I just got back from my trip to Kolkata which was planned in order to introduce the founding team of an upcoming investment to Mr. Aditya Ladsaria of Chaibreak (an Artha investee) and Mr. Miftaur Rahman of Wow Momos (a fantastic venture that I deeply respect but unfortunately didn’t get a chance to invest in). The objective of the trip was to give the new founders the chance to learn from two sets of successful founders that had no previous background in food, yet managed to fund their respective successful food startups from customer capital before raising venture capital. I especially admire Aditya & Miftaur’s razor-sharp focus towards addressing the customer’s needs through constant innovation in both, the product and operations.

I was a mute spectator (for the most part) in the conversation between the new founders and the experienced ones, but thoroughly enjoyed listening to their detailed discussions about operations, product innovations, customer loyalty management, HR, etc and all the other topics that concern building a business, except “how to raise money from VCs”. This experience gave legs to an initiative that I have wanted to launch for the last 8-12 months i.e. the Funded Entrepreneurs Group.

The idea is to put a group of founders that have already raised money (seed, angel, pre-series A, series A, etc) into a conference room for a couple of hours every 4-6 weeks to talk about matters that only another founder that has raised money can relate to – ‘how to build the venture!’ The discussion shall take place behind closed doors with no recording so that any founder from any stage of the business growth cycle can ask questions – no gyaan sessions only mutually beneficial universal learning.

I strongly believe that when a founder learns the solution to a problem from a fellow founder who has faced a similar issue and managed to overcome it, the solution seems more do-able and the problem less enigmatic. This will also help form a stronger and more cohesive ecosystem for all entrepreneurs. Going forward, the group can also share business leads or transact with each other and the possibilities remain endless, but for now, lets stick to getting a first meeting done.

Artha helped organise a meeting in an open discussion format for angel investors under the age of 50, with a minimum of 5 investments with a similar objective of learning from each other’s experiences. Those meetings have successfully been going on for the past 11 months with beneficial results for all the participants. Currently, the discussion has graduated to deal sharing and evaluating each other’s investments.

My team and I are excited to be able to organize the first Funded Entrepreneur Group meeting for the founders of our ecosystem. The meetings won’t be sponsored by anyone so that the attendees’ independence will be maintained, but there will be a thorough scrutiny of each person that attends to ensure the sanctity of the event. The exact costs of the event shall be shared between the attendees but I do not expect the cost to exceed 500-1000 per attendee inclusive of tea/coffee and a snack.

So, if you are an entrepreneur who

1. Has raised outside capital
2. Are willing to share your experiences to help another founder
3. Are interested in meeting other founders to build your business

Then email us on feg@artha.ventures with

1. Your full name
2. The name of your venture
3. Link to the article announcing your latest funding round
4. Your mobile phone number(s)

If there is enough interest, I would love to organize the first FEG meeting in 2-3 weeks (based on everyone’s ability). Email us as soon as possible!

‍30/2018