{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"First Principles (Private)","title":"Kanwaljit Singh","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":7250,"description":"1 · Summary\n\nFor fifty-odd episodes, First Principles kept venture capitalists off the show, because the conversation tends to drift to the portfolio rather than the person. Kanwal Singh is the exception. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, an idea investors could not place. His first cheques came not from institutions but from the families who had built India's consumer businesses. Nearly a decade on, Fireside is close to sixty brands and around 650 million dollars across four funds. What makes the conversation worth two hours is that Kanwal built the fund to reject the two instincts that define his industry: the power law, and the pull to get big. He would rather a portfolio where most companies win than one 100x outlier, and he turned down twice the money he could have raised to protect it. The episode covers all of it, and then the man himself.\n2 · Chapters\n\n0:00 Cold open and intro\r\n4:13 What Fireside is, and why it exists\r\n10:48 How the fund actually makes money\r\n12:07 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments\r\n13:34 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions\r\n17:58 Two years as a solo angel: Licious, Mamaearth, Paper Boat\r\n26:35 Ownership by design: 10% to 20%, and the follow-on model\r\n34:49 What \"success\" means, and the anti-power-law\r\n37:40 The centre of excellence: why hands-on is hard to copy\r\n42:31 A single-founder fund with no prima donnas\r\n46:24 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3\r\n51:28 India 3: selling to villages with no address\r\n54:31 Quick commerce is brand-first\r\n1:01:40 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all\r\n1:07:07 What he adds as Fireside's \"CEO,\" and value of good\r\n1:17:37 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money\r\n1:20:55 Hiring: read the person, meet the family\r\n1:27:30 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying\r\n1:35:19 The coach, and coaching vs...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Hbr9i47-C7nz9V6W8snlCHtCTGBi03n2Vsji9pGsilM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8xMTE5/MTE2NmE5M2UyMDQ2/MDkxYWI0Y2FhZTRi/ZTNkMy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}