This document provides advice on how to build a successful startup during an economic downturn based on lessons from the past year and the story of ixigo.com. It recommends focusing on product-market fit, hiring great people, setting ambitious goals, spending little on marketing until organic growth takes off, prioritizing unit economics and profitability over revenue and growth, using downturns to innovate and raise funds opportunistically, right-sizing operations, and building a strong culture. India is highlighted as still having significant long-term growth potential despite current market conditions.

1. Building a Cockroach
How to survive and thrive in 2016

2. Recap of last 12 months
• Public markets killed some Private market
valuations (thank you Box, Square, Twitter,
Linkedin, Alibaba)
• Series B, C, D valuations affected
• Series A bar much higher (fewer deals)
• Flurry of angel and seed deals
• More copy-cats than innovations raised money

3. Is it all Gloom & Doom ?

4. Current Environment
• Valuation correction and markdowns in larger companies
• Round-size shrinkage
• $100 Mn rounds in Series A / B stage will be history for a bit
• Pre-Series A & Series B extension rounds
• Strategics more active
• Many Angel / Seed funded businesses will get acq-hired
• Cash-flow and profitability
• Unit-Economics & Sustainable Growth

5. Enter the cockroach
• Lasted the dinosaur extinction millions of years ago
• Can live for six weeks without food
• Not choosy about what they eat
• Move fast and can hide during storms
• Adapt to environment / surroundings
• Lack glamour and do not look for limelight
• Can Fly when needed

6. The ixigo story
• Started in 2006, Bootstrapped, Launched 2007.
• All Indian investors say No despite 100k+ non-paid visitors in 6 months
• Lost a co-founder in late 2007
• Seed round in Feb 2008 from Singapore-based fund
• Series A deal fell through weeks before Lehmann Brothers did
• Survived the downturn with team’s, landlord’s & investors support
• Continued innovating & growing through difficult times
• Raised Series A in 2011, Series B in 2015
• 90% users non-paid, growing user-base 2x YoY and revenue 3x YoY

7. Lessons from every downturn

8. Money buys a company
time but not the ability to execute
growth but not product-market fit
revenue but not viable business model
traction but not real customer love
techies but not innovation
VPs & AVPs but not passion
schwag but not culture

9. Focus on the core value to users

10. Hire Great People
Set Lofty Targets
Get Out of the Way

11. Spend very little on marketing
till organic growth & monetization
take off
(Do not fake growth)

12. Unit-level economics matter
(Don’t discount more than what you earn)

13. Growth Hacking
(mix of art & science, intuition & data)
Creative engineers not Marketers
Story tellers not content writers
FB videos not TV
SEO not SEM
Killer Product & Content = #1 Growth Hack
Word of Mouth = #1 Marketing Channel

14. Learn to use PR & Media
(but don’t waste time reading competiton’s PR –
only track why people use their product)

15. Raise money whenever you can
(Don’t overdilute for your stage though)

16. Right-size sooner rather than later

17. Revenue is Vanity
Profit is Sanity
Cash is Reality

18. Build a great culture
(it lasts the test of times)

19. Macro : India still rocks !
• In the next 15 years, India
will see more people come
online than any other
country in the world
• Smartphone penetration is
still at 20%
• Only 40 Mn transacting
users on e-commerce =>
10x upside in next 10 years

20. “The very best companies get built
in a down market”
Facebook, AirBnB, Uber, Tesla

21. ceo@ixigo.com