A seed-stage company asked for a list of prospects. A long list would have been easy to produce and useless to work, because every name on it needs a specific buyer and a reason that company would care. So it became thirty accounts instead of three hundred, split into four groups, each group a different guess about who the product is actually for. Behind them sits an Airtable that holds what has to be known about a company before anyone is allowed to contact it, and what gets written down after every call.
Evaluated 50+ early-stage companies on founder, market, and business model, and wrote the 30+ investment briefs behind them for investment-committee discussion. Ran the fund's newsletter, podcast, and LinkedIn alongside that, growing the audience 5x. A corporate venture fund's deal flow depends on founders knowing it exists, and the CRM is where you find out whether the visibility worked.
Government data on Delhi street vendors only counts the licensed ones, who are the minority. Forty vendors interviewed on foot across four parts of the city, in Hindi, over eight weeks. Ten held the license the law requires of all of them, and the ones who did had either post-secondary education or three decades of family experience.
I'm especially interested in conversations about venture, market intelligence, early-stage growth, and access to capital. If there's something you want to get into properly, reach out on any of these. I'm just as happy to talk about darkroom printing, cooking for eight, or a board game worth the hour it takes to learn.
