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How does Net Neutrality Play a Part for India’s Product Ecosystem?

If You are connected to the Internet, Social Media or any form of media, you must have heard about Net Neutrality and the protests that are going on.
While it feels like iSPiRT hadn’t officially made any announcements on the same, quite a few of us have been working behind the scenes to ensure that our voice is heard and that TRAI takes the next steps regarding the Internet in India.

A bit of backdrop:

On December 2014, Airtel quietly dropped a note that they will be rolling out a plan that will differentially price calls that are made on its network – both voice and video calls, using skype or viber.
After the backlash that started, Airtel rolled back on its rollout plan, however forced TRAI to give them a guideline on how this should be handled, because the masses had mentioned it breaks netneutrality.

A bit of context:

India, if it gets the policy on Net Neutrality would be the 7th country in the world to have a stance on net Neutrality. Most nations assume a stance of Net Neutrality (as has been the case in India so far). But the policy defines a clear line in the sand, as operators all over the globe have been itching to cross the line to find ways to increase their profit margins.

Are we against Operators making money?

We aren’t. We understand that businesses need to be sustainable. But it is also the perogative of the ecosystem to allow for innovation to happen. Zero rating and slicing the internet into pieces and selling them in packets wouldn’t be innovation, it goes quite the other direction on that matter.
While on first look it feels as if operators are making lesser money, with the advent of applications, the opposite is true. Operators have evolved from voice and sms providers, to data providers. They are no longer circuit switched networks, but packet switched networks – and the latter is far more effective and allows for innovation on the applications layer. Idea, Vodafone and Airtel which are the three big players who control close to 75% of the mobile subscriber base in India have doubled their data revenues year on year. In the last 2.5 years, Airtel has made close to 15,000 crores in profit. So the stance that applications are eroding the profit margins is not a fact.

Why is this important to the startup ecosystem?

Net Neutrality isnt a principle by itself, but also one that dictates a fair an open market when it comes to dealing with the internet which is a public property. The ability for anyone to be able to contribute has been the core fundamental on which the Internet is built – and the operators who want to be gatekeepers
with their influence could totally alter the way that goes about.
In case the debates around this topic have been too cumbersome to follow, this picture would help.
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Zero Rating : Airtel and Internet.org

One of the key tenets that the telecom lobby is playing is using the analogy of Toll Free numbers to allow for bigger companies to subsidize the cost of access for certain applications in a network. The simple question we have been asking is, what about startups that might not have the money to pay operators to fight the defacto incumbent who would have paid the operator.

How can you pitch in?

Till the 24th of April, TRAI (Telecom and Regulatory Authority of India) is taking feedback on the 118 page consultation paper that they have put out. The Paper seems heavily influenced by the telecom operators who claim that OTT (Over-the-top) services need to be regulated.
You can send in your feedback to the 20 part question that they have raised, to let them know your thoughts.
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Bootstrapping, not an excuse for being cheap #BootUpINDIA

I witness the scenario on both sides of the table.  A startup provides a solution to a problem; solves it elegantly. And makes it seamless for its users. They use a few other products too – that solves some of their non-core functions elegantly. They grow out of its free usage, but they don’t pay.

And they sit and break their heads, day in and day out as to why on earth,  many of its heavy users not converting. I too do wonder why.

Karma, is a bitch.

We don’t negotiate with the entity that provides the electricity, nor the ISP who provides the pipeline, nor the bank who keeps our accounts, or the lawyer who manages our legalities, or the accountant who keeps our day sane. Why then are we being partial to teams solving our operational headaches with tools they built, burning midnight oil? Especially if its a tool that does its job and is a revenue expense for you.

We don’t bicker about the sunk costs, but are cutting corners on the revenue expenses. You understand how that makes no sense whatsoever right?

If you really want to throw around bootstrapping as an excuse, take a lower bandwidth plan and save costs. Buy a Dell or a Lenova and not a Macbook Pro (or one with a retina display). Keep a feature phone, nor a smart phone. Work out of your bedroom, and not a fancy office. Print your business cards on modest paper, and at your corner print store, rather than throwing around Moo cards; catch the train or the bus instead of flying around or travelling in luxury. After you’ve followed all this, if you still are short, then use a hack – use google docs, notepad, or one of the many free tools out there which do the job, will make you put in twice in amount of work and time – because it looks like time is the only currency you have. If your time is precious and you value it, and you are a growing business, then you have no excuse to be a cheapo.

You can spot a good team, by their ability to differentiate, what’s their core competency, where they can make a difference, and what is non-core and can rely on dependable tools, and pay for it.

Next time, you look at the conversion funnel and ponder why your customers are not converting, make sure you are not looking at a version of you on the other side. Bootstrapping, and being a cheapo, are two very different things.

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Crowdfunding In50hrs: India’s Idea-to-prototype Event Platform

I am in the middle of building two platforms. One being The Startup Centre, the older one, and its younger sibling In50hrs. In50hrs does get a bit of my attention, partly because I find my soul being there with entrepreneurs, teams,  and ideas when they get that Aha! moment of breakthrough and build something. Its priceless being part of those moments.

Most of you might think that In50hrs is extremely well funded, or for that matter, The Startup Centre. I am not at liberty to talk about how much funding went into setting up The Startup Centre (yet), but I can tell you that In50hrs runs on extremely thin budgets.

We knew that overcharging participants is not a way out. People can only pay what they have, and anything more than INR 1500 for an event will become hard to sell – partly because of affordability. Students will need a discount.  Which doesn’t leave much room to wiggle around.

If not for the generous support of organizations such as Thoughtworks, One97, Verisign etc who support us, In50hrs would be an impossible dream.

Yet, last year 1600 participants were part of it, 400 ideas were pitched, 283 prototypes were built, and 185 products launched. 28 startups came out of In50hrs and some have even gone on to raise institutional capital. All that, starts very small.

I love the energy when being in the middle of In50hrs. I love the community that Kerala, Pune and these smaller, endearing cities bring about. I love the moments when i have my jaw on the floor when people build amazing things, and talk about ideas bigger than this country, but are nowhere close to the metros. In50hrs is about that first step.

If you are imagining me high flying to most of these places, infact Redbus has been my best friend. We take the cheapest flights out (in cases like cities far to the north) and we exclusively travel by bus for all the neighbouring cities. By We, we mean me. Because, thats all the time that In50hrs can afford (barely).

An Event Platform like In50hrs costs anywhere between 20 – 25L per year to keep it running. While we have had some generous and far thinkers in the corporate world, raising all that money from corporates is turning out to be tough. Partly because I am stubborn not to want to turn In50hrs into a recruitment event. I cannot nudge someone with an amazing idea, and ask them to dare, and on the other hand also pitch a company that might be interested in hiring them and shelf their idea for a few more years. I’m gonna see the end of me, thanks to wanting to be black and white about it.

So in a moment of madness, thats original to entrepreneurs, I am thinking, if this is about the community, why not ask the community to own this as well. So we are going to start small, and raise 10% of the costs from the community (or atleast aim to). I can’t by any measure do this on your own, but if you’ve been a part of In50hrs and would love to help – in anyway – this is that moment to truly own this wonderful platform. Here’s the question then: Knowing all the pains and troubles we have as an ecosystem and country, would you like to be part of the solution, laying one crucial brick in India’s product ecosystem?

Im hoping your answer would be a Yes.

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How to Become a Super Associate

Being an Associate in a Venture Capital firm is a dead-end job*, that you can’t leap without entrepreneurial experience. And, entrepreneurs hate you for your pesky, clueless mails. Here’s hoping to help you out – and help ourselves.

Dear Associate / Analyst,

I know I took a big stab at you [1] and went public with it. I know you are trying to do your job, but the way you are going about it right now sucks big time. If you are wasting the time of an entrepreneur – and especially one in my fold and care [2] – well, you can expect more coming your way.

That said, I know its pointless to be critical instead of being helpful. So here are some tips to be awesome at what you do:

1. Introduce yourself with your title

You represent the firm, but what you do there will set expectations right with the entrepreneurs. Most Firms have a lousy habit of not even updating their current website and partner list, so an Introduction that says “Hi, I am So-and-so, an Associate with XYZ firm and I work closely with Partner Mr. X on Deals related to a,b,c sectors” would make it a better intro.

2. Be Clear

Please do not make claims about funding and all – Try very very hard not to set false hopes. We know the power you have is only to get names in a pipeline. Not even the principals have power to make that claim [3], so be very clear why you are reaching out to a startup – “To get the startup in your list of startups to watch” aka the dealflow pipeline. Entrepreneurs are racing against all the odds set against them, letting them know that this is a relationship building excercise, not a funding excercise, will also give them the opportunity to prioritize accordingly.

3. Think twice, thrice before asking teams to work on a document

I have met startups who sit and slog making market projections and research – well, thats kinda your job, isnt it? – and in trying to make business plans with five year projections.

Hint: the startup still doesn’t have a product, they don’t have a customer and they don’t know who might pay for it. That’s a hell of a lot of variables, and what you are asking them to produce is nothing short of writing fiction. Let us do more realism and less fiction, please?

4. Be hands on.

And by that we mean, be useful. If you love tech, what we really really lack in India (and globally) are guys who can look at a product and give feedback. If you sign up, give the product a try, recommend it to a few users, get them to try and send the team an email with genuine usability, functionality and customer feedback, guess what? its two birds in one stone – you don’t have to ask questions about who uses the product anymore because tada! you yourself know, and you also get on the good side of startups and the advisors / accelerators who are helping them.

5. Can you get them customers?

If you are talking to a startup that has its beta / product launched, can you push it internally within your team and your portfolio and get them to adopt it? You might have to build a system where your portfolio entrepreneurs get a single point/vote in the companies you are looking at (Tell them Y Combinator does stuff like that, internally to sell it) – which helps in two ways;

a) You get an entrepreneur’s perspective that can really help startups and

b) if they are solving a real problem, they might get paying customers.

6. Add Meaningful Value.

You know that there are only four defined roles in a VC firm, and you are at a dead end job if you are not an entrepreneur because its not easy becoming a partner, climbing up the associate route. You know what will put you up there? Proving that you can work with entrepreneurs and can be the second mind (head). So be selfish. I have been blown away by the value add some of the associates and principals like Anshoo of Lightspeed, Anand Daniel of Accel do for companies (in India) – so much so that I ask teams to talk to them. See, how it works?

All of this gets you on the good books of entrepreneurs, startups and folks like me. If you are an awesome associate/analyst, I’d love to meet you sometime and lets do this work together. We are all on the same side of the table. [4]

Do Entrepreneurs really Care? Here’s a requote of a quote from Kris Nair’s blogpost [5], of Sampad from Instamojo [6]:

I hardly see an investor saying that:

Hey, I used your product and it’s awesome / awful / sucked etc and I think you can do this or that from his/her experience which can help the founder achieve little bit more on reach, retention or revenue metric of the company.

You know where to start to build moat – almost always it starts with what most others wouldn’t care doing or looking at. Be an awesome associate – don’t suck.

————————————————————————————————
[1] http://www.vijayanand.name/2013/06/darn-the-associates/
[2] http://www.thestartupcentre.com
[3] http://www.vijayanand.name/2013/05/ask-vijay-what-goes-on-inside-a-vc-firm/
[4] http://www.vijayanand.name/2013/05/the-same-side-of-the-table/
[5] http://krisnair.com/post/34818850722/vc-associates
[6] http://www.instamojo.com/

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Collating Problems Worth Solving

In my experience working with Entrepreneurs for the past 9 odd years and possibly have seen a few thousand startups, there is one key attribute that instantly sets apart the startups that just might make it, to the ones that would struggle – the clarity on the problem they are trying to solve.

While we have made it a mandate in events like In50hrs that explaining the problem is crucial, we have realized that as a culture we havent yet learnt the art of observing the issues that around us – especially the ones that present opportunities along with it.

In an effort to help out, we have started collating interesting Problem Statements from entrepreneurs all around. Quite a few have contributed and we are starting to list them at the In50hrs site, as Problems Worth Solving (with due credits).

As a recently read article said, Focus on Talking about the Problems, and not the solutions, its evident that the key to building a thriving ecosystem is by building the capability to spot the problems, but for now, we are giving entrepreneurs a headstart and hopefully a sense of what to look for.

PS: If you want to prototype a solution to any of these problems, do sign up for an In50hrs Near you.

PPS: Want to add a Problem Statement? You can too.

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The Business of Accelerators

Accelerators are in the business of creating Startups – or atleast taking the first bet. Its a startup of startups; Which means, everything they talk about as risk, in venture capital nicely gets bundled up and will get put on the head of what is the accelerator.

Going back to the basics, Now depending on which accelerator you are involved with, there might be two or three key milestones that they would provide as value:

  • Spit Polish your Pitch in a matter of weeks and put you in front of a lot of Investors and hope one of you becomes a hit (Usually this model also involves accelerating a lot of companies in one go)
  • Have an Alumni or a Brand that can give you early traction, and mentors who can give you an overview (working with a startup to dig deep will take a few weeks usually)
  • The hands-on accelerators that will work with a handful of startups, but will dig deep, have a few dedicate personnel whose job would be to help you eliminate market risk (have a product, but there is no market) and also help with Go-To-Market strategy, setting up a board, advisory etc. Thats really a deep dive model and most accelerators wont touch that route with a ten foot pole – we at the Startup Centre, however love doing that kind of stuff.

 

Depending on what level of support you are getting, the duration of the programme will vary, but you get an idea. All of them, in someway will put some money in, quite honestly that would be the easiest (valuation of the company is the lowest and shares are cheaper comparatively – it makes sense to do it).

Thats the Pledge, if you can call it.

The Accelerator Model, no matter how sexy it may sound is a very very complicated and fragile model. It throws the firm in the side of the entrepreneur than the VC. The VC gets rather hefty (or sizeable) management fees of the funds they manage (usually 1-2% of what they manage divided over 7-10years) and the managed fund sizes are usually in the three digit millions, so that usually covers for operations. Accelerators on the other hand, even if they have a fund, owing to the nature of making small bets, the fund size would be small and the management fee, so to speak, usually covers the legality in managing the fund. Nothing more – Yes there is hefty legal fees involved in auditors, lawyers and stuff when you manage a fund.

And the accelerator has the cost of infrastructure (if its provided), the man power, operational costs, and travel where they go around meeting companies. All of this comes from a very very thin shoe string budget in most cases.

That’d be the turn.

Now, are they making a sacrifice and killing themselves over a cause. Not at all. But however, the upswing for an accelerator is in that small amounts of equity that they are taking in. If you are a banker by any chance and can do a little bit of excel sheet math, you will realize that the Approx 10%  that is taken (out of which usually 70 – 80% belongs to whoever brought in the capital also called LPs), is very small and if the venture goes through two rounds of funding or so, will quickly become a 1-2% play (which is the “carry” that the accelerator makes – sameway a VC fund makes money)

Which means, in order for the accelerator to say make a million in a company (and it usually takes about 3-4 years to think about any reasonable exit, in most cases way more) the company has to be valued, literally, at a billion. The chances of building a billion dollar company? Well, the US has 20 companies that are listed and 40 companies that are privately held, who are billion dollar companies in the last 20 years. close to 30,000 companies get funded in the US per year, so you can see the odds.

What you get is a fantastic community. You work shoulder to shoulder with entrepreneurs and pushing them to be their utmost best, because quite literally you make money only when they do. Some accelerators – if they are short termed, will go the mass model way (put 30 – 40 companies in a batch), raise the valuation by 1x or 2x and want to dump it on someone else and go to the next batch. They make less money, but over volume, they make more.

Not sure, if that is a model that is exciting for us, personally. I’d rather be associated with one or two companies that stand out, and perhaps stand the test of time – solving real problems.

Honestly though, if anyone were to ask me if starting an accelerator was a good Idea, its not. Its hard work, but if you love working with entrepreneurs, this is the best place to be. Its a lot of community building, lot of hard work, with not much money to hire talent – a lot of lonely hours, but along the way you also have the possibility of building a few amazing companies.

That’s the Prestige.

PS: Most wont make it.
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Are you a Tech Startup? You are part of a Fraction

Fraction

I remember this TED talk by Hans Rosling as he echoed the sentiments that I’ve heard working closely with Market Research firms:

Even with quantitative data, you have to be careful because as much as they are hard numbers, they usually are averages of two extremes – and the markets are full of extremities.

Truth is, if you follow (just) the numbers and build a product, you might end up with something that half convinces one group and slightly lures the other but never raging fans – in short, you build a product that is average.

Which means, that in order to improve a system, its not necessarily the most effective way to measure the system has a whole, you have to look at the individual parts of it and see which part of it is inefficient and work on that as a unit, rather than the whole system.

Organizations, love to club “Entrepreneurship” as one big whole chunk of gooey and that is very misleading.

I came to realize this working for a few years with IIT Madras, and interacting with the government and realized two things – their priorities were on cutting edge technology (patentable, and hence hard core sciences – some of which were a few layers away from direct commercialization) and the other was employment. If you think about it, it fundamentally comes down to the two priorities any government would have – security (economic and physical) and job creation, which are the key elements to a society, everything else is incidental.

How does technology entrepreneurship play into all this? If you are not building patentable technology (but an application – Yo! to the dudes and dudettes building Twitter 2.0) and if you do not have an intent to hire the masses to come work for you, you really don’t factor in anywhere at all.

That’s why when I read articles and the entire social media sphere going abuzz about the government plans t0 create 10,000 startups, and trying to force fit technology startups into that equation, I cringe, because thats like tryin to get a rhino into a bride’s wedding dress.

“According to a recent planning commission study, India needs to support nearly 10,000 scalable start-ups by 2022 to provide some level of sustainable job creation to the 140 million potential job seekers entering the workforce over the same period”

Some rough estimates say that there are close to 24 – 32 million (I know its vague but vague is all we have, because nobody has actual data) small and medium enterprises. Most of them are spread in the 1200+ Industrial clusters in India. When the government says “Startups” that is the ideal target they have in mind. It is none of the 350 odd brilliant, fraction of the whole equation demographic at all. The image in the mind of the government and policy makers when they say “startups” is someone who can be part of that 140 million job creation scheme of things – which means its the labour industries first, followed by manufacturing, followed by vocational skillset based organizations, followed by service companies (IT and Hospitality), followed by Research and development. You and I, don’t factor in at all.

The Key is to recognize that, before writing a post saying that things are sweet and sour. Truth is that the Tech Startup Ecosystem is on its own. And it survives on its own. It is nascent, very nascent and things are as crazy as the wild wild west. Not all entrepreneurs know what it takes to be in India and be building a business here, most of them complain that they are born in the wrong country, and most others just whine that this is not the valley. Some others are fooling themselves into believing that we are somehow there.

So steps to take:

1. Organizations like TiE have seriously lost their focus, gearing further and further into general entrepreneurship (so is CII, and FICCI and etc), rather than having a focus – when they are positioned best to help, but are just wiling away.

2. Understand that there is no such thing as an ecosystem yet, there is a landscape and like cattle there are some startups and enablers around. When my CA knows why a tech startup which has no “machinery” is valued at a crore, and all he sees is four guys and their laptops, then we have made the first step in building an “ecosystem”, not yet.

3. Building the Tech Startup Ecosystem, will take a concerted effort, by not the govt, or by one or two people, but by many who share this vision and are willing to play a non-zero sum game. Think beyond what you get (right now).

4. Our early successes will come from companies that will move out of India, go to the valley and succeed. Hopefully some of them will find a reason to come back and become that corridor. So don’t grumble when some of them leave, if they come back we should involve them. Israel’s ecosystem was built that way. There are ways to accelerate it, but that goes back to point (3) about a concerted effort. Investors will have to think beyond just deal flows, technology companies have to think beyond getting startups on their platform, and entrepreneurs have to think beyond just getting funded as their agenda.

5. Stop thinking small, and incorporating in India because of Patriotic reasons. Be global, incorporate where needed and keep your options open. Leverage all the exposure you can get. You are not competing with that startup down the road, you are competing with your counterpart globally.

6. If you are a startup, stop wasting your time in ecosystem stuff, there are enough of us around who have made it our mandate, if you really really really want to help, succeed amazingly well. There is very little replacement for what a success like Flipkart, Mobme, Webengage, Freshdesk, FusionCharts, Visual Website Optimizer, Tenmiles, Orangescape or a like can do.

Suceess breeds inspiration, while all the enablers can lay the roads, its entrepreneurs succeeding that really lights up the runway.

So don’t crib. Leverage India for what its worth. You can build amazing businesses here, but it will require getting your hands dirty. In short, be resourceful and make the most out of it. We are on our own.

You can leave comments here.

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India has a drought – not of Investors, but Customers

I came across this rather misleading article by a New Investor in town, that India has a Series A drought. I think its a bit sensationalist and misleading and drinks a bit of his own coolaid and shifts blames on others, but I’d agree with the article on one count – Yes there is a drought.

I am going to start this off on the right foot. This whole venture funding phenomenon is about at the best 15 years old in India. Whenever i sit with the guys who really understand business and even remotely talk about the things we talk about – they give me a dazed and confused look. You know why? Venture capital is nothing more than a bank – a bank which specializes in lending to private companies. I cant think of a single self-respecting business man who built his business based around what the money lender thinks he should do. If Startups today are talking about funding – as their only big milestone – there is no one to blame but the loud-mouthed investors who have positioned themselves to be the focus point for these early stage entrepreneurs.

Now coming back to the topic. We see the following happening in India:

1. Compared to 7 years ago, everyone knows what a Startup is.

2. Mainstream media has accepted Starting up as a perfectly acceptable choice of career – they are dedicated shows and show hosts who think they are celebrities.

3. Almost every well known Investor (Startup Bank) has an office in India.

4. Angel Investment is on the rise and its raising angels in the country right now. I seem to be bumping into more angels than Entrepreneurs sometimes – its scary.

5. The Govt causes a fuss from time to time but predominantly has stayed out of what they dont understand.

So What’s missing?

Are there great ideas? Yes

Are there great teams? Yes

Are there great products getting built with world class UI? Yes Yes Yes, andYes

Are teams bootstrapping/saving up/ getting a bit of money to get off the ground? Yes

Is there ample Series A happening? Yes, but Not Yet at scale

Are there exits happening? Not Nearly

Read the Complete post here

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Demo Days: Obsolete. Over-Hyped. Disaster

If we were going to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, comparing accelerators, here is my biggest gripe about “Accelerator Models” – Demo Day.

For the fortunate, who aren’t aware of the Process, this is how it goes. Applications open, Teams submit their applications, Interview processes later, teams are picked, brought onboard and after a 12 – 16 week Programme (depending on which accelerator you are part of), you are building off that first version of the product and then comes D-Day, Demo day when you launch your product, Introduce the Startup, and get funded so that you can move forward. Except that there is one glitch. The funding never happens. Nobody I know of has gotten customers at these D-Days, and nobody is wowed.

You could have glue stuck wings on the entrepreneurs and pushed them off the cliff instead.

Sadly, D-Day is a critical aspect that a lot of accelerators acclaim, is their USP, and that is going to come bite a few entrepreneurs in the ass sometime. Unfortunately. Its not just me saying this. Sameer and Nandini have been saying this for years.

India is Different

Demo Day works. It works in the Valley. A bunch of accelerators put up their startups, and there is someone to come look at these companies and see them for their potential rather than what they are a the moment. At the stage that these accelerators are putting up, all they have is a product that is ready to go for launch, and that is only going to get you one answer “Interesting. Keep us posted on how it goes”.

There is no one here in India who will take you at that stage and take you forward.

For those who understand this space better: You ideally want someone who can drop a 100-250K USD (with a valuation of roughly 1 – 1.5mn Valuation) on the startup to take the company from there. But thats precisely it, they want a “company” not a product built in a scurry. I havent met any teams in the Demo Days of most of these accelerators who can even justify (with data) why they think the product will work.

The Pivot is on you.

So If D-Day is the day when you launch, and I presume it will take the entrepreneur another 30-45 days before they realize that the product is not taking off – nobody is using it, let alone pay for it, what happens? Then comes the decision to Pivot vs Persevere and its the hardest decision on an entrepreneur. Except, guess what. You have already “graduated”. And whatever you pivot on, you’ve lost the opportunity of Demo-day to gain audience. You are as good as a team which was never part of the accelerator in the first place. I know how draining that is on an entrepreneur – we wouldn’t wish that he goes through it alone. Thats why we take our time and go through it in six months.

Direction vs Speed.

Something we’ve been saying for quite sometime. You might want to know where you are heading, before you start setting yourself on fire with Jet fuel. Do you even have a product that the market wants? Without it, Where-my-friend are you “accelerating” to? :) Find your Direction first, in terms of the industry, domain, and problem you are addressing and the solution to it. Thats direction. Then, figure out how fast you want to go and how an accelerator can help. (though most accelerator models seem to be Product accelerators than Startup Accelerators)

Product vs. Startup

There are essentially three steps. Picking an Idea that you want to work on and building a prototype. Its Okay to build multiple prototypes of multiple ideas and figure which one “sticks”. But once you see the data, let the numbers guide you, and make the decision to build it out as a product. Once a product, see if it makes sense to build a startup around it. There is a reason why we modelled ourselves in three stages.

Product acceleration is not equal to startup Acceleration. You shouldn’t be giving equity for inputs that you get towards a product (which might pivot dramatically) – atleast, not so much as what typical accelerators charge.

Is it important to give Young Startups a Platform? Absolutely. We ran Proto.in for years. The key however is to know what stage to unveil them at. Demo Day, as it stands in India today in India, is a disaster.

FootNotes:

1. The Process of building a company in India is still very much bootstrappish – Unless you are an entrepreneur with a track record of execution. The Norm is that, you are rewarded for results you show. PS: There is nothing wrong with that. But its here to stay and its important to acknowledge that and work around that, rather than being in Denial land.

2. The Startup Cuve of a Startup In India is very different from that of a US Startup. “Demo Days” are to replicate the “Techcrunch Initiations”. Answer honestly, does it? It does create a blip, but is it really a launch?

A Rough Sketch, if I were to map out the Startup Process in India Mapped against Traction vs Time would look like this – against the US Counterpart:

Assumptions:

a) The Startup Didnt have to Pivot. Fact: Most Startups will Pivot 2.5 Times.

b) The Startup survived competition, were able to find their value kernel and pivot for scale.

c) Also assuming that this startup did Marketing from Day minus 150 before the product launched. Otherwise, traction would be 0 till demo day when there would be a just a few curious bites, and no solid engagement. Situation, in reality, would and is much worse.

Cross Post from the Startup Guy’s blog