As we build (software) products, the competition is something that we need to stay ahead of, but how? Especially building products for different markets, you always have others building similar products for probably same or different markets. There are already established products that you have to compete with, there are other products that are …
M & A Connect Roundtable on Structuring and M&A
Couple of key points that emerged during recent acquisition of startups have been issues related to structuring of the company. Anil Advani of Inventus Law walked us through these issues in a roundtable organized by iSPIRT M & A connect program at the Microsoft Accelerator venue. Many key aspects such as taxation (especially in the …
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Why product startups need to pay serious attention to brand name and logo design
A logo is one of the most visible faces of your brand. In other words, the logo is most likely to be your most frequent and most visible brand representative. Ideally, a logo should clearly state the following: Who you are What you do How the logo is designed and how well the messaging is …
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Global Lean Sales – Selling your software online to global markets, without field-force #PlaybookRT
Last week I was going through the startup class videos and one particular statement by Sam Altman stuck with me. He said “All successful founders are fanatics”. And YCombinator has seen a whole bunch of them. The way he puts it is very awesome, let me reproduce the statement here: “The word fanatical comes up …
Early Stage Start-up? Your Chance to Get Market-Ready and Mentored by the Best Brains in the Business!
After a successful launch in 2013, TiE Bangalore’s AnthahPrerana is back with a bang! It is not another business plan competition. Think of it as an idea booster. We pick the 10 best unfunded startups in commercial and social sectors, mentor them and get them market ready for exponential growth. Last year, the who’s who …
3 Reasons Why Start-ups Should Invest in Content Marketing
Today, a stream of regular and engaging content can get people talking about any organization. While this is definitely good news for start-ups, the reality is that they often don’t have the time, resources or know-how to turn their organization into a lean, mean content marketing machine. Just like that, developing content often gets relegated …
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Cropin – Transforming agribusiness sector by leveraging ICT
Cropin Technologies are one of the leading players in the niche and emerging agribusiness startups. Krishna Kumar, CEO of Cropin shares his journey and perspectives with Product Nation in this discussion. Read on… You are among a niche set of startups that have focused on agribusiness opportunities. Could you provide an overview of your organization …
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Innovate on the Product, Not on the Business Model
Entrepreneurs from Bangalore had no problem driving into Chennai amid a tense political situation in Tamil Nadu. There was an air of expectation and enthusiasm on the part of more than 15 entrepreneurs who had come in from Bangalore and Mumbai, apart from Chennai itself, to listen to Girish Mathrubootham, Freshdesk CEO and founder, for …
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When you lose the business in B2B sales
If we only understand sales, we’re just salespeople to our prospects and nothing more. We can’t just be experts in selling. We need to be experts in our customers’ industries, too. When we understand the overall industry, prospects’ business, and their specific issues, we become business experts. That’s the key to selling value, and that’s …
Flipkart – Lessons for “Make in India”
Disclaimer : This article is entirely based on my reflection on what I read in the media It was exciting and encouraging to experience the marketing campaigns of Flipkart’s billion dollar day and painful and demoralizing to witness pitfalls. I completely empathize with Sachin and Binny who had to write an unconditional apology letter to …
Product Evangelism for B2B Startups
If you are a B2B startup building an innovative enterprise product, it’s the dream of millions of users that keeps you going in the initial days. Sometimes however, as you acquire early customers and users for your product, it seems that the demands they make and attention they seek is almost distracting you from your …
Make in India – A Social and Cultural Revolution starting at Home
Delighted and enthusiastic to hear and read about the “Make in India” initiative by PM Modi. I came back to India after a short stay in Qualcomm, USA in 1995 to start a software company, to ship software that is made in India to USA. Along with my brothers Sridhar and Sekar, we started our journey with Vembu Systems. The passion and drive then was to create a software product …
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Bootstrapping! Great or Bad?
Off-late, I have been seeing many articles on “Funded” V/S “Bootstrapped” models. Few articles have projected bootstrapped ventures as great in comparison to funded ones. I run a company that is profitable without any external funding and at times find it very odd with these sorts of comparisons. Many entrepreneur friends suggest me to continue …
Making the world flat, one programmer at a time. Vivek Ravishankar, Co-founder at HackerRank. #PNHangout.
I am one of the founders of HackerRank, formally called InterviewStreet, where we are building a platform for programmers to hone their skills and companies to streamline their recruiting process. Currently we are a team of 66 split across Palo Alto and Bangalore and we have been signing up companies like FB, Amazon, VMWare, Bloomberg, …
Internet’s Truth or Dare game of anonimisation
A while ago, I broke my self imposed “participate in only one social network policy” when I installed popular networking app Secret. It was out of sheer curiosity and an intention to experiment with its technology of anonymous social networking. The underlying premise is very interesting as the people participating are from your extended friend …
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