Indiglo begins!
The first cohort of our software/SaaS founders move to the US as part of our Indiglo playbook!
As someone who has built & sold in the US (as well as other global markets), one of the key realizations for me was how, in spite of all the content and programs and conferences and visits, there was still a large gap between a Priya and Piyush building from Bangalore/Pune/Delhi/Chennai/etc with a Priya and Piyush building in Silicon Valley or NYC or such mature ecosystems - the latter Priya and Piyush were locals, they knew the nuances of how things work, they had years of networks they could leverage, they understood their local customers much better, and many more things! The former Priya and Piyush are (& have been) mostly confused & disadvantaged - a mindset of building for the world from India (which is a story their customers really donโt care much about - they are mainly looking to buy the best product from people who understood their problem), visiting for conferences hoping they scoop up a new customer or a pilot (the transactional desperation shows), incessantly asking for intros because they had/have no networks whatsoever, not really understanding what it means to โbe like a localโ, not truly being able to understand how to โconnectโ with customers before selling them, and so so so much more. Note that this is not a generalization at all but most situations are like this right now. Being on the ground in India for the last 11 yrs after being in the US for 16 yrs, I was able to see this difference more clearly (esp as an investor over the last 5 years) โ the โgapโ between these two Priyas and Piyush is very real and a big disadvantage for the P & P from building from Bangalore/Pune/Delhi/Chennai/etc.
Not an easy problem to solve - and many folks who understand the nuances are all doing a lot to address it in their own ways.
Based on our first-hand data, we started to independently think about what it might take to reduce this gap to eventually make it negligible. After speaking with tons of people over the past couple of years, we came up with a small playbook of how we might begin an effort to reduce the gap. It is lot of small small things so to avoid getting lost in the details, we called it Indiglo (stands for India Global..!).
The goal of Indiglo is simple - to help Indian founders build โUS-native companiesโ so there is no difference between the two Priyas and Piyushs. And we boiled it down to 3 things: removing friction, creating a comfortable platform & enabling access.
To remove friction, we have created a set of verified providers for correct global company setup (seemingly easy stuff that is screwed up more often than youโd imagine), getting cost-effective ongoing legal services, effective immigration support, fund raising from local angels as well as Seed/A/B funds (warm intros as needed/when ready) and have refined these over the last 12-24 months.
A comfortable platform really is about helping the Priya & Piyush from India settle into the US, understand the nuances of truly becoming a local (for their advantage) and feel like your belong to the place (versus feeling lost, homesick, out of place & more)! A key part of this is the Indiglo Pads - shared homes in San Francisco & Palo Alto (both up & running) as well as NYC & Brooklyn (soon!) - these are homes located at the right places for serendipity to happen and are shared by 2-4 of our portfolio companies so founders have a 24x7 space 365 days a year at an affordable cost & a community nearby - makes it easy for founders and their teams to spend more time closer to their customers. We have a lot planned around these pads so stay tuned :)
Enabling access is really all about unleashing our network for the benefit of our founders for finding early customers, partners, advisors & senior hires โ all done via what we call Indiglo Anchors, friends of Better who are themselves founders and operators in the US and are keen to open up their networks to new founders. This enables us to go well beyond our own networks and we have this already in action - customer intros that are creating a win-win for both parties!
As I discussed this with more folks in the US over the past 6 weeks, I realized how there is a large Indian diaspora of founders & operators who are keen to help, connect and be a small part of the India story over the next decade โ these are FAANG execs, scaled founders, operators across the country across industries and its a goldmine of insights and connection. Indiglo will simply enable them to do what they want to do โ if you are keen to connect with the new generation of incredibly talented Indian software/SaaS founders, please DM me!
Priyam
@priyamsaraswat of Voosh, Shailendra
@Shailendra_ht of Hypertest, Keshav of OptIQ, and Pratyush
@pratyush_r8 of Merlin are part of our founders who have helped make Indiglo a reality, and are happy to share learnings as they go down this path! DM them for any help in this regard.
ps: thereโs a lot more to this but this is already too long a post so I will keep the rest for later :)