Permanent Beta
This Substack is currently a staging location for Rahul to record ALL thoughts on company building in India. Free free to start following!
This is the Indian Founder's Field Guide, a newsletter about company building in India by Rahul Mathur.
Over the past 2 years of running a VC backed company, I’ve done one major pivot, two fundraises, two 0-1 journeys, hired a few execs & built a 100+ person Org (EPD, S&M, Support) - learnt a lot about everything & nothing!
Building in India poses a unique challenge - each State has a different language, huge socio-economic divides, monetization problems (!!), trust gaps & our obsession with hiring 1000s of people.
Who? (is this meant for)
A current / prospective 1st time founder
A current early stage / pre-Series A startup operator (EPD, S&M, Strategy etc)
NOT meant for: Casual readers, time pass Instagram Reels crowd, investors, thought leaders, visionaries, Thread writers.
Why? (am I doing this)
I’ve found some success writing about company building in India on LinkedIn (68k+) and Twitter (68k+) - the most common request I receive is for a single location to find all my posts.
The most common feedback I get is “practical” or “thanks” so I guess the posts add some value? (unlike most VCs)
I also have a few Angel investments where my portfolio founders appreciate the random drawings I make for them based on my LinkedIn posts.
This blog is NOT meant for: Acting as top of funnel for investment deal flow or attempting to get a BLUE tick on Twitter. You can find enough of those con artists on Twitter writing “valueless” Threads.
What? (is this blog intended to be)
The idea behind writing this blog is to give you a HUGE set of mental shortcuts and guides to grow your business faster. There is NO substitute for learnings from 1st hand action or mistakes - but this MIGHT be useful for you.
I intend to make this Substack the single place to find curated (longer, deeper & more refined) posts from my end.
This blog is NOT intended to be a cohort based course where I make money out of you because I know monetization in India is hard in all sectors except “education”. If you think this is education - god bless you, go buy a textbook from Kaplan.
How? (will these guides be structured)
Each post would be regarding a single topic e.g. building a FOS (offline Sales team) or a basic framework for Sales Analytics.
I’ll try to go as deep as possible - and respond to ALL FAQs based on feedback shared on synopsis Tweets (example here)
Most topics will be revised each quarter based on my own learnings!
Where? (can you learn more or find me)
Don’t hesitate to DM me (or even double DM in event of no reply). I’m happy to answer your questions / respond to constructive criticism (not always TBH)
You should proceed to investigate the structure (of this Substack)