Anu Hariharan's Recent LinkedIn Posts

We are thrilled to announce the launch of avra — a 7-week program designed specifically for post-Series A CEOs looking to scale their companies effectively. As most startup founders are first-time CEOs, the journey can be daunting, and resources are scarce. That’s why we created avra : to bridge that gap and provide structured, actionable insights from those who’ve been there. Each week, you’ll dive deep into essential topics like hiring and managing leaders, how to accelerate shipping velocity, and refine strategic planning. Every session is taught by experienced CEOs and operators from the world’s best companies. Since launching last year, we’ve run three cohorts, with 37 CEOs participating in the program. Don’t just take our word for it—hear from the avra founders directly!

Live shopping is here to stay, fueled by sellers building real businesses. We’re excited to share that we’ve raised $225 million in Series F funding, valuing Whatnot at $11.5 billion. This moment reflects the incredible work of our team, the trust of our community, and the energy that sellers bring to Whatnot every day. We started with a simple idea: shopping should be more personal, more connected, and more human. That vision has now powered more than $6 billion in live sales this year alone, and we’re just getting started. The round was co-led by DST Global and CapitalG, with participation from our new investors Sequoia Capital and Alkeon Capital and returning investors Greycroft, Andreessen Horowitz, avra, and BOND. We’re building Whatnot to help small business owners and entrepreneurs grow what they love into something bigger. If you’re looking to do meaningful work with a team that cares deeply about helping people build something of their own, we’d love to meet you: careers.whatnot.com https://lnkd.in/gNZaFSa6

No greater joy to give back to an alma mater that gave us our start! Ram Parameswaran and I are so grateful to Virginia Tech and to be in a position to pay it forward to deserving students.

The Hidden Forces Behind Toutiao: China’s Content King Toutiao, one of the flagship products of Bytedance*, may be the largest app you’ve never heard of–it’s like every news feed you read, YouTube, and TechMeme in one. Over 120M people in China use it each day. Yet what’s most interesting about Toutiao isn’t that people consume such varied content all in one place… it’s how Toutiao serves it up. Without any explicit user inputs, social graph, or product purchase history to rely on, Toutiao offers a personalized, high quality-content feed for each user that is powered by machine and deep learning algorithms. Going a step further than merely serving up content, Toutiao’s algorithms also create content: During the 2016 Olympics, a Toutiao bot wrote original news coverage, publishing stories on major events more quickly than traditional media outlets. The bot-written articles enjoyed read rates (# of reads and # of impressions) in line with those produced at a slower speed and higher cost by human writers on average. The average user spends more than 74 minutes each day in Toutiao - Here's how Toutiao did it - https://lnkd.in/gNx-EJw

Thank you all for the kind words and support. It is a privilege of a lifetime to work with each of you and I have learned a ton working alongside you. This isn't the end. To new beginnings 🚀 And I am sure we will continue to work together for years to come.

Today we celebrate Team Groww — now the largest stock brokerage platform in the country, built in just 5 short years. Lalit, Harsh, Ishan, and Neeraj started Groww with one goal : make investing easy for Indians. They launched mutual funds in 2017. At Series B, Groww had $0.7M ARR; by Series C in 2020, $2M ARR — all from mutual funds alone. Then came liftoff: from $2M ARR in 2020 to $450M in revenue with 45%+ net income margins in just five years. From 55K monthly users in 2019 → #1 brokerage in India today with 26% market share and 10M+ active users. How? Culture, focus, and execution — all shaped by the founders. Lalit Keshre is one of the best product minds in the world. He’s in hundreds of WhatsApp groups with tens of thousands of users. When asked about competition, he’d say, “I don’t look at them.” His only focus: remove friction so young Indians can invest confidently with the relevant information. In the early days we often questioned TAM. Lalit replied: “Small TAMs are the result of products with high friction”. He was right — Groww expanded the market itself. A few lessons I’ve learned from Lalit: Stellar clarity of thought. When we led the Series C at YC , we sent him our valuation memo ($1–1.5B base, $3B upside). He replied with a short memo explaining why we were wrong on TAM — backed by data and A/B tests. Keep in mind that stocks hadn't even launched yet but he was right about the path it would take once launched. Be disciplined. When every consumer company advertised during IPL (the equivalent of a Superbowl ad), Lalit refused — “He refused to spend as much money to acquire customers for an investing product where retention was of utmost importance. That relentless clarity defines Groww’s culture. Harsh Jain is Groww’s backbone — he built the regulatory and risk foundation that allowed the company to scale safely across mutual funds, stocks, F&O, credit, and insurance. Neeraj Singh architected the platform and culture behind engineering. He hired young engineers from top colleges and taught them to think like owners. His bias for simplicity — fewer clicks, faster load, zero friction — made Groww one of the most reliable consumer apps in India, even on peak trading days. Ishan Bansal has been the quiet engine of financial discipline. As CFO from day one, he ensured every product line was self-sustaining and every decision grounded in unit economics. Many US LPs have asked me if Indian investments would ever make money. Ecosystems take time — but here’s Groww, returning capital many times over and returning at least two US funds fully and likely delivering one of the best IRRs of the decade (Launching Stocks in 2020 → IPO in 2025). It’s been a privilege of a lifetime to be part of this journey along with Nick Shalek from Ribbit and Ashish Agrawal from PeakXV. Team Groww - you deserve all the credit - not just for Groww, but for the next decade of Indian founders you would have inspired.

This morning I interviewed Pedro Franceschi for the Brazil Conference at MIT and Harvard. I have known Pedro for over 6 years and he has scaled immensely in the role of a CEO. Their love for Brazil and the level of commitment to build a strong team in Brazil is unmatched. Very few people know this - Pedro and Henrique Dubugras invest a lot in their people both at Brex and outside of Brex. It is no surprise that the earliest team members like Larissa Maranhao Rocha, Camilla Morais and Michael B. Tannenbaum among many others are still at Brex and have played a key role in shaping what Brex is today. This team worked day and night for almost 3 weeks straight since the SVB crisis. They worked at incredible speed with "impatient optimism" to support and onboard 5k startups with an emergency loan program in 72 hours. They had to do this while keeping all the systemic checks and balances that come with managing a financial institution. Larissa - you are the ultimate hustler. Thank you for giving me the opportunity this morning :)

Huge congrats to Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras the entire Brex team. It is not often two 20 year olds decide to move to the US from Brazil and build a fintech company and exit at $5B+. I have learned so much working with the both of you and it was the privilege of a lifetime to see you build Brex Here are my fun and favorite stories 1/ 2017: Henrique decides he does not know how to hire engineers in the US and applies for a job at a startup to go through the full process and then asks to meet with the CEO and converts them into an angel investor 2/ Before hiring the first employee, Pedro and Henrique decide they need to see if the company will be even worth a $1B. They attend an accounting class at Stanford to build a model which Michael B. Tannenbaum then tears apart 3/ Pedro's written culture: Pedro has so much empathy that it is unmatched to most leaders. When the going got tough, Pedro Franceschi you led with intensity, optimism every single day and that showed through every part of Brex. Your letter to the company about the role your mom played in shaping you during your toughest times in your childhood is by far one of the best and most inspiring letters I have seen from a leader to date You put together an incredible team - Michael, Camilla, Ben, Art, James among so many others that stayed in the trenches every single day. You should be proud and a new chapter begins. And kudos to my former partner Dalton Caldwell who spotted them at YC, accepted them into the batch for a VR idea, convinced them to pivot to Brex and always said: this team is special.

Daniele Perito - you will be incredibly missed day to day. I remember the day you joined the YC batch in 2017. It was a bit of a surprise but Max Rhodes said with such conviction that you were the best cofounder to power the entire marketplace with data and manage the underlying risk. At that time Faire had not launched and it was hard to comprehend what that role would entail. After 6 years watching you scale the data team, leverage data to power every decision in the marketplace and manage underlying risk especially during the pandemic I can say with the same conviction as Max did then, Faire wouldn't be here today with you! Thank you for your immense contributions. Roles might change but you will always be the cofounder that laid such a strong foundation for Faire for the years to come

Our dear friend Lexi Reese is considering running for the US Senate. I have worked with Lexi for 7+ years. She is an incredible leader with a big vision. She is sincere, kind hearted and a class act. Please consider joining me in making an early contribution to her campaign

Welcome Max Winston to the avra team! Excited to have you on board.

Congrats to the Whatnot team on raising at $11.5B A few unknown facts about this amazing cofounder duo Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head 1/ They launched in 2020 right before COVID hit. 2/ in the early days, they even funded payroll for some of the early employees. 3/ They started with collectibles while every other competitor was focused on fashion. 4/ It was tough to raise because "how could you be a big company with just collectibles". 5/ But they stuck to their gut - collectibles was the way to launch and use that as a beach head to launch other categories. 6/ They decided to launch live video auctions because of the feedback from customers (they weren't familiar with China's video commerce market). 7/ Logan holed up in a room to code and launched the live video auction in 4 to 6 weeks. 8/ More than 80% of the buyers were male for the first few years. Fast forward to today at least 50% of the buyers are women since they launched fashion (it's quite popular with the TJ Max buyer). 9/ There were at least 14 competitors along the way (I have lost track) but Whatnot beat almost all of them 10/ Grant and Logan are the nicest people you will meet. They are quiet (you won't hear from them on social media and podcasts) but they are one of the most fiercely competitive founders I know. I call them "silent killers" :) Beyond all the success, Grant and Logan are some of the most loyal and genuine people. It has been an honor to learn from them as they build! https://lnkd.in/gM9SCXZi

Hi All, My Twitter account has been hacked and I am unable to reset it. Until this is resolved please don't respond to any Twitter DMs

Congratulations Alfred Wahlforss Florian Juengermann and the Listen Labs team! We love using Listen at avra! The AI video interviews are a unique approach and gives us such a differentiated perspective on user research.

Congrats and welcome Lauren to Faire!

Huge congrats Max Junestrand. You have come a long way from avra batch 3:-) and congrats on building an A++ team! Love how you are building the product and team at Legora

Amazing post by Daniele Perito and Chen Peng on how Faire uses data and machine learning to help shape its marketplace! There are so many exciting roles in their data team. See below.