Ankit Chowdhary
2.3K posts
@ankitcc
Backing bold founders @spc_india @southpkcommons | Prev @ServifyHQ 1-n 🇺🇸🇮🇳 🤿🧘🏻♂️
Last evening was a milestone for SPC India — our 2nd-ever Demo Faire. TL;DR it was everything that we are known for @southpkcommons. Greatness in every shape. A packed room. Energy that you just cannot find anywhere else. Let’s take an early peek, at the epic demos from our @spc_india portfolio founders! 🧵 (P.S. We will have videos out very soon!)
Our own @ankitcc is going to be speaking to future leaders — from The @Wharton School's Global Modular Course in Delhi, on March 13. He will be joining Professor Harbir Singh and Professor Rahul Kapoor from Wharton, for a fireside chat on "Evolution of the Indian Technology Investment Landscape". Let's go!
.@adityaag and I hosted a talk yesterday for our @southpkcommons community called "Avoiding the Eye of Sauron: Companies & Categories that are NGMI". Admittedly, the title was a bit click-baity :). We could’ve also titled this “Building in the Era of Accelerating Returns”. The high-level is that the opportunity couldn’t be greater, but the bar is also higher. We must update priors on what’s a good opportunity and how we operate. We must move faster and move smarter. Here are some summarized takes: 1/ The Eye of Sauron isn't just the specter of foundation model improvements. It's a heightened competitive environment that spawns and fuels competition from every direction — incumbents, other startups, and the labs themselves. But there's a 4th category. Possibly the scariest one. Your own customers. The labs didn't just create better models. They armed your customers. 2/ Don't build software for software companies. Alarmist, yes, but most directed toward those building application-layer software. Any customer with high technical capability + high agency is your most dangerous customer. With a pile of tokens, ample motivation and minimal effort, they will build custom software and workflows that erode your value. Startups and mid-market tech companies are the worst ICP in 2026. 3/ Stop building around model deficiencies. A year ago, it might have been sufficient to say "it doesn't do inpainting well" or "character consistency in video is broken” or “it doesn’t automate PR reviews”. That thinking is NGMI. Model capabilities are non-linear — what's hard today is emergent in tomorrow's weights. Assume the models will do everything. Build something that gets stronger as the models improve — not something they make obsolete with the next dot release. 4/ One of the best places to build right now: go deep on domain and JTBD. AI is the ingredient. Domain mastery is the product. Find a space where you understand the customer, the workflow, and the problem better than any lab ever will. Go so deep they'd never bother chasing you down that gold mine. The moat is domain expertise + distribution. Not the model. 5/ Seek out human problems. Selling. Change management. Trust. Compliance. Network effects. Community. The edge here isn't the model — it's who can get closest to the customer, educate humans on how to harness AI, navigate procurement, and do the messy work of actually changing how people work. Find where humans are at the center of the problem — and build around that. 6/ The grace period is gone. Used to be: build something cool, raise money, figure out the hard stuff later. You had years. Now you have months — maybe less. Technical founders have to lean into the discomfort of answering questions they used to kick the can on. Strategy. Differentiated moat. GTM edge. ICP. Day Minus One, not Year 2. That said — there's never been a better time to build. We all have superpowers now. Customers are primed to try and pay for new things. The bar is as high as the opportunity is massive. Just have to move faster and move smarter. h/t to @rosslazer for the hilarious AI slop movie poster and for @ditzikow for suggesting we openly share, in @southpkcommons fashion, our "half baked theses and frameworks". The community discussion found at SPC enables us to figure this all out together.
Practo founder, former Lenskart and Ola executives raise $5 million from South Park Commons for healthcare startup Cent moneycontrol.com/news/business/…
🚨 Big news: @producer_ai is officially joining Google Labs! 🎶 ProducerAI is a creative collaborator, whether you’re writing lyrics, developing a melody or experimenting with genres. With ProducerAI, you can turn your imagination into dynamic tracks. We share ProducerAI’s mission of helping artists of every level make the music they imagine with Lyria 3, and are excited to welcome them to the Labs family. Learn more: blog.google/innovation-and…
Last call for entries for SPC Bangalore Demo Night on 26th Feb. If you're building AI models or the infrastructure that drives them, and want to be in a room where people just get it, apply to demo! Demos at @spc_india mean real, working builds. No slides, no word jumbles, no cap. You can also apply to observe! RSVP on Luma.
Thrilled to be hosting @joulee at @spc_india for a fireside chat, on March 3rd! Julie went from being @facebook 's first intern, to being their VP of Product Design, and is now the founder of @Sundial. And, she’s literally written the book on management! She is someone who sees the "why" behind the "what"...in ways that only those who build futures do! She chose to transition back into the builder phase, after achieving great things in big tech. She’s gone from leading a large design charter…to navigating the trenches and uncertainty of a startup. That’s what we call building your life’s work! If you’re a builder, designer, or leader, this is a story that you must hear! RSVP on Luma.
