First 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products from India

InTech50, a joint initiative by iSPIRT and Terrene Global Leadership Network, that recognizes most promising software products by India’s entrepreneurs, is pleased to confirm the first set of 10 selected products from over 200 nominations.

InTech50 logoThe elected products that represent inspirational and pioneering concepts in software will be showcased at InTech50 , a two-day event to be held at Bangalore from April 9 -10, 2014, where global CIOs and transformation leaders will be present.

How we picked out the Top 10 showcase products:

It is quite an honor to be in the InTech50  considering there was an overwhelming response for product nominations.

An esteemed panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), venture capitalists, and product leaders from previous successes have evaluated the nominated products.

The products have been selected based on their capabilities and uniqueness, while having the potential to transform the world around us.

The first 10 finalists for InTech50 2014 Most Innovative Products (in alphabetical order) are:

  •  99tests is a Crowd sourced Testing Marketplace with over 6500 testers from over 20 countries. Software product owners can get their applications tested on different versions of web browsers and various mobile devices to find critical bugs.
  • Cerebra (patent pending), a product from Flutura Solutions is a Machine-to-Machine Big Data Analytics platform that has the capability to unlock signals embedded within cryptic machine logs.
  • CoCubes is India’s largest assessment and campus hiring platform. The company works with 450+ corporate for hiring that provide greater control and transparency, while assisting institutional clients measure and improve employability and helping students move ahead on their career path.
  • Datonis (TM) is a platform from Altizon which helps get any device connected to the internet, manage these connected devices and drive data related to their performance and usage to a cloud based data aggregation and analytical engine to glean operational and consumer insight.
  • Freshdesk is a leading SaaS based customer support software that has more than 16,000 Support Teams across the world using it to deliver exceptional customer service. Freshdesk allows businesses to support customers through email, Twitter, Facebook, chat, phone, forums and other channels.
  • Bizosys’ HSearch is an award winning Hadoop based search and analytics engine to handle several terabytes of data. HSearch has been deployed by clients in Telecom infrastructure, Pharmaceutical R&D, Energy management, online retail, financial analytics industries with the core search engine available as open source.
  • Uniken has developed a path breaking Secure Digital Platform, REL-IDTM – which delivers ubiquitous, rich multi-channel digital experience with military grade security to the customers, employees and partners of an enterprise. Through REL-ID, the end users enjoy a rich and secure digital experience across devices and platforms.
  • Whatfix is a solution for creating interactive support faqs, training and product tours. With Whatfix anyone can create such interactive guides with just a few clicks and integrate them with products, applications & websites.
  • WhistleTalk is a SaaS based referral hiring solution that allows companies to leverage the social network of all their current employees, reach out to their friends and hire them. This unique approach helps organisations to supercharge their referral hiring.
  • ZipDial is a pioneering Mobile Marketing & Analytics platform for emerging markets. Marketers and advertisers utilize ZipDial to transform their brand campaigns into highly interactive and viral user experiences, while building a loyal customer base.

Moving Ahead:  As the evaluation process is still underway, we will announce names of the subsequent finalists as we go along. So stay tuned and share your comments about these innovative companies.

iSPIRT – CeBIT partnership to drive Software Adoption in India

iSPIRT signed an MOU with CeBIT India organized by Hannover Milano Fairs India Pvt Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of the Global JV Company HMG (Hannover Milano Global).

With iSPIRT’s partnership with CeBIT India, iSPIRT opens more opportunity to grow the software development industry in the country and encourage the right policy environment towards product entrepreneurship. The potential that India holds in terms of software products is huge and is growing every day.

Facilitating the interaction of buyers and sellers through a well-recognized brand like CeBIT is only going to create further traction and momentum in the market.

iSPIRT aims at internationalization of India as a Product Nation utilizing the CeBIT Global series of events as a platform. A focused, curated pavilion of several Indian Software companies will be showcased at CeBIT India. An iSPIRT Island, a group of software product companies that will be showcasing the software products from India to a wide range of buyers, will be created at CeBIT India, scheduled to take place from 12- 14 November, 2014 at Bangalore International Exhibiton Centre (BIEC), Bengaluru.

CeBIT India will be targetting buyers from across the sectors and across different department & verticles . The target buyers are:

Decision Making Target Groups:

  • CIOs/ CTO/ IT Managers from following sectors:
    • Banking, Finance and Insurance Service (BFSI)
    • Telecom & High-End Technology
    • Manufacturing
    • Retail
    • Healthcare
    • Power & Utilities
    • Other Industry
  • Directors & senior management/ CEOs as well as managers and department heads of

IT
Distribution
Development & Research
Marketing & Communication
Logistics & Warehousing
Finance
Legal Dept., incl. brand/patent law
Production
HR

  • Networking specialists & Software developersApplication developers
  • Web tech developers & users
  • System Integrators, Service Providers, Business Partners, IT Vendors, Consultants,
  • Channel Partners, Resellers/ Distributors, Retailers
  • Public Sector undertaking
  • Commerce
  • Buyers/OEMs
  • Government agencies, bilateral and multilateral agencies
  • Entrepreneurs, Small Scale Industry,
  • Private Equity Investors,
  • Venture Capitalists
  • Innovators
  • Top decision makers, middle & senior level management

Apart from this iSPIRT will hold roadshow along with CeBIT India to engage with informed buyers from focused sectors to showcase India’s Software Product Development capabilities and hold match making activities within the curated Pavilion. Please get in touch with me at ishani(at)hmf-india.com for further participation information.

#InTech50 – Bringing Bold Innovations to Light! Your Last Chance to Seize the Opportunity and Get Discovered!

If you have an Innovative Enterprise software product or a business transforming idea that you want the world to know about, iSPIRT invites you to take part at InTech50 and achieve your bold dreams!

InTech50 is a showcase of some of the most promising software products created by entrepreneurs from India. A panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), venture capitalists, and successful product leaders will select the Top 50 companies for the submissions.

Seize the opportunity to showcase innovation, get validation of concept and product directions from global CIOs, VC’s and successful product innovators.  If showcased well you never know what might be in your future – pilot at large global company, early stage adoption, investor interest or becoming an add-on to a successful product.

InTech50 is proud and honoured to announce the first list of global CIOs and transformation leaders who have confirmed their participation at the event.  These eminent names include:

Andy Walter – Vice President, Procter and Gamble
Anup Nair, Senior Vice President and CIO, Vantiv
Atul Jayawant, Senior President Group IT and Group Chief Information Officer, Aditya Birla Group
Chandra Venkatarmani, Chief Information Officer, Convergys Corporation
Christopher T. Hjelm, Senior Vice President And Chief Information Officer, The Kroger Co.
Dawn Page, Managing Director, Global Digital Development, Citi Global Consumer Technology
Ed Ossie, Director, Corum Group
Edward L RenneMann, Chief Transformation Officer, Crate and Barrel
Guru Vasudeva, SVP And Enterprise Chief Technology Officer, Nationwide Mutual Insurance
Jay Jayaraman, Vice President, Global Strategic Innovation & Technology Alliances, Colgate-Palmolive Company
Dr. Narayanan (KK) Krishnakumar, Vice President and Chief IT Architect, EMC Corporation
Partha Srinivasa, SVP and Group CIO, HCC
Suren Gupta, Executive Vice President, Allstate Udai Kumar,Chairman and CEO of OHUM Healthcare Solutions Private Ltd

among many others. This list is being continually updated. For more details go to InTech50.com  and stay tuned!

The Advisory Board members look forward to your submissions to evaluate whether you qualify for InTech50.   Seize the opportunity now.  The jury members are now curating the second set of applications and there is a great chance that you could make it. Please do submit your nomination before 15th FebApply Now

“The day we claim success is the day we fail”– Andy Walter, CIO of Procter & Gamble #InTech50

Andy Walter, CIO of Procter & Gamble strongly believes that the day we claim success is that day we stop innovating and the day we start climbing down. We are very fortunate to have Andy Walter CIO P&G to visit and talk about his experiences in what it takes to be a global enterprise product company and specifically what it takes for an Indian product to break into US enterprises. He is here visiting, speaking and being part of the advisory board to shortlist the 50 Indian enterprise product companies showcasing at InTech50. Have you applied for InTech50, if not, please apply here

Andy WalterAndy is the Vice President, Delivery & MDO Solutions at Procter & Gamble. With 24 years of experience at P&G across the U.S. and Europe Andy’s career has spanned a variety of assignments including Global R&D, Product Supply & Manufacturing, Marketing, and International Sales & Operations. Prior to his current role, Andy also designed and led the industry-leading Business Intelligence / Analytics journey across P&G. Under his leadership, P&G received the first-ever Excellence in Analytics Award by The International Institute of Analytics. His teams have also been recognized with CIO 100 Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In 2013, Harvard Business School will add a P&G-based case study to their analytics’ curriculum. Andy credits such recognition to clear “Play to Win” strategy choices, relentless talent development, and breakthrough strategic partnerships. Andy is driven by the belief that people and relationships make the difference—that “The day we claim success is the day we fail.” Execution is the only strategy consumers and retailers see!

Andy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. A native of the city, Andy lives on the West Side of Cincinnati, with his wife, Debbie, and their two sons. Andy believes that “perfect storm” of Talent, Technology, and Leadership (TTL) is required for the success of a company and in particular at P&G. He strongly believes in TTL with TALENT gave it a good nucleus of people who understood analytics and already had a strong program in place. TECHNOLOGY – P&G also saw the technology advance to a point that allowed it to bring together disparate, siloed datasets, and run analytics on stuff it hadn’t been able to previously. Leadership. The third element of P&G’s perfect storm was the vision of GBS President Filippo Passerini that BI and analytics needed to be a “key area of investment and a breakthrough for P&G and Andy was asked to head it.

Andy designed and led the transformation of Consumer Digital Services, and, more recently, the industry-leading Business Intelligence/Analytics journey across P&G. Under his leadership, P&G received the first-ever Excellence in Analytics Award by The International Institute of Analytics. His teams have also been recognized with CIO 100 Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

P&G’s transformation into a data-driven, analytically-rich culture happened quickly. And Walter said, “because we made the courageous choice at that time that we weren’t going to wait until the data, infrastructure, and core systems were perfect before we started doing analytics or visualization.”

Andy shares that P&G adapted new technology at the right and that is the risk they took and today they proudly say and No doubt, P&G deserves recognition as an analytical innovator.

Let’s all welcome Andy Walter to InTech50 and we are all very fortunate to have him here!!

The trouble of selling to BigB

I was talking to one of the CEOs of an enterprise product company who sells to CIOs of enterprise. The typical industry classification for them would be B2B, a business selling to business.  When you read it that way it seems like a fairly balanced relationship between the two.  However as we discussed his situation further and I learnt about the realities of what he has to go through I realized that it was not just a simple B2B but it was SmallB to BigB. He wanted to target big enterprises with at least 1000+ people, as a result he was selling to IT departments and CIO’s had to sign off on the purchase on business value basis.

In his mind my friend had a innovative product, it would lead to significant business value and cost savings and there should be a desire to make the paradigm shift.  As he explained his value proposition I was convinced of the same and the thought that struck me was that  he must be  very successful and for sure is raking in huge bucks.  To my surprise he hardly had any POC candidates let alone real customers. I was shell-shocked.  After more conversations over a few beers I realized that it doesn’t matter what product or value proposition you are selling to large enterprises when it comes to SmallB selling to BigB is a huge challenge.  The major reasons why it is a challenge (definitely not an exhaustive list) are:

    • Getting to meet CIOs is a herculean task and to be able to navigate the murky waters of the organization before you get to them is very time consuming(and expensive). From an experience basis in most situations getting to meet them at a client’s place for start-up solutions has a 1 in 20 probability.
    • There are not even a handful of events that have Indian CIO’s focused on Innovation, Most of them are very expensive when you calculate the total costs incurred by start-ups. Entry itself is north of Rs 50,000, then to add a stall and have staff there to man it and put up collateral costs upwards of Rupees. If you do not have a stall then one is left chasing people and handing them business cards – that surely does not lead to sale. You add travel and other costs to it, the costs go up so much that it is impossible for a startup like ours to participate (most events happen in Mumbai, Delhi or Goa)
    • There are many other inexpensive smaller events and they promise CIOs as part of their promotion. However the reality is that mostIndian CIOs never turn up for such events and in tune they send their IT folks who generally don’t have the decision making powers.
    • Assume somehow you did make contact to these CIOs and you were able to mention the value proposition and they liked it, you later need to do several trips to their head office to meet several stake holders, get all their approvals and finally get a nod to do a pilot; all such trips add up huge to your expenses
    • Worse inspite of the value propositions you show, remember the tag line – you can never lose your job if you go with IBM. Even when you manage to get through that almost insurmountable barrier the progress of pilots is slow. One ends up making trips to demonstrate commitment and to push for progress on the the Pilot. Unfortunately sometimes the start-ups get play to justify other purchases as they will never pass the smell test of strong financials or references for procurement departments of large enterprises..
    • On the other hand big brands have deep pockets, large sales force, strong reseller base and reach out to these clients easily. The clients find it easier to trust them due to their relationships and safety trumps agility and foundation of innovation of startups.

 

If these are a sample of challenegs that you have to go through to try to get a Pilot then imagine the travails of having international clients take you seriously. Imagine trying to do all of the above for potential Global customers.  Also one of the situations he ran across was people in the Indian IT departments advising him to try and get some global customers for credibility.. It seems contrary to the saying that says win at home first to win outside! –To be able to do the same would require significant funding or leap of faith!  Interestingly some of the VC’s loved his product and were ready to invest but with a caveat – they say can you possibly get some Pilots in US and demonstrate success there –  – WHAT????

Just a return ticket to Mumbai and a couple of days stay costs me more than 25K and these people are talking about attending CIO events in USA and then doing pilots in the US market.  Interestingly attending CIO events in USA is not cheap and most of the big ones there (Evanta, HMS, CIO Summit etc.) require vendors to pay hefty sponsorships (starting at US$20,000 to attend)Does this mean that SmallB with small budgets should just not have the vision to build enterprise products even if they have the ideas to solve some of the pressing problems?

Wish there was a way to enter bigger markets that were more focused on innovation and were willing to try out new ideas to make a big difference. . Wish there was a way to showcase to Global CIOs in a manner that did not mean dipping into all the savings in one trip. Keep wishing…

Thankfully I got to meet another CEO of a successful product company from India who passed this litmus test.   He was a case in point that a SmallB can actually sell to BigB. Today his revenues are upwards of $100M but it takes time, patience & money.  He achieved it by doing services on the side and investing that money into marketing the product. His mantra is, there is no shortcut for a SmallBto sell into BigB.  You have to spend quality time with CIOs who are willing to see the vision of the start-ups and drive decision making to make things happen.  Face time and getting early customers is the trick and he concluded by saying that SmallB selling to BigB is where the real money is 🙂

That’s when I ran into InTech50.  They are bringing  25 Global CIOs and 25 Indian CIOs , Product M&A folks, VC’s and media all under a single roof.  They are also bringing the entourage to Bangalore and will utilize their skills and knowledge to select the 50 that get to be at the event to present to them.  In effect they have already expressed an interest in your company if you are selected to be there.  There is no cost to apply!

I think we – the enterprise product companies from India should grab this opportunity and make every effort so that we make it to the list.

Would love to hear comments form entrepreneurs who are playing in the enterprise product selling into big enterprises.

If you have built an Enterprise Software Product, here are 5 reasons why you should apply for #InTech50

If you have built an Enterprise Software Product and have aspirations to take it to a global scale, here are the 5 reasons why you should apply for #InTech50.

  1. An opportunity to showcase, get validation of the concept and product direction, better understanding of business value in the enterprise from Global CIOs.
  2. High probability of being selected by Global CIO’s for pilot or early adoption.
  3. Possibility of being selected by large product companies for add-on/bolt-on value add/partnerships to their large scale product solution sets.
  4. Potential possibility of getting investors attention due to interest/validation from Global CIO’s/large product companies.
  5. Getting selected in the elite #InTech50 list and subsequently getting a high degree of visibility from different stakeholders especially media coverage.

InTech50 logoThe possibility of all this happening without the need to travel out of country is real! This is the 1st and only platform for Enterprise products to showcase their products to Global CIOs.  Only the 50 shortlisted companies will get to attend the event. So what are you waiting for, go ahead and apply, the last date is 31st Jan 2014.

 Read more details here – Announcing InTech50 – A showcase of 50 Innovative Product Companies to Global and Indian CIOs, Product Company executives, Investors and Analysts

101 Takeaways from the First ProductNation Boot Camp #PNCamp

The inaugural edition of PNBootcamp at Pune is the best thing to come out from iSPIRT yet – in my opinion.  For all the startups that missed this bootcamp, I strongly recommend staying tuned to pn.ispirt.in for the next playbooks and bootcamps.

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There were two themes in the bootcamp:

  1. ‘Discovery Hacking’ for those companies who have not yet figured out the product-market fit.
  2. ‘Scale Hacking’ for those companies who have figured out the product-market fit and are now looking to build a repeatable and scalable business model.

The participants were divided into cohorts of 15 and these cohorts took part in day long highly interactive discussions facilitated by practitioner entrepreneurs who have ‘been there, done that’.  It was very heartwarming to see the ‘pay it forward’ maxim of iSPIRT in full steam.  Successful entrepreneurs disseminated their hard-earned learning from their journeys with the intent to improve the product ecosystem in India and ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’.  Do visit the PNBootcamp website https://pn.ispirt.in/pncamp/ to look at the illustrious list of facilitators and volunteers.

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While trying to figure out how to condense the 50 pages of my notes from the bootcamp into a blog post, I felt that I could do most justice by writing down the top 101 takeaways.  Here goes:

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Discovery Hacking:

  1. The most common mistake that startups commit is to build something nobody wants.  This is also the largest risk.  The most important question to ask is – will my offering remove customers’ pain point? One must first confirm ‘the need-gap’ priority.  Use tools such as surveymonkey, competitive analysis and customer interviews to see if the need is there and also if it is important enough that people will want to pay for a solution.  People might say that this is a great product, but they may not want to pay for it.
  2. Definition of a customer:  “The person who writes the cheque”.  Even if you have users, but no one wants to pay for your offering, then you don’t have customers.  The customer is the person who pays you, and can be different from the person who uses your product.
  3. Do not confuse validation of the problem with validation of your solution. Use the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to validate that your solution is indeed solving the problem for the customer. ‘Build, and they will come’ is not a sound philosophy.  It rarely works.
  4. If not even a single prospect is jumping out of their seats for your solution, then the product-market fit is poor.  It gets a lot harder after that.
  5. Startup journeys are typically 4-6 years.  You need to be in it for the long haul.  Startup journey is very hard. There are times when it can be frustrating for days or months at a stretch. Consider the opportunity cost and your level of seriousness before starting up.
  6. There are several distractions at each point during the startup journey.  Maintain your focus on two important things – Sell and Code. If you are not selling or coding, be 200% sure how that activity is going to help your startup.
  7. Building a business is bloody difficult. Learn from your peers and other people’s mistakes.
  8. Focus on prototyping instead of pitching. Focus on delighting your customers.
  9. Sell. Sell. Sell. Sell first even before building the product.  ‘Sales’ is serious business. It is the most important aspect of building a business.
  10. Investors are not always right.  They just have their point of view based on their experiences, just like everyone else. Build the business. Investors will follow.
  11. It is a myth that Sales involves lying and misrepresenting facts.  The best sales guys are truthful.
  12. It is a myth that one needs a business degree to do good business.  Some of the best sales people are techies.
  13. It is a myth that techies can’t sell. In the earlier days of the product, when it is not well known, it is the founder’s passion and vision that helps selling.
  14. Hiring a sales guy early on is a mistake.  Sales people should come later in the cycle when the business model is validated and you need to start scaling.
  15. You are in the driver’s seat. Never take eyes off the road, ever. Keep laser focus on your business. Avoid distractions like media and news about other companies.  There is no room for distractions in a startup.
  16. Startups are founded typically due to emotional reasons, which makes it all the more important to have a disciplined approach.  Also, friends and family encourage and we start off with a lot of personal biases.  As far as possible, decisions should be driven by metrics, score cards and analytics.  Create the discipline to value cold hard data over opinions.
  17. You have to be very scientific in your approach.  You need to have a good understanding of answers to the following questions:
    1. What is the problem you are solving? What is the validation?
    2. Who is your customer? What is your niche? Initially, you must target as narrow as possible and then expand to other target segments after you achieve success there. Become the king of a small hill first and then expand.
    3. How do you sell? What is your cost of sale? If your cost of sale is more than the Life Time Value (LTV) of the customer, then it is not going to be a profitable business.
    4. What is the size of opportunity?  This is basically to get a sense of how much your business can potentially grow to. This question is important for your own personal goals and also if you wish to approach investors.  If the size of opportunity is too small, it may not be worthwhile for you to try to build the business.
    5. Who is your competition and what are the current substitutes? This is important to see if people are going to use your product.  Remember that if you are automating something, one of the substitutes is doing it manually.
  18. Lean Startup Methodology works.  Every startup founder must be familiar with these concepts.  Great books on this topic are ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries and ‘The Startup Owner’s manual’ by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf.
  19. Use experiments instead of opinions.  Most of what we start with are “Assumptions” and “Opinions” and not “facts”.  No idea survives first impact with the actual customer.
  20. The only way to validate our opinions and assumptions is through clear metric driven experiments. Convert the assumptions into ‘verifiable statements’ i.e. numerical hypotheses.  For example, if show the paper sketch of my product to 10 potential customers, 2 of them will agree to give me a conditional advance order.  Then run this experiment and measure the response.  Based on the response, you must use your judgment to either persevere or pivot.  Design tiny experiments which can be run in the least amount of time.11268731253_d58684b4da_o
  21. Do experiments with an open mind.  Design the experiment to validate your assumption rather than just reinforce your bias.  Savor any surprise findings from your experiments as that new knowledge will help you make better judgments.
  22. Do all your experiments with your Minimal Viable Product (MVP).  You can add scalability, security and other aspects after you have got a paying customer.  A general rule of thumb is that it should not take more than 3-5 months to validate your assumptions.
  23. There are different kinds of MVPs with varying fidelities that will help validating your assumptions.
    1. Customer interviews and surveys. Low fidelity.  This might help in validating the problem, but it does not validate your solution.
    2. Landing page on your website + traffic driven using Google adwords. Also low fidelity, but helps in validating the problem and that people are looking for solutions.
    3. Concept videos.  Similar fidelity to landing page.
    4. Paper sketch.  A little more fidelity as now prospects can see how you are planning to solve the problem.
    5. Digital wireframes. More fidelity as they can visualize how your solution might be and whether it is of value to them.
    6. Concierge MVP or Fake-O-Backend.  High fidelity. This is where you manually process the customer requirements without putting any code or systems in place.  But the customer is able to use your service to solve his problem.
    7. Working prototype.  High fidelity.  Immediate feedback on whether your solution solves their problem.
    8. The product itself.  Highest fidelity.  Typically, MVPs should not have this level of fidelity.
  24. The cost of change (a.k.a pivot) increases exponentially as the product goes through idea, prototype and launch stages.  Also, the emotional commitment increases at each stage which makes it much more difficult to make those changes.  So try to make any changes as early as possible.
  25. Do not make large investments without validating your assumptions.  Among your assumptions, pick the ‘leap-of-faith’ assumption which is most important and validate it first.  If the ‘leap-of-faith’ assumption fails, everything else fails.
  26. If you are in the business of ‘marketplace’, you need to validate your assumptions from both the suppliers and the consumers.  Validate the supplier side assumptions first as they are the ones who will be making money in the marketplace.  If you cannot validate supply side assumptions, there is no need to validate consumer side assumptions.
  27. First do the value experiments to figure out if there is a real need your product is solving.  Once you have figured out that you are building something that some is willing to pay for, then run pricing experiments to figure out the right price for your product.  Pricing experiments can also be done using A/B testing.  For different sets of users, try different price points to figure out what price you want to finally decide. Simplicity is generally a very good thing, particularly in pricing models.
  28. Ideally, get an advance purchase order or a letter of intent (LOI) before writing any code.  This also validates that you have found a buyer.  Sometimes, we might a ‘user’, but that person may not have the buying authority.  In those cases, you might be building something that is difficult to sell.  It is better to sort out ‘who is the buyer’ assumption as early as possible.
  29. For startups, it might be sometimes difficult to get an advance purchase order.  In those cases, validate the buyer assumption by seeking non-monetary commitment from the customer. For example, if a pilot needs to be done, the customer might be able to offer you accommodation and food in their guest house and also commit the time of some of his employees.
  30. Focus on one BIG problem at a time. For example, do not try to solve a BIG technical problem and a BIG sales problem at the same time.  Focus on doing a few things well, instead of doing a lot of things.11268730054_1041491b59_o
  31. Make it very painless for the user to give you feedback.  This is the most valuable thing during ‘Discovery’ stage. Use this feedback and iterate.
  32. Always have a way for the customer to get a free trial.  There is no substitute to the user actually using the product to validate your assumptions.  And reduce the friction to trial as much as you can.  Make it as easy as possible and don’t make the user think or read.  Case studies, videos etc. help. But they will not buy till they experience the product.
  33. If your offering is a service (as opposed to a standalone product), do not give it for free.  If people do not want to pay for a service, it means the need is not important enough.
  34. Till such time that you have found the product-market fit and have got paying customers, do not hire a sales person. Hiring sales people is a scale problem, not a discovery problem.
  35. It is usually good if your product idea comes to you because you are facing the problem yourself. This accelerates the validation of your assumptions and reduces the risk of making mistakes.
  36. Customers will buy the product if it solves their problem, not because you are good at selling. The product should be able to sell despite a poor sales experience.
  37. Getting the target customer right is very important.  Avlesh Singh of WebEngage initially felt that engineers were his customers as it would automate work for them and keep the marketing guys at bay.  But he realized that engineers were not buyers.   They didn’t have the budgets or business reasons or the willingness to buy their product.  However, the marketing folks were really interested in their product at it solved their business need.  They also had the budget and they could see return on investment.  It would also make them less dependent on their internal engineering teams. Pivoting the customer segment from ‘Developers’ to ‘Marketers’ was a major turning point in WebEngage’s journey.
  38. Pricing model should be based on customer’s perceived value, not on some technical aspect.  For example, instead of charging for number of HTTP requests, it might be better to charge based on number of surveys completed.
  39. Derive your price based on market dynamics (current manual cost or pricing of competition) and not on your incurred costs.   Build some differentiation in your offering and use that for price arbitrage.
  40. For techie founders, one thing that needs particular attention is that techies are highly opinionated and look at things in black and white.   We need to get over our strong views. One way to achieve this is by meeting and talking to different kinds of people and getting their perspectives.11268700366_a652a671ca_o
  41. By writing good content on your blog site, you can attract customers and establish thought leadership.   If a person spends 8 to 10 minutes on your web-site, it is very likely that he will sign up for your free trial.
  42. Quora is a very good forum to attract customers.  Provide genuine answers without shamelessly promoting your product.  People hate it and you can also get blocked on Quora for directly promoting your product. One tip is to include your product name in your Quora user name – that way when people see your name, they see the name of your product too.
  43. What works for some other company might not work for you in your context.  There are several factors at play and it is difficult to figure out. The only way is to run various experiments and see what works.
  44. Think in terms of how the end user is going to use your product.  The human element is very important.  You must know your user well – really really well. Know the context in which the user is going to use the product – the user’s demographic, life style, social life, aspirations, work life schedule, how they work, and their aspirations. Create personas of the users.  There are free templates available online to create target personas.
  45. Feedback from users should shape the product.  It is common to see several bug fixes or new features between version to version. But rarely do we focus on customer delight as the focus of a release.  Customer delight should get more priority than new features.
  46. You must observe how the user uses the product to get a deeper understanding. If you ask customers pointed questions, they will give pointed answers and hence it is not very valuable.  Engineering, business development, product mgmt and UI teams should all experience first-hand how the user uses the product.
    1. Never ask customer what they need – instead observe what they do.
    2. Never ask for their feedback – instead watch them use it.
    3. Never just listen to what they say – instead observe their behaviour.
  47. There are free tools for capturing the user behaviour. They help you record the user experience through a web cam when they are using the product. Search for them online and evaluate for yourself.
  48. Sign up folks from your target segment. Call 5 folks on a Saturday and observe their behaviour with the product.
  49. Be frugal and save money. Do not splurge during initial days.
  50. Startup people have to be hands-on. Should be ready to roll up the sleeves and do all kinds of work.11268807103_4aa0e9f56f_o
  51. You have to persevere. You will hear a hundred “No”s before your first “Yes”.  Tip: People seldom refuse a cup of coffee.  Ask for that small coffee meeting. If the customer sees value in your offering, he will give you more time.
  52. Hiring good people is good. If they are good hearted, better.  Focus on getting a team that can run as fast as or faster than you.
  53. Luck is more important than competence.  Competence is a must, but you need luck also to be successful. There are several factors which are not in your control but can have a major impact on the outcome of your company.  However, you must run like the devil is behind you and not just wait for lady luck.  When a lucky event happens, you must analyze it to figure out why the lucky event happened.
  54. Sales, product management and engineering are three important pillars of a startup.  Ensure you have specific individuals who are tasked with each responsibility.  The same person can play multiple roles, but you must be clear on who is playing which role.
  55. You must qualify the companies/individuals who will be suitable for your product. Not everyone is going to be your customer.

Scale Hacking:

  1. Scale hacking is all about aligning and finding the business model after getting the product-market fit. The key to scale hacking is to find out what is working and do more of it.
  2. Initial sales happen because of the founder’s passion. Sales people need a template for selling.
  3. If you have a lousy product, nobody can sell it.  The product should be great and the positioning should be right. Folks should be willing to buy it in spite of the sales experience.
  4. There is no template for scaling.  You need to explore different avenues and channels. Some of them will work for you and some of them won’t. Even when some are working, you should be exploring new channels as you might be missing out a very good revenue source.
  5. You need aim to be in the top 3 players in your market if you desire to scale. You first have to be a player on par with competition.11565850805_891d74a239_b
  6. You might have to change your sales pitch multiple number of times based on reaction from the market.
  7. When the customer can visualize the benefits of your product, it makes a huge difference.  E.g. if you say that the user can jog after taking your medicine – it can be visualized by the customer and have a bigger impact than just saying it will make you healthy. Visuals are very important (good graphics). Do not expect the customers to extrapolate mentally.
  8. You have to show customers the solution to their problem. For example, freshdesk creates a site called customer.freshdesk.com and puts their logo there so the customer can see how the solution will look like. Also, they show role based dashboards based on who they are giving the demo to.  Different people like to see different things and you need to customize your demo to how it will help them.
  9. Marketplaces are something you should definitely consider for scale hacking. E.g. Google app store.
  10. Integrations are the new SAAS channel. E.g. integrate with salesforce, basecamp etc. Then write a blog on how the integration works. Write to the business person at the Salesforce side and ask them also to promote your integration.  Typically, they are also interested in promoting something that promotes their product.
  11. Positioning is very important in the mind of the customer.  For example, though Freshdesk does several things – the core positioning is that it is a customer support solution.  For example, they provide invoicing, chat, time sheet also, but they do not position them as separate products – it is all under the umbrella of customer support.
  12. Unassisted buying (e.g. purchase directly from the website) can get you only small tickets. If commitment is higher, customers need to talk to a live person and you need to invest in field sales.
  13. Importing from competition is a 1.0 feature.  Do not postpone it thinking it is not your core work. From customer’s point of view, it is very important to have his current data migrated over to your product.  Otherwise, they may not even bother to try your product. Make it very easy for your customers to come over to your solution.
  14. Customer’s attention span is very small. He might sign up for your product, but forget about it.  For example, a customer might provide his email id and sign up, but might not even bother to go to his Inbox to click on the verify link.  Hence, engaging leads is very important and focus your energies on getting them to trial your product.
  15. Nobody likes to talk to a sales guy. Have a title like ‘account manager’ etc. and this person says that he is trying to help out with the evaluation.11268639314_bf2074fbe3_o
  16. Webinars are very effective for scale hacking.  Offer a free webinar on a related topic and soft sell.  There has to be enough meat in the webinar content itself which will be attractive and worthwhile for the attendee.  In webinars, people do not want to hear your pitch. They want to see thought leadership and practical advice for them. If you can, have customers speak at your webinars.  This is better than someone from your company speaking. For example, the title of a webinar can be ‘CMO of company X speaks on how to maximize ROI on Y’.
  17. Once you start scaling, you must have support staff available in the time zone of the customer. This is very important due to global competition.  In India, companies have different shifts of support personnel working from India but during the business hours of the customer’s time zone.
  18. Pricing is a challenge.   You should look at the current cost for the customer, price charged by competition and come up with your own pricing.  If it is too high, it scares customers away and if it is too low, you end up leaving money on the table.  But this problem is unsolvable.  You can only do price experiments to figure out the price of your product in the market.
  19. ShopSocially moved to small monthly subscription + cost per social action. This way they have a very low entry cost for the customer and as the customer uses more of their product, they will pay more.
  20. Try to get a marquee customer in your portfolio.  It will have a huge impact on your credibility and growth.  Suddenly, prospective customers will look at you in a very positive way. So you need to be flexible on pricing during the initial days.  Give discounts in exchange for case studies and testimonials. Or give discounts over larger timeframes. E.g. 3 months free if they purchase a 1 year license.
  21. Evaluating a sales person is tricky, unlike an engineer where the results can be directly attributed to the efforts.  Tip: Shadow your new sales hire for 3 months to judge for yourself if is good for your business.  If there is a mismatch, let go of the sales guy as early as possible. Otherwise, the cost to your business is huge.
  22. Always collect data on how people are using your product, which features they are using and which they are not. This should be one of the main ingredients for product direction decisions. If the product manager is sitting in a cube, then it is not good. He should be talking face to face with customers and getting real world feedback.
  23. When you are trying to move customers away from a competitor who they have already purchased, you need to protect the customer’s investment so far.  E.g. when a customer had 6 month license still left with your competition, you should offer 6 months free on your product to protect their investment.  However, see if you can have the customer pay for the first month and then the next 6 months given free.  This ensures that they are serious about switching to your product and have made a commitment to you.
  24. If you are in a commodity market where there are hundreds of competitors, then execution is the key differentiating factor. Of course, it goes without saying that the product has to be very good. If you are in a niche market, then value proposition is more important than execution.  You might not have the best quality and completeness of the product, but if there is not much competition, then you should focus on the value proposition more than the execution of completeness.
  25. Think hard on how you can leverage your happy customers. Ask for referrals. At every sale, try to leverage. Ask your referrals to write guest blogs on your site, case studies and testimonials. Photo testimonials are better than just text as they are more credible.
  26. Leverage influencers. They can tweet about you.  Follow influencers and include them with @X so they will notice you. Try to get them to follow you.  Share signups and success stories through social media. As the company grows, you need one person dedicated for social media and working with influencers, establishing connections etc.  Bear in mind that influencers love praise. It also helps if you can get thought leaders from academia writing about you.
  27. Write thought leadership articles and blogs – maybe twice a month.
  28. When you sign up a customer in a vertical, find out the competitors in their space and try to make them your customers.  Folks pay more attention if they know their competition is using your product.
  29. Set up Google Alerts on keywords so you get notified of new stuff. Then go there and leave your comments. Mention.me is another site similar to Google alerts.
  30. LinkedIn groups is a good source of leads. Answer questions there. Also post questions yourselves on challenges in your domain.
  31. There are tools like pardot, marketo, data.com for follow-ups. Use them if you see the ROI on them.
  32. Conferences are not so great from a lead generation point of view. But they are good for showing your presence in the market place.
  33. Don’t innovate on the business model, particularly when you are a startup. Go with tried and tested ones. Select the right sales model for your product depending on the kind of product and price of the product. Look at how your competition is doing it. Usually, it is better to follow their model during the initial days and then experiment later.
  34. A recommended reading for all startups is “Most startups should be deer hunters”.  Essentially, there are three types of customers – elephant, deer and rabbit.  Catching elephants is very tough until you are of certain size. Catching rabbits is very tough to survive as they are spread too thin and even if you catch one, you get only very little meat. Hence try to catch deer – which are right sized for you.
  35. For cheaply priced products, educational institutions are a good place for doing pilots and getting feedback.11268730903_6c278bfcf9_o
  36. In scale hacking, have a good sense of metrics on customer conversions.  How much revenue is being generated, from how many customers, out of how many evaluations, out of how many leads, out of how many visitors?  Measure, track and improve the rate of conversion at each stage of the funnel.
  37. Once you have had success with your first product, you should consider other products for scale hacking.  Build newer revenue streams based on the incoming cash of existing successful products
  38. Hiring cross-continent is a very big leap-of-faith for an entrepreneur.  You need to be very careful with the first set of people you hire in a different geography. Culture alignment is key to global success.
  39. Taking funding for scaling is a very good idea.  Investor money is like rocket fuel. You can either go up or fall down fast.  You can go from ‘darling’ to ‘donkey’ quite fast with VC money.
  40. All news is good news when you are small.  So don’t shy away from publicity of any form. Of course, do only those things that you are comfortable doing.
  41. Requirements should be driven by customers, where ever possible, instead of internally imagining and creating requirements which might not be of any value to your customers.  When a sales person gives a requirement, ask ‘why do we need this and how will it help’ five times.  If you can find a good answer, then the requirement is a real need.
  42. When deciding on which new requirement should be added to the product – consider the return on investment. This is commonly overlooked.  Usually, the latest incoming requirement is given more importance at the cost of an older one.  Have a methodology for choosing requirements – based on factors such as number of customers requesting the requirement, the ROI that the sales team believes this will generate and if the sales team is willing to stick out its neck for this requirement. Always use data to make product decisions.
  43. During scale hacking phase, ensure you have continuous customer feedback. Have a customer advisory board of your key customers and have a relationship manager who works closely with these customers.  Get their inputs on new features you are planning to build.  Having a good relationship with them also helps you know the pulse of the market, get inputs on competition and getting strong case studies and testimonials. Meet with key customers periodically.
  44. Channels are extremely important for scaling.  Be clear on how the channel can make money off of you.  Partners should benefit because of you. Either directly by making money or leading to sales of something else.  For example, in non-SAAS products, system integrators make money by implementation, customization and support.
    1. Partnerships are for successful products.  That way the partner can sell easily.  They want a winning product. If the product is new and complex and it has a long sales cycle – partnerships might not be of use to you.
    2. Partners can help you enter large enterprises as they are already on the vendor list. They can ‘white label’ your offering.  Getting on to the authorized vendor list of large companies is itself a very complex and time consuming process.
    3. Consider partnering with frameworks – e.g. building an add-on to an existing framework which has a good marketplace.   That way, your discovery problem is solved to a great extent. Many companies die because they struggle to reach their prospective customers.
    4. In SAAS kind of offering, traditional partnerships do not work as the partner does not make good money upfront. They do not want to wait for a long time to reap the rewards.  SAAS partner ecosystem is not there yet.
    5. Partnering with platform players like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle is a good idea in principle. But even there, promoting a startup’s product is not easy.  They have very high qualifying factors for them to select your product for promotion. For example, you need to already have thousands of users.  Partnering with platform players is a great strategy for scale hacking once you have a critical mass of users.11268764013_3a299b8f4f_o
  45. Engineer driven products are typically not so great in user experience. It might be worthwhile to hire/outsource to a UX expert. These days, coolness of UI is a very important factor.
  46. Mobile centric or mobile first is a very sound strategy for growth.  It is easier to find early adopters.

Conclusion

I hope that at least some of the 101 takeaways provided new data points in your startup journey.  While there is no silver bullet and each startup has to go through its unique journey, there are several common themes that are generally applicable.  And we can learn from those who have trodden the path before us.

Many thanks to iSPIRT and all the volunteers and facilitators of the Product Nation Boot Camp for this wonderful initiative.

Announcing InTech50 – A showcase of 50 Innovative Product Companies to Global and Indian CIOs, Product Company executives, Investors and Analysts

InTech50 is a showcase of some of the most promising software products created by entrepreneurs from India. A panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Venture Capitalists, and Product Leaders from previous successes will decide the fifty companies that make the cut to InTech50 selection criteria. These chosen companies will receive advice, on-going mentoring, product marketing support, and funding to scale their offering to the global markets.

So Why InTech50?

The founders of InTech50 truly believe that the Indian start-up ecosystem is on the cusp of explosive growth—in innovating for the enterprise, society, and for social causes that will alleviate the quality of human life. We bring global experience, wealth of knowledge in dealing with global markets, and true enterprise-level insights to help these companies scale their vision.

InTech50 provides these entrepreneurs with a platform to showcase their innovations to folks who are visionaries in their own way and have the knack of seeing possibilities very quickly. The platform will create possibilities that we can think of but more importantly it will create a network that will evolve in ways that we cannot predict in any way!

Why apply?

InTech50 will help software product companies enter global markets through our network of early adopters, partners, co-innovators and investors. Our platform helps your company with exposure to these powerful members of the ecosystem in your geography—India!

Winners of the InTech50 are acknowledged as the most promising in their space, and receive every effort—from product strategy, UI, product marketing, sales and global partnership—all designed to help them succeed in massive scale.

Please visit www.intech50.com for further details on who can qualify.

When and where will it be held?

Intech50 will be held on Apr 9th and Apr 10th @ Bangalore, India.

How much does it cost?

It is absolutely free for applying. 50 companies will be shortlisted by the Advisory Board comprised of global and Indian CIO’s, product company heads, venture capitalists, and analysts.  The selected companies will need to pay a fee of Rs. 25,000 to cover expenses for two attendees.  Only the 50 shortlisted companies will get to attend the event. So what are you waiting for, go ahead and apply, the last date is 31st Jan 2014. 

What You Missed at the #PNCamp

In case you are one of those who did not make it to the iSPIRT PNCamp for Product Entrepreneurs at Pune on December 4 and 5, 2013, here’s an overview of what happened during the two-day event.  Over 128 delegates took part in the camp that brought together entrepreneurs, developers and experts under a common platform for learning and sharing of ideas and experiences. Participants came from Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi, including distant places like Kochi.

Pune was a strategic venue as the city has about 400 startups who are contributing to the positive evolvement of software product eco-system in India. As  is usually the case with such strategic events, PNCamp provided the right opportunity to network with peers and talk to iSPIRT mentors that included icons like Pallav Nadhani, CEO, FusionCharts; Sharad Sharma, co-Founder, iSPIRT; Shashank ND, CEO of Practo, among others.

Focused Tracks

Day one of the event focused on Discovery Hacking for the early startups with initial traction. The experiential learning was aimed at taking the product entrepreneur on his forward march starting from its original plan to making the first successful sale.

Day two was more intense with discussions revolving on the difficulties getting the first few customers, validating the need for the product in the market, generating the first rupee (or dollar!) in revenue and how to grow the startup from a buzz in the head to a live organism.

There were numerous sessions that focused on what it takes to be a successful startup firm. In particular, entrepreneurs got deep insight into how to make the first crucial sale or pick the right timing of stepping up the gas to get on the fast track with your startup.

Positive Feedback

Participants felt the insights shared by peers were real and relevant.  Said Raghavendra Singh, Head-Marketing, Intellileap Solutions, “PNCamp is a great initiative by iSPIRT and focuses on select and right mix of entrepreneurs that enable a two way process. The learning and sharing of ideas, experiences, and strategies was very stimulating.”

The significance of being in the top ranking of a product category, the importance of its positioning and PR was not lost on anybody. Impressed by this learning, Praveen Singh. Founder & CEO of 99tests.com, a company that offers testing solutions, admits, “Differentiating your products is key to success and building a market for it is crucial, I gathered.”

Considering its advantages, PNCamp has become a not-to-be-missed event for product entrepreneurs. Says Rinka Singh, entrepreneur, a person who rarely entertains disruptions or hardly ever stays away from work, but makes PNCamp an exception, “It was a great experience listening to the speakers and connecting with various participants. Besides, the boot camp model allowed us to share problems, discuss them through with those who were in the same state as us and to learn from each other. It will be worth coming back for it next year.”

If you missed this one, we hope to see you next time around!

Product warriors, pick your battles!

The first question that I asked iSPIRT volunteers running PNCamp, the first ever bootcamp exclusively focused on product entrepreneurs in India, was why Pune? They pointed to Dilip Ittyera whose greying strands of hair masks his passion to firmly perch Pune on the product map of India. Later during many conversations, it became evident why Pune was the destination for the “product mafia” (term courtesy Pallav Nadhani) for an extended Playbook roundtable format bootcamp, the PN Camp, for a couple of days. In its subtlety, Pune hides its product quotient. There have been global success stories from this quiet city that really doesn’t hit you on your face: QuickHeal, Druva, Pubmatic and let’s hope counting.

Pallav infused energy in his intro to the camp that would make you say “let’s make it happen” with a pumped fist. The very essence of this bootcamp was to enable lifelong bonds between entrepreneurs so that they can learn from each other’s mistakes. For entrepreneurs operating with limited resources and entrapped in a lonely journey, the peer group lending a hand makes it even more exciting.

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Another unique aspect of the camp was “cohorting” applicants for maximum impact. Only one out of every two applicants was accepted and then divided into cohorts matching the state in which they are in their entrepreneurial journey. The first day was for entrepreneurs just starting out to “discover” (discovery hack) the way to do it and second day was for “happy confused group” (scale hack) where the entrepreneur has figured out the product, has found a few customers and struck there, without a clue on how to take it forward.

As each cohort groups were ushered into their respective sessions, intense discussions ensued. The camp organizers had made it clear that the sessions wouldn’t be gyan but experiential discussions. A successful entrepreneur had a presentation and the questions he raised were basically discussed by the 15 to 17 entrepreneurs in each group for over three hours. The successful product entrepreneur’s success becomes a playbook for success-aspiring entrepreneurs to follow and reach heights.

Pick your battles

There are only 24 hours in a day. And it is left to the entrepreneur to choose what he or she wants to do. Picking the right battles pays you rich dividends. This is the thought behind the session ‘Picking Your Battles’ by Practo’s cofounder N.D. Shashank. Basically, Shashank’s presentation centred on four questions:

  • Do you have a compelling story around your startup?
  • Is your product really different?
  • Why is it exciting?
  • Does your product really solve a problem?

Story: If you are unable to build a compelling story around your idea and the startup, you will be less motivated to continue. So just ask yourself if the problem you are solving or your idea will keep you going for x number of years. Then build a story around the idea so that anytime you are asked why you started up, you can tell the story, which will be appealing. It’s another matter that the story will get refined over time like the events in history getting different perspectives at different points of time in future.

Differentiators: How different is your product? It would be great to create an entry barrier for a competitor to replicate your model. Here Kunal Shah of Free Charge provided an apt explanation. Create something that will become a habit for someone to use. For example, although G+ has better features than Facebook, users don’t switch because they are used to Facebook. Only when another innovation happens that changes this habit, it would be Facebook all the way. You should think of ways to appeal to the users by making a difference in the way the product serves the user that he wants to come back and use it over and over again. Sometimes customers can become your salespeople that they recommend your product to their friends and people in the network.

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Excitement: Taking a cue from Practo’s experience, Shashank said that among the specialists, dentists were high in number. So dentists were first targeted for PractoRay, a Practo software used by the doctor to schedule appointments with patients and keep their medical records. This proved successful as more users felt excited to find dentists in their neighbourhood. Customers will buy if they find the product useful and not make a fuss over price.

Solving a problem: You should build features in your product that are must-have and not nice to have. Then you should ask if your customers will pay for those must-have features. Unless you are solving a real problem, customers will not pay. Usually, the problem you are solving is the problem you faced yourself. Shashank got the spark of an idea on a platform like Practo after experiencing difficulty in mailing his father’s medical records to an expert in the United States. Then he studied what ails the system and built Practo to address each one of the issues he observed such as waiting times for patients (Practo helps you schedule appointments), non-digital medical records (information can be stored using Practo’s software), storing them and sending them (possible in the Practo platform).

_DSC3216Many aspects of product building, feature adding, and finding customers were discussed elaborately. Just to give one more useful example, when there is friction, it’s best to have a basic free model and then price the product for different sets of customers. Differential pricing by adding features is another

Announcing the CIO Mentorship Program for Enterprise Product Startups

A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about – 1. What its product is, 2. Who are its customers, 3. How to make money.

– Dave McClure

As a startup we all struggle either with the Market Fit, the right price for the product and finally the sales. There have been times when we have wondered if the product is perfect or I could have added some new feature, all the while loosing time to launch the product. When the product is out we wrestle with how to sell – Free, Premium or Freemium models and wonder, when will we get to close the big orders. We wonder why our product is being outsold by our competition – What does he have that I don’t.

We sometime wish that how wonderful it could be if we could share our thoughts, bounce our ideas with someone who could understand us and help us in a sustained long term manner, in short become our Guiding Lights as Mentors.

To help startups with just this dilemma, we are pleased to partner with CIO’s of leading Indian Enterprises to put together the CIO Mentorship Program. Where some of the very recognized CIO’s of the Industry from Hero Motors, BMW, Ericsson, Matrix, Max NewYork Life, Moser Baer are ready to use their collective wisdom and experiences to help the startups scale over a sustained time period of 5 months.

If you are brilliant Enterprise Product who is willing to take advice, implement advice and share your pain points then this is just the opportunity. So if you are operating in HR, Education, Data Analytics, Cloud, Mobile applications, CRM’s then you need to apply here. This is only open as of now for companies in NCR region. The last date of getting the entries is 17th Dec. Only the short listed companies will be contacted for the event on 21st Dec in Delhi NCR.

A day at the Product Nation Camp at Pune #PNCamp

As someone who has attended many events such as the Nasscom Product Conclave related to Software Products, I was intrigued by the concept of an one-day Boot Camp organized by iSPIRT (Indian Software Products Industry Round Table).  i had earlier attended a mini-Round Table event organized by them in Chennai that was quite energizing to say the least and hence i signed up for the Camp that was to be held on 4th December at Pune.

Unlike the Conventions/Conclaves/Conferences where we pay and get to listen to industry stalwarts, the design of the PN camp was radically different.  Interested professionals were first required to apply to Product Nation and if selected were asked to pay the Camp Participation fees.  Selected participants were then divided into 4 groups called Cohorts and each cohort of about 12-15 members had 4 sessions with facilitators on various topics.

The cohort that i was in huddled together and worked as follows:

a.  Session 1 with Rajeev Srivatsa of Urbanladder as the moderator on ‘Experiments never killed anybody’:  Each of us shared our Vision, Target Segment and the Problem we sought to solve and got instant feedback from the others.  This was an enjoyable session where we really got to know the space where the others were operating and could contribute from our experience.  We also critically looked at the assumptions we were making at this stage and designed experiments to either validate or invalidate the same. We ran out of time but managed to sneak in a working lunch to do justice to the objectives of the session.

b. Session 2 was on “Picking your battles” and this was moderated by Shashank of Practo.  Each participant talked about the reason why they started whatever they had started and examine if there was an emotional connect to it.  The proceedings were enlivened by personal shares by Shashank, Kunal Shah of Freecharge and Avlesh Singh of WebEngage .

c.  Post lunch session 3 was a presentation by Kunal Shah titled ‘Shameless is the new sexy”:  I was personally inspired by Kunal’s perseverance, never taking no for an answer and his chutzpah.  The discussion went tangential for a while when there were objections to some of his tactics on moral and ethical grounds.  Overall an enjoyable session

d. Session 4 where participants belonging to cohorts 3 and 4 were in a session by Harshit Desai of Indigo on ‘Business Design’:  I volunteered to represent my table of 6 and in the process was grilled by the others on various aspects of my personal and professional life as part of the session.  Along with 5 others who represented their tables, I stood in front of the room and all of us were treated to opinions by our table-mates about what we were good at.  This session was about careful profiling of the user so that the solution can deliver the appropriate results.

After these sessions, we were together treated to a presentation by Manav Garg of Eka Software on his journey.  It was really refreshing to know about his early struggles and the ways he overcame them.  this was followed by Q&A and a small quiz (I won a milestone replica for answering a question correctly) and it was all over.

For a first time, this was a great show and i want to congratulate everyone involved in it especially Avinash Raghava and his team of volunteers.  I also met some people like Jay Pulur of PramatiSandeep Todi whom i have only spoken to or written to earlier.  Thanks to the event, I have also gotten to know a few product startups like LevitumShimbiTaxeeta,TeedbackOpsftware,  extraaedge,happyvisitorEffect works,  Cordiant who are doing interesting work.

This would not be complete without expressing a few suggestions for an improved performance the next time around.

a.  The cohort members can be a homogenous lot either in terms of their target segment focus like B2B or B2C or as a vertical if there are sufficient numbers.  this would lead to more focussed discussions and questions and minimize dilution.

b.  For a Camp like this, 4 sessions is perhaps too many.  I would have liked to have 1 pre-lunch and another post lunch to be able to do justice to the discussions.

Overall, a different and a great experience!

Breaking the Status Quo: Takeaways from a Revolution Taking Wings #PNCamp

It’s not often I find myself in a roomful of people driven by a shared vision. Inspiration was inevitably seeping in. It took me not more than a couple of minutes to realise that I should count myself lucky as I was in the same room as the bravehearts who were changing the world one product at a time.

The inaugural ProductNation Camp at Pune was a movement taking shape. More than 120 startups were brought together in the most unique of formats resulting in 2 days of high-quality discussions, learnings and mindshare.

The message behind the format was loud and clear. “No sage on stage”. Entrepreneurs never learn based on a pre-defined syllabi structure. They love to disrupt, destroy and re-build. The 2 days were filled with gems of knowledge, actionable insights and conversations from the heart.

What follows are some which hit me hard:

  • Pick your battle and fight it out: A product can’t solve all the problems of the world. Shashank ND, Co-founder at Practo emphasised the fact that a startup needs to focus on a single problem to solve first and fight it out in the market with that one product. This approach ensures a laser sharp focus and allows for the best of resources to be spent towards creating value for the customer.

 

  • Tell your own story, avoid drawing an analogy: I heard few founders introduce themselves saying “I run a startup ____ which is like ____ but with ____. Think of it as Dropbox meets YouTube meets Facebook.” Such a narrow vision or outlook of one’s own product has huge ramifications in the way people react. Not the best way to build trust and confidence. Write your own story, be proud of it and build on it.

 

  • Build an experience, delight the user: The most successful of web products have delightful and simple design at their centre. Harshit Desai insisted that designer(s) and developers should work closely in a team to build the product. Have an inclusive design, avoid focussing too narrowly on a set user profile. 

 

  • Being shameless is truly being human: Entrepreneurs are not a differentiated human race. They are brought up in the same systems, and often many of them carry the “What will others think” baggage.  “Self-doubt and fear of failure take many down”, said Kunal, Founder at Freecharge.in. Being true to your product and your vision is about losing the baggage and being ‘shameless’. Perhaps a sales attitude often overlooked.

 

  • Two wheels and an engine, the sales hack: Shashank led perhaps the best session of the camp as he dived into the sales philosophy and concepts which he believes in. A photograph of his bike was up on a slide (he still uses it to reach customers). Hit the ground running, talk to customers, no one refuses a cup of coffee. “Spend a lot of time with the end-user of your product and convince them that it’s THE solution they seek.”

 

  • An engaging story comes before a good copy: “Good storytellers, writers are born, not trained”, said Girish, Founder at Freshdesk. Experience counts for little if you are looking to create content as a marketing strategy. Don’t just talk about your product, share your ideas, opinions and learnings with a broader context. With content, be there out-to-educate, not out-sell.

 

  • Technologists are great sellers by-the-way: Ashish Gupta, Senior MD at Helion Ventures is a technologist to the core and he took upon himself to convince us that selling is a challenge and not a handicap. Look around… Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs! Something common? – all techies who rose up to the challenge of selling products (isn’t it about that at the end of the day?).  

 

If I can speak up for many like me, we couldn’t believe that we were in a room of like-minded individuals who shared similar challenges, had fought through and risen up with their head held high. I guess that was the vision behind the format. These startups are sure to change the world in their own little/big ways. As the camp drew to its inevitable close, I was invigorated by the inherited treasure house of learnings, experiences and friendships. The team behind the initiative should be proud and I hope the movement only gets stronger by the day.

Guest Post by Tejaswi Raghurama  who is helping build Entrepreneur Academy at the National Entrepreneurship Network. 

This is just the beginning …..picture to abhi baki hai dost.

For every successful movie one requires a huge team effort from the story writer, producer, actors and directors to the light guys, similarly for a startup to benefit one requires the vision, passion, team work, the agility to implement and mentors. This is what the delegate exactly gets at the #PNCamp, where startups work in cohorts, learn from one another, share their insights and break barriers.

Depending on your stage of company – Discovery or Scale you go through a grueling camp supervised by your Drill Sergeant, by the end,  the cohort together achieves what they thought was not possible.

Cohort4-2So are you ready to see what you can accomplish, challenge the limits of your thought…then come on over in the 4th set at the #PNCAMP.

Inside story on The making of #PNCamp

The journey of doing something different for the software products ecosystem that started almost half year ago comes to climax as #PNcamp in Pune this first week of Dec 2013. Over 125 product leaders will come together over two days and meet other companies in similar life stage and exchange notes through a facilitated discussion by a slightly senior practitioner entrepreneur. The vision of making this a national level assembly has been realized, with participants coming from Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad & Delhi and even distant places like Kochi.

PNCamp journeyI am part of the volunteer team that worked to make this happen and we all know the ups and downs we went through to bring this to you. It’s been an absolutely amazing journey. You can see what this journey has been like, right here. It’s the story of #PNCamp come alive!

Today, all cohorts (~17-20 per cohort) have been formed and all facilitators(20) have prepared for two days of peer learning to happen.

The next few days is action packed and inspite of being tired in this roller coaster run up, we can’t wait to launch. Come, be with us in this journey to make India a software product nation.