Eco-system Archives - Page 25 of 26

06/10/201206/10/2012

Should we aim for quantity or quality in Indian startups?

I had a very good discussion with 2 folks over the last week about the current state of technology entrepreneurship in India. The rough estimates from multiple sources indicate a varied number from 250 (low estimate) to 1000 (high estimate) technology product startups each year in India. Compared to that, the US produces tens of thousands and even Israel beats India by having 3-4 times that number.

There are a few folks in the ecosystem that suggest that we should focus on fewer but better quality startups in the technology space. They have some strong points in their argument which include a) the total amount of funding available in the system will only support 50-100 companies annually b) if more companies were to be started, more will fail, which will deter more folks from becoming entrepreneurs and c) there are not too many experienced entrepreneurs & seasoned executives who can tackle issues of scale yet.

I fall on the other camp and my focus is to get more people to buy into the religion. I agree with the premise that most startups fail and that’s the nature of the beast. That has not changed much (or at all) with the number of accelerators or incubators in the last few years. Startups die for multiple reasons and many of them are not easy to fix.

The main reason I think we should focus on quantity first is so we can increase the pool of risk-takers in India. Entrepreneurs take the most amount of risk in the ecosystem. We need more of them, in fact more than the system can really handle. So how do we address the arguments from the “Quality first” side?

1. Most product entrepreneurs I meet in India (I meet a new batch of 5 EVERY week) dont really want to build a company to exit. They would prefer to build strong profitable companies and run time for a long time. They do need some funding initially when they are ready to test a few of their hypothesis. Many build products that take a few pivots to get right and most operate in markets that take long to mature. So what if the ecosystem can only support 50-100 currently? We should be able to find ways to get the not so successful ones to pick up, dust-off and get on the horse again. The other point I make that we really have a lot of money sitting on the sidelines in India, with a fairly immature angel investment ecosystem. Each week I meet one new person interested in investing in technology companies, usually a technology executive at a large software company like Microsoft, SAP or VMware. They are enough to get our entrepreneurs started and build good companies.

2. If the percentage of startups that succeed is fairly constant, then the argument for more startups is even stronger. If we increase the pool of startups and the failure rate is still a constant, we should get more successful startups. The failure rate has not dramatically increased or decreased over the last 5 years, so if we have 2000 startups and a 99% failure rate we will still have 20 successes vs. 250 startups and 95% failure rate.

3. The best way to have “serial” entrepreneurs is to have more people go through the experience once. Regardless of whether they failed at their first startup, the success rate of a repeat entrepreneur is dramatically higher. They are more experienced, seasoned and more willing to understand the importance of persistence.

I believe that we need more, not less technology startups overall to help our ecosystem grow dramatically

02/10/201203/10/2012

Demo Days: Obsolete. Over-Hyped. Disaster

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

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

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

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

India is Different

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

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

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

The Pivot is on you.

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

Direction vs Speed.

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

Product vs. Startup

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

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

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

FootNotes:

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

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

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

Assumptions:

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

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

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

Cross Post from the Startup Guy’s blog

02/10/201203/10/2012

Software Products: Funding and Opportunities, Shoaib Ahmed, Tally Solutions (Part 3 of 3)

Read the Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.

Shoaib Ahmed, President of Tally Solutions, began his career as a retail
software developer in the early 90s. Formerly the Founder-Director of Vedha
Automations Pvt.Ltd, Mr. Ahmed was responsible for developing Shoper, a
market-leading retail business solution — and the first of its kind in India to
bring in barcoding to the retail space. The company was acquired by Tally
Solutions in 2005, where Shoper merged with the Tally platform to offer a
complete enterprise retail software suite. In the last of a three-part series,
Mr. Ahmed gives entrepreneurs some advice from the product development
trenches.

In your opinion how important is the concept of funding? Do you think
people can bootstrap easily without funding?

Unfortunately, I come from a bootstrap background so I have to admit that I haven’t
watched the successfully funded companies very closely! Looking at the components,
you need money for development and marketing. I also feel one key component is
requiring enough money to bring on board people with enough leadership qualities and
understanding to pre-empt issues on all fronts. You have to have the working capital to
confidently bring on board people with these qualities. In this kind of context come the
questions: who should fund and at what period of time. There are the elements of the
seed and angel fund — in my mind the concept of angel fund hasn’t matured completely
because there is the expectation is that there isn’t complete clarity but there
is an element of being able to patch the company through so that they experiment through
the formative periods, and the VC comes in when the company is ready to scale, like for
marketing to get big numbers.

The sharpness, unfortunately, is not yet there because the maturity hasn’t been
established. For example, once a product company has been funded, there is an
expectation that the trend set by early adopters is what the remaining set of customers are
going to adopt as eagerly. However, this set may not have bought into the idea yet — but
there now is an expectation that based on the reaction of the first set, the next set will get
automatically attracted and it’s just a matter of reaching out to them. However, the method
and timing of reach out will be different. What it takes and what can kind of expectation
to set is dependent on the fund, but it also largely depends on getting the right kind of
mentoring and product mindset so that the entrepreneur is geared in a sensible manner.

What opportunities should entrepreneurs in the SMB space be
focussing on, other than in the accounting space?

Typically, the mid or large market gets most of the attention. For small businesses,
however, the pain-point is bringing hygiene into working systems like managing books,
inventories and people. At this point, there are options for the small business owner

to opt for enterprise integrated business solutions or specialised applications. The
opportunity lies in recognizing that different segments with different nuances exist —
and your focus is to design in such a way that their respective problems are solved. For
example, keeping in mind what a pharmacy needs both from a software and form factor,
I would say that billing is not the problem but replenishment is. Therefore, a large PC
may not be the solution — maybe an iPad or a mobile app makes more sense. So I would
say that you would need to wear the hat. To find a customer is the first element, and
giving a suggestion which works and bringing new technology in place are areas which
entrepreneurs in the SMB space should be focussing on.

What advice would you give to people who are getting into the product
development space?

First, they should understand the product mindset, which is to be able to identify if they
are building a value proposition. The whole process of product development shouldn’t
confuse them – there is the whole question of what the customer is asking for and what
the product will provide them. This is important, but product development shouldn’t just be
about reacting to market opportunities – arriving at a product design is also critical.

Secondly, there’s also a tendency to concentrate on providing too many features,
understanding customer requirements and being in a perpetual development mode. This is
why the development team has to have a strong business and marketing background.

Thirdly, having a face in the Indian market is a huge opportunity, but technology adoption
continues to be an issue so that needs to be kept in mind. This has a bearing on how you
design the product and experience. How much of that product you’re designing needs a
deep engagement, as well as elements like value and price. There’s a catch-22 situation
here because these elements of the product will still be in infancy – I don’t see a method
which a product company can use to address a market across the entire country. This is
where a lot of product companies fall into a gap because they might move to a partnership
model to sell to more people and this may not always be logical because a partner will
be interested in someone who has already created a market! A product company falls
into this gap where it sells to a few people, finds that it cannot reach out to more, gets
into a deeper engagement with the few customers it has and then loses the shape of the
product. Over the past 25 years, many product companies have morphed into service
companies because of this reason. Yes, environments have changed today: there’s
internet penetration, elements of communication have evolved and so product companies
should leverage this.

Read the Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.

29/09/201219/10/2012

The weight of expectation

How many times last month did you use Power Point? Most would have used it at least a couple of times. Power Point is one of those products that seem so natural and effortless to use. And when you think about it, Power Point acquires its muscle from its core ability to dumb down a variety of thinking processes. What were its creators — Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin – thinking when they were writing Power Point? Could they imagine that within 25 years their creation would be installed on over a billion computers worldwide?

Ironically, Power Point was designed for the Macintosh and was the first venture capital investment that Apple ever made. Forethought, the company which created it, was bought by Microsoft in 1987. With such a rich history and possibly the only company to have the two software behemoths in its DNA, we may well ask, “What have Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin done after Power Point?” Austin created some average-to-middling clip art (Screen Beans) and Rudkin worked for Microsoft in Silicon Valley, turning Power Point into a product with $100 million in sales. Why could Austin and Rudkin not create another great product?

That’s because creating software products is not like building a home or a work desk. The problems that software solves are not the same as those which apartments and office cubicles solve. Software solves newer problems (hopefully!) each time. That’s why there are more failures in creating software products than in making homes and offices. Every time a software engineer sits down to write code, the end goal is different – and often the end goal doesn’t stay the same through the lifecycle of the product’s development (surely you are familiar with scope creep and change requirements?).

It doesn’t matter that the profession has its own set of guidelines and best practices to follow. There are languages and project management techniques. There are tools and quality processes. Yet, practically any software project you come across has seen time and cost over runs, has versions lying on shelves that have been discarded, and has bugs that cannot be eliminated before release (these are passed off as “known issues”).

Why is it that creating software products is such a random process? Why can’t success be replicated even though the team has experience and ability? In other words, if there is a lesson in the creators of Power Point, it is this: building software products is not like constructing a home or a table with raw material that is pretty much standard. Software products have to be built from the ground upwards. From the framework to the data types and structures, from how the data will be
managed and manipulated to the protocols and networks that will come into play and finally how human beings will view it, store it, share it and deploy it. Creating software products is an intensely unpredictable process. The industry may try to provide examples of how great products were created, the role of engineering and innovation, of time and funding, of requirements and usability, market studies and prototypes and a whole list of other imponderables. None of them hold fully true when you get down to solving a new problem with fresh code.

The point is this: if you are trying to create a software product, the top most problem you have is not your skills or resources, but the expectations that industry has about you getting it right first time. You can’t will that expectation away. The trick is to not let it weigh you down – or even dictate the course you are charting for yourself.

27/09/201227/09/2012

Is Software Innovation an Art or a Science? It’s Artful Science or Scientific Art!

When we think of Software Product Innovation, we imagine getting “Eureka!” moments 3 am in the morning, getting up and writing down inspired thoughts and coding them the next morning!

Reality is much more mundane and is more of evolution rather than sudden insprirations from the sky!

Yahoo started because Jerry Yang and Filo just wanted to create a searchable directory of information first at Stanford University and then San Francisco in general!

facebook started as a teenage testorone-fueled comparion site for Harvard students to post pictures of fellow girl students and rate who’s hot and who’s not! From there it evolved into directories of students in universities to find each other for dating more than anythingelse. For a long time, facebook signed up university by university and not the general public-oriented thing it is now!

This stands for enterprise software products also – Oracle Relational Databases were less expensive, clumsy knock-offs and replacements for Digital Equipment Corporation’s RDB/VMS relational database system.

Before Microsoft Word and Excel spreadsheets, there were Lotus Ami Pro and Lotus 123!

Before Google search, there were DEC Alta Vista search engine and Yahoo!

What made all the successful ones innovations in their own right were not just technical superiority but they took useful innovations and products before them and fixed annoying problems with their usages or expanded the concept of who can use them additionally or fixed usability problems with them.

Or they took an older concept and applied it to a new platform!

Or took an older concept and applied it to a newer market!

So if you want to innovate, you don’t necessarily to invent something new. You can innovate by doing one of these:

—- Is there something useful but not so easy to use? Can I fix it by making it easier to use? (Google’s single search box in the middle is a great example – Alta Vista got lost in boolean searches and requiring ANDs and ORs when specifying search. Google said – don’t worry about all of that stuff. We will take care of it. Just type in what you want into that box!)

— Can I take something useful and apply it to a new market? eBay India was another company before it became eBay bought it and made it eBay India. Flipkart is India’s Amazon. Cleartrip is India’s Expedia! Make no mistake. They are not just copies. Flipkart uses courier delivery. Cleartrip is useful for buying train tickets less painfully than when going to the IRCTC website. They all add some value and difference!

— Can I take something in one platform and make it suitable and applicable to another platform? Mobiile versions of applications may need to be differently designed and executed than an online, browser version of something.

— Can I build a family of products around one idea with more features? Personal, Professional, Enterprise versions of software is a fairly standardized way of adding additional features but orienting them towards different markets.

— Can I build a family of products that are related to each other but different from each other in functionality? Word, Powerpoint, Visio, Excel are all examples of slightly related products but providing different kinds of functionality.

Many times, we think that innovation is coming up with something completely new,. Successful innovations have all fixed or fine-tuned something useful but had some problems that were preventing widespread adoption.

Sometimes it is as simple as figuring out what these are and fixing them. And also thinking about related things so that you are thinking about a “family of products” rather than a single “one hit wonder”.

Wikipedia provides a clear definition of Innovation:

Innovation is the development of new customer value through solutions that meet new needs, unarticulated needs, or old customer and market needs in new ways. This is accomplished through different or more effective products, processes, services,technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different (Lat. innovare: “to change”) rather than doing the same thing better.

27/09/201208/10/2012

Observations on India

I’ve spent a decent amount of time in India over the past few months. Most recently, I spent a little over two weeks of August meeting with founders and investors in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Goa. A couple of observations in no particular order:

Indian founders don’t have clear role models… at least not within the Indian startup ecosystem. That being said, that will likely change over the next 3-5 years as the founders of companies such as SnapDeal, FlipKart, Naukri, MakeMyTrip, Inmobi, Directi (along with many other fantastic companies) continue to grow.
The communication style of Indian founders is quite different than other places. It seems like a cultural thing: founders (and perhaps most people) seem to think that they are establishing authority by giving longer answers to specific questions. I’d like to see founders improve their communication styles: be direct, be crisp and be passionate. By doing that, they’ll be able to better communicate with cofounders, potential team hires, press and investors (both foreign and domestic). More tips here: Your Solution Is Not My Problem. (On a side note: There’s huge opportunity for a speaking coach to make a metric shit-ton of money in India.)
Pound for pound, the Indian technical founder has far more raw horsepower than I’ve seen anywhere else. I suppose that’s why nearly every pitch I’ve heard from Indian founders has been heavy on the technology powering the solution. Unless you’re building a startup that *is* technology, your pitch shouldn’t contain any mention of the technology you’re using.
I’d like to see more Indian founders try to solve problems for the Indian market. Until now, it seems that most focused on building online products that could be sold to the West and that made sense: the Western internet user was way more likely to buy online. Internet penetration is rapidly increasing in India, that’s no surprise — Indian founders should start to focus on the Indian internet user because more of them are coming online daily, their comfort with purchasing on the web is growing and, frankly, becauseoutsiders are less likely to understand the cultural nuances of the Indian customer.
No surprise: most of the Indian investor community isn’t founder friendly. They can be very slow, deal terms can be onerous and the overall experience for founders is rough. For investors, there’s a lot of opportunity in this — just be more founder friendly and I suspect your dealflow will rise considerably.
Investors seem to inherently distrust founders. Investors should only take referrals from trusted sources and initial check sizes should be smaller while the relationship is still new. Founders should take it upon themselves to present themselves in the most truthful way. Regardless, I think you’ll begin to see investors prosecuting founders publicly in an effort to make a statement to the market.
As a first generation Indian-American, I find it interesting that many founders and investors born and raised in India seem to be more pessimistic about India’s prospects than I (and, by extension, other outsiders) am. As Sasha Mirchandani has said in the past, my hope for India is that it changes from a pessimistic society to an optimistic one.

I’m certainly not the first one to say this but, even with all the challenges that exist, India has no where to go but up — the question isn’t *if* but *when* it will happen. We’ve made a handful of investments in Indian startups over the past year and we’re planning to aggressively ramp that up immediately. Watch out India, the 500 train’s coming!

Cross Post – ResultJunkies.com(Paul Singh)

23/09/201223/09/2012

Startups and mentors: How to look for a great marketing mentor? & A list of top marketing mentors in India

After the first post on technology mentors in India, the next person who can help the most as a mentor to startups < 2 years old is someone that can help with product & customer knowledge (or understanding user / customer behavior if its a consumer startup).

There are 3 primary categories of “marketing” mentors I’d recommend you think about. You dont need them all, just be clear who you need for what kind of mentorship.

Product mentors are people who can distill what customers would need and say into what you need to build in your product. There’s a big difference between a product manager and a business analyst. The latter, typically found in many Indian services companies, tries to give the customer exactly what they want, and end up building largely a custom piece of work for that client. Product experts on the other hand, observe customers, ask them tough questions and direct the technology team to build what the customer really wants.

Sales mentors are people carrying a quota (target). They are pounding the street or directing teams that are selling every day. They understand targets, compensation, lead nurturing, managing deals and sales opportunities. There are many types of sales people but largely they are either “farmers” or “hunters”. Farmers end up expanding your current opportunity and Hunters get new business from new clients. They both have their place. Mostly, I have found sales people dont make very good mentors because they are largely unavailable, but there are a few good guys around. Ideally they would help you understand and grow your sales team from “CEO is the sales guy” to building a repeatable, growth-oriented team.

Marketing mentors would help you with positioning, building awareness, lead generation and digital marketing. They can typically help you at the stage when you need to launch (largely after product-market-fit). Most marketing people tend to talk lots and do little, so if you get someone that can give you practical tips on how to build your funnel and grow your customer base by spending as little money as possible, then you have the right person.

The question usually is why do you need so many mentors. The answer is you dont. It all depends on the team you have and if they need advice, help and mentorship. I have seen startups with 5 mentors and many with none. Most have 2-3 mentors to complement the team. You can get as much value from mentors as much time you put into the relationship. I typically recommend most entrepreneurs to setup 1 hour every other week during the initial days (<6 months) and then 1 hour every month and finally 1-2 hours every other month.

Some recommended Product mentors:

1. Amit Somani (Make my trip)

2. Varun Shoor (Kayako)

3. Vijay Anand (The Startup Center)

4. Girish Mathrubootham (Fresh Desk)

5. Sridhar Ranganathan (InMobi)

6. Amit Gupta (InMobi)

8. Preetham VV (InMobi)

9. Dhimant Parekh (Hoopos)

Some recommended Sales mentors:

1. Madhu Lakshmanan (ex Photon)

2. Abhay Singhal (Inmobi)

Some recommended Marketing / Online customer acquisition mentors:

1. Pankaj Jain (Startup Weekend)

2. Ravi Vora (Flipkart)

3. Karthik Srinivasan (Flipkart)

23/09/201223/09/2012

Technology product startups, angel and venture market comparisons – US and India

There is a lot of activity and interest in technology product companies in India, as there is in the US. I spent some time reviewing numbers from NVCA, VCCircle and pulled some numbers specifically in the areas of Internet, software, technology products and eliminated services companies. Here is a simple table to keep things in perspective. All sources are at the bottom.

	USA	India
Total number of technology (Product & services) companies formed annually (average)	24,169	412
# of companies that secured angel funding	15,233 (1)	65
# of companies that secured seed / early stage from VC	1,682	58
# of companies that secured late stage funding from VC	658	31

I am yet to do any “analysis”. Right now the data validation process is what I am going to embark upon.

What is your analysis.

Relevant Links:

1. Crash Dev – eye of the needle

2. UNH center for angel investment research.

3. NAV Fund John Backus

4. Product Startup Landscape in India from Zinnov . (Thanks Pari!)

5. NVCA National aggregate data for US investments (Excel spreadsheet)

23/09/201208/10/2012

Startups and mentors: How to look for a great technology mentor? & A list of top tech mentors in India

I am going to write a 3 part series on mentorship and technology startups. Rather than write about why you need a mentor or how to engage with a mentor (next series) I thought the first step for most entrepreneurs would be to seek out great mentors.

As an additional bonus, I thought I’d list some good mentors in India so there’s a starting point (not comprehensive). Please feel free to add people who deserve to be on this list via comments (you cannot add yourself, someone has to recommend you, preferably 2 people).

We will focus primarily on technology startup mentors, which are < 2 years old. I believe there are 3 types of mentors you need at this stage: Technology, Marketing & Industry specific ones – that’s it. Everyone else is a ~~nice to have~~ waste of time.

Why?

Early in your startup, you should be focused on solving a problem and building your product, while at the same time, talking to customers and understanding their pain points. So if you are spending time doing anything else, its a waste. Mentors should help you do these things alone.

So, if you are thinking of getting that CEO of a 3-4 year old company which is doing well, as a mentor, he should fit in one of these buckets, else he a) does not have enough time to give you or b) does not have enough practical knowledge to share.

This post is about technology mentors. The next two posts are on marketing and industry mentors.

Technology mentors should help you think about the solution architecture, build & recruit a great engineering team and understand how to solve complex engineering problems.

I define technology mentors as people who are engineering managers, UX designers, architects & hands-on senior technical staff members in their day jobs. No one else qualifies. I would not put ex-engineering manager (now consultants at large, etc.) on this list. The reason is simple:

If you are not practicing, in the trenches, you don’t know the specifics and tend to give “Gyan” at a high level.

ps. US folks, I am trying to introduce some cool Indian lingo into your vocabulary, so please click on that Wikipedia link about gyan.

So how do you look for a great technology mentor?

1. Social proof – GitHub, Hacker News, Hackerstreet.in, HackerRank and Stack Overflow are great places to start. Also seek out folks at offline events such as Startup Weekend, Yahoo Hack Day and other such developer events. Dont look for technology mentors at generic industry or startup events. You dont find good technology mentors there.

2. Look at some awesome product companies – Cleartrip, Flipkart, Komli Media, Yahoo, Google (Map Maker), Microsoft Surface, InMobi, Facebook, etc. Get to know who runs their engineering and technology teams. Find out who their good senior, hands-on, architects and engineering managers are.

3. Reach out through your technical network: E.g. I am trying to solve this complex engineering problem, and we have a few areas where we’re stuck and would love some help. Can you please recommend someone who is a <machine learning expert> who is working on this area at <company name>?

Most good technology mentors I know like to work on really hard engineering problems, so the harder & more unique your problem the more likely you are going to attract a great mentor. Its a self selecting list (which is good) so if someone believes the problem you are trying to solve is not in their interest area, you dont want them anyway.

So now, on to a short list (soon to get long thanks to you all).

<EM> This list is biased right now. These are people I know, like and admire. Please feel free to help other entrepreneurs by recommending good people I dont know to this list. </EM>

Some recommended Engineering manager mentors:

1. Sachin Desai (Ericsson)

2. Mekin Maheshwari (Flipkart)

3. Hari Shankaran (Interview Street)

4. Jayanth Vijayaraghavan (Yahoo)

4. Indus Khaitan (Bitzer)

5. Bharat Vijay (ex Yahoo, Amazon)

6. Amod Malviya (Flipkart)

7. Srinivasan Seshadri (ex Kosmix)

Some recommended Architect / CTO mentors:

1. Dorai Thodla (iMorph)

2. Prateek Dayal (Support Bee)

3. Shivkumar Ganesan (Exotel)

4. Avlesh Singh (Webengage)

Some recommended Cloud (AWS, Google App Engine, Azure):

1. Ravi Pratap (MobStac)

2. Perrraju Bendapudi (Microsoft)

Some recommended design mentors:

1. Sunit Singh (Cleartrip)

22/09/201208/10/2012

Is your company dependent on Innovation? Grow the right Culture First! The rest will take care of itself!

There is a reason, Mark Zuckerberg sits right next to the Summer Intern from University of Waterloo (True Story – Daughter of an Indian friend of mine!). No separate office, no glass windows to look out of!

Sergei Brin and Larry Page are worried sick of “Not Enough Innovation” out of Google!

They all focus on building the right culture for their people so that they can out-innovate their best competitors in the world!

Netflix, Google, Facebook all encourage and even require their employees to engage about 25% of their time in some pet technical project of their own. Some of these turned out to be big money makers, many failed!

Their philosophy is that if you have not failed enough number of times, you are not trying hard enough!

It all goes back to the company culture you build from Day 1! I have done it a number of times putting together engineering groups in multiple companies in Silicon Valley and I have done the same thing in India! If anything it works even better in India, if it is any consolation! Employees loved it and so very highly motivated, especially if they came from other companies in India!

Do you view yourself as the Captain of the ship who just makes very high level decisions and leave your first officers and people who report to them alone to do their jobs? Do you trust them from Day 1 to make the right technical decisions, stepping in only to guide them if they are straying too much from your mission?

Many of us come from a technical background and as engineers, our first instinct is to jump in and make the right decisions for our employees. Wrong!

In other words, do you treat that employee who just joined you straight from college as an adult, expect a lot from them, make sure that they have the hardware and software tools and leave them alone to do their jobs?

High expectations does something magical! The same employee comes in on their own on saturdays and sundays to try out something they have been thinking about. It stops being work for them and becomes something they take ownership for!

Do you praise them in meetings for even minor accomplishments but correct things they do wrong in private?

Do you tell them everyday that you are depending upon them to contribute great ideas to the company, give them time to try them out?

Then you have the right culture for innovation!

However, there are other things that go into this culture working correctly! You need to spend a lot of time hiring ONLY the right people! Make no mistake – Silicon Valley, India or Timbuktu, only 5- 10% of any population are really really good and suitable for innnovative companies. Do you look through 100 resumes and filter out that 5 to 10%? The wrong people can make your innovation train go off the rails, right from the beginning!

You are saying – I am this small company in Chennai – I am competing for talent with Infosys, Wipro and others. How do I get that 5 to 10% cream of the crop.

Guess what? I have done that! Spread your search to Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier4 colleges. Go to Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai to hire. Simple science, really! If you are trying to hire the 5 – 10% of the best in a population, to increase your chances, you go to more populations. I hired two people from Delhi to come, work in Chennai. Did wonders for my employees. They learned how to help, interact with someone from another language, culture.

There is another reason how diversity helps your innovation. Men and Women think about the same problem differently. Punjabis think differently than South Indians. Assamese and Bengalis are different in thinking than Mumbaikars! All these differences are your real assets. Walk into facebook and Google, you will see employees that represent the United Nations. There is a reason to that madness! Innovation comes from thinking differently and people who solve the same problem in many different ways are your real assets, your keys to innovation!

If you encourage them, give them the broad direction, tools and step away to let them do their jobs, fail often but try different things nevertheless. Works in Silicon Valley, New York, Washington. Works even better in India, if you try it without skipping any of the ingredients.

You never realize how much the Indian work culture has borrowed all the wrong things from our British masters before us. Separate dining rooms for different levels of executives, the “Yes. Sir. No Sir” culture. This kind of thinking is more harmful to your goals than you think!

It can be changed. It all starts with a few companies that start doing it. I am sure there are many companies in India that already do it actively today and are seeing the results.

Culture is often pooh-poohed as something touchy-feely stuff and not suitable for a goal oriented, task oriented company. It is everything in a startup, especially one that wants to Innovate!

12/09/201212/09/2012

TechSparks 2012 Unveils the Top 30 Tech Product Startups from India

TechSparks, the flagship event of Yourstory.in, the biggest tech product startup showcase in India, is now in its 3^rd edition. The Grand Finale of TechSparks 2012 was held in Bangalore on September 8^th, after the 5 roundtables which were conducted in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Hyderabad over a period of 4 months. Techsparks 2012 was presented by Intel in association with Amazon Web Services, Qualcomm, Sequoia Capital, CNBC TV 18 Young Turks and VentureBeat.

Registering more than 800 applications to become a TechSpark, the response was overwhelming and the jury comprising of investors, successful entrepreneurs, industry experts and the Yourstory team had a tough time shortlisting the top 30. Applications were received from all over the country and the diversity was immense. From education to healthcare to cleantech, there were companies in every sector with a common motive – leveraging technology to build great businesses.

The Techsparks 2012 Grand Finale had the theme “The Smartest Way to Scale Up” and the entire day was organized around that. Starting with an introduction from Shradha Sharma, founder of Yourstory.in, the high-on-adrenaline event was given a huge pump by RJ Sriram and DJ Dhruva maintaining the tempo. Shradha’s introduction was followed by an in-depth keynote by Shailendra Singh, MD of Sequoia Capital, who outlined some of the most important factors for ‘Building a Business’. The ensuing Panel Discussion was a highly engaging one with audience actively participating in the discussion. The Panel consisted of Narendra Bhandari (Director, Intel Software and Services Group – Developer Relations (Asia-Pacific)); Shailendra Singh (MD, Sequoia Capital); Gautam Gandhi (Head – New Business Development Emerging Markets, Google); Joe Ziegler (AWS Evangelist for Australia and New Zealand); M. Maheshwar Rao, IAS (Commissioner for Industrial Development and Director of Industries and Commerce, Govt. of Karnataka); Dr. Wido Menhardt (Vice President, Head, Philips Innovation Campus) and was moderated by Ravi Gururaj (Vice President, Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix).

Read the complete story at YourStory.in

11/09/201211/09/2012

How Silicon Valley’s Community Gives Back

Editor’s note: “Silicon Valley is a unique, vibrant intermingling of different ideas and cultures resulting in innovation coming from all parts of the world,” says Raju Reddy, executive vice president of global services at Hitachi Consulting. And it was the ideal location for the recent Sevathon 2012, the annual walkathon that brought together more than 60 Bay area profit organizations to raise funds for nonprofit orgs. In this interview, Raju shares insights about the Indian technology community in both the valley and in India and how U.S. technology companies can get involved in “giving back” and helping others.

SandHill.com: My Internet search reveals that you’ve been very involved in helping young entrepreneurs for many years.

Raju Reddy: Professionally, for me, mentoring others is very important. Like other entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, I’ve been a big beneficiary of people giving back. Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley kind of take it for granted, but we’re surrounded by such a wonderful infrastructure of people and organizations to help build a company. I have always really appreciated that and tried to work with other entrepreneurs and help them build companies.

I spent about 10 years in Intel before I started my own company, Sierra Atlantic, in 1993. We were venture funded by NEA, Walden and GE Capital, and I had some great board members and mentors. At the end of 2010 Hitachi bought my company. I also had been mentoring an entrepreneur in Toronto, and that startup was successfully acquired by Intel about the same time as the Sierra Atlantic acquisition. Currently I serve on the board of RedBus and GharPay, both in the consumer Internet space.

Read the complete post at Sandhill.com

01/09/201208/10/2012

Techcircle SaaS Forum 2012 announces top 10 SaaS startups in India

If there is one area within the new-age technology that is red hot right now, it is software-as-a-service or SaaS – both in terms of startup activity and as a tool for entrepreneurs to build a low-cost business from scratch. Techcircle.in has come up with a listing of India’s top 10 emerging SaaS companies who have shown significant market traction, created unique products or services that can disrupt existing markets and most importantly, have a very high potential to make it big in the coming years. The listing has been compiled by a distinguished jury comprising Shailendra Singh, MD, Sequoia Capital; Manik Arora, MD, IDG Ventures and Mukund Mohan, an active angel investor. These 10 companies have also showcased their products during Techcircle Runway at Techcircle SaaS Forum 2012, in Bangalore on Aug 31. Here are brief notes on the 10 startups (note: this not a ranking, the companies are arranged in alphabetical order).

Read the complete post at TechCircle.in

23/08/201208/10/2012

Who are the “early adopter” Venture Capitalists in India

Like you, I assumed that all VC’s are risk takers. I mean as an asset class if you have to provide the highest returns over the long term, I would suspect you have to take big risks to get big returns. The average Indian bank has been giving around 8% annual returns on FD (source), real estate returns about 13%, and gold loan providers will give you close to 15% I am told. So, VC as an investment class should offer higher returns given how ill-liquid they are and how risky they tend to be.

So, how do you really measure if a VC is an early adopter versus a late adopter? (lets keep it simple and only put them into 2 categories).

My thinking is the only way you can do that is to look at their investments (portfolio companies) and find out the categories of companies they invested in. Then find out if any other VC’s invested in another company in that category after the “first” VC did. There are other ways to do that, like ask entrepreneurs who responded the fastest when they were looking for funds, but those dont evaluate who puts their money where their mouth is.

Why is this question useful to answer?

For entrepreneurs who are innovating in a new area, this list of early adopters will help you determine who you should go to first versus who should you expect will fund a possible competitor.

Lets define our methodology and assumptions:

1. We will look at all their websites and make a list of the Indian VC portfolio. Fortunately we have that list of over 50 VC’s in India.

Flaw: Many dont update their website as frequently so there may be a 20% (or higher) error, but I have tried to be comprehensive.

2. We will then categorize their investment into 5 buckets – Media and content, eCommerce, Business to Business, Mobile and other (Education, Healthcare, etc). This is important so we know not only which VC’s are early adopters but we can also try to find that out by sector.

3. Then we will look at the announcement dates of their funded companies from press releases, Unpluggd, YourStory, ET and VCCircle. We will give them 2 points for every investment done in a sector before any other VC did.

Flaw: Most (I suspect over 50%) of companies report their funding 3-6 months after they have raised the money, so this will be a large flaw, but lets do the analysis anyway.

4. Finally look at stage of investment. If a VC puts money in the series A, I would give them two points in the early adopter bucket. If, however they participated in series B or later, they get one point in the late adopter bucket.

First let me give you the results (not in any order other than early adopters vs. late adopters).

Early adopters VC’s.

Accel (eCommerce, B2B) – 78 points
Indo US Venture Partners (B2B) – 56 points
Saif partners (Mobile, eCommerce), but they are late adopters in B2B – 49 points
Venture East (B2B) – 45 points
Sequoia (Media) – 46 points
Seedfund (Scored enough, but dont have a clear winning category) 42 points

In the middle

Blume ventures – 40 points
Nexus Venture partners – 36 points
Helion – 36 points
Ojas ventures – 34 points

Later adopter VC’s – all scored less than 30

Bessemer Venture Partners
DFJ
Cannan partners
India Innovation fund
Inventus Capital
Footprint ventures
IDG ventures
India Internet Fund
Lightspeed partners (but have done well in Education)
Norwest
Sherpalo

What I hope this list will do?

1. Make Indian VC’s think about being innovation catalysts rather than ambulance chasers. I understand you have a responsibility to provide returns, but you also have a responsibility to grow the Indian startup ecosystem. Might I suggest a 5-10% of your portfolio towards risky, “first time this is going to happen” investments?

2. Make Indian company founders announce their funding. Unlike the US, here entrepreneurs are loathe to do so. I can understand the competitive pressures, but not doing any announcement is just lame.

3. Educate Indian entrepreneurs on their target VC list. Depending on the opportunity you are trying to pursue, please target the right VC firm. The only thing you have (and dont have) on your side is time. Use it judiciously.

P.S. I have confidence in the methodology but I would be the first to admit its neither comprehensive nor scientific. If you are an eager MBA / Engineer / analyst and would like to help make this methodology and analysis more robust, I’d love your help. You can take all the credit. In fact, I can convince many publications to give you credit for the work if you desire and if you keep it updated every 3-6 months.

P.P.S. If you are a VC and not in the early adopter list, or you are not happy with the analysis I’d also welcome your associate’s help in making this analysis robust.