# eChai Ventures

> eChai Ventures is a slow founder network. It is built by founders showing up at open meetups, demo days and dinners: every week they gather somewhere across 25+ cities in 10+ countries, and have been since 2009. Alongside the gatherings it curates question-first knowledge hubs for founders on starting up, go-to-market, D2C, personal wealth and how founders use AI. The public site is free to read, and answer engines are welcome to cite it.

## Events
- [/events](https://echai.ventures/events): Upcoming founder dinners, workshops, and meetups across 25+ cities, each with date, venue, and who is going.
- [/cities](https://echai.ventures/cities): The startup ecosystems eChai gathers in, with a guide for each city.
- [/demoday](https://echai.ventures/demoday): Startups founders are building, showcased and ranked by peer upvotes.

## Learning hubs (a question, a straight answer, and curated resources)
- [/explore](https://echai.ventures/explore): One front door to every hub: type a question and get the best answer across all of them, or browse by hub.
- [/startingup](https://echai.ventures/startingup): Question-first learning hub for early-stage founders: a real question, an opinionated answer, and a few curated resources on it.
- [/d2c](https://echai.ventures/d2c): The same, for direct-to-consumer and e-commerce brand founders.
- [/how-founders-use-ai](https://echai.ventures/how-founders-use-ai): A curated map of how founders actually use AI, organised by the job they are doing.
- [/gtm](https://echai.ventures/gtm): Go-to-market answered for where the reader is: breaking into GTM, doing the work, leading a team, or studying how the best do it. The same question gets a different answer at each level.
- [/gtm/people](https://echai.ventures/gtm/people): GTM leaders and practitioners worth learning from, what each is known for, and where they publish.
- [/gtm/india](https://echai.ventures/gtm/india): Go-to-market for Indian companies: what a sales hire costs here, pricing for two markets, selling to the US from India, GST and DPDP inside a deal cycle.
- [/wealth](https://echai.ventures/wealth): Founder personal finance, India-first: paying yourself, what ESOPs and secondaries are really worth, and how to de-risk when nearly all your net worth sits in one illiquid company. Education, not advice.
- [/glossary](https://echai.ventures/glossary): A plain-language dictionary of startup and VC terms (PMF, CAC, SAFE, runway, moat), each with what it means, why it matters, and the best resources on it.

## The network
- [/network](https://echai.ventures/network): The eChai founder directory: founders across the network, searchable by name, company, and city.
- [/foundernotes](https://echai.ventures/foundernotes): Founder Notes, eChai's column: founders on eChai writing about what they are building, under their own names, beside posts and articles eChai curates from outside the network, each saying where it came from and linking back to it. It also carries photographs from eChai gatherings, requests founders post for help with one thing, the stories behind each edition of the daily news quiz, eChai's own news reports of what happened at a company, each with a named editor and its sources, and rankings written from eChai's polls.
- [/foundernotes/about](https://echai.ventures/foundernotes/about): How Founder Notes is put together: who writes in it, how eChai files and curates entries and says where each came from, what the blue tick beside a name means, and where to write about a mistake.
- [/astra](https://echai.ventures/astra): Built with Astra: what people are building with GPT-6 Astra, each in the builder's own words, curated on eChai. Every byline belongs to someone outside the network and links back to the post it came from.
- [/wronggoneai](https://echai.ventures/wronggoneai): Wrong Gone AI: what went wrong when people put AI to work, curated on eChai and filed by the kind of failure. Hallucinated citations, prompt injections, agents let loose, leaks, deepfakes and rollbacks, each case carrying the source it is drawn from.
- [/jev](https://echai.ventures/jev): Deciding with Jev: what people are doing with Jev, TypeSafe AI's model that decides instead of writes, curated on eChai. The browser agents, the games, the triage, the guardrails, the new kinds of software and the argument, each in the poster's own words and linking back to the post.
- [/devday](https://echai.ventures/devday): OpenAI DevDay 2026: what OpenAI announced at its developer conference on 29 September 2026, and what people made of it, curated on eChai. The announcements in OpenAI's own words, the stage demos, the first builds, the explainers, the view from the floor and the argument, each in the poster's own words and linking back to the post.
- [/walloflove](https://echai.ventures/walloflove): The eChai Wall of Love: what has been posted about eChai across YouTube, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Reddit, each post whole.
- [/asks](https://echai.ventures/asks): Founder asks: what founders in the network are looking for.
- [/dates](https://echai.ventures/dates): Founder Dates: founders helping each other get good at one thing at a time.
- [/failcode](https://echai.ventures/failcode): First-hand founder accounts of startups that did not work out, in the founders' own words, filed by subject. Every entry is the founder's own post or an interview they answered themselves; nothing here assigns a cause on their behalf.
- [/failcode/all](https://echai.ventures/failcode/all): Every FailCode entry in one searchable index: the founder accounts, the ones written on eChai, the ones nobody has filed yet, and the curated resources about failure.
- [/failcode/about](https://echai.ventures/failcode/about): How FailCode is put together: the companies its accounts name and what each one was, where the accounts were published and the cap on any one source, and the questions readers ask.

## What founders recommend
- [/watchlist](https://echai.ventures/watchlist): Series, films, and documentaries about building companies that founders recommend.
- [/books](https://echai.ventures/books): Books founders recommend, ranked by recommendations.
- [/podcasts](https://echai.ventures/podcasts): Podcast episodes founders recommend.
- [/readingroom](https://echai.ventures/readingroom): Long-form pieces founders think are worth reading.
- [/videos](https://echai.ventures/videos): The best startup films, ads, and keynotes, curated.
- [/polls](https://echai.ventures/polls): Network polls: one question each on the software and services founders use, with how many founders named each answer. A poll can be written up as a ranking in Founder Notes once 25 founders' answers count.

## More
- [/feed](https://echai.ventures/feed): What is new across the network.
- [/gallery](https://echai.ventures/gallery): Photos from eChai events.
- [/brands](https://echai.ventures/brands): eChai Partner Brands: what a brand gets for the year it works with eChai as its growth partner, and who is on it now.
- [/hummingbird](https://echai.ventures/hummingbird): Hummingbird Talent, an eChai company: executive search and leadership hiring, run from inside the founder network.
- [/media](https://echai.ventures/media): The eChai logo and brand files, for partners and press.
- [/llms-full.txt](https://echai.ventures/llms-full.txt): The full-content companion to this file: every hub question with its answer, every glossary term with its definition, the questions each city guide answers and each city's Startup Grid in counts, in one fetch.
- [/sitemap.xml](https://echai.ventures/sitemap.xml): Every indexable page on the site.

## Founder conversations (one question, answered by founders in their own words)
- [/conversations](https://echai.ventures/conversations): Every question in the series, with who answered each one.
- [/feed/thirdspace](https://echai.ventures/feed/thirdspace): Apart from your office and home, which place do you love working from the most? Every founder has a place that is not the office and not home where the work actually gets done. A cafe, a library, a coworking floor, someone else's spare desk. This is where founders name theirs.

## Curated collections
- [/collections/gff2026](https://echai.ventures/collections/gff2026): Global Fintech Fest 2026. What people posted from Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, day by day, curated on eChai.
- [/collections/navierstokes](https://echai.ventures/collections/navierstokes): The Navier-Stokes Week. A warning, a rumour, a result and an argument, in the words of the people who wrote them.

## Founder Notes by section (what founders write and what eChai files, by subject)
- [/foundernotes/ai](https://echai.ventures/foundernotes/ai): AI. What is being built with AI, how it is put to work, and what happens when it goes wrong. 466 entries.
- [/foundernotes/fintech](https://echai.ventures/foundernotes/fintech): Fintech. Payments, lending, insurance and banking, and the rules the companies building them work under. 104 entries.

## FailCode by subject (first-hand founder accounts, filed by what the founder said it was about)
- [/failcode/on/no_market_need](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/no_market_need): No market need. Built it, and found the demand was not there. 24 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/ran_out_of_cash](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/ran_out_of_cash): Ran out of cash. The money ran down before the thing worked. 16 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/team](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/team): Team / co-founder. Co-founders, the split, and who was in the boat. 3 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/outcompeted](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/outcompeted): Outcompeted. Somebody else was doing it, cheaper or better. 5 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/pricing](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/pricing): Pricing / unit economics. The numbers underneath: what it cost to serve, and what it sold for. 11 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/product](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/product): Product / execution. It got built, and the building was the hard part. 5 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/timing](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/timing): Timing. Early or late, and what that cost. 3 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/regulatory](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/regulatory): Legal / regulatory. A rule, a licence, or a ban. 7 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/burnout](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/burnout): Burnout. What it took out of the person building it. 7 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/scaling](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/scaling): Scaled too soon. Grown faster than it could be held. 6 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/pivot](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/pivot): Pivot / focus. Changed direction, and then changed again. 7 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/distribution](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/distribution): A channel that closed. A search ranking, an algorithm, or a platform's terms changed. 3 accounts.
- [/failcode/on/funding_fell_through](https://echai.ventures/failcode/on/funding_fell_through): The round that did not land. The money existed, and then it did not. 8 accounts.