Who is a Founder?
In a sea of entrepreneurs, whoever makes a mark by fueling their dreams into reality & paves a way to start up (quite literally) after dodging all the bullets of Funding, Hiring, Coding, Investing, Budgeting and a bazillion more.
And what happens when they come together?
Well, simply put, they discuss their learnings!
Or at least, that is what 100+ Founders & associates of Light Speed Ventures did when they met us on the Razorpay terrace to discuss their Founder journey.
But before we dive right into it, let’s do a quick recap of this beautiful evening & bring you up to speed!
Missing out much? Don’t worry! Here’s a quick recap of this beautiful evening that’ll bring you up to speed!
Powering dreams in a post covid world!
The evening kick-started with a Fireside chat between our co-founders – Harshil Mathur & Shashank Kumar, and Aditya Sharma, Partner from Light Speed Ventures, where they discussed how it is essential that the Founders ensure that their business grows and thrives in the most efficient way possible even during an economic slowdown.
The startup veterans further gave examples of how some of the best companies were built in an economic turbulent climate because they were passionate about their dream, focused on building the right product and, of course, providing a first-class service to their customers.
All-in-all, economic slowdown or not, there will always be channels of growth that allow Founders to explore other channels of growth and ensure that they come out stronger whenever the markets are stable.
Lessons from their journey
Harshil and Shashank reminisced the times when they started their Founder journeys and talked about how to date; they are trying to figure things out in the startup land.
For instance, when they started out, just like any fintech, they too faced a lot of challenges on the compliance and regulatory front. And while the conversations around this are starting to brew even more now, this has always been the case for fintech startups!
Just like the markets, regulation too is not in anybody’s control!
What helped Harshil and Shashank early on was establishing connections with people in the industry dominated by older & wiser and understanding the nitty-gritty of the compliances.
Later they also started looking at the challenges as product problems which they needed to solve. Thus, sales, customers, hiring, and culture – were all looked at as challenges and solved one by one.
A speed-bump called ‘banking’
It all starts like this – Founders have an idea, more like a dream, which has the potential to change things around. They pitch it to the world (read: investors) and make them believe in it, and just when they are so close to making it big – compliances, taxes, payroll, OTPs and other banking woes come in the way of their dream.
Like other founders, our co-founders, Harshil Mathur & Shashank Kumar, recall these painful times and chuckle because now they’ve achieved victory over most of it and especially the banking bit with RazorpayX, neobanking arm of Razorpay. For instance, – when Harshil carried a laptop on their vacation in Goa (which Founders rarely get) only to process salaries.
They have clearly come a long long long (x1000) way.
But, sadly, can we say this for other Founders too? Who still lift the banking burden over and above their business as usual tasks?
Imagine carrying your hefty gadgets on a vacation only to approve payouts, or responding to 283748234 texts from your CA every day or worse, just being okay with this bankache which most definitely has a cure – that too, a tried and tested one!
A Founder’s journey is tough and long, and we’re here to share this burden so that they get to relish the rewarding parts! And these words, promises, and mottos (be it in a blog piece or at the Mixer event) come to fruition when 10,000+ Founders trust RazorpayX to manage their finances from end to end!
This is not the end. It’s a start!
A start to change the narrative of banking from “painful” to “relieving”.
A start to focus on things that really matter – your dream.
A start to making banking truly awesome
