Should you care if your VC backs your competitor?

There's a lot that has been said about this - if you're a founder who is fundraising & thinking about this, here's #AMatrixMoment capturing our take on it.

Salonie:

Where should a founder look to incorporate their company, geographically speaking, should it be India, US, Singapore, these are some of the most common opportunities.

Avnish:

Its become quite messy actually Salonie, because Singapore became a place to incorporate for a period of time. These places come with a lot of over head of corporate governance, but at the same time if you want to be catering to an overseas market, it might be easier. Sometime for investors these jurisdictions are more friendly. So at least the rule of thumb that I have come with is don’t focus on which market do you need to incorporate in. Focus on which you see as your first market, the GTM and focus on which you see as your largest market.

Your GTM and your first market is where your employees and all of that development might happen, so you absolutely need to have an office there. But if your largest market is somewhere else, your largest investors may come from that market, and the largest investor are going to come from that market maybe you should incorporate there. So one could argue a company that wants to start out in India with a development center and the founders here but want to move to the US long-term, should incorporate in the US and office will be in India, right?

Flip side is a company based out of Singapore, whose largest market is in India, I don’t think they get any advantage of being in Singapore. They should be here, unless they want to be on south east Asia. So that’s how I think about it, first market and largest market likely should be incorporated in the largest market.

Salonie:

Got it.