Best of 2021: Conversations on Building & Finding Opportunities

Every week, the Prime Venture Partners podcast series brings you thought leaders and entrepreneurs from the startup ecosystem decoding trends for the future of product, business, and more.

As we welcome 2022, here's a look back at the best episodes of the Prime Ventures Podcast.

03:05 - Figuring out PMF during the build journey - Shreyas Doshi

Shreyas Doshi, former Product Manager at Stripe and Twitter, offers insights on the building phase of a product for early-stage entrepreneurs and reveals the most important principle of finding product-market fit.

06:06 - How a Facebook designer thinks - Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo, Former Design VP, Facebook, and Co-Founder, Sundial talks about her learnings on how to build and design products that solve problems.

09:33 - The power of listening to users - Vidit Aatrey

Vidit Aatrey, CEO and Founder of Meesho, reveals his journey as an entrepreneur, what led Meesho to become a category-defining startup, managing trust and accessibility in online shopping, and more.

12:41 - How to train your team to take risks - Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Founder and Chairman, theBoardlist, talks about smart risk-taking and balancing gut feeling and data in decision-making.

18:25 - When should you hire CXOs at your startup - Vivek Sunder

Vivek Sunder, Chief Operating Officer at Swiggy, talks about hiring CXOs and understanding the evolving customer behaviour.

22:22 - Building a founding team - Nickhil Jakatdar

Nickhil Jakatdar, Co-founder and CEO of GenePath Diagnostics, talks about the lessons learned during his entrepreneurial journey.

25:14 - Competing against large global brands - Hitesh Oberoi

Hitesh Oberoi, Co-promoter, MD, and CEO at Info Edge India Limited, talks about building Naukri and experiencing competition from big brands.

35:06 - How to position your startup - April Dunford

April Dunford, an entrepreneur and market positioning consultant, shares insights on product positions and customer segmentation for early-stage startups.

40:08 - How to become culture-ready for IPO - Donna Wilczek

Donna Wilczek, SVP of Products Strategy and Innovation, Coupa Software, talks about her 10-year-long journey and building the right company culture.

43:06 - How to build a healthcare product - Mudit Dandwate

Dozee Co-Founders Mudit Dandwate and Gaurav Parchani share their founding and growth story. They talk about the time they acted as guinea pigs for Dozee, how they took an idea to a product, the challenge of convincing doctors, data privacy issues, and more.

46:05 - How leaders use the power of humor - Naomi Bagdonas

Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas introduce their book ‘Humor, Seriously’ and talk about the importance of spreading humour in the workplace. They also shared tips about humour styles, reading the audience, making people feel valued and more.

49:06 - Why PMs need more breadth than depth - Anshumani Ruddra

Google Group’s Anshumani Ruddra talks about how he shifted to Google, what he learned from his journey, and what it means to be a product manager.

54:29 - Emerging opportunities in the crypto space - Nischal Shetty

Nischal Shetty, Co-founder and CEO of WazirX, talks about the market’s current enthusiasm around cryptocurrency and the early days of building WazirX. He also spoke about the growth hacks of building a crypto exchange business, and more.

58:50 - How to build a global data business - Neha Singh

Neha Sigh, former Venture Capitalist, and Co-founder & CEO of Tracxn, sheds light on Tracxn's role, making the most of the exploding data, and how early entrepreneurs can leverage the opportunity to build a data business.

01:03:20 - Opportunities for entrepreneurs in the EV space - Tarun Mehta

Tarun Mehta, CEO and Co-founder of Ather Energy, presents the country’s EV landscape in a snapshot. He talks about building Ather, customer behaviour in India, the exponential demand in Tier II and III areas, and more.

01:05:08 - Planning an exit and building relationships - Shirish Nadkarni

Shirish Nadkarni talks about his book ‘From Startup to Exit’ from where he shared valuable excerpts about the startup journey. He focused on exits along with the importance of building relationships, running a fundraising campaign, among others.

01:09:50 - How is cross-border commerce evolving - Vargab Bakshi

Vargab Bakshi, International Partnerships Lead at Shopify, talks about his journey, Shopify’s model, and opportunities for tech entrepreneurs.

01:12:12 - Global SaaS trends - Shihab Muhammed

Shihab Muhammed, CEO and Founder of SurveySparrow, shared his journey from Zoho to Freshworks, and finally, SurveySparrow. He discusses the importance of building a minimum usable SaaS product, along with the rising global trends in SaaS.

01:15:42 - The open-source business model - Viral B Shah

Viral B Shah, Co-founder of Julia Computing, and Co-creator of the Julia programming language, spoke about his road to success as an entrepreneur in the open-source programming business domain. He talked extensively about the early days of Julia, and more.

01:21:25 - How to act when there is a disruption - Beerud Sheth

Gupshup CEO and Co-founder Beerud Sheth shares the unicorn’s 15-year long journey. He also shares insights on manoeuvring the startup through new technologies, building a solid team, and having a measure of success.

01:24:49 - Startup ecosystem and changing world dynamics - Shamir Karkal

Shamir Karkal, CEO and Co-founder of Sila, talks about setting up neobank Simple Finance right after the 2008 financial crisis, and more.

 01:30:38 - Government adopting an open mindset - Amit Ranjan

Amit Ranjan talks about his journey from SlideShare to DigiLocker, innovating while working with the government, and how startups can soon leverage the digital infrastructure.

01:33:26 - The 1-percent pledge - Atul Satija

Atul Satija, Founder of The/Nudge Foundation and Founder-CEO of GiveIndia, sheds light on the entrepreneurial angle of the development sector. He talks about his switch from the corporate world to social causes, how to find and measure success as a social entrepreneur, and GiveIndia’s mission to sim