Hard-won lessons from a Gobi Partners exec and serial entrepreneur

Shannon Kalayanamitr is a venture partner at Gobi Partners, a VC firm with US$1 billion in assets under management and 13 funds. She cut her teeth as a management consultant and investment banker at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Lehman Brothers, before going on to found lifestyle ecommerce platform Moxy (which later became Orami).

Shannon Kalayanamitr

She recently gave a talk at MOX Happy Hour, a public event series by Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX), operated by SOSV. The accelerator counts Kalayanamitr among its network of over 350 mentors including venture capitalists, ex-entrepreneurs, and heads of corporates. Here are the key takeaways from her talk.

Do one thing right

Looking back at her earlier days of starting up and fundraising, Kalayanamitr advised founders to “crystallize what you do, and do one thing right.”

Just as Amazon dominated books first before dominating everything else, startups should aim to nail one thing first. Kalayanamitr recalled how investors were skeptical about her original plan for Thailand-based Moxy, which would encompass ecommerce, logistics, and a lead-generation engine. “For me, I wanted to convey that I had vision, that there was a roadmap, there was more than just the ecommerce business that we see here,” she explained.

Realistically, founders don’t have to convince investors that they are visionaries who can see into the future. It’s a people business, after all: Investors bet on entrepreneurs and their ability to adapt, not on their business plans.

Identify the right competitors

“A pet peeve for VCs is when founders say they don’t have any competitors,” Kalayanamitr shared. For example, FoodPanda’s competitors are not only other food delivery apps, but also people eating out or picking up food themselves, she said.

When talking about their respective industries and competitive landscapes, a lot of founders make the mistake of saying that they don’t have any competitors. The reality couldn’t be more different. While there aren’t exact replicas of a startup’s business model per se, people have been trying to solve the same problems in different ways.

Founders should apply rigor and creativity to their competitive analysis, just as they do with product prototyping and strategy. Mapping the right landscape also shows that a founder has the right amount of self-awareness, vision, and humility to succeed. From the VC perspective, it’s also a test of whether the founders know their stuff or not.

Find your moat and plug in deep

Once you have identified your competitors, make sure that you have a convincing edge over them. Citing the blue ocean strategy, Kalayanamitr urged everyone to drill deep to find their unfair advantage, an asset that a company has that’s defensible.

Investors want to make sure that your unfair advantages are sustainable in the long term as well. “Ask yourself: If your competitor puts US$100 million into your industry and dumps all the prices, what would you do then?” Kalayanamitr said. “Anticipate the future of your industry and make sure you’re defensible against whatever is coming.”

Build on top of other technologies

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. This adage especially rings true when working with a team of brilliant engineers. While many companies want to be disruptive when it comes to tech stack, it’s best not to reinvent the wheel when you’re still trying out new things.

“While creating a minimum viable product (MVP), what you don’t realize is that you’re also doing an MVP of your company structure, an MVP of your team, and an MVP of this new industry,” Kalayanamitr observed.

During the first few years, a startup pivots many times before reaching product-market fit, founder-market fit, product-channel fit, etc. This is because the company’s MVP will go through many iterations. The first thing that a company tries to do might not be the thing it ends up doing.

Build rapport with investors early

Above all, take care of your mental health