EP#2 Sid Talwar – Learnings as a first time entrepreneur, founder personalities and why Lightbox prefers maintaining a lean portfolio of startups

In today’s episode, Sid Talwar, Founding Partner@Lightbox joins our host Digjay, to share his learnings as a first time entrepreneur, what led him to start Lightbox, why Lightbox prefers to maintain a lean portfolio of startups and how to think/respond in crisis situations. 

Sid is a Co-founder and Partner at Lightbox, a venture capital firm based out of India. Lightbox invests in emerging technology companies at an early stage. Prior to Lightbox, Sid founded Evolv, a vocational training company funded by Singapore Technologies. Over six years he built it into a business that trained 20,000+ people annually across 200 cities in South Asia and the Middle East. He sold it to NIIT in 2007 but continued to lead the internal teams in adopting new technology as a transformative force in education and vocational training. An entrepreneur at heart, Sid left NIIT to get more involved in the start-up community in India. Over the next few years, leading up to Lightbox, Sid advised several startups and angel funds before founding Lightbox in 2010. You can reach out to him here on Linkedin / Twitter 

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Show notes – 

1. Sid talks about his first startup Evolv and his learnings as a first-time entrepreneur 

2. Personal and professional costs of entrepreneurship and why it’s not necessary to be a founder to demonstrate success in life? 

3. Founder personalities; Realizing the importance of team members and building a culture of retaining talent 

4. Why Sid started Lightbox; Thesis and Vision of the fund 

5. How Sid allocates time to portfolio companies and why Lightbox prefers to maintain a lean portfolio? 

6. How to optimize decision making as a VC, despite long feedback cycles of a VC fund 

7. How should founders evaluate which VC/investor will add most value to their company? 

8. Responding vs reacting to crisis situations and being thoughtful before making pivots 

9. Rapid fire questions and closing remarks