PNFT Updates

February 2019 Update

 Dear ProductNation Tribe,

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – Charles Dickens (A tale of two cities).

This could very well be the quote at the end of the year. 2019 is poised to be a time of opportunity as well as risk. We had outlined the 3 Shifts for SaaS at SaaSx5, and recently shared more color on the AI/ML Gold Rush at SaaSBoomi.

For both our global SaaS and Bharat entrepreneurs iSPIRT ProductNation has several playbook sessions scheduled for this month and next. 

Poster Session and Fireside Chat with Don Norman

Don Norman is a living legend in the world of design. His book Design of Everyday Things is considered a bible within the design community. We have 2 amazing invite-only sessions scheduled with Don.

Platform Products Roundtables

The distinction between building a platform or product is a very thin line. It impacts your product, organization, users & value creators in the industry. This is what 20 people huddled in a board room debated on 31-Jan (click to read). Stay tuned for our second roundtable on the same topic.

Mavens: Avlesh Singh, Shivku Ganesan, Sampad Swain, and Arpit Singh.

iSPIRT is announcing the first AI/ML Teardowns

Most startups on the AI/ML journey grapple with their data readiness to deliver the promised value to their customers. If you are doing trials or you are building your 1.0 AI-enabled product this deep teardown could be super beneficial.

Mavens: Adarsh Natarajan, Shrikanth Jagannathan, Puneet Jindal, Ramesh Loganathan.

Building for Bharat – Digital Sky Roundtable

The Indian government recently launched Digital Sky – an enabling platform for Drones. Learn about the new regulations, explore strategies on how to win by attending the

Mavens: Tanuj Bhojwani

Deep Strategic Partnerships 2019

Strategic partnerships have the potential to blossom into investments or acquisitions, which are healthy markers of a mature startup eco-system. Resuming our  M&A/PSPConnect & StartupBridgeIndia partnership program, we are 
Additional Roundtables on various topics are in the works and details will be shared soon. If you know of other entrepreneurs in your network who would also benefit from either of the playbook roundtable tracks above, request you to please forward.

January 2019 Update

Wishing all of you a Very Joyous and Prosperous 2019!

This year our goal is to build momentum in supporting the ecosystem through all major transformations, be it AI/ML, Platforms, Partnerships, or Leapfrogging for Bharat (did you read about our intense discussions in our last Digital Sky RT?)

Transforming B2B SaaS with Platform Thinking Roundtables

We are beginning 2019 by kicking off a new playbookRT track which focuses on product platforms. As global B2B customers become increasingly digital savvy, they are looking for comprehensive solution which supports high interoperability, intuitive experience, and seamless data flow across multiple products and solutions in their workflow.
Very few SaaS startups in India have transformed using a platform approach. Avlesh Singh (WebEngage) our core Maven, will facilitate an intense sharing & learning roundtable on how a platform approach can catalyze sustainable growth. If you are a SaaS startup which is ready to leverage platform thinking best practices, you may want to register here for the 31-Jan Transforming with Platforms RT.

AI/ML Teardowns

We are designing our next level of roundtables picking up from our #WhyAI for SaaS roundtables. This next series of roundtables will help startups with a critical review of their AI/ML approach, a 360° honest-to-goodness review across the value proposition, data collection & processing strategy, ML models, and more. If you are a startup wanting to take advantage of such a review with early AI/ML experts from the startup ecosystem, please register here for one of our yet to be announced AI/ML Teardown for SaaS sessions.

Deep Strategic Partnerships 2019

Strategic partnerships have the potential to blossom into investments or acquisitions, which are healthy markers of a mature startup eco-system. Resuming our  M&A/PSPConnect & StartupBridgeIndia partnership program, we are inviting applications for 2019 PSPConnect program. Space is limited so do apply at the earliest. 
 
We will also announce a series of RT on Operational Partnerships shortly, do stay tuned.

Bharat Playbooks

Stay tuned for more sessions on Bharat Playbooks – If you are an entrepreneur focusing on Building products for the Bharat then please register your interest in the Digital Lending & Digital Sky (Drones) for Bharat.

December 2018 Update

Dear Founders and Friends,

As we approach the end of the year & upcoming holiday season, we are glad to share that our playbook roundtables are increasing in momentum and scope.
For Bharat entrepreneurs we have sessions to go deep on Digital Financial & Lending services, the Drone Infrastructure and large awareness of Unlocking innovation for Bharat. Here’s a fantastic video by Pramod on Building for Bharat.
For global B2B SaaS entrepreneurs we also initiated a series of roundtables on building key strategic partnerships. While sales & operational partnerships are a necessity for growth, identifying and driving key strategic partnerships have the potential to unlock significant growth & value.

Deep Strategic Partnerships (Bangalore) & Announcing New Cohort 2018-19

Strategic Partnerships is one of the Three shifts for SaaS and Vijay Rayapati, Founder – Minjar provided very grounded insights on partnership building at our annual – SaaSx5. Deep strategic partnerships also have the potential to blossom into investments or acquisitions. And, meaningful investments and exit cycles are healthy markers of a mature startup eco-system. We are curating the following Roundtable for SaaS companies: 
 
Dos & Don’ts for Strategic Partnerships on 17-Dec in Bangalore will be facilitated by our maven Vinod Muthukrishnan (Founder – CloudCherry)
 
iSPIRT has also been running the M&A/PSP Connect partnership program since 2013 and we are announcing our next batch of approx 20 startups for 2018-19 cohort. To Apply for the 2018-19 programme, Please click here.

An Interactive Session On New Market Opportunities for Bharat Market (Delhi – Gurgaon)

As part of our playbook series, We are hosting an interactive session on ‘Unlocking New market opportunities using Platforms‘ that can power to transform the way we function as a nation at WeWork, Gurugram.
 
If you are interested to attend and be part of the exciting Digital transformational journey, Register right away. 

India’s New Drone Regulations Symposium Roundtable (Bangalore) 

The govt is soon to launch Digital Sky – an enabling platform for Drones. With the new regulations kicking in, find out the following focus

  • Who will be the winners and who will lose?
  • What is the best long-term winning play for your startup?

Join other companies and the iSPIRT team behind Digital Sky in our playbook roundtable to know more here.

Please reach out to [email protected] for any queries on these and upcoming playbooks in your area.

November 2018 Update

Welcoming the new year post Diwali, we wish you all a Prosperous Year ahead! Please read ahead for updates on our past and upcoming playbook roundtables on AI/ML for SaaS, Potential Strategic Partnerships, Building for Bharat and more.

AI/ML for B2B SaaS roundtables

We conducted 3 WhyAI/ML for SaaS roundtable over the last month in Chennai w/ Shrikanth Jagannathan (PipeCandy), in Bangalore with Viral Shah (Julia), and in Delhi with Adarsh Natarajan (AIndra) and Puneet Jindal (Rategain/Eduwaive). All 3 sessions were very different but went deep with the attendees to give some quality insights into their use cases. 
One takeaway – “The Data Maturity curve (courtesy Manish Singhal) set the right framework to think about our AI/ML approach“.
Another myth-busting takeaway – “hearing problems from different domains and still applying the same data science workflow to all of the scenarios“.

We’ll post more of the learnings from each shortly. If you are interested in future RTs on this topic, please register your interest here, it will help us schedule appropriately.

Deep Strategic Partnerships 2018-19

Strategic Partnerships is one of the 3 shifts for SaaS. Vijay Rayapati provided very grounded insights on partnership building at SaaSx5. We are excited to kickoff this playbooks track with 2 roundtables:

Deep strategic partnerships have the potential to blossom into investments or acquisitions, which are healthy markers of a mature startup eco-system. We are resuming our  M&A/PSPConnect partnership program for the coming year.

Inviting applications for 2018-19 PSPConnect program .

Space is limited to 20 startups so do apply at the earliest. 

Playbooks for Bharat

If you are an entrepreneur focusing on Building products for the Bharat then you will be interested in 2 upcoming playbooks to help build awareness and leverage the opportunities via Digital Lending & Digital Sky (Drones) for Bharat.

EngageMint – Marketing Automation Event

If you or your team are looking for deep actionable insights on Marketing Automation, we believe EngageMint, hosted by WebEngage, may be a good learning event. The intent of the event is to help you and your marketing/product managers interact with best practices in user engagement and retention marketing. You can register for your invite here.

Spread the word, Grow the tribe

If you know of other entrepreneurs in your network who would also benefit from either of the playbook roundtable tracks above, request you to please forward. 

October 2018 Update

Hi PNFT Friends,

The months of September-October onwards mark a series of significant festivals and holidays across our communities – from Muharram to Diwali to Christmas. The current festival of Navratri or Nine Nights signifies power, wealth, prosperity and knowledge. To help with knowledge and growth we have also planned a series of playbook roundtables for Entrepreneurs.

WhyAI/ML for B2B SaaS Roundtables

The 6-Oct MiniRT on AI/ML for SaaS and went deep with 5 startups with Shrikanth Jagannathan in the PipeCandy office in Chennai (known as the B2B SaaS capital in India).
“Don’t dilly-dally on AI/ML. Get Going” & “Take small steps, don’t need big investments to get started”, were a couple of takeaways from the cozy yet insightful session.
Based on feedback & growing interest we have set up the AI/ML for B2B SaaS MiniRT in Bangalore on 18-Oct (today) with Viral Shah and in Delhi-NCR on 17-Oct with Adarsh Natarajan. If you or founders you know are interested please Click to Register (or request) for the AI/ML Playbooks Track.

Deep Strategic Partnerships Playbooks Track

Strategic Partnerships is one of the 3 shifts for SaaS and Vijay Rayapati provided very grounded insights on partnership building at SaaSx5. Continuing our investment in this track, we are announcing the Strategic Partnerships 2018-19 Roundtables starting with Bangalore on 24-Nov with Abhishek Kumar. Stay tuned for more details on this RT track.
Additional Roundtables on various topics are in the works and details will be shared soon.
 

November 2017 Update

Dear PNFT friends,

Thought I would share the work on our playbook roundtables and upcoming activities.

Product Teardown Roundtables (click to read post)

We had two sessions of our teardown series in Chennai on 4-Nov and Bangalore on 11-Nov. We invited a small set of companies for a deep immersion of 4+ hours each. 13 companies across the 2 cities participated and are leveraging some awesome insights from our moderators and each other.
The Chennai RT was moderated by Suresh (KiSSFLOW), Bharath (FreshWorks), you can hear the intro by Suresh on this post. Niraj (Hiverhq), Amit (Prime Ventures), Sree(Accel), Amarpreet (Frrole) moderated the session in Bangalore. Some comments from the Chennai and Bangalore sessions:
” Had great insights, got different perspectives on how customers think. good work.
” Brilliant product teardown today. Learned loads and met awesome startups.
” The feedback was genuine and should be helpful for everyone present today.

Upcoming teardown sessions

  • This week a session is planned in Delhi on 18-Nov. Last day to apply is today.
  • Next week a session is planned in Hyderabad on 25-Nov. Registrations are open do apply.
  • Session in Pune/Mumbai is under planning, please do apply and register your interest with us.
If you are ready or know someone who would be interested in growing through this journey, please do register or help them to register here. Since there are limited seats, we would request you to kindly apply at the earliest.

GDPR Workshop (click here to read more)

Some of you may know about the upcoming rollout in EU of the General Data Protection Regulation. If you are operating in the EU or if any of your customers are operating in the EU, GDPR applies to you. iSPIRT and Microsoft are conducting a GDPR workshop for founders to demystify the GDPR and help understand the steps required towards compliance. Apply here using the Registration Form.

SaaS 2017 Survey, launching on 15-Nov!

The third edition of the popular SaaS survey is coming? If you found the results of the 2016 SaaS survey valuable please help us make the upcoming survey more meaningful and relevant. This survey is an annual exercise conducted jointly by SignalHill and iSPIRT to gather valuable data for drawing insights which help various stakeholders in the ecosystem understand this space better.
We will be providing a link to this year’s survey very soon in an upcoming blog post, stay tuned.

Call for Volunteers

iSPIRT playbook roundtables credo of for the people & by the people continues to be held high. We are looking for volunteers who are passionate about giving back to the community, from sharing their success stories and helping fledgling startups grow faster, to helping create and execute these Deep-immersive, Peer learning sessions for our Founders tribe. If you or someone you know is interested please help connect me with them.