At eChai Founders Social at IIMA Ventures, founders opened up about their small wins and everyday challenges

In addition to our panels and demo days, we also host eChai Founders Socials, intimate gatherings for founders to connect. Last week in Ahmedabad, we hosted one at IIMA Ventures.

This time, we had a simple script. Everyone was asked: what was the most exciting or thrilling thing that happened to you last week, what challenge did you face, and how did you navigate out of it?

Generally, startup discussions tend to drift toward numbers, how much revenue someone is making, who’s doing better, or what some popular founders are doing that everyone else measures themselves against. 

There’s value in focusing on individual journeys every now and then,  the stories of a single week in a founder’s life. At this Social, founders spoke about the very real week they had just lived through: the small wins that gave them energy, the challenges that stretched them, and the unexpected roadblocks they had to work their way around.

We’ll do more of it. Alongside eChai Socials, we’ve recently started experimenting with the “Table of” format, curated, theme-based circles where founders and operators gather around a specific context. It could be a Table of 5 for folks building on Shopify, a Table of 7 for founders who’ve raised seed and are preparing for their next round, a Table of 4 for those trying to crack their hiring process, a Table of 10 for founders visiting San Francisco to explore opportunities, a Table of 6 for founders scaling D2C brands, or a Table of 8 for SaaS builders figuring out global GTM.
 
The idea is simple: bring together the right mix of people, keep it small, and let the conversations go deep.

Participants included