Vaibhav Domkundwar
@vaibhavbetter
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CEO at Better Capital | 3X Founder | Cal Alum
Join 700+ startup founders →
Joined January 2021
Better Capital: first US pre-seed fund built to back India's breakout founders at scale. → $100M AUM → 200+ companies | 2 unicorns | 15+ soonicorns → $250K–$500K median check size → Solo GP-led | 3X founder | 25+ years in global B2B Backing India’s boldest across: →
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Peter Thiel is the greatest recruiter of all time. He hired Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman, David Sacks, and partnered with Elon Musk. Here are the 3 questions he asks to pick 10/10 people: 1/ Tell me something which is true that almost nobody agrees with you on? Litmus test
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And there are *venture* investors who ask for retention at Seed.
Proof Is Too Late 🧵
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👇
I still remember when Gamma faced incredible odds in its earliest days with a way better funded competitor and a product that just wasn't there. A lot of teams would have quit. They kept going, focusing on relentless customer execution. Now, five years later, their momentum has
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"corporate rewards politics, not performance" -- as AI rips through all work there is a sliver of an opportunity to put an end to this bullshit. We are conceptualizing 1729 - a way to help high agency folks become AI-first in their craft - to empower the best doers do it and
My coworker got promoted over me. He was worse at coding. Better at politics. I wrote better code. Fixed more bugs. Shipped faster. He talked in meetings. Took credit. Played the game. He got the promotion. I got "keep up the good work". That's when I realized: corporate
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in fact, as far away from it as possible :)
If you just aim to build a $1m/year biz, you don't need to be in Silicon Valley.
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@m2jr Deserved a beat, Mike: https://t.co/92VmmF75pc 🪩
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This deserves a permenant pin and only a longterm truly pre-proof investor could articulate it so well. I haven't read a better framing for what we live everyday at Better as a day zero investor and we see so many versions of how early pre-proof ideas struggle every day of the
Proof Is Too Late 🧵
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We often tell our founders to *imagine this* ahead of time and assume this reality. There is no other way to anchor yourself for the long run. Bad news first, is our mantra :) PS: I also start any and all of my updates with Lowlights first.
Everyone loves the idea of being a founder until: • You’re 5 years in • Your cofounders have left • Revenue has stalled but you still have 20 employees • Investors stop returning calls and write you off as a loss Yet you still have to believe.
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thine.com
Co-founder to your life. Privacy-first intelligence that empowers you to achieve your goals.
Conversation from the Stanford CS building today: A chatbot is a primitive interaction mode. It’s a reactionary (not proactive) one, too. By itself, it’s just a mouth: brilliant at language but disconnected from actual action. It can't do anything, it just says stuff. We’ll soon
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Couldn’t agree more — and been advising this to anyone who’s asked. Also, with AI, the opportunity cost to not be operating is too high unless you simple don’t want to get your hands dirty.
VC is a dumb job to do too early. Most of the 5 attributes you need get much easier with experience & notoriety -Unique sourcing -Sub-sector expertise -Portfolio support super power -Track record -Buy-in: GPs want you, not to fill a role Build first, or build these first.
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Founders when analyst shows up for the meeting saying the partner had a last minute conflict
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Startups are a marathon so this is simply not sustainable.
Most early-stage founders I know are barely surviving, even the ones who look like they’re winning. Terrible sleep, no social life, constant anxiety, crushing doubt, brutal lows. Don’t let social media fool you, this path isn’t for everyone.
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🎯 never understood the need to invest in fancy office spaces in the early years…
I spent as *little as possible* building our office after raising a seed round.
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This is quite interesting and relatable.
@rrhoover @garrytan highly recommend the full article! https://t.co/RAK14zT8yb > Founders younger than 26 are much more likely to have “dead” startups, and founders older than 30 are much more likely to have “zombie” startups (still alive, but haven’t achieved breakout success). The odds of
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Founders, for the love of God; send investor updates. 1. Leverage them for help with customer intros, hires and fundraises. 2. Use them to create excitement and conversation about you in market. 3. Because these people have trusted you and given you their money. Not doing
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“You’re not selling because you’ve lost faith. You’re selling because the market structure won’t reward your faith —even if you’re right.” Exit decisions are brutally hard especially for high conviction investors.
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Once you are past PMF (product and revenue), we've seen that a focus on creating core compounding engines is far more valuable than simply chasing growth on any one/two metrics. Incredible to see these Ayden and Shopify numbers!
We think of Adyen and Shopify as legendary companies with $2.5B and $11B in revenue. But it’s easy to forget that in year 9, Adyen had about $80M of revenue and Shopify about $150M. Nearly all of the legendary status accrued in the second decade. Go long!
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For the very first time across 200+ companies have I seen a job posting where candidates are not just filling a form that takes 20 mins to fill but also appreciating how well it was designed, how it got them thinking, how much they loved the questions and how well they were
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