"Go Back To The Drawing Board, Build Real Startup"

In an interaction with Entrepreneur, Subrata Mitra, Partner, Accel Partners, shares insights while stressing on the need to build real startups.

What does investors look for?

I think this whole branding startup and funding in one brush is not the right way to look at it. What we do is when a startup comes to us, we look at the validity of the idea and how big it can grow and whether the team is good
enough and based on that we make funding calls.

Does receiving funding mean an insured future?

For the right companies funding will continue to happen but if you are only in the business of going from Series A to Series B to Series C without having the accelerated value proposition, you might get into more trouble.

Therefore, the my two cents to entrepreneurs would be go back to the drawing board, build real start-ups which have the potential for real revenues, show us how it is going to be built out, what are the differentiators when you guys put together. Those very basic fundamentals things if you put together, I think good companies will still get funding.

Your tips to adapting to the market?

Entrepreneurs are very sophisticated people, they have done their homework and when the markets were going crazy they were actually taking advantage of it. So when the markets are not so crazy they have to learn how to live with it.

This article first appeared in the Indian edition of Entrepreneur magazine (April 2016 Issue).