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.

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

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.

Bass tu bhaag Milkha…(the third Cohort #PNCamp)

Running a start-up is like running a marathon. It is not for instant gratification; it is not for short cuts; it is not for everyone. Completing a marathon needs planning, perseverance and technique. As marathon runners know, for every marathon, be it your first or nth, the odds of succeeding are high when you train right for it. Marathon running training is intense; so is the #PNCamp going to be!

One of the popular methods of marathon training is training in groups. It helps to properly prepare to run a safe marathon, with support, advice and a team of people cheering you on. At the same time, each runner builds different targets with each race. Your #PNCamp experience will be something similar—train for the marathon and beyond!

At #PNCamp you will train with cohorts! We intend to enable you to run the customer discovery hacking marathon or scale hacking marathon depending on your start-up stage.  You will be with like-staged peers in a cohort as you go through the day-long drill at PNCamp with great coaches. As it often happens, the tribe grows quickly with time. Yes, we are happy to announce our 3rd cohort!

Cohort3 #PNCampWe have the next set of attendees signed up for each of the tracks. We are also happy to announce two new coaches—Shashank, co-founder and CEO at Practo and Sangeet Paul, mentor 500 startups and contributor for HBR. As it happens with marathon runners, everyone has a different target, so based on your timing targets, preferred trails and routes; this will be a great opportunity to also help you choose your future training partners beyond the bootcamp.

As we get closer to the event, we hope you’re feeling the rush too! To be a marathoner! To train! To look ahead for the pleasant aches from a run! If you want to but haven’t registered yet, hurry, the last few seats are filling soon. So, just do it!

Like me, are you too going to be humming this song all day? Ab tu jaag Milkha… Ab tu bhaag Milkha…

90 minutes at #PNCamp and the PR Engine cheatcode is yours

“There’s an empty slide in your deck reading user acquisition, which follows the slide showing hockey stick adoption. We’ll grow virally! Three words that fill up the slide nicely. Relying on virality as a standalone source of user acquisition is fatally flawed to begin with.”

That’s Sangeet Paul Choudary at his usual best. He probably said that a hundred times over, yet Startups continue to falter when it comes to understanding user growth and PR. The two are distinct, but underlying is a common trait, that about being remarkable. Have you extracted the remarkable ideas from your product and turned it into a PR opportunity? Or you think you are remarkable and still don’t get noticed?

Meet Sangeet Paul at PNCamp.in as he dissects the PR and Virality code step by step. It’s 90 minutes of pure adrenaline rush as you realize what can now be in your reach.

Announcing the Second list of #PNCamp attendees

Here’s the second set of attendees and more will get announced as soon as we’ve collated the registration details. Stay tuned for the updates.

Cohort2We’re almost full now, but if you are interested in the last remaining seats up for grabs, there are few days left and would request you to apply before 27th November.

More details about the attendees can be seen by clicking on their names

Attendees for the Discovery Hacking

Archana Stalin

Sagar Vibhute

Shashikant Kore

Arun Prabhudesai

Sarang Lakare

Vivek Beria

Aravind Sivashankara

Sudarsan Ravi

Tejaswi Raghurama



Dhanyal Gopi

Neha Arora

Attendees for the Scale Hacking

George Vettath

Praveen Hari

Sushant Khurana

Sumesh menon

Jazeel Ferry

Rohit bagad



Naveen Chandra Voruganti

Ajay Navgale

Sunil Patro

S Vijay Venkatesh

Kiran Nataraj

Akshay Tilak

Shashikant Anpat

Tejaswi Raghurama

Sudhir Patil

Why should you attend the inaugural #PNCamp?

I mean, why should you. Haven’t you seen all this already?

If that’s your question, well, no. You haven’t.

The #PNCamp is the first Indian product event that brings together product professionals in a bootcamp format, designed to make you take away a wealth of information and actionable insight.

Based on the highly successful iSPIRT Product Round Tables, it is also a highly curated, limited access  event which ensures that participation and engagement among people actually trying to solve the same set of problems.

We’re almost full now, but if you are interested in the last remaining seats up for grabs & still have doubts, this infographic should clear it up for you.

6Reasons
Well, I have to go now. The team is working hard to put together what we believe is soon to become one of the premier events in the Indian software product landscape.

Mission – To transform India into a Product Nation.

See you in Pune!

Announcing the first list of #PNCamp attendees

Last evening was a really exciting one for Team #PNCamp. We’ve been cracking some goals we set for ourselves while building this bootcamp from scratch, and lofty as they were, the team has been reaching milestone after milestone. The incentive of putting together an event to help the ecosystem we are part of, has pushed us all towards something special, and we hope you’ll see that passion come through on December 4 and 5.

Amidst a flurry of mails yesterday then, we have just been able to take some time off to publish the first list of confirmed attendees.

The most important thing we want to make clear is that being in the same track as your friend or someone you know doesn’t mean that you are going to be attending the camp together or that you can sit together and so on. The boot camp format is not going to work that way.

How will it work then? Well, it’ll work better.

Here’s the first set of attendees and more will get announced as soon as we’ve collated the registration details.

Cohort

Dec 4th – Customer Discovery Hacking track

 

Dec 5th  – Scale Hacking track

If your name is not in this list, there’s nothing to worry. We’re still collating all your info and will be announcing the next set of attendees soon.

We’ll be seeing you in Pune!

If you haven’t registered/applied yet (there’s still time — in fact if you register before 22nd November, we have something special for you 🙂

 

Using small data in a BIG way

#PNSummit – Two Day Gathering of Practicing Product Professionals, 4th &5th December, Pune

These days there’s a huge buzz about BIG data. Everyone is now talking about investing huge in BIG data in a BIG way. But before we get all gung-ho about it and take the BIG data plunge, companies should try to figure out applicability of whatever existing data they have. This is especially true for Startups and SMBs who don’t have BIG budgets for BIG data.

With that thought, here’s how we at #PNCamp are using the small data we have to draw BIG and meaningful conclusion…

Participating Cities

Bangalore and Pune are leading the pack with Mumbai / Chennai trailing behind them. Do you see your city? Register today put your city on Startup map of India.

Business Model

B2B is leading the pack. Surprised?

Primary Customer Base

Startups and SMBs have now slowly started building products with primary focus on Indian marketplace. The local market focus enables these companies to be closer to their Customers and create products that address their business needs.

Number of EmployeesNumber of Employees

Companies with up to 20 employees are really interested in identifying ways to crystallize understanding of their customers and or rapidly grow scale their business. Hence, if you are a business with fewer than 20 employees, you will get to interact with bunch of your peers. And discuss way to find and grow your Customer base.

Learn more about #PNCamp at https://www.pn.ispirt.in/pncamp/

Register today to become part of the movement that’s making India a Product Nation!

Scale Hacking at #PNCamp: What To Expect on Day 2 (Dec 5)

It’s a conference….it’s a summit….it’s a camp! Being a startup ourselves, we constantly listen to  our customers (who are startups as well!) and try and come up with initiatives that solve their problems and address their pain points.

In that regard, the genesis and the program design of the ProductNation Camp has come from what we’ve been hearing from you – the Indian product startup community. Sandeep has very nicely elucidated the need for a Product Bootcamp for Product entrepreneurs and laid out the broad agenda of the #PNCamp.

#PNCamp is expected to be a very intense, highly curated and focused two-day event with two tracks – Discovery Hacking (on Dec 4) and Scale Hacking (on Dec 5). For a product entrepreneur, getting the first set of customers is mighty important from multiple perspectives – validating the need for the product in the market, generating the first rupees (or dollars!) in revenue  and grow the startup from a buzz in the head to a live organism. While 2013 is expected to end with a Dhoom for Bollywood fans, it’s the same for product entrepreneurs attending #PNCamp. Rather than an ending, we hope it’ll be a new beginning for them to grow their startups to greater heights in the coming year. One of the producers of the product startup community’s Dhoom, Sai unveiled the first look of #PNCamp and gave us a glimpse of what’s in store for attendees of the Discovery Hacking track on Day 1.

It is said that well begun is half done. Let’s stay the tough part, that of beginning well has been taken care of and you are now staring at the tougher part – of growing your startup across multiple dimensions. That is when the startup is in the happy-confused state and there are a lot of questions on your mind.  Sales cures most ills, but how do you sell? This will be the primary thrust of the morning sessions which is mandatory. Here, we will have separate tracks for those who are selling to a global audience and those who are selling domestically. The challenges, hiring, operations, etc are completely different. In the afternoon, we have various exciting sessions on how to understand and communicate with customers and how to pick the right product direction when you have scarce resources to spread amongst several promising ones. Choice in an uncertain world is not easy and while we promise no silver bullets for your problems, we do promise to ignite enough fire in the belly (and in the heads!) for you to go back and navigate your way into scaling your startup. We also have specific “Oh, Oh, How do I do that?” sessions on specific topisc you’ve always wanted to know..

So specifically, what do we have to offer to you on the Scale Hacking Day:

We will have around 75 chosen participants for the Scale Hacking Day divided into cohorts of 15-20 people each. There are mandatory sessions which all participants will attend and then the cohorts will attend the optional sessions depending on the stage of the company and their interest.

The Mandatory Sessions

Great Indian Street Fight or Selling In India”

No wonder most of the selling in India happens through ‘feet on street’. And when you’re out there on the streets, it’s always a fight. Fight against time to sign-up customers, fight against a thousand other things to get the customers’ attention, fight for receiving payments on time and just fight for survival!

You have probably got your first set of customers, but you want to scale now. What are the different ways to do that? Does the Channel Partner route work and what are the pros and cons of taking that approach? How do you reach out to your next set of potential customers in an effective manner? Should you now start considering mainstream media for advertising or scale up your digital marketing efforts? More importantly, how do you plan for scale and put together the right team to execute your plans? How to hire the right people and fire the ones that don’t work out well?

Dhiraj Kacker, who has built Cavera into the leading destination for customized printed merchandize and an e-commerce solutions provider for photographers, will facilitate this session. Dhiraj along with Canvera’s Co-Founder Peeyush was recognized as amongst the top-10 Most Influential People in Photography in India by Asian Photography magazine. So he surely knows what clicks with his customers!

“Dancing with Elephant/Winging in the new flat world or Selling to Global Customers”

If IT services companies made the world flat, Saas product companies have made it even flatter!

While Zoho remains the pioneer, we have seen many SaaS companies FreshDesk, WebEngage, Wingify, Capillary Technologies, ChargeBee among others whose products are proudly Indian and that are selling to customers from across the globe. What does it take to build a global SaaS company out of India? More importantly, what does it take to sell to customers you haven’t met or even spoken to? How do you price your product so that customers from across geographies can buy it? How do you take care of the differences in the customers expectations, time zones, languages, even customs and culture across different regions? After all, every product has a personality. What about providing support to global customers?

Samir Palnitkar (ShopSocially, AirTight Networks) & Girish Mathrubootham (FreshDesk, Zoho) will facilitate this session. You wouldn’t want to miss this session unless you want to see your dollar dreams go sour!

The Optional Sessions

“Customers Buy Features, Not Benefits or How To Think Customer First?”

Here’s a quick question – which is the Indian brand that has grown the fastest in recent times and its identity (hint, hint!) transcends all barriers of language, region and religion? What’s more, it is very much an Indian tech startup! Yes, you guessed it right. It is Aadhar. Meet Shankar Maruwada, who gave the Aadhar its brand name and developed its identity and made it into the household brand it is today. Get to know how to place yourself inside the customers’ heads, try and understand what factors play in their decision-making and how you can approach your customers better by anticipating what’s possibly on their minds.

If you want to get a sense of what’s in store for you, watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTNVTaPXfqI#t=58

Well, you wouldn’t want to be that fish which can’t understand how people live without water!

“How to get featured in TechCrunch, spending $0”

It’s true that media coverage alone isn’t the true barometer of success of a startup. But hey, when has positive media attention, especially from a top global publication like TechCrunch hurt any startup? That is of course, assuming that the product is a good one!

For a lot of product entrepreneurs, getting featured on TechCrunch is a dream and considered as a good means to be visible in front of a lot of people – customers, investors, partners among others. So what does it take to get featured in TechCrunch? Considering they’d be getting hundreds of requests each day, do the writers and editors there even read such emails? Do you need to hire a high-profile PR agency and spend a lot of money?  Or should you just build something meaningful and the coverage will happen by itself?

Valorie Wagoner, Founder of ZipDial, has done that and been there (on TechCrunch). ZipDial is one of the fastest growing global startups emerging from India and Valerie will share her experiences of getting covered in global tech blogs and tell you how your startup can also get featured with no money spent!

“Positioning for Getting Acquired”

So you think acquisition only when you have reached a certain level and scale of business? Well, that’s what a lot of entrepreneurs in Bangalore thought before they attended this round table. How do you know if the time is ripe for your company getting acquired? How do you choose between multiple suitors you may have? What are some of the key things one should keep in mind so that all the stakeholders have a favourable outcome? While an acquisition is a regular business transaction in the US, do we Indians get (needlessly?) emotional about it?

Jay Pullur, Founder and CEO of Pramati Technologies and Sanat Rao, Director, Corporate Business Development (Emerging Markets) at Intel will facilitate this session. iSPIRT has a very active M&A initiative with Jay and Sanat actively leading the M&A Connect. You’d surely not want to miss this opportunity to understand how you can set yourself up for a nice acquisition.

“The Forum or Where You Can Bring Out Your Worst Fears!”

Every CEO needs somewhere to turn for the insight and perspective only trusted peers can provide. When such peers meet together in a setting where there is an atmosphere of confidentiality, respect and trust, it can become a supreme sounding board. We will call such a setting a “Forum”. Such a forum can become most valued asset for the members, because the maxim holds true: it can be lonely at the top, but it doesn’t have to be.

At #PNCamp, we want to experiment, for the first time, with building such a Forum by forming a small group of peers who meet regularly to exchange ideas, thoughts and experiences on the issues that matter most to them. During the first meeting at the PNCamp, this group will be taught effective forum techniques, a set of protocols and a shared language that creates immediate and meaningful connections among members.

We expect that once created, the Forum group will periodically meet either in person or online with the following agenda:

1- Update each other by looking back since the last meeting and looking forward

2- Identify, discuss and park business issues that are typically Important but not Urgent

3- Make presentations around these issues and get non-judgmental feedback from the fellow members

I’ll end this post with a quote from the very inspirational movie, The Shawshank Redemption.

Dear Red, If you’re reading this, you’ve gotten out. And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don’t you?

Of course, you remember the name of the town. It’s Pune and we look forward to see you in Pune on Dec 4 and Dec 5 for #PNCamp.

PS. After all this if you haven’t still applied for #PNCamp yet, we’re afraid you may be a little late. Apply Now here!