Always be smarter than your lawyer and VC, or so they say. As an entrepreneur, pitching an idea to seasoned VCs can be a nerve-wracking experience. A VC is considered the linchpin of our startup ecosystem, and most often than not, the “hated one”. Entrepreneurs are wary not to rub investors the wrong way, and with a lot of grit and tenacity they subdue those voices screaming out loud (pot-shots) in their head at the VCs.
Now, what if the tables were turned? Roasting or what we may call ‘glorified bullying’ isn’t something your VCs are arguably familiar with. It’s very rare that you witness the fun banter between India’s largest startup incubator and seasoned VCs. But, that’s exactly what happened when our CEO, Jay Krishnan went on to roast some seasoned VCs during our flagship annual event — Beyond Boundaries’ VC Roast.
Five VCs namely — Sateesh Andra, Endiya Partners; Sarath Naru, Managing Partner, VentureEast; Sashi Reddy, Founder and Managing Partner, SRI Capital; Venkat Vallabhaneni, General Partner at Parampara Capital and Prasad Vanga, Founder & CEO, Anthill were ready and armed to take on Jay Krishnan’s witty jibes and believe us when we say, they aren’t faint-hearted and made some great comebacks.
The five ‘cool’ panellist introductions saw Krishnan take a potshot at them by saying, “I reached out to the top 5 Hyderabad-based VCs, but couldn’t find them, so here I am with the next best 5.”
The panellists or rather Big Money Wasters/Haters as Jay calls them, got some candid introductions that brought in roars of laughter. Well, we wouldn’t like to spoil the fun. So, we suggest you watch it in the video.
After introducing the VCs using anecdotes and not-to-miss profile pictures, Jay asked each one — why all organisations within the startup ecosystem construe VCs as F$%&ING PR@!#S…errr…he meant FUNLOVING PICNICKERS.? What were you thinking?
While the crowd was in splits, Sateesh Andra was quick to respond how he didn’t belong among the hated ones. He continued, on how VCs are roasted all the time by family, investors and entrepreneurs.
While Jay stated how the definition of ‘Venture’ includes a risky journey, but VCs seldom take risks? Our high-risk-taking VCs jumped on the opportunity to side-track the question to how ‘entrepreneurs are not taking risks’. A good move, we must add. Venkat took a quick jibe on ‘startup valuation’ and how the word ‘deep learning’ is thrown about everywhere.
But, the most hilarious was the witty ‘fill in the blanks’ segment. It asked VCs, how they would describe most entrepreneurs that they come across these days. Sateesh cracked up the audience instantly with his response stating how these entrepreneurs are ‘more intelligent than he is’. There were some quick responses, but we think ‘fun loving’ garnered the most cheer from the audience, or did we hear ‘fund loving’?
Do you ever wonder — when an entrepreneur is useful or useless to a VC? Well, each VC had a stunning and witty response to that too, but behind these responses were some hidden gems of advice.
No more spoilers from us. Watch the video right away!
