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How do you find your next opportunity in Startups & Venture Capital?
How 13 programmers turned $59k into $41B Autodesk?
How Terraform lost $45 Billion in less than 7 Days?
How a Delhi boy created $200 M Wingify with $0 VC money?

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How 13 programmers turned $59k into $41 B?

Do you know what is common between Ronald Reagan, MTV and Autodesk?

In 1982, Ronald Reagan was president, MTV was still playing music videos, and in an unrelated intersection, 13 programmers decided to pool their pocket change, a modest $59,000, to chase what seemed like the most niche dream imaginable, the origin of CAD software company, Autodesk.

John Walker, the head of this crew, wasn't even trying to build a CAD empire. The man was more interested in creating office automation software called "Autodesk", yes, that was supposed to be the product name, not the company.
AutoCAD was just a side project, something they figured they could knock out quickly for a December 1982 trade show.

Did you know that John Walker acquired the core technology for Autodesk from Michael Riddle for merely $1 plus 10% Royalties?

Unique Survival Quality: Art of Strategic Self-Destruction

The Subscription Revolution Nobody Wanted: They systematically killed their most profitable business model, while transitioning from one-time software purchases to recurring subscriptions; but, By deliberately cannibalizing their cash cow, they built something far more valuable, predictable, recurring revenue that scales infinitely.
The AI-First Pivot in a 42-Year-Old Company: While startups scramble to add AI features, Autodesk has been quietly building AI capabilities for over a decade. Since 2009, Autodesk's industrial research lab has published over 65 peer-reviewed research papers, making the Autodesk Research AI

Did you know that John Walker is claimed to be the first creator of a computer virus, when he created the program ANIMAL in 1974, which crashed 1100 UNIVAC machines accidentally?

Wins Against all Odds:

The $875 Million PlanGrid Gamble (2018): When Autodesk acquired PlanGrid for $875 million, industry observers called it massively overpriced. But Autodesk wasn't just buying software, they were buying the future of construction. PlanGrid had cracked the code on field-based productivity, something traditional BIM software couldn't even imagine.
The Alias Coup (2006): The acquisition of Alias brought major film studios and game developers, such as Industrial Light & Magic, DreamWorks SKG, Weta Digital, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Electronic Arts, Midway Games, Nintendo and SEGA directly into the Autodesk ecosystem. With this move, Autodesk owned the creative pipeline from concept to screen in Hollywood.
The Manufacturing Play: Autodesk has completed 56 acquisitions so far, with an average acquisition amount of $231M. Each acquisition wasn't random, they were building an integrated ecosystem before anyone understood what that meant.

Source: S&P Global, Autodesk Business Projections

Did you know that after achieving significant success in late 80's, in 1991, Walker moved to Alps, while the company went through business transition?

5 Secret Hacks Autodesk used to create value of $41 Billion

Profitability over Perfection: Walker's $1,000 AutoCAD pricing wasn't about undercutting competitors, it was about creating a completely new market. While competitors fought over enterprise accounts, Autodesk democratized entire industries.
Takeaway: Sometimes the biggest opportunity is in making expensive things accessible, not in making good things perfect.
Pragmatism: Crazy, right?, but here comes the best part; Autodesk's transition from perpetual licenses to subscriptions was financially painful but strategically brilliant. They deliberately destroyed their most profitable revenue stream to build something more valuable.
Takeaway: The companies that survive longest are willing to cannibalize their own success before market forces do it for them.
Right Talent:Walker managed "18 coders, all very expressive, with their own ideas" by giving them big problems to solve, not by forcing conformity.
Takeaway: Innovation comes from creative tension, not consensus. Great founders create environments where brilliant people can argue productively.
Strategic acquisitions: Autodesk was most active in 2014, with 8 acquisitions completed in that year. But look at the pattern, each purchase added a specific technical capability or market access.
Takeaway: Strategic acquisitions should fill gaps in your vision, not just eliminate competitors.
Timing: While others debate whether AI will transform their industries, Autodesk has been building AI capabilities for 15+ years. The AI-enhanced design tools market is projected to grow from $5.54 billion in 2024 to $40.15 billion by 2034, and Autodesk is perfectly positioned now.
Takeaway: The best time to invest in transformative technology is before it's obviously transformative.

How Terraform lost $45 Billion in less than 7 Days?

Did you know that prior to TerraUSD's collapse, Do Kwon quietly transferred 9 billion won (approximately $7 million) to a law firm, anticipating huge legal challenges ahead?

Do Kwon wasn't your typical crypto bro. This was a guy who'd worked at Apple and Microsoft, founded a mesh network startup called Anyfi (which had already raised $1 million), and possessed the kind of technical credentials that made VCs believe anything he'd say.

In January 2018, he co-founded Terraform Labs with Korean entrepreneur Daniel Shin, armed with a white paper that promised to revolutionize payments.

The goal was to create a systme that maintains a $1 peg, not through conventional system, but through sophisticated algorithms that would absorb volatility.

A disaster recipe: They were trying to create stability through instability, value through destruction, and trust through untested algorithms.

What They Promised vs. Reality:

🎯They promised: A decentralized, algorithmic stable currency that would revolutionize payments
❌They delivered: A yield-chasing scheme that attracted speculators, not real users

🎯They promised: Real-world adoption through partnerships like Chai (a Korean payments app)
❌They delivered: Fake transaction volume. Do Kwon later admitted to fabricating Chai's blockchain integration

🎯They promised: True decentralization through algorithmic mechanisms
❌They delivered: A system entirely dependent on Terraform Labs' subsidies and market manipulation

By 2019, Do Kwon had landed on Forbes' "30 Under 30" list. The company raised $32 million from crypto heavyweights including Binance, Arrington XRP Capital, and Polychain Capital.
Korean commerce giants like Ticketmonster and travel service Yanolja came aboard as partners. Everything was picture perfect

Did you know that Do Kwon's claims about Terra's decentralization were later exposed as complete fabrications?

3 Major Miscalculations by the Math Prodigy:

Infinite demand for LUNA: The system only worked if people always wanted to own LUNA tokens
Perfect arbitrage: It assumed rational actors would always step in to maintain the peg.
Unlimited growth: The model required constant expansion to sustain itself

The final nails in the coffin:

On May 7, Two large addresses withdrew 375 million UST from Anchor Protocol. Bot monitoring services detected an 85 million UST swap for USDC.

UST's price dropped to $0.985,

While UST was experiencing its death spiral, traditional fiat-backed stablecoins like USDC and USDT barely flinched. Why?
Because they were backed by actual reserves, not algorithmic fluff.

Terra wasn't just a two-token system, it was supposed to be an entire blockchain ecosystem hosting thousands of decentralized applications.
When Terra collapsed:

$28 billion in value was wiped from Terra-based dApps
Entire projects built on Terra became worthless overnight
Developer talent fled to other blockchains
The "Terra 2.0" relaunch was met with universal derision

Terra's collapse triggered a cascade of failures throughout crypto, contributing to the bankruptcies of Three Arrows Capital, Celsius Network, and dozens of other firms.
It wasn't just a single company failure; it was a systemic event that proved how interconnected and fragile the crypto ecosystem had become.

5 lessons to learn from Terraform's $41 Billion Mistake

Avoid Valuation Bubble: Terra tried to create value from thin air through algorithmic mechanisms, but algorithms can't suspend the laws of economics.
Lesson: Real businesses solve real problems for real people, they don't just move money around in circles.
Sustainable Growth: Anchor Protocol's 20% yields were entirely subsidized by Terraform Labs, burning through $6 million daily by April 2022. This created artificial demand that disappeared the moment the subsidies became unsustainable.
Lesson: If your business model requires permanent subsidies to function, you don't have a business model.
Agility>Arrogance: Do Kwon's Twitter feed was a masterclass in hubris. He mocked competitors, dismissed critics, and publicly stated there was "entertainment in watching companies die."
Lesson: Arrogant founders create blind spots that become fatal flaws.
Market Fundamentals: When the SEC issued subpoenas, Kwon's response was to threaten legal action rather than engage constructively. This adversarial approach turned regulators from potential partners into active opponents.
Lesson: Smart founders work within frameworks, not against them.
Timing>Vision:Terra launched during the greatest bull market in crypto history, with unprecedented liquidity and risk appetite, but even perfect timing couldn't save a fundamentally flawed model when conditions changed.
Lesson: If your company only works during perfect conditions, it will fail when conditions inevitably change.

How a Delhi boy created $200 M SaaS with $0 VC money?

Did you know, Wingify became the first bootstrapped SaaS company out of India to cross $50M ARR?

This isn't your typical founder story!

Paras was a gold medalist from Delhi College of Engineering in biotechnology, a field that had absolutely nothing to do with what he was about to build in coding or programming. But here's the twist: Paras had been programming since he was 13, back when his father first brought a computer home.

I just immediately fell in love with the idea of programming- Paras, Wingify founder

By the time he graduated in 2008, he'd already started multiple startups during college, watched them all fail, and learned the hard lesson that most entrepreneurs learn: failing fast and failing often is part of the process.

The original Wingify wasn't even called VWO. It was just "Wingify", a platform that Paras thought would help businesses optimize their websites.
But as he started building and talking to potential customers, he discovered something that businesses desperately need A/B testing tools, but the existing solutions were either too expensive (costing $25,000+ annually) or too complex for non-technical users.

& that is how Wingify came to fruition!

Unique Value of this Bootstrapped Gold Standard:

The Visual Revolution: VWO introduced something that seems obvious now but was revolutionary then, a visual editor that let marketers create A/B tests without writing a single line of code.
The Pricing Genius: While enterprise A/B testing solutions were charging $50,000-$200,000 annually, VWO started at $49/month. This wasn't just aggressive pricing, they were creating a market segment altogether.
The Trust Framework: While competitors focused on fancy features, VWO obsessed over making sure tests actually worked.

The David vs. Goliath Victories:

Beating Optimizely at Their Own Game: When Optimizely raised $57 million and positioned itself as the "Rolls Royce" of A/B testing, industry experts assumed VWO would get crushed. Instead, while Optimizely focused on enterprise features for Fortune 500 companies, VWO obsessed over user experience for everyone.
Surviving Google's Optimize: When Google launched Google Optimize as a free A/B testing tool, VWO's doubled down on what Google couldn't offer, personalized support, advanced features, and reliability for serious businesses.
The Global Market Penetration Strategy: From day one, Paras understood that to build a truly scalable SaaS business from India, you needed to think globally. While Indian competitors focused on the local market, VWO positioned itself as a global solution that happened to be just built in India.

Did you know that Wingify originally had a modest goal to generate just $1000 MRR, when they started?

Success Milestones:

Reached $1 million annual recurring revenue in just 18 months, in 2010
Paras Chopra featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 (Asia), in 2014
Closed $20M ARR with industry-leading margins by 2017
Acquired 6,000+ paid customers across 90+ countries by 2019
Everstone Capital acquired majority stake for $200M, in 2025

Did you know that Wingify founders rejected VC money for 15 years?

Source: Avinash Raghava on Wingify, Medium

5 hacks Paras used to Turn Wingify into a $200 Million Enterprise

Profitability>Funding: While competitors burned through VC millions trying to achieve growth at any cost, Wingify's profitability gave them infinite runway and ultimate strategic freedom.
Hacks: Cash flow positive businesses can outlast, outmaneuver, and ultimately outcompete funded companies.
Global>Local for Indian SaaS: Indian market alone can't support a truly scalable SaaS business, so always build for global markets from launch.
Hacks: Don't let geography limit your ambition or your pricing power.
Founder Market Fit: By staying close to every aspect of the business, Paras developed an intuitive understanding of customer needs that no amount of market research could provide.
Hacks: The best product decisions come from founders who stay connected to ground reality, not boardroom presentations.
User Experience: While Optimizely competed on enterprise features and Google competed on price (free), VWO won by obsessing over user experience.
Hacks: In crowded markets, user experience is often the only sustainable competitive advantage.
Product Innovation: Every dollar Wingify spent had to be justified by revenue generated. This forced them to innovate efficiently and focus on customer needs.
Hacks: Resource constraints force creative solutions and sustainable business models.