• Investments

    Who I invest in: Investments:

    Aarjav Trivedi

  • “Summon: 15 Minutes with Founders.”

    “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” ~Ernest Hemingway One of the best ways to learn is to listen. As a CEO, it is important for me to always be in tune with what happens inside my company and with patterns, changes, and trends inside…

    priy21

  • How we nearly doubled driver reliability at Summon

    Average reliability rate of all active Summon drivers. It was August 2013 and we had a problem. It had been nearly 6 months since we launched Summon. We had signed up hundreds of drivers in San Francisco. Our availability rivaled Uber and Lyft. Yet, we could not consistently get our riders a ride. The problem…

    Aarjav Trivedi

  • Why?

    Many aspects of running a startup are incredibly hard. With a startup like InstantCab where our goal is to massively improve a fundamental, real world service like transportation – the challenge of scaling up to serve tens of thousands of drivers and hundreds of thousands of customers is especially hard. At some of our hardest…

    Aarjav Trivedi

  • Light fires, add fuel. Grow.

    For a startup with a small team, the most precious resource is the team’s focus. As PG says, it is important to choose the top idea in your mind, because it will get most of your attention. I was talking to a friend today who has a side project he built two years ago. He…

    Aarjav Trivedi

  • Execution lies in the details

    Once the vision for your startup is firmly in place, it helps to tighten up focus. This quote from philosopher William James about “master[ing] the thousand and one practical matters that will ultimately make your dreams come true” evokes the right picture: “I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success.…

    Aarjav Trivedi

  • 100,000 startup hours

    A few weeks ago, I met David Cummings, founder and CEO of Pardot and Hannon Hill at Flashpoint, and asked him for an appointment because I love reading his blog 10,000 Startup Hours [1] which is chock full of very practical and thoughtful advice for entrepreneurs. It is incredible how many times his daily post…

    Aarjav Trivedi

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  • What I learnt about sales from the angry subway preacher

    One of the advantages of starting up is that you get to choose where your office is. RideCell’s office is at the edge of the Georgia Tech campus and a 5 minute walk from the nearest MARTA (subway) station. I enjoy taking the train to work, having the luxury of basking in the beautiful sight…

    Aarjav Trivedi

  • A dispatch from the startup frontlines

    It is a cold rainy day in Atlanta today. Bleak as it can be. My daily startup roller-coaster has hit its periodic low and I find that yet again, I need to remind myself why I am doing this. For me, a great thing about starting a startup is all the new things I have…

    Aarjav Trivedi