respect and kindness while doing it. How you treat people and how you show up every day will impact your work environment. You’re responsible for the energy you bring to the room, so be authentic and try to inject some positivity. It will help you build the type of network you want to have too” 🗣 Invest in Communication Skills - “It helps you ask questions well, advocate for yourself, have your ideas be heard. It also helps others understand your impact. It takes continuous practice to do well.” If you’d like to learn more about Sharon’s career, the full post is linked in the comments. Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead too, will ya? #bostontech #operators

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Tune in to get insights from Touraj Parang, President, COO, and Board Member of Serve Robotics on the importance of early partnerships in startups, the myth of exit taboo, and the impact of the new technology landscape on the VC power law. Plus, learn how startups can secure funding in today's bustling market. I missed this episode, but you shouldn't! Spoiler alert, this episode is in Persian (Farsi). Please leave a comment if you think we should record these in english. 🎥 Watch here : https://lnkd.in/ehbBeDD4

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Founder <> founder convos are the biggest unlock for company building. I spent the last 2+ weeks in SF. Besides meeting with customers, I spent a ton of time with founders / early stage builders that I deeply respect (shoutout to Abhinav Asthana, Christina Cacioppo, Kevin Van Gundy, Akshay Kothari, Yuhki Yamashita, Tara Viswanathan, Celine Halioua, & Michelle Valentine). I’m extremely grateful to have the chance to spend time with these folks. Some reflections from these brilliant people. 1/ People > everything. A company is a collection of people. Company success comes down to hiring the best people. 2/ Startup problems aren’t *that* unique. Startups are HARD and even if you think your challenges are specific to your company, they’re likely not. Someone else has faced the same thing, and you likely don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 3/ Let some fires burn. Focus > trying to do everything. As a startup, you can’t fix everything at once with limited resources (even if you want to). You need to focus on the stuff that will move the needle the most. Pick the top 1 or 2 problems, fix them, then move onto the next. It’s okay if some fires need to burn for a little in the meantime. 4/ Company operating cadences are key. We’re redoing our cadences now, so it was super interesting to learn how others run their board meetings, leadership meetings, all hands, etc. A consistent theme for board & leadership meetings is to have everyone complete a prompt in written doc, share with each other, then use the time to have meatier discussions. 5/ Be competitor aware, customer obsessed. Competitors cause unnecessary noise. Build products and make decisions based on customer / market need and founder intuition, never based on competition. Are these learnings helpful? If so, can share more founder learning posts in the future!

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Ever wonder how teams at Airbnb & directors like Spielberg turn big ideas into unforgettable experiences? ✨ It all starts with storyboarding - it’s like sketching out your project with a comic strip to visualize each step before you begin. We’re launching a "Multimodal Storyboarding Starter Kit" for developers, enabling you to unlock GenAI storyboarding in your apps. Check out StoryFlow, a demo app built on VideoDB: 1. Enter your app description. 2. List user steps. 3. Hit Generate & watch your user journey come to life! Want early access? Reply or like this post! :)

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🚀 Exciting news for all startup founders! 🌟 Before he took over the mic at TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Haje Kamps joined us to share invaluable insights on crafting a pitch that stands out—especially in today's challenging fundraising climate. 🎙️ In this killer video excerpt, Haje, with his deep expertise as a pitch deck expert, breaks down the essentials of a compelling pitch. He emphasizes clarity in your value proposition, the critical nature of founder-market fit, and the importance of a sizable market opportunity. 📈 We dig deep into these topics, extracting gems that are vital for every founder looking to make an impact with potential investors. 🤝 👉 Watch the short clip here, and if it grabs your attention, the full conversation covers even more ground on navigating the VC ecosystem successfully! 👇 Check the first comment for links to the full podcast on YouTube and Apple Podcasts!

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If you had a great startup idea, should you keep it a secret? Are musicians natural entrepreneurs? In this episode, Seed Zeng and I chat with Yotam Rosenbaum, musician, YC founder, and investor. 👉 Listen on your podcast app: https://tr.ee/ZmRr5NjEtk

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Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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I had such a great time chatting with Lenny Rachitsky in this week's podcast! We talked about some of the lessons I've learned over my career, like getting my hands deep into execution, using storytelling and metaphors to build stronger products, and leading with curiosity so I can constantly learn from everyone (and, as a side benefit, stay focused in meetings 😀 !). So many of these tactics I've learned from the brilliant and generous people I've been surrounded by throughout my career -- thank you all! And of course, you can find more about these lessons in my "Hard Parts of Growth" series about product, leadership, and scaling, at amivora.substack.com.

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Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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🚀 Strategy and Profitability: Insights from Lenny’s Podcast with Ami Vora I recently listened to a fantastic episode of Lenny Rachitsky podcast with Ami, where they delved into the critical aspects of governance and profitability in product leadership. Their insights were incredibly resonant and thought-provoking, particularly for anyone navigating the complex intersection of innovation and business sustainability. Highlights: Detangling User Needs: • They emphasized the importance of understanding user needs while setting up strategic frameworks. Clear guidelines help product teams innovate without getting bogged down by bureaucracy. GMV and Surface Separation: • Ami made a compelling point about Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) and the need to separate it by surface. This approach helps product leaders see which platforms or channels are driving the most value, enabling targeted improvements and strategic investments. Building User Engagement for GMV: • Ami discussed how different user engagements contribute to GMV. By segmenting GMV per surface, companies can tailor strategies to enhance user experiences across various touchpoints, driving higher overall GMV. Profitability with Purpose: • Integrating profitability into the product development process from the start is crucial. Ami shared strategies for ensuring every product initiative drives financial success without compromising on user value. Data-Driven Decisions: • They underscored the power of data in strategic planning. Leveraging analytics allows product leaders to make informed decisions that balance short-term gains with long-term growth. Building Accountability: • A strong theme was fostering a culture of accountability. Transparency and regular reviews are key to maintaining high standards and achieving sustainable growth. Reflection: This podcast was a powerful reminder that effective strategy and profitability are not mutually exclusive. It’s about setting the right frameworks to foster innovation and ensure our products are financially viable. I highly recommend this episode to fellow product managers and leaders. It’s packed with actionable insights on balancing governance and profitability. How do you integrate governance frameworks without stifling innovation in your teams? #ProductManagement #Governance #Profitability #Innovation #Leadership #DataDriven #SustainableGrowth

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I remember chatting with Steve Jobs when he would come to our office at IDEO with his most intractable design problems. He was so much more than the co-founder of Apple. He was the man who truly merged technology and design. The man who raised consumer expectations for thoughtfully made products. The man who gave users not what they asked for, but what upon seeing it, is what they wanted all along. His influence still looms large more than a dozen years after his passing. Even the staunchest critics of Apple can’t deny he helped shape the modern design and business world. We often ask: “What does it take to make the next Steve Jobs?” I interviewed dozens of designers, design scholars, entrepreneurs, and CEOs on the role of design in Silicon Valley. My research led me to identify five traits (what I call ‘Jobsian’ traits) that could shape the next great design-tech leader. If you want to be the next great leader in design-tech, this is *all* you need.

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Big News: The Official Day Zero is here! 🤩 Thrilled to announce the official launch of Fibr and to celebrate our funding led by the visionary Accel, 2am VC, and my mentors Kunal Shah and Yamini Bhat At Fibr, we obsess over micro insights. One such hypothesis was that landing page personalization is often overlooked, yet is a super-critical tool to reduce CAC in the cookieless era. Like every market creation opportunity, testing this hypothesis took us some time. We decided to only go out and launch when this hypothesis was completely tested. And guess what? We saw a 10-15% increase in conversions from partnerships with large enterprises in the broadband, insurance, and interior design sectors across geographies. If you are a mid-market/enterprise marketer struggling with CAC, we would love to help. Here’s the kicker: Share this post and tag a fellow marketer who needs to hear about this! Both you and your friend’s company will snag 2 free months with the enterprise version of Fibr Web personalization product. Only 20 slots for this early bird offer. DM me to seize this exciting offer and let’s revolutionize your marketing together! Read the full news here: https://lnkd.in/gx_EQtx5 Thanks, ADWEEK AdExchanger for the mentions. #Fibr #Launch #MarketingRevolution #Personalization #CAC #Martech #FundRaise

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