Single versus Multiple VCs

Should a founder be raising capital from 1 VC, or from 2 VCs and more in a round? And what role does 'diversity of thought' play in the overall scheme of picking the right partner and VC for your startup? Avnish Bajaj (Founder & MD, Matrix India ) and Rajinder Balaraman (Director, Matrix India) of Matrix Partners India share their views. Tune in to find out.

Rajinder:

Should a founder be raising from one VC or two or more in a round?

Avnish:

Only from Matrix. Apart from Matrix two VCs, if I was an entrepreneur again, I would take Matrix plus one, I’m joking. I would probably take two VC’s but we have spoken about it in a different context, where the partner and the people should believe in you. Look the reality is the journey of entrepreneur is never like this. It will likely go sideways at some stage, so for having that double pockets around is important, having diversity of thought is extremely important, diversity of thoughts and experience is very important. So somebody said this, actually one of the founders, that ultimately you are – When you are a founder the odds are stacked against you. Sorry to say but that’s the reality, more startups fail.

So your job, and we’ve spoken about resource fullness in a different episode, is to stack odds in your favor. I think getting two investors to believe in you and have enough quality and all of that stack odds better in your favor.