Today, everyone talks about going Digital. Renowned strategy and customer experience consulting firms have renewed themselves as Digital Transformation agency. Softskill trainers have become Digital marketing consultants. Large industrial conglomerates have become Digital industrial company by a creating a platform for Digital aficionados to develop custom apps. New roles such as Chief Digital Office, Data …
“Vertical SaaS” Deep Dive #PlaybookRT in Bangalore
If I were a Cobbler it would be my pride.. The best of all Cobblers to be.. If I were a Tinker, no Tinker beside Should mend an old kettle like me.. The above poem defines vertical SaaS to a T! When I got an invite from iSPIRT that there was going to be a …
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You may have a viable product but do you have a viable business?
(Also posted on LinkedIn here). I’m a big fan of the “Lean startup” movement. Steve Blank, Ash Maurya and others have done amazing work around innovative, startup companies. Two of my most recommended books in this area are The 4 Steps to Epiphany and Running Lean. I strongly recommend every founder read these. Shockingly, most haven’t! …
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5 reasons why you should NOT attend #SaaSx4
SaaSx4 is here! It is an event for SaaS founders, by SaaS founders. Generally, event invites to entrepreneurs focus on why it is imperative to network and learn at the event. SaaSx is different though. Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t attend the event! You hate criticism! SaaSx is all about learning. The …
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From Bootstrapped to Angeled : Is it your idea or product ?
You’ve shaped up your business idea to flag off. You have a pool of talent believing in that idea and lined up with working prototype with feedback. Now, it’s time for funding to take your idea to concept to design to product to a successful business. Depending on the idea, startup projects can be particularly …
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Survival is not enough: #SaaSx4
Note: SaaSx is an invite only event, for SaaS founders, by SaaS founders. Are you ready to push beyond SaaS survival? Are you all set for Chennai on March 17th? The SaaS world is changing. Niches are breaking out, the number of SaaS startups is increasing by the day. Competition is fierce and being SaaS …
Place of Effective Management (POEM) of a business
Finance minister had announced during budget 2016 that place of effective management (POEM) will determine if a company is resident in India or not. Accordingly, this was notified in Finance ACT 2016 as under. The details of what will determine the place of business rules was not decided in the Finance Act 2016. The POEM …
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Survival is not enough if you are a SaaS founder in India
In an explosive SaaS market with entries from all over the world, survival is not enough. “Survival is not Enough” is the theme of #SaaSx4, scheduled for 17th March in Chennai, and like last time we are heading to the beach. 🙂 SaaSx is a community for SaaS founders by SaaS founders, so if you are just contemplating …
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Why No One Responds To Your Customer Success Managers
Who am I writing this for: people who are building or managing a Customer Success function. What’s my key point: your CSMs need to provide value, and for that it’s better they specialize based on industry (or business-type) versus round-robin or regional distribution. Our experience with the Hubspot CSM When we bought Hubspot as our marketing …
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Startup Playbook for Potential Strategic Partnerships
We spoke to couple of Indian product founders (who went through M&A or strategic investments) and friendly lawyers to extract advice on tips that they will keep in mind when making their next deal. Two key things emerged Unlike a product sale where the value to different buyer is roughly the same, in case of companies …
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How limited access to paid tools as a startup made me realize the need for a community
When I started out as an entrepreneur the journey was fueled by big dreams that were perhaps a bit too daring. It wasn’t smooth sailing and early days were tough. Life in a startup is dotted with challenges that can be overcome only by sacrifice. Bootstrapping required a lot of restraint – both professionally and …
I am the Product Manager
Of the various hats I have worn all these years – Founder, Sales guy, Deployment Specialist, Level 1 and Level 2 Support, DevOps, Coder, Cheque depositor – I have come to realize I was a Product Manager all along – right from the get go. Putting a label on what you do is extremely important. …
A Framework For Building SaaS Products That Don’t Churn
When you say “reduce SaaS churn”, most people will immediately imagine tactics like drip email campaigns, great onboarding, customer marketing, gamification and automated alerts when users show signs of leaving. But this post is not about tactics. This post recognizes that users are smarter than any of the cute tricks we can come up with, and …
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Announcing #BeyondFounders – Connecting Entrepreneurs in need with Doers indeed.
As an eco-system builder, I’m always challenged with finding more Founders to contribute or help other early stage Founders. Normally, successful people have very little time to contribute and many a times, there is no formal platform which allows them to engage on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, our eco-system has many fake mentors and founders …
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Volunteer Hero: Vivek Raghavan
iSPIRT volunteers build public goods inspired by open-source Linux and Wikipedia. Our volunteers are selfless, committed and conflict-free. They are animated by a burning cause. One such cause is about creating technology platforms that will help make India a Product Nation. Building a successful country-scale technology platform is hard. And doing this as an open …