{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"First Principles","title":"Fireside Ventures' Kanwal Singh on the consumer-brands bet nobody believed in, why \"for a 5x, nobody will call you legendary,\" and on refusing the one-100x-outlier game","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3700,"description":"1 · Summary\n\nPart 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it.\n2 · Chapters\n\n0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro\r\n3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists\r\n10:04 How the fund makes money\r\n11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments\r\n12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions\r\n17:14 Two years as a solo angel\r\n25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model\r\n34:05 What \"success\" means, and the anti-power-law\r\n36:56 The centre of excellence\r\n45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3\r\n53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first\r\n57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes\n\n[0:20] \"For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary.\"\n[34:24] \"We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers.\"\n[40:26] \"The answer lies in the question. It is hard.\"\n[54:12] \"The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce.\"\n4 · Frameworks & mental models\n\nAnti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear \"capital plus,\" not one built to live or die on a single outlier.\nThe three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/ZPjguY9ABfvbemOPTrjXRW3XKosLSKk1tzX-F51gCWw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82N2E1/MjUwZmE5M2ZlZTZh/NzFjZjcwNjVlMGQ3/ZjkxOS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}