Startups used to be the promised land where ambitious, young people spent their time doing exciting, ground-breaking and challenging work. And why not? Back in the day, startups promised to change the way business was done.

Ideas became organizations, and pulled in people who threw away cushy jobs for the thrill of building something fun and interesting. They moved cities and changed their lives to fulfil their aspirations of being a part of something big and having real impact – as opposed to a cog in the wheel.

But lately…all of these exciting organizations seem to have hit a wall. In some cases, they’ve settled down and become boring companies – for whom innovation and excitement aren’t what they’re chasing anymore. Incentives aren’t lucrative anymore and the mission doesn’t seem that clear anymore.

And how have the disruptors settled down?

The same edtechs that said they will disrupt the old-world coaching institutes seem to have become them. The lucrative careers at startups which promised asymmetric growth with more than 100% hikes are no longer a reality – most startups under a cash crunch, scaling down and laying people off.

On top of it we seem to be living in an age of duopolies, which is never a good sign, for customers or for disruption. And the truth about the market not being as large as said on the outset seems to be settling in. Even if the market is not as big as promised, it did grow at an alarming pace – and then, the regulators decided to step in to make sure customers aren’t cheated, making life much harder for the startups. 

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan (PGK), COO of The Ken and Rohin Dharmakumar, CEO of The Ken speak with guests Ashish Sinha and Prof. Sourav Mukherji, to understand what has changed in the last 10 years – and what does the future hold?

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Praveen Gopal Krishnan

Why has all the excitement and disruption gone out of startups?

Startups are neither fun, nor are they able to build disruptive products and experiences. Are the two connected? Who is responsible? And how do we break this cycle?

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About the guests:

Ashish Sinha is an experienced product manager and also the founder of NextBigWhat, one of India’s oldest digital publications chronicling stories about products, technology and startups from India. Ashish used to work as a Product Manager at Yahoo back when it was still fashionable to.

Our second guest is Professor Sourav Mukherji, who teaches Organizational Behavior at IIM Bangalore. He’s also the Dean of Alumni and Development, and has worked at organisations like BCG, Oracle and IBM before joining IIM-B as a faculty (Fun fact: Prof. Mukherji taught PGK when he was doing his MBA at IIM Bangalore. So it’s a full circle moment for him to have his professor be a part of a discussion he is leading)

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We have a 2×2 puzzle for you this week as well.

In this week’s puzzle, the X-axis goes from startups on one side to big companies on the other side. What should the Y-axis be here? What can we put on the Y-axis that will bring out the tension of what one stands to gain and lose when going from startups to big companies?

Write to us with your answers on [email protected].

If you liked listening to the episode do let us know by rating the show wherever you listen to podcasts and share it with people who would enjoy it.

P.S. Don’t worry we’re still going through the responses for the first puzzle, we’ll be back with the winner next week.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is our lead writer and researcher, and our resident sound engineer, Rajiv CN, is the audio producer.