EP#16 Anirudh Pandita – Adopting a beginner’s mindset to build disruptive products, the data driven approach to distribution & key tenets to cultivate a strong team culture

In this episode, Anirudh Pandita, Founder @Pocket Aces, joins our host Digjay, to talk about the art & science of building products in the content space, the data-driven approach to cracking distribution, the value in adopting a beginner’s mindset to come up with disruptive innovation & the importance of building a strong team culture as you scale your startup

Pocket Aces is a new-age, socially-distributed, digital entertainment company, making highly engaging content for the millennial audience. The company operates multiple content brands including FilterCopy (short videos), Dice Media (multi-episode web series), Gobble (lifestyle videos), Jambo (young-adult animation shorts) and Nutshell (infotainment videos), as well as Loco (game streaming and e-sports app) with 500million+ monthly views across these platforms. The company is backed by prominent investors like Sequoia India, DSP Group and 3one4 Capital. Anirudh, along with co-founders Ashwin Suresh and Aditi Shrivastava, has won several 40 under 40 awards from the likes of Fortune, Social Samosa, IMPACT and BWDisrupt in 2019. Prior to founding Pocket Aces, Anirudh was at Valo Group LLC, a value-oriented hedge fund, based in Philadelphia. Anirudh is a Wharton alum, a Liverpool FC fan, massive cricket buff, and a film fanatic. You can connect with him here on Twitter/Linkedin

----

If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes and Google Podcasts. Please leave us a review on Apple iTunes to help others discover this podcast. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay on Linkedin & Twitter

----

Show notes –

1. (01:33) Anirudh’s unconventional journey - Leaving behind his career in Private Equity/Hedge Fund to start a digital content & entertainment business

2. (10:45) The art & science of building products & achieving product-market fit in the content space

3. (12:17) The 0 to 1 journey; Testing hypothesis & launching products using a quick to market, inexpensive fail fast approach

4. (14:43) Cracking distribution - by taking into account different use cases of your product & by understanding consumer needs

5. (17:25) Importance of building a strong team culture as you scale your startup

6. (22:48) Using a beginner’s mindset to disrupt a specific market; Fundraising challenges

7. (28:55) How investors can add value beyond providing the funding dollars?

8. (31:38) Rapid fire and closing remarks