EE21 Masterclass with Neha Singh

It’s always a good day when you get to talk to Neha Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of Tracxn. For her 2021 Lightspeed Extreme Entrepreneurs masterclass on ‘Market Creation Bets’, we dove deep into the Tracxn story and what it takes to create a new market and go all in. 

Neha told the cohort that when Tracxn was born, its market was virtually non-existent. Existing processes entailed a great degree of information asymmetry among the founder and investor community. Accordingly, stakeholders relied on personal relationships and ad hoc processes.

 She emphasized the importance of having thought leaders from the industry to help navigate through the 0 to 1 phase. She opined that it is crucial to forge and leverage such relationships, especially if a startup is creating the market. In the absence of institutions that provide rich networks, Neha said that one must be extremely perseverant – if you have the grit, right intentions and set of questions, it’s much easier to get time with leaders than you might expect.

 Neha spoke about the initial days of Tracxn, which involved extensive prototyping for the first 2 quarters, followed by multiple experiments on product features and pricing. She added that the concept of early and laggard adopters was very real – some customers took 4-5 years to sell to!

 The Tracxn founding team had a very clear and sharp global ambition from the outset. They identified early markets like Germany and offered their product for free in order to help build critical mass. 

For startups that are creating the market, Neha underscored the importance of answering the TAM question. Accordingly, one must think of proxies to estimate TAM. For example, understanding the hourly salary of an investment professional and the average number of hours taken to complete common tasks was useful for Tracxn.

 Speaking on team capability required to create a new market, Neha mentioned that the ability to solve problems is paramount – it’s not rocket science; just understand customer pain points and figure out ways to solve them. She added that it’s crucial to have a POV on where the world is headed. For Tracxn to be competitive 10 years from inception, the team had to invest in deep infrastructure and databases that could drive competitiveness.

 On having a product vs. service orientation, Neha explained that a product-led approach should always be preferred, owing to the higher margin structures, lower overheads and higher proclivity to scale.

Neha concluded the masterclass by responding to the cohort’s questions. On challenges faced as a female entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, she said that initially senior executives did not take