At the height of the dotcom bubble in early 2000, capital was abundant, talent was scarce & at a premium (sounds familiar?). A🧵... I was a first time cofounder, in a happy/confused state, unaware of what world-class vision and execution and what typical milestones should be for enterprise software companies.

We were delighted to host @DavidSacks yesterday for a #MastersOfSaaS session. Some super helpful learnings that I've summarized in this thread. For more insights on building your SaaS business, sign up for David's newsletter here: sacks.substack.com 1/n Trends usually start with consumer and then make their way into the enterprise. What could go from consumer to enterprise today? Perhaps the @joinClubhouse audio use-case. But you can't port over exactly. You have to adapt to actual enterprise needs. 2/n

1/8 Today, @thedarwinbox announced its $15mm financing, led by @SalesforceVC. I couldn't be happier for this founding team from Hyderabad to have Salesforce make its first SaaS investment in Asia. cc: @alexkayyal ^ArundhatiBhattacharya 2/8 @shuvi and I first met @chennamaneni, @jayantp, @chaitanyapeddi in February 2017, with @lightspeedindia subsequently leading the Series A in May 2017. The founders and us shared a belief that Asia is underserved and has different requirements for SaaS/enterprise software.

Small boards (5 or less) are magic. These massive board meetings here with 10-20 people and every board member and board observer bringing a colleague stifles problem-solving conversations, vulnerability, transparency and generally makes things unproductive. 99% of board meetings I attend have board materials sent less than 24 hours prior to the meeting, sometimes nothing prior to the meeting. I'd encourage founders to do a flipclass model where the deck is sent 4-5 days in advance and only Q&A at the board mtg + strategic deep dives

We did a deep dive into digitally-native influencer-driven brands here in India recently. Conclusion: it is a bit early, as truly endemic influencers are not yet at scale (10s of millions of followers) on Insta etc. 1/n Yes there are sports/movie celebrity-driven brands but not clear these are venture-backable opportunities- much of the value is being extracted by the celebrities themselves or by distribution platforms such as Amazon and Myntra. 2/n