Team-issues can derail any startup, says Subrata Mitra

Accel partner Subrata Mitra opened up about the one failure which he will always remember, the decline of 'Chakpak'. Mitra spoke about the factors responsible for it and the lesson he learnt from this experience.

“Chakpak [a film news portal]. It was an early internet company and also one of the early engagements for me at Erasmic Venture Fund [the firm he co-founded and which became part of Accel]. Cofounders Nitin Rajput and Gaurav Singh Kushwaha made rapid progress after our seed investment. Soon it was a famous brand among the large moviegoing audience in India. It caught the attention of Canaan Partners, and we raised a decent series A. The failure, however, came when the founding team started to waver on how to make decisions, which path to take, etc. It came to a point where they couldn’t work with each other. This quickly created a downward spiral that we couldn’t get out of. My team and I spent a lot of time with Chakpak in the early days. The company returned significant money to investors and finally shut shop. What I learnt from my experience was that no matter how good the founders may be, team-related issues can derail any startup.”