The Venture Intelligence Blog

A TechInAsia article chronicles GoZoomo's story and its shut down:  The issues faced by the peer-to-peer used car marketplace company were: 1. Poor unit economics due to low conversions for a peer-to-peer used car marketplace - around 20%. “For instance, we are taking pictures, inspecting 100 vehicles, but at the end only 20 of these sell on our platform. Then it becomes very difficult to recover the money we have spent on all the 100 vehicles listed,” explains Arnav. 2. Need for the market to mature - in terms of accepting standardised pricing for used cars by customers In the course of the exit, the company has: 1. Returned over half of the investment amount raised (i.e. money in the bank) to its investors SAIF and DST Global.  2. Employees were given a seven-week severance package and offered help with finding placements elsewhere. “As of today, except six, all have been placed,” Arnav says. On the shut down Alok Goel, SAIF Partners shares: “The st...

Techinasia has rounded up a list of 11 startups that gave up in 2015. The list includes From Foodtech: Dazo Investors: Rajan Anandan of Google, Amit Agarwal of Amazon, Kunal Shah of FreeCharge and Founders of CommonFloor, TaxiForSure, and Yo China. Spoonjoy Investors: SAIF Partners; Sachin Bansal of Flipkart From E-Commerce: DoneByNone Investors: Seedfund From HR Tech: TalentPad Investors: Helion Ventures From Hyperlocal: Townrush Investors: Lightspeed Ventures From IoT: Lumos Interestingly, Yash Kotak, a co-founder of Lumos, has published a detailed article in YourStory  listing "7 Reasons Why My IOT Startup Failed". Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital is an investor in several well known US consumer web, mobile, and wireless technology startups like Twitter, Kickstarter, Uber, etc. A lawyer by education, he earlier worked at Google. Highlights:   Personal story Amazing story of how he lost millions in leveraged trading and how he clawed his way back. "Fake it till you make it": Highly entertaining story about how, when he was out of job, he created a fake management consulting company, The Salinger Group, and handed out its card at various networking forums (including TiE). He even offered to let his friends who were also out of jobs to use the company's name! On Entrepreneurs  Truly Disruptive Entrepreneurs: Failure is not part of the options for them. They never doubt the outcome. They just think "the world will be a better place if this product gets built". "If I'm the one asking the entrepreneur 'how can this be bigger', then...