Keerthi Kiran Kanchanapally

From our PearX S25 cohort, meet Pravāh, the AI-native operating system for the electric grid When Mohak Mangal, Dhruv Suri, and Aman Gupta looked at the strain on the U.S. electric grid, they saw a system pushed to its limits. Exploding demand and unpredictable supply have made blackouts increasingly common. This costs the economy more than $150B a year, a number that could 10x in the next five years. Mohak Mangal and team founded Pravāh to help fix it. Their platform helps utilities and grid operators make real-time decisions on load, generation, and congestion, reducing blackout risks, optimizing power procurement, and bringing much-needed stability to the backbone of modern life. We’re proud to support the Pravāh team as they take on one of the toughest and most important infrastructure challenges of our time.

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Five people I promoted to Director at Amazon are now SVPs or higher in top companies. Here’s a list of them and how they got there. Getting to Director helped launch these executive careers: Ameesh Paleja – VP at Google, now EVP at Capital One. Promoted from Sr. Manager to Director while working on the Amazon Appstore. Kamlesh Talreja – VP at Goldman Sachs, now SVP at Capital One. Sr. Manager to Director on the Amazon Appstore. Jason Vogrinec – VP at Microsoft, EVP at Lyft. Another Sr. Manager to Director promotion from my Appstore team. Miguel Roque – COO, CTO, and now President of Bezos Academy. Became a Director creating Amazon Coins and Merch by Amazon on my team. Mike Minton – VP and now Chief Monetization Officer at Twitch. Followed me from Amazon to Twitch and became a Director on my team there. How they got promoted: 1) They formed a partnership with me (their manager). In simple terms, they worked hard to make our team successful, and I worked hard to make sure they were recognized with a promotion. We both upheld our ends of “the deal.” 2) They stuck with the process through adversity. Ameesh, Kamlesh, and Miguel all hit snags that delayed their intended promotions by weeks or months. They stuck with it when it was hard. 3) They took on dirty tasks when needed. Ameesh moved to open a new remote office; Kamlesh moved from Seattle to Bangalore to do the same. Mike—who we mostly called Minton—won the trust of a skeptical Twitch org that viewed Amazonians as clueless outsiders. They did what was needed, even when it sucked. Important: a) These are not the only people—just five really clear examples. b) Each of these individuals earned their promotions and continued growing. I don’t claim responsibility for their careers, but I do claim that I was a supportive guide through the promotion process that helped launch them into executive roles. c) There are no women on this list. This reflects the heavily male-dominated nature of Amazon 10 to 15 years ago. I’ve supported many women in their careers, but few have reached positions as high as the ones mentioned here in part because of time. I worked with more female leaders later in my Amazon career. Getting promoted quickly matters because the faster you move up, the sooner you’re exposed to higher-level challenges and executive leadership. That gives you a better shot at going further over the course of your career. I’ve been teaching people how to get promoted into executive roles for more than 15 years. And I’m teaching it again starting this weekend. I have a few more seats available if you would like to join: https://buff.ly/nnC2LGG? Who have you seen shoot forward in their careers? How did they do it?

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India has abundant expertise across every domain - logistics operators, subject matter experts, local service providers, etc. What's scarce isn't capability. It's the systems that coordinate this capability at scale. Most companies see this fragmentation and default to vertical integration: build everything in-house, own all capabilities, control every aspect of delivery. This works if you have unlimited capital and time. Most companies have neither. But there's an alternative approach that we've noticed two of our portcos execute remarkably well, in completely different industries - 1. When Meesho looked at India's logistics, and they saw thousands of fragmented local operators. Instead of building warehouses and delivery fleets, they built Valmo - an orchestration platform coordinating existing partners. Individual pilots with smartphones earn sustainable incomes, small hub operators build viable businesses, and Meesho gets coverage across 15,000+ pin codes at 12% lower cost than traditional third-party-logistics. 2. Entri saw similar fragmentation in education. India has abundant teaching expertise already running offline/online programs. Entri partners with them for content while owning demand generation, platform infra, quality monitoring, and placements. This allows them to launch new categories in weeks and scale across languages without the capital intensity of building in-house teams for every vertical. If I had to pull a common thread, it's that in fragmented markets like India, the orchestration layer often matters more than asset ownership. Coordinate what exists rather than rebuilding from scratch.

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Excited to share a recent innovation built from the feedback of the people who power Amazon’s operations: Scanless Stow. This sensor-based system improves station operations by automatically detecting packages when Amazon delivery station associates place them onto a sorting shelf, eliminating the need for repetitive manual scans. The result: faster operations, smoother workflows, and reduced physical strain for station associates on the ground.   How did we do it? ⚙️ Built custom systems capable of processing data from thousands of sensors at scale 🧠 Applied machine learning to enable real-time package placement detection   Key results: 🌍 Live in 100+ Amazon delivery stations across the U.S., Europe, and Japan 🚀 Supporting millions of shipments daily and enabling station associates to sort packages 10% faster 💪 Saving station associates 50+ minutes of manual scan time per shift   This is what happens when real-life feedback, data-driven insights and inventive engineering come together to deliver real impact for Amazon teams and customers.   Huge thanks to the Amazon teams who made this possible 👏.  

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What an honor hosting Gokul Rajaram Thanks Gokul for spending time with the Antler Embark founders from 🇮🇳 🇸🇬 And sharing your insights gathered from decades of leadership at Doordash, Square, Coinbase, Pinterest, Google and Facebook! - with Gowri Shankar Nagarajan ⚡️💡Some great points captured by the group.. * Selling before building - even more important now in the world of AI * Each sales call is a product dev call * Visualise your GTM as narrow hyper-focus, then concentric circles * Compound products will become more important - the first product might not be the best wedge, but the 2nd/3rd might be * Impossible to build something great without founder-led sales for the first $1M-$10M * Be the second startup that hires from corporate work at :) (don’t be their first startup journey) * Big difference between hunters vs talkers / people who are only convert existing demand gen at large cos * Create your personal Advisory Board of 5 founders (incl. those who sell to the same customer but not competing) * Customers between the coasts are much less pinged by tech startups - get on a ✈️ ! * SaaS in the #AI age is “service as a software”, in selling, quickly get to the labor spend / pools you can replace * Sales cycles are shortening as more connection with labor cost savings * With AI, the trilemma of speed, cost, quality no longer unsolvable * Just ask - don’t worry about being too polite! Antler Karan Prasad Rajiv Srivatsa Jivitesh Jadwani Yoeven D Khemlani Rishabh Goel Dinara A. Moksh Garg Rebhav Bharadwaj Kanishka Thakur Ronak Massand Ayush Agarwal Vaibhav Saxena Yue (Lawrence) Xu Gaurav Pansari Anurag Ram Chandran Sayanta Ghosh

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During my 15 years at Amazon, we often started annual planning cycles with a Vision Planning process. This process required senior leaders to prepare a Vision Document. Here's how they did it. First, the Vision Plans centered on a different theme each year. Some themes were externally focused, such as “How to live in a world where the customer has perfect information?” or “How will Web Services change the way software is built?” Other themes were internally focused, like “How to increase software development speed?” In each case, every VP needed to come to the vision planning offsite with a vision document for their organization based on the assigned theme. A great Vision Document typically covers 7 sections: 1) The Five-Year Vision Start by defining the desired end state. Where do you want the business to be five years from now? This section is aspirational but should be grounded in reality. Think of it as your team’s answer to, “What does winning look like?” 2) Market Background What is the size of the opportunity? Who are the competitors? What are the macro trends? This is where you show that you understand the broader playing field and where it’s heading. 3) Current State Where are we today? As Jim Collins puts it, you must confront the brutal facts to achieve long-term success. Explain how each participant in the market creates value for customers, identify customer problems that aren’t being well served and describe the biggest challenges and opportunities for your team. 4) Strategy How are you going to win? What are the key strategic bets? Which customers will you serve? What tradeoffs are you making? One of the most important things is to state what must be true to achieve the vision. Some you have control over and some may be outside of your control. 5) Resourcing What people, skills, technology, and capital will be required? When will you need them? Suppose you need to acquire a new skill in the company. What are the paths to do so? Through developing existing employee skills? Hiring externally? Acquiring or partnering with other companies? 6) FAQ Use this section to anticipate and answer tough questions. A good required FAQ is to ask and answer: What are the best reasons not to pursue this idea? The point is not to talk yourself out of the idea. Rather it is to combat the bias and excitement of a new idea someone is trying to sell. 7) Appendices Include only what’s essential: relevant data, market analysis, org charts, etc. Appendices should support the narrative, not distract from it. A strong vision document doesn’t have a fixed format. Teams should tailor it to their context. However, the best documents almost always have a version of the above traits. Additionally, they almost always: - Are narratives, not slide decks - Use simple, direct language - Call out risks and uncertainties, not just upside - Make a balanced assessment that seeks truth (cont in comments)

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I recently had the privilege of moderating a fireside chat at Stanford University Graduate School of Business with Vijay Krishnan, Founder & CTO of Turing, alongside Prateek Sharma (Managing Partner, Ahead VC). Moving beyond the usual buzzwords, Vijay shared some deep-cut insights on the AI landscape, market dynamics, and career strategy. Here are a few that really stayed with me: 🌐 Market Alpha Gets you the Global Maximum Vijay echoed Marc Andreessen’s idea that market is the biggest determinant of startup success. After his first exit, he resisted investor pressure to “move fast” and instead invested heavily in exploration, searching for the right market with the best opportunity. He prioritized a global maximum vs shuffling around local peaks. Strategic patience is super valuable. 🔄 Agility + Open-Mindedness = Reinvention Turing began as a developer marketplace and reached unicorn status. But when OpenAI approached them for GPT-3 work, they leaned into a new frontier, evolving into an AI accelerator powering frontier labs and enterprise deployments. Agility and open-mindedness helped them embrace “right-place-right-time” opportunities, as they dared to reinvent. 🏗️ Vertical AI Still Has Moats The narrative that foundation models will swallow every vertical? Vijay pushed back. Companies with deep system integrations, compound products (vs point solutions), and strong distribution create defensible value. Vertical players that solve real workflows wouldn’t vanish overnight just because models gets better (unless there’s AGI…then all bets are off!). 🔧 Consulting Will Focus on Plumbing + Context In the enterprise AI wave, strategy decks won’t cut it. The winners will be the ones who can do context engineering, who identify high-value use cases and actually implement, customize, and plumb AI into complex legacy systems. 🚀 Career Advice: Stay Close to the Frontier For early-career folks, Vijay’s message was clear: “The closer you are to the frontier of AI, the better.” That’s where the opportunities compound. What do you think? #AI #GenAI #FrontierAI #AIInfrastructure #EnterpriseAI #FutureOfWork #TechCareers #VentureCapital #StartupStrategy #Turing #StanfordGSB

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When I started Multibhashi in 2016, the mission wasn't to help people "learn new words." It was to hand them an entry ticket - to that Tier-1 job, to that promotion, and to a seat at the table where decisions are made. We knew - English in India is not just a language. It is a class divide. And, we also realized early on that for our users, fluency wasn't about cognition - it was about confidence, fitting in, and breaking through the invisible ceilings of the workplace or society. It is rare to find an analysis that looks past the "tech" of EdTech and sees this human reality. That is why Inderpal Singh’s latest piece in The Ken stands out. He didn’t just review a tool; he dissected the sociology of language learning. He captured how deeply emotions, culture, and aspiration are woven into the syntax we teach. Thank you, Inderpal, for looking under the hood and telling the real story of why we do what we do. Read the full analysis here: https://lnkd.in/g8CGk27v Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

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Sreedhar Peddineni (Co-Founder, Gainsight & GTM Buddy) and Kiran Darisi (Co-Founder, Atomicwork & Ex Freshworks) joins me on Neon show. Two founders from Hyderabad who build global SaaS companies, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again). In this episode, we discuss: 1. Sreedhar’s journey: Host Analytics → Gainsight → GTM Buddy 2. Kiran’s path: Zoho → Freshworks → Atomicwork 3. How to find the “Goldilocks zone” for startups 4. Building companies that last for decades 5. Common mistakes founders make scaling SMB → Enterprise 6. How Atomicwork co-founders connected & chose their problem 7. Why smaller, high-quality teams are winning 8. Is AI expanding the pie while eating it? 9. How businesses can leverage custom GPTs 10. If big AI goes everywhere, what’s left for B2B SaaS? This conversation is about the two decades of building India’s most iconic SaaS companies and what the future holds for SaaS founders from India. Episode is out on youtube.com/@TheNeonShoww

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After a six-month pilot, we’re officially launching Practo in the US. For us, this isn’t just about entering a new market; it’s about seeing something built in India work at a global scale. An India-built healthcare platform is now being used to navigate care in one of the world’s most complex healthcare systems. With deep data, an outcomes-led approach, and a focus on trust and clarity, we’re excited to begin this next chapter, bringing better healthcare navigation to more people, across more geographies. Onwards.

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