解码创业2025

scan the Qr todownload the report Table ofContent 01 ROLE OF CO-FOUNDERS & CONFLICT RESOLUTION PAGE - 0 1 02 MARKET SIZE AND KEY TERMS PAGE - 0 5 03 IS YOUR BUSINESS VC’S FUNDABLE? PAGE - 1 0 04 PAGE - 1 3 05 BUILDING A BRAND AND CUSTOMER TRUST PAGE - 1 7 06 WHAT TO DO AFTER A SUCCESSFUL FUNDRAISE? PAGE - 2 0 Foreword Over the course of last 20 years, I have met many founders and founding teams. Whatis common to all of them is a passion and vision to achieve something different thatmakes things better. Either to bring a change in the way a business operates, or how tobridge for consumer needs that are missed, patterns that will change the future overthe course of next decade. Through the Decoding Starting Up series, our goal was to distill key learnings thatcould help early-stage entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of building a company.From shaping the first principles of your business to raising capital and managinginvestor relationships, these six chapters bring together insights that are oftenlearned the hard way. This is not a playbook with all the answers—because no twostartup journeys are the same—but a guide to help you ask the right questions. Compiling these chapters into one report is our way of making these lessons moreaccessible, reinforcing the fundamentals that every founder must master. The path of an entrepreneur is filled with ambiguity, tough decisions, and constantlearning. While the challenges are inevitable, the right frameworks and mindset canmake the journey more intentional and rewarding. As you read through, we hope these insights serve as a compass in your journey, helpingyou build with conviction, resilience, and a sharp focus on creating long-term value. Vani KolaManaging DirectorKalaari Capital CHAPTER - 1ResolutionRole ofCo-Founders& Conflict Chapter 1 talks about how founders should setprocesses and systems in place, take activeactions to reduce or minimise conflicts and therole of Co-Founders and what it takes to build astrong founding team to build a long-lastingcompany. Starting up is hard and it’s a fact. Founders start with a hypothesis that they then need to prove. The need of a certainproduct or service in the market. But a lot of things remain uncertain, a lot of open ques-tions and a lot of changing variables. For a company to be successful over a course of10-15 years - an entrepreneur eventually goes through the process of finding the rightproduct-founder-distribution-capital-team-market fit. And the list does not end here,you can add several other parameters to this. This is the reason why success rate of start-ups is <1%. However, what’s often spoken about is the timing of a market, strategy or business model.What’s not spoken about is the lost opportunity due to founder conflicts. Conflicts arenot new, where there is power, and money involved – conflicts are inevitable. Things andsituations become emotionally charged very quickly and all reasonableness and logic areout of the window. Sensible reasonable solutions keeping long term benefits are rarely the norm and only toolate perhaps there is reflection of cost of conflict and the lost value. Sadly, I have been a witness to many of these over the course of my journey. Have difficult and hardconversations as earlyas poible Internal alignments and shared value systems can help taking this a long way and some-thing I wish founders did more. Even a good idea and good product with a great market opportunity fails to achieve itspotential due to internal founder conflicts. Generally, entrepreneurs (CEOs) form teamswith people who have been a long-term friend of theirs – can be a college batchmate orcolleague at their previous organizations or someone they know personally. However,even if the Co-Founders are very familiar with each other and have deep past relationship,there is no guarantee that they will not have conflicts. Someone took care of Product, Marketing, Brand Building and Hiring while the other tookcare of core backend operations, finance, and expansion. One of them used to sell a visionto the investors, while the other used to take care of executing things on ground for thebusiness to scale. While this has been a playbook strategy to divide roles & responsibili-ties, a very handful number of entrepreneurs were able to last this journey. There can be numerous reasons for a Founder conflict. Misalignment of the vision, mis-alignment of the roles and responsibilities, Co-Founders unable to level up as the startupscales (there are a lot of people who are extremely good at 0-1 of a company but areunable to level up as the company requires them to think of 1-10 or 10-100 part of the jour-ney). One thing that I have advised all our portfolio companies or any founders that I have inter-acted with – while it is good to have co-founders involved who have a similar vision as ofyou about the company and the product, have difficult and hard conversations as early aspossible. W