Managing Partner, KAAJ Ventures
Entrepreneur and Investor
Author and Mindset Coach
StartUp To Win™, the ultimate guide on surviving and adapting to the ever-evolving startup landscape, is packed with insights from Silicon Valley’s ace entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist B.V. Jagadeesh (BV) and co-authors Dr. Ashish Mehra and Vida Vidyangi Patil. BV has successfully sailed two-founder startups to exits, IPOs, mergers, and acquisitions of companies with millions in revenue. This book gives you a sneak peek into the gripping tale of BV’s phenomenal journey in Silicon Valley, detailing the early days to behind the scenes action on helming multimillion dollar companies Exodus Communications and NetScaler. It is packed with pro-tips on how to innovate, create a loyal customer base, and navigate IPOs, mergers and acquisitions in your bid to create a successful, financially disciplined and product-led venture.
Building upon BV’s successful 30-year journey, this book lays out the evolution of entrepreneurship in a post-pandemic world driven by new trends, paradigms, priorities and expectations. We articulate what it means to WIN for your customers, partners, investors, team and you. We then outline the critical recipe for survival and lasting success that combines your North Star, Center of Gravity, Staying Power, and Execution Discipline to create a purpose-driven, conscious startup. This recipe is essential to create and build a Product Led organization that forms your startup DNA, shapes your customer experiences and accelerates your startup’s journey. Our four-fold strategy asks you to:
To pin down your startup’s problem, develop problem-solution fit, and hone your business model
Towards product-market fit, go-to-market fit and beyond to scale
To achieve customer-centricity and customer-first experiences
Especially in changing and challenging markets
We tie it all together by bringing out the essence of fundability, how to improve and achieve it in a stage-relevant manner, and what investors look for in fundable startups. Packed with numerous lessons learned from personal experience through successes, scars from failures that we share openly and case studies, this book strives to educate, empower and energize current and future generations of startups to WIN.
Written with the primary goal of helping first-time founders, StartUp To Win™ offers many nuggets of wisdom, hands-on tips and domain-specific insights for repeat founders, startup executives, mentors, startup incubators and accelerators, and investors. While the concepts and insights are primarily relevant for technology-driven businesses, they are generally applicable to all types of businesses. This book is essential wisdom from Silicon Valley technology companies whose cumulative market cap exceeds the combined GDP of most countries.
Entrepreneurship is a way of life where you solve crucial and burning problems for the market. Doing that, you’re making a difference in somebody’s life and to this world! You're building an institution that creates jobs, jobs lead to socio-economic upliftment for any society and with this momentum of wealth creation you can uplift the underprivileged.
B. V. Jagadeesh (BV) is a highly regarded silicon valley changemaker, angel investor, serial entrepreneur, and philanthropist with over three decades of a proven track record of managing and building market leaders in technology, silicon valley, and cross-border startups as an investor, and advisor, and board member at several nonprofits. BV is currently the founder and Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures and co-founder at FalconX B2B Startup Accelerator. He has in the past been Group Vice President and General Manager of Citrix Systems' Application Networking Group and served as President and CEO of NetScaler before its acquisition. During his tenure, BV grew NetScaler to become the market leader in Application Delivery Systems and was eventually acquired by Citrix for $325M in 2005. BV has also co-founded Exodus Communications and was instrumental in leading its highly successful initial public offering (IPO). He has also held various management and engineering positions at Novell and 3Com. He is currently involved in many philanthropic initiatives, to name a few are One School At A Time (OSAAT), Overseas Volunteers for A Better India(OVBI), Vibha, Sri Shankara Cancer Foundation (SSCF). He has served as an Adjunct Professor at Santa Clara University in the past.
Ashish Mehra is an entrepreneur with 25+ years of leadership experience in business, product, engineering, innovation, and customer success at both venture-funded startups (Drishti, Allocity, iScale) and public companies (NetApp, EMC, IBM). He was the Head of Products at AI startup Drishti Technologies, served Fortune 500 companies as product leader at NetApp and Allocity (acquired by EMC), and was co-founder and CEO of data distribution startup iScale. Ashish is a Mentor for IIT Startups, was Program CEO (Silicon Valley) of Startup Leadership Program, and advises and invests in startups. He also serves on the Dean's Advisory Board of UCI School of Business. Ashish has a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan and is a graduate of IIT Kanpur, India.
Vidyangi (Vida) has been a participant at BV’s innovation initiatives and workshops on multiple occasions and made detailed notes on his critical transformative insights on innovation. She is a serial book author, has been Medium’s top blogger in innovation, and advises/consults with silicon valley and emerging market startups and nonprofits, and is based out of silicon valley. Currently Vida is Entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) and works as a mindset coach and ecosystem builder with startups and large organizations.
We don’t just aim to write this book on startups that win. We seek to inspire you – to make a difference in this world by combining purpose, profit and impact.
We aspire to educate, empower and energize entrepreneurs worldwide to build and grow conscious, purpose-driven startups. Metrics and numbers matter – and will always do for a healthy and fast-growing business. However, your startup’s heart and soul also matter! Just as much – if not more. Especially in a post-pandemic world that is hungry for deeper meaning and inclusive solutions to the diverse problems faced by enterprises, consumers and society in general.
In short, we are on a mission to help founders create and scale startups with a difference.
To lead by example, we will share a generous portion of the book proceeds with our partners.
Silicon Valley-based technology accelerator shaping global startups for success through mentorship, investment, access to VCs, and customer introductions. Developed by ten successful serial entrepreneurs as a platform of strategic and tactical support systems to help entrepreneurs succeed.
Non-profit foundation that strives to eliminate classroom hunger by providing mid-day meals to school children.
Philanthropic organization that supports developing engineers that will contribute to the technology world.
Volunteer-run non-profit organization that provides basic infrastructure for rural schools in India.
Non-profit organization that serves cancer patients through comprehensive treatment, effective cancer prevention, and training of health care professionals.
Non-profit organization that partners with families, schools, and school districts to provide students with expanded learning opportunities through after school, summer, and school day programming.
Non-profit organization that is dedicated to finding solutions to homelessness in Silicon Valley while providing shelter programs and community outreach.
