Scaler Pod - The Software Engineer's Podcast · Scaler Academy

SCALER POD 15 ft. Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner, Antler | Building Successful Startups, VC & Funding

·1 hr 26 min·5 clips

Rajiv says VCs must return about 5x over 8 to 10 years, so founders face constant pressure.

1. Scaler Pod - The Software Engineer's Podcast centers this conversation on Rajiv Srivatsa’s path from coder to founder to Partner at Antler. 2. Arnav interviews Rajiv Srivatsa, who is identified as a Partner at Antler and a former founder at Urban Ladder. 3. The episode asks what venture capital does and how engineers should decide whether to become founders. 4. Rajiv says his work week splits across five areas: customers, capital, team, brand-product, and ecosystem. 5. He compares a VC’s customers to founders, a business leader’s customers to engineers, and an ecommerce leader’s customers to buyers. 6. He says capital work includes raising money, generating revenue, and managing sales functions. 7. He says team work includes building, managing, and reviewing people across a VC team or engineering team. 8. He says brand and product matter because early-stage VCs need a strong brand to attract founders and build useful platforms. 9. He says ecosystem work includes networking, learning from people, press, and events that build long-term connections. 10. He connects that split to his earlier years as a founder at Urban Ladder and says the same pattern showed up there. 11. Rajiv traces his first contact with computers to 1994, when he finished 10th grade and entered computer science in 11th grade. 12. He says his first entrepreneurial-style project was an India version of Carmen Sandiego built in Visual Basic in 1997-98. 13. He says people used that campus-network app enough to spend time on it and follow the clues he created. 14. He says his Infosys personal website drew 1,500 to 2,000 daily users and became a network concern in Chennai. 15. He says he built the intranet at IIM Bangalore in 2003, and it continued standing for 10 years after he left. 16. He says Yahoo gave him strong grounding in product management, engineering, and UX before he moved to Urban Ladder in 2012. 17. Rajiv says the VC model exists because LPs expect high returns from risky startup portfolios over about 10 years. 18. He says founders should understand that board involvement, pacing pressure, and dilution are built into VC-backed growth. 19. The interview style is direct, practical, and example-heavy, with Arnav asking beginner questions and Rajiv answering with specific numbers and career milestones. 20. People considering an engineer-to-founder jump will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting abstract startup theory may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical founder-to-funder conversation that keeps returning to market reality, validation, and cofounder fit.

This episode leans into the practical side of startup building: how venture capitalists think, what a VC week looks like, why founders should validate demand before writing code, and why cofounder fit matters as much as product instinct.

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Why you'd press play

If you are wondering when to stop coding and start building, this gives you the VC lens on founder choices.

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