⭕ Weekly Roundup #3: 6 Jobs + 2 Products + 3 Learning Opportunities
Jobs @ Carnegie, UNDP, Invest India, Shortlist, InterviewBit and Project 39A
Join the Readers Group to get updates every time I read something interesting. Like the content ?
👩🏫 Classes:
A number of legal professionals / law students ask how to learn more about finance: while online courses at Coursera help, sometimes 1-1 classes are a much better way to learn a new subject. Check out finance classes by Sachin Chawla at Tenth Decile. Sachin is a senior finance professional and runs finance courses for non-finance professionals / CFA aspirants. Check him out if you want to take the guided route to learning finance.
KPMG is hosting similar courses in June and July. Check them out here.
💬 Discussions:
🖊️ An important thought for those of you who want to startup: A lot of entrepreneurs (legaltech or otherwise) that keep telling me that having 18 months worth of capital in the bank to pay for personal expenses is crucial prior to starting up.
💼 Entrepreneurs feel that 18 months is the minimum time any new venture takes to start generating revenue or to make enough progress to raise seed investment.
❓ My question was, given that urban living is becoming increasingly expensive, how practical is this ? Can young professionals save 18 months worth of living expenses ?
💸 I raised this with the group and a bunch of entrepreneurs and senior professionals pitched in. Highlighting comments from Sounak Sarkar, Chandrasekhar Bhide, Suhasini Rao, Uttara Gharpure and Abhyuday:
🏃 One can always hustle on the side while having a full time job to validate their idea. Once the idea is validated, there is always the chance of raising angel money from friends and family which will help support the founding team before they raise institutional capital.
💰 In case it is a services business it will most likely start making profits from Day 1. In a situation like this a realistic assessment might be having 6 months worth of capital in the bank and trying to stay afloat through revenues.
📝In case you manage to raise money with only a deck i.e. without an actual product or MVP, you are set. Otherwise it might be worthwhile to have that 18 months worth of capital in the bank.
My take: Entrepreneurship is a high pressure journey with massive uncertainty ♾️ The last thing you need on top of this is uncertainty about how your rent will get paid. Optimize expenses as much as possible prior to taking the plunge. And if you still feel that you don’t have enough personal runway, wait till you build it 🛣 Remember that most successful businesses are built by people in their late 30’s and 40’s when they have resources, connects and experience.
🎁 Products:
👩🏫 I recently tried out SmolCoach, a video based platform which lets professionals and teachers conduct paid consulting sessions and classes online. Sowmya Rao (former lawyer) CEO and Founder of SmolCoach, shares that, "…we anticipated that given the COVID situation , professionals would need video based conferencing tools to run their practice remotely 🖥️ SmolCoach comes with professional video, scheduling and payment tools integrated; 😀 If you are planning to start online sessions for clients, webinars to boost your practice or on teaching classes, SmolCoach is the perfect tool. SmolCoach is launching for the public soon and you can signup for the beta here.
🤖 The world’s first robot lawyer, DoNotPay has just raised a USD 12M round from Andressen, Coatue and Founders Fund. DoNotPay started out with helping people with their parking tickets and now helps them with over 100 areas of consumer rights claims ⚖ It even helps you find free money by negotiating fees for your bank accounts and sending legal notices to spammers 💵
💭 Think:
🚀 Ryerson University’s Legal Innovation Zone “Sprint Studio” is launching a "free, 12-week intensive program that helps future legaltech entrepreneurs develop their proof of concept into a market-ready legaltech product." Apply here.
🧠 Kleiner Perkins just released the reading list for its 2020 batch of fellows. Find it here. KPCB is one of the worlds most respected venture fund’s and runs a fellowship program where fellows get to work with their portfolio co’s. Check out the fellowship here.
🏃 Internships:
🗿 Carnegie India is offering interesting long term (3-6-12 months) remote research internships in the areas of Political Economy, Technology & Society and Security Studies.
💼 Jobs:
🏛️ Vipul Nanda is hiring candidates for multiple general management roles at the Project Management Group at Invest India. Details here.
🏛️ UNDP is hiring an Analyst for its Digitization of Corporate Payments project. Apply here.
💼 Carnegie India is hiring a Research Analyst to join its Political Economy program in New Delhi. Details here.
✝️ Project 39A at NLU D is hiring 2 litigation Associates in New Delhi. Details here.
📖 Shortlist a recruitment startup working with employers in India and Africa is offering a Fellowship with its team in Mumbai. Details here.
🤵InterviewBit is hiring a People Lead who will work on employee related activities. No prior functional experience in HR required. Details here.
Let me know your feedback by replying to this email or send me a message on Whatsapp 💬.
cheers,
Subhro