Chandigarh

There are many successful startups whose original founders lost control over them after several rounds of financing. To me, this is like losing part of yourself. It’s not all about money.

But if you take Facebook as an example. Mark Zuckerberg successfully managed to stay on top of things with his 26% of equity. How did he manage to do that? What is the most effective way to keep company control after so many rounds of financing?

What are the most effective ways to keep company control after several financing rounds?

Women in the western part of the world are equal to men, at least they should be. Still, there are much more men at executive positions. Why do you think this is?

What’s your take on the status of women in business and do you find the question itself frustrating?

I didn't realize just how hard this was until my company had an offsite yesterday where they let the sales people and the engineers play together. I guess I normally hang out with people who have at least been forced to do Java or Matlab programming or something in college, but a lot of paradigms I thought of as common knowledge aren't.
 
 The best example we came up with (for explaining how a large web site works) was an Excel spreadsheet analogy. Imagine a spreadsheet that has a bunch of graphs constructed from the data. The spreadsheet is our database of all of our data, and each graph is a different web page view.
 
 Programming is pretty interesting, and I think non-programmers would really enjoy knowing what's going on. Too often though, I think explanations go right over their heads, and they've learned to not even bother asking.

How do you explain how programming works to complete non-techies?

I would like to advertise an idea I have among some VCs, attract some attention and hopefully close in on some finances. I don’t have much business experience nor business contacts but I am trying to read about it as much as I can. What is the best game plan here? How do I approach potential investors? Startup conferences? Online services? Accelerators? I would appreciate any help I can get.

What are the best ways to manage relationships with VC contacts prior to fundraising?

I'm working on a survey to validate my business idea. Assuming I have a good sample, how many responses is enough.Say there was just one question: "Would you use a service like this?". How many yes's should I want to have enough confidence to move forward?

How Much Data Is Enough To Trust A Survey Result?

Startup talent is something that is very hard to come across. Especially when it comes down to building engineering teams. I have seen in Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley companies going around this hurdle by bringing folks from foreign countries by giving them J1 visas, H1B visas, etc.One thing that has become apparent with Donald Trump in the US, is that visas, as well as green cards, are becoming harder to obtain for employees and the thresholds to meet the criteria are increased. One clear example for this is how the salary of an employee to qualify for an h1B is now raised to $150K or so which for a startup at an early stage could be a bit steep.My question is more with regards to the future. Given the circumstances that we are facing, do you think as a result companies will start setting up foreign branches to build up their operations? How would this impact the US economy and the startup ecosystem?

How will the immigration ban and other initiatives impact startups?

Not sure how many of you read the blog post of Mitch and Freada Kapoor, early investors of Uber. It was an open letter where they addressed their concerns about Uber's culture after former employee Susan Fowler detailed via a blog post (see it <a href="https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>) the sexual harassment and overall toxic culture that she had experience while working at the company.
 
To provide some background, Fowler was sexually harassed by a manager and human resources and upper management refused to punish the offender and even threatened her with a bad performance review.
 
From the Kapoor's blog post, which you can read <a href="https://shift.newco.co/an-open-letter-to-the-uber-board-and-investors-2dc0c48c3a7#.mj3ndv8aw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> in full, there is an excerpt that states:
 
&ldquo;Uber&rsquo;s outsize success in terms of growth of market share, revenues and valuation are impressive, but can never excuse a culture plagued by disrespect, exclusionary cliques, lack of diversity, and tolerance for bullying and harassment of every form,&rdquo;
 
I totally get that goals need to be aligned with investors. Uber's CEO is also a phenomenal salesman and fundraiser. In fact the CEO at Uber convinced the Kapoor's how they would contribute to social good with the company which was one of the main reasons behind such investment in first place.
 
Are the Kapoor's right to force change by publicly stating all the concerns at a time when Uber is being hit left and right by the press on not such a positive light? Seems like they have lost $1B+ in value in a week as a result of this...
 
Look forward to your thoughts.

Is it ok to have your early investors rebuke your company publicly?

I&rsquo;ll be giving a small presentation to a startup education group. Many of the founders are working on revising their pitches and models to get seed funding, so I want to help them prepare for the next steps, especially because they don&rsquo;t know seem to know much about what I call Life After Funding. There are a lot of trip wires for seed-funded companies, and many ways to mis-allocate money. What are the biggest mistakes that must be avoided for seed-funded companies?

What are the biggest mistakes that companies with seedfunding make?

"Android Development is not about learning it's about crashes, as those crashes or bugs
are features that people are unable to understand."

This is my motto of my professional career. Due to which i am able to keep myself updated with the latest updates of android and implement in my projects.

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