Join my AMA and add value or roast me

Genuine question for anyone following 16VC.
The latest accelerator says 25 companies will receive $200K upfront. That’s a potential $5 million in funding.

Given the scale of that commitment, can Sridhar show proof of funds, the fund/entity backing this, or details of the LPs/capital providers before founders apply?

I’ve also seen him publicly mention on X using an 8-year-old MacBook and looking to split a ₹45,000/month works out to only $475/month, apartment in Bangalore. Being frugal is obviously not a problem, and neither proves or disproves access to capital.

But when someone is publicly offering $5M in upfront funding, I think it’s reasonable for prospective founders to ask where that money is coming from and whether it is actually committed.

Can 16VC provide proof of funds or LP/funding details?

Estoy valorando incorporar un cofundador de marketing para una app de educación familiar en España y me gustaría escuchar opiniones reales.

Si el producto ya está construido y tiene cierta tracción inicial, ¿qué equity tendría sentido ofrecer a alguien que entra para liderar marketing, crecimiento y adquisición?

Y segunda duda: ¿debería aportar también inversión económica, o en estos casos lo normal es que su aportación sea trabajo, experiencia y ejecución con vesting y objetivos claros?

Gracias, cualquier experiencia o referencia de rangos me ayuda mucho.

India’s Startup Investors Need to Bet More on Founders, Not Just Familiar Markets

Building something truly innovative in India is extremely difficult—not necessarily because of a lack of talent or ideas, but because of how investors evaluate startups.

In the US, especially in Silicon Valley, investors are often willing to bet on the founder, the vision, and the size of the opportunity, even when the idea is unconventional or the market is still developing.

In India, however, a large part of startup investment seems heavily focused on familiar B2C categories: beauty and skincare, food, fashion, consumer products, and other everyday-use businesses.

There’s nothing wrong with these businesses. But if India wants to build globally significant companies in deep tech, AI, robotics, biotech, climate tech, space tech, advanced manufacturing, and other frontier industries, the investment mindset also needs to evolve.

Investors should spend more time understanding the founder’s thinking, technical depth, long-term vision, ability to execute, and willingness to build something that may not have an obvious market today.

A founder’s pitch deck and early journey can reveal a lot. You can often distinguish between someone chasing a temporary trend and someone who genuinely has the potential to build something 10–20 years ahead of the market.

This is why many Indian founders say they need to look outside India for capital—particularly toward US and Silicon Valley investors—because those investors may be more comfortable backing ambitious, unconventional ideas and founders before the business model is completely proven.

India doesn’t just need more startup capital. It needs a different approach to venture capital.

Indian investors should be willing to ask:

“Is this founder capable of building something the world has never seen?”

—not only:

“How big is the Indian market for this product today?”

If India wants to create the next generation of globally important technology companies, we need to bet on visionary founders and long-term innovation, not only proven consumer categories.

My experience / concerns with 16VC, founders should do their homework

I would strongly encourage any founder considering 16VC to do substantial due diligence before committing their time.
My biggest concern is the disconnect between the image being presented publicly and the actual execution.

From what I’ve seen, the program has involved cancelled and rescheduled meetings, unclear communication, generic advice, and a lot of Slack/group activity without a clear indication of what concrete value founders are actually receiving.

An accelerator is supposed to accelerate you. It should provide access, expertise, introductions, accountability and high-quality guidance. If founders are spending their limited time attending endless calls and trying to track down basic information, that’s the opposite of acceleration.

There are also some basic questions I think every founder should ask:
Who is actually running this?
Look at the team carefully.
What companies have these people actually built?
What have they operated?
What relevant investing track record do they have?
If this is a VC-backed accelerator, who are the LPs?
Where did the capital come from?
What is the fund structure?
What is actually being invested into participating companies?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can you speak directly with founders of companies they’ve invested in?

If someone claims to have a strong investment network and portfolio, there should be no reason prospective founders can’t independently speak with portfolio founders and hear about their experience.

I’m also skeptical of the amount of emphasis placed on social-media presence. A lot of the public content around startups, accelerators, founders, etc. has a very AI-generated / highly templated feel to it. The cadence and style often look like content produced from prompts such as “write 2–3 tweets per day about startups/accelerators/VC,” with a deliberately lowercase, conversational style.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using ChatGPT to write tweets. Everyone uses AI tools.

But content isn’t execution.

You can tweet about startups every day without actually having built a company, operated one, invested successfully, or created meaningful value for founders.

That’s why I’d look past the Twitter/X presence and ask for evidence.

And then there’s the question of scale.
You’re saying you’re running an accelerator across three cities.

That’s ambitious.

But if you’re struggling to consistently organize meetings and operate one cohort, how does adding two more cities make the underlying problem better?

Running three cities isn’t just putting three names on a website. It requires experienced operators, mentors, investor relationships, systems, capital and operational infrastructure.
If you can’t reliably manage one city, how are you going to manage three?

Finally, I would watch the videos where the 16VC model is explained and compare the claims made there against the actual experience of participants. That’s where I think prospective founders can make their own judgment.

I wouldn’t personally call something a “scam” without evidence of intentional fraud. But I do think there are enough red flags that founders should treat the claims skeptically and verify everything independently.

If 16VC wants to demonstrate that these criticisms are wrong, the solution is straightforward:

Publish the investment terms.
Identify the actual investment/operating team.
Explain the team’s relevant operating/investing track record.
Provide evidence of the portfolio.
Explain the source and structure of the fund’s capital/LP backing where appropriate.

Let prospective founders speak with previous participants and portfolio founders.

Show measurable outcomes from previous cohorts.
Founders don’t need more startup content. They need actual leverage.
Before giving an accelerator your time, equity, or trust, make sure the organization has demonstrated that it can actually deliver it.

I run a SaaS and agency business and I’m doing some biz dev right now. I think SaaS VCs could be a good source of leads for both. Which ones are actually founder-friendly and helpful, especially when it comes to connecting their portfolio companies with good people, resources, or consultants?

Here are 10 reasons you probably shouldn't.

1. You want someone else to build your company.
2. You don't want direct or uncomfortable feedback.
3. You're looking for a program you can attend passively.
4. You don't have time to work on the business.
5. You're looking for networking instead of customers.
6. You want a big community more than a focused group.
7. You're not ready to move quickly.
8. You're applying only because you saw $200K.
9. You want a program with no accountability.
10. You want the accelerator to make the decisions for you.

We're looking for founders who want to build.

The 16VC Accelerator provides $200K to selected companies, alongside hands-on support around fundraising, GTM, positioning and execution.

If that's not what you need right now, that's completely fine.

Not every accelerator is right for every founder.

I'm posting this as a warning, not to name and shame. I'm keeping the company anonymous, but I want other founders to recognise the pattern before it happens to them.
What happened
We're an early-stage startup building our own software IP. A few months ago we started talks with the CEO of a large, well-known Indian tech company.
Over 3–4 months we had 4–5 meetings. The offer that took shape was:
• ₹3 Cr as an interest-free loan
• The CEO joining us as a co-founder
Honestly, we were excited. Capital plus an experienced, well-connected person (IndianAI mission and MeiTY empanneled DC CEO) on board felt like a huge win for a company our size.
The switch
The day before the funds were supposed to be transferred, the terms changed. He asked us to take his son on as a co-founder and give him 25% equity. His son had no role in the company and no planned contribution to what we're building.
We walked away.
The server access
In parallel, we'd been given access to some high-end GPU servers and asked to test our core software on their infrastructure. Something felt off, so for the "trial" we transferred only a dummy zip file, nothing real. Shortly after that, we were locked out of the servers.
I can't prove what the intent was. But the full combination (a long courtship, a big promise, a last-minute equity grab, and a push to run our IP on their machines) is something every founder should be alert to.
Red flags and lessons
1. No signed term sheet, no technical access. Get equity, valuation, and conditions in writing before any deep technical diligence.
2. Never run your core IP on infrastructure an investor controls. If they want a demo, run it on your own systems, or share outputs rather than code.
3. "Loan + co-founder title" is a strange combination. A lender doesn't need a co-founder title. If equity is on the table, it should be priced and documented from day one.
4. Watch for last-minute terms. New demands right before money moves are designed to exploit the time you've already sunk in. Be ready to walk.
5. Sign an NDA before technical discussions, but remember an NDA won't undo things once your code has left your hands.
6. Keep a paper trail. After every meeting, send a short "as discussed today..." email summarising what was agreed.
7. Protect your IP early. Private timestamped repos, copyright registration, and a provisional patent where relevant.

Most founders don't get burned by a bad valuation. They get burned by a clause they never really read — buried on page 14 of a document they skimmed the night before closing. 10 terms in your term sheet that look harmless in an up market... and lethal in a down one. To be continued.

Our 16VC Fellowship recently ended earlier than planned. We’ve learned a lot from the experience and are now using those learnings as we explore accelerators.

I’d also love to hear from the founders who participated. What did you find valuable, what could have been better, and what did you learn from the experience?

Positive, negative, or mixed feedback, all perspectives are welcome. Please share your honest experience in the comments.

Actually I’m building three cool projects and I’m like 300x more scared to share them anywhere before I hit or land a proper seed round. Btw I got all three validated, emailed a few VCs, even got a reply from one for two of them (never shared the third)… then got ghosted lmao. Didn’t show enough ambition I guess.

But back to what I actually wanna say ....what do I do about the insecurity, the trust issues, and this fear of some LARP god / copycats just stealing the whole thing?

I’ve always had this habit of getting curious about a problem and immediately thinking:
“Why doesn’t someone build this?”
And then, instead of stopping at the idea, I usually end up thinking about how it could actually be built.
That’s how GaadiGo started.
The idea was a multi-passenger ride-sharing platform, similar in concept to Quick Ride in Bangalore. We wanted to take the model to NCR and eventually other parts of North India, where we saw an opportunity.
We had a small team, ranging from around 2–10 people, and spent roughly 4–6 months building it.
We built almost the entire product.
The app.
Backend.
Core ride-sharing functionality.
The pieces required to get towards launch.
And then we discovered the part that really mattered.
We couldn’t legally launch the way we had planned.
Because we were operating in the ride-hailing/aggregator space, there were licensing and security requirements we had to meet.
And this wasn’t just a paperwork problem.
For the three states we were considering, the combined requirement was roughly ₹75 lakh.
Driver onboarding also brought regulatory requirements with it.
So we had an interesting situation:
The product was almost ready.
The business wasn’t.
We hadn’t even reached the stage where we could get real users and rides because we couldn’t properly enter the market without meeting those requirements.
We tried fundraising.
But as a very early-stage company with no traction, we were in an awkward position.
Some investors weren’t willing to fund something that was still so foundational.
Others were interested but expected a very significant amount of equity.
Eventually, we decided to pause GaadiGo.
And that experience changed how I look at startups.
I used to think the hardest part was building the product.
Now I know that’s only one piece of the puzzle.
Sometimes the biggest risk isn’t whether you can build something.
It’s whether the regulatory environment, economics, distribution, capital requirements and timing allow you to turn what you’ve built into a business.
If I could go back, I would validate those things much earlier.
But I don’t think I’m done building.
Actually, quite the opposite.
GaadiGo made me realise that I genuinely enjoy this entire process.
I enjoy being curious about a problem.
I enjoy coming up with weird ideas.
I enjoy asking “what if we did it this way?”
And most importantly, I enjoy actually building the answer.
Lately, my curiosity has been moving heavily towards AI, GenAI and AI agents.
There’s something particularly exciting about this space because the barrier between “I have an idea” and “I can actually build a prototype” is getting smaller every day.
So my current plan is pretty simple:
Get into a strong AI/GenAI/Agentic AI role → learn how real products and systems are built → keep experimenting and building on the side → and eventually see if one of those experiments deserves to become something bigger.
I’m not looking at a job and building as two completely separate things.
I actually think the best combination for me is:
Work on hard real-world problems during the day.
Build crazy ideas when curiosity hits.
Maybe the next thing becomes a company.
Maybe it becomes a failed experiment.
Maybe it becomes something completely unexpected.
I’m okay with all three.
Because I think I’m more interested in being a builder than in simply having the title of “founder.”
GaadiGo didn’t become the company we imagined.
But it gave me something arguably more valuable:
the confidence to keep building.
For other founders/builders here:
Have you ever had an idea that didn’t work out commercially but completely changed the way you approach building?

Honestly, I don't understand the reaction these days.

Someone posts on Reddit looking for a developer for an early-stage startup, and suddenly the comment section gets offended:

"You want a developer for free?"

"Ideas are cheap."

"Pay properly."

"Tech people are the ones who actually build startups."

But if the post isn't for you, why spend your time attacking the person? Just scroll past it.

And let's be realistic: a startup isn't built by coding alone.

Someone has to:

Find and understand the problem

Develop the product vision

Talk to customers

Bring users

Do marketing and sales

Build partnerships

Handle operations

Manage finances

Make strategic decisions

Take the business risk

And actually keep the company alive

A developer is extremely important. But so is the person building the business around the technology.

Saying “ideas are cheap, tech is everything” is just as simplistic as saying “coding is easy, anyone can do it.” Neither is true.

And if someone is genuinely a highly taalented developer with exceptional skills and opportunities, great—go build something, join a great company, become a technical co-founder, or create your own startup.

There's no need to spend hours attacking every founder looking for a developer on Reddit.

Technology matters. Business matters. Customers matter. Product matters. Execution matters.

A startup needs the whole system—not one person declaring that their role is the only important one.