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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…

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Know your audience.

We, Indian entrepreneurs, can think big, can write code, can build a sustainable business, can raise money and we might as well make a successful exit but we still face challenges in making a 2 minutes presentation that would that would at least make the listeners curious about our startup.

I happen to attend an event recently wherein around 8 established and mostly funded startups presented to a billion $ US based company looking to partner/ acquire startups in India. Out of these, four startups kept on rambling about what they do, team, achievements, product details, technologies, etc. Two of them could not even explain their idea properly and the stakeholders were clueless even after 2 minutes talking by the founders. There was only one startup which did a decent job in explaining what they do and how they could help the targeting company. At every such event I have attended, the story is pretty much same – only 10%-20% of the entrepreneurs are able to make their case properly in a 2 minutes pitch. However crude that may sound, but we still haven’t learnt the art of selling.

The repercussions are actually much larger than we think. India’s VC/M&A ecosystem is still quite novice. We have handful of VC firms making a handful of deals every year. The number of successful exits through acquisition is much lesser and IPO happens once in a bluemoon. The onus is on every stakeholder of this ecosystem to help the ecosystem grow, both in size and maturity. So when some firangi folks from US come down to India hearing amazing stories about India, the first expression they get becomes really critical. Our product/ service may not be totally relevant to their business but our pitch should be kickass, so that when they go back, they should be thinking about how to leverage India more and invest more in India rather than having doubts about quality of startups and entrepreneurs here. In short, when we screw up the pitch, we screw up brand India.

And what’s more ironical is that, pitching should be one of the simpler tasks for an entrepreneur. The hard part is analysing the market opportunity, creating the product and making money, all of which we do pretty well. An entrepreneur should never underestimate the cruciality of a meeting, even if he is sure that nothing will come out of it. Some basic research and due diligence about the audience, putting oneself in their shoes, creating a customized presentation rather than an off-the-shelf investor deck, timing the deck and practicing it couple of times, etc. – these things should never be ignored. Basic Google search would give many good ppt templates that can be played with. Personally, I find the ones on 500startups website quite helpful. The story should be something like this:

–          Slide 1: What your company does. <Should be 1-2 lines – catchy and crispy clear>

–          Slide 2: How will partnering/ acquiring you help the company. <Very critical slide. Should be driven by various use-case scenarios and business impact creation>

–          Slide 3: Any case study (if available) about a similar partnership with another company

–          Slide 4/5: How have your operations grown since inceptions. Some data around founders, investors,  user-base, key clients, etc. and future roadmap <Ideally no technical stuff >

One can always keep more detailed slides about technology, architecture, etc. in the appendix and can share if the need be. An average of 30 seconds per slide would still consume around 2.5 minutes. So make sure you literally cram it by heart so that no time is wasted in reading through the slides while presenting. Even after this entire, an entrepreneur feels that he won’t be able to pull off the pitch, there is nothing wrong in handing the dais to a more capable candidate, even if he does not belong to VC/M&A ecosystem team.

There is a bigger picture here. All this is applicable is almost every walk of life. Be it job interview or a b-school interview or just a casual chat with some investor or probable client, we always tend to underestimate the importance of beforehand preparation and proactive viewpoint. Before stepping into any meeting, we should have a hypothesis and point of view based on it. Getting it wrong is better than not having it at all.

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Design in Indian Startups

A brief look at the state of the Indian startup ecosystem from the lens of design and how well it is understood or misunderstood. How the next generation of the technology startups are battling the design challenge in a globally connected ecosystem for the right consumer audience.

According to Dave McClure the founding team of a startup should include the holy trinity of a hacker, hustler and a designer. In simple terms a dream team comprising of members responsible for the technology, business/marketing and the design. Dave is no stranger to entrepreneurship or India, and as the founding partner at 500Startups (internet startup seed fund and incubator program based in Mountain View, CA) each of their accelerator programs have seen interest and presence from a number of Indian startups.

“Holy trinity of hacker, hustler and a designer”

This then begets the question of what exactly is an “Indian startup”? Unlike Israel a nation known both for its military prowess and high-technology startups along with the fact that it has the highest per-capita VC investment in the world. Startups in India like the nation itself conform to no unifying sector or theme. On one hand we have Delhi based Langhar helping connect foodies with authentic home cooked local cuisines on the other we see SarkariExam a portal dedicated to helping people find government jobs. Even after applying the filter of technology and technology enabled startups with their constantly blurring boundaries in the internet & mobile space, the bandwidth of the spectrum is still large.

If one goes by the estimates of AngelList, a platform dedicated towards the startups and the investors; there are 1500+ startups in India. This by no mean implies that all of them would be independently successful or have a profitable exit. Many of them would eventually shut shop and might not even exist the next summer. Despite this uncertainty and the increasing belief of Indian founders in their idea have led to a rising entrepreneurial activity. Catering to everybody from the hyper local audiences to products specifically built for the customers abroad. Helping us establish the fact that there is no single way to explain or define as to what constitutes an Indian startup. If question of the Indian-ness wasn’t tough enough the attention to design has increased the complexity of the understanding manifold. Invariantly a handful of startups like Cleartrip (travel), Zomato (food), Paytm (payment) and Hike (messaging) have become the poster boys for the best designed products being built in and in certain cases for India. This then progresses us to our next challenge of “What is design in the context of the startups and what is the role of the designer?”

Depending upon who do you ask, one is bound to get various forms and interpretation of what constitutes design? Making it easy to complicate things for the humble hackers and the hustlers trying to fathom as to why their designer is unable to deliver in the face of the challenge for their startup. Going over from formal the definitions provided in academic institutions of design being ‘a noun and a verb’ to the one followed by design practitioners whereby they try to highlight the difference between “art and design”. One thing that emerges is that, design has been and will always remain at its core a form of problem solving.

“Design has been and will always remain at its core a form of problem solving”

Had things been as black and white as they seem we wouldn’t have startups explaining their design strategy in terms of the visual design. Or in the case they understand the value of design keep looking for that one mythical designer who could solve all their problems. With the ever changing relationship and interaction of humans with technology; and it’s constantly evolving nature the boundaries of what explicitly is the job of a designer or the hacker is quickly overlapping.

Take the case of Rasagy Sharma who after finishing his undergraduate degree in computer science & engineering joined a Bangalore based startup as their UX Designer. One of the first ‘design’ hires in the team comprising of hackers, leading him to explain his role to the people around him. If the challenge of understanding what exactly entails in these new design roles wasn’t tricky enough, Rasagy highlights the emerging debate of ‘Should designers code?’ “The answers vary from the extremes of ‘Designers can code and should code’ to ‘Designer cannot code and is not expected to code’ with a comfortable middle ground emerging in the form of ‘Designer can code but is not expected to code’ ” says Rasagy.

“Designer can code but is not expected to code”

But if there is no one designer who can solve all of the problems of the startups which range from visual design & interaction design to in certain cases industrial design; and finding the talent is tough. Then shouldn’t we see the limited resources of the startups being spent on the function (technology) than form (design and by extension user experience)? One of the most interesting theme to emerge while talking to a number startups as a part of the research was their unanimous agreement in pushing design forward for their product. Neeraj Sabharwal who heads the design at the Hyderabad based NowFloats quotes Tom Peters when he says “The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to ‘tidy up’ the mess, as opposed to understanding it’s a ‘day one’ issue and part of everything.” Even in the case where the technical founders thought of design as nothing more than a marketing gimmick they did approve of increasing the resources dedicated to certain design activities by either hiring talent or outsourcing the process. And putting the bill under what they felt was the ‘cost of customer acquisition’.

The cost of starting an internet business is decreasing by the year and in no other period of history have we seen more entrepreneurial activity than the present. Faced with the simple market forces of consumer choice, a positive user experiences is a simple measure of how efficiently the technology works to help the user achieve his goals. In a somewhat surprising trend that in hindsight makes perfect sense, some of the best designed startups being built in the country include a designer as a part of the founding or the founders atleast have the design aesthetics in place to drive things forward.

Eventifier is being built in the southern city of Chennai at The Startup Center. Eventifier helps keep all the social media chatter around an event including the conversation, photos, videos, presentation decks in a single place. They are one of the few startups using the hacker, hustler and the designer approach since the day they began. Mohammed Saud holds the mantle of the Chief Design Officer and one would give weight to his belief when he says “Being equally proficient in all facets of design even when their underlying principle might be the same is difficult.” His solution is the one that is increasingly becoming common, become proficient in one form of design yet understands the other well enough to guide somebody with your vision. A similar ideology was put forth by Arun Jay, who amongst a number of other claims holds the post of the principle designer at SlideShare and the senior UX designer at LinkedIn. By academic training Arun began as a communication designer but his experience with film making, photography and web based technologies makes him the ideal choice for the unicorn designers so many startups look for.

But it wouldn’t be fun if there weren’t a few startups breaking the mould. HealthifyMe and NowFloats are two startups which were a part of the Microsoft Accelerator program in Bangalore. On one hand we have Neeraj Sabharwal from NowFloats with no formal training in the various disciplines of design yet relying on his industry experience and understanding of design thinking principles to lead the charge. On the other we have Tushar Vashisht co-founder of HealthifyMe attributing the fact that “Lack of a dedicated designer in the founding team even with the team valuing design, cost them precious resources in the decision making and product building exercise. With HealthifyMe treating the user experience as an integral part of the product building process getting Rohan Gupta as a designer onboard has positively affected our shipping time.”

But believing that a well-designed product is the end all in the product building exercise would be plain naïve. Design is one of the integral processes amongst the host of other responsibilities held by the hustlers and the hackers which make a product successful. Brij Vaghani is the founder of live traffic monitoring service, Traffline which currently operates in three metropolitan cities. His team is working in close association with a design studio for the soon to be launching next version of their product. “Even though we understood the value of design, the founding team relied upon our core strengths of technology in the early stages of the product. An approach which we feel might have had an impact on the metrics we use to track the product success but something that was within permissible levels”

Where are we headed? Great design and technology have always existed. The founders are still looking for that elusive designer who can handle all their design problems, but as unicorns go those beings are still rare to find. The consumer internet is nearly twenty years old, the smartphone nearly six and the tablet less than four. Yet the potential of the startups building upon and specifically for these platforms is seeing an exponential growth. We haven’t even begun scratching the surface of the potential and can’t predict the trajectory of the startup economy in India serving an internal audience of a billion plus people and catering to those abroad. But the fact remains that the designers seem to have finally found a voice and Indian startups are rearing for them to go.

Author’s Note: This article was written for a collaborative publication: Create Change for Kyoorius Designyatra 2013 produced by Kyoorius and British Council, India and is a part of British Council’s design writing programme.

The post has been slightly modified for the web by adding of the appropriate hyperlinks to the startups and the resources mentioned to aide the reader. You can download the PDF version of the print magazine in all its glory here. The article is on page sixty-nine.

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#ReversePitch “The day VCs pitch the Startups”

Depending upon who do you ask the question, the answer to “Indian Startup ecosystem has a shortage of good quality?” would oscillate between kick-ass investors and great customers. While the presence of both is crucial to validate the success of the startup, founders always seem to be cut-off from both of kick-ass investors. With India poised towards climbing up the entrepreneurial ladders, no wonder we would see more first generation product startups coming out of unheard Indian towns and cities.

With this in mind, the recent edition of #ReversePitch took place at 91SpringBoard. The premise is simple, at any conventional networking/demo event the startups are the ones pitching their ideas and its potential to a room full of investors. But by turning the tables in favor of the startups the idea of reverse pitch was born. Investors now make their pitches to a room full of potential startups as to why they are the best bet.

For those of you wondering whether this was another bout of “networking” and “gyaan” session by investors making tall claims for their funds haven’t seen Mukund Mohan in action. Seeing that the founders were taking time to warm up that too in a room full of people having the exact same question in mind. Mukund brought everybody at ease and what followed were interesting rounds of presentation by VCs and subsequent Q&A by the audience.


The questions were spread across the entire spectrum from the usual one on how to raise their seed fund to a startup specific. What tricked both the founders and the VCs were the most simplest of questions which required the greatest insights. Not many might have wondered about “How do VCs actually decide their investment amount?” or our personal favorite “Who gives money to the VCs?” The latter had the entire crowd glued should they find their secret!


With the wheel set in motion the post event discussion was full of its own share of fun. Where else can you find a startup sharing their experiences on raising their first round with a former-founder-turned-VCs chipping in to reminisce about his own life.


This was not the first time #ReversePitch took place in India and this will definitely not be the last time it takes place in Delhi. Nothing is more better than learning from shared experiences. For those of who missed the event can search for the official hashtag #ReversePitch on twitter and relive the moments and maybe even catch the VCs no hold barred in the after party!


A handy list of the VCs who presented at #ReversePitch in no particular order of their likeliness to fund your venture:

 


The pitch sessions was followed by networking with the investors and the community had an amazing time. Thanks to Subhendu(ReversePitch), Mukund, Mukul(Saif Partners), Apurv & for the 91Springboard team for putting together an amazing show. Stay tuned for some more excitement in the next few months!

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Find out what emerged when the Geeks met #Dilliwallas #GOAP

It was a usual Thursday morning, chaos at the Mathura Road, but once you got on to the 91SpringBoard office, you could feel the aroma of the paints, etc in the new office which is beautifully done and very colourful. Few guys were sipping their early morning coffee and some interactions by entrepreneurs and some folks who usually give gyaan to them:). Few minutes and you could see the geeks walking in, interacting the dilliwallas and then also trying to figure out a space where they can settle down.
Yatin from MoonLighting kicked of the session and the Geeks introduced themselves to the #dilliwallas. We had around 50-60 startups from dilli who were here to meet with the Geeks….some of the best startups in NCR were present and we had the Bangalore Product guy – Sharad Sharma who was there to set the ball rolling. He started his talk on how entrepreneurship is happening in the small cities of rural India, software products are being made in this New India. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore are seeming to be focusing on fixed templates, whereas the rural India’s innovation are more creative disruptions and they seem to be focusing on problems and therefore providing solutions to these problems. The guys in the smaller cities and rural areas are keeping a more open mind and are more willing to weather the storm and be persistent with product.

Don’t be dismissive of Small cities or Rural India, in the next 3-5 yrs the best start ups would be from here. A Revolution is happening in India similar to the mobile revolution – that is to do with the software as a service. Service being used by wide variety of segments from a big multinational to a small business. It is happening at a price point that will fit each and every need that is out there. India’s future is dependent on its small scale sector transforming itself and becoming competitive over time which is  based on three things –  The democratization of productivity which is happening of the mobile phones, democratization of  best practices which is going to happen in the software as a service and the third thing is building trust networks. This Revolution needs to be taken to the next level among ourselves by using the open source method which will help the industry to go forward. Creating communities of entrepreneurs to help solve the problems of fellow entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneur needs to give back to this community during the process of being successful and not only at the time of being successful. Sharad Co–founder iSPIRT seems to say what Mahatma Gandhi said of India at just before Independence —India does not live in its big cities but in the smaller cities and villages

Dave from 500 Startups takes centre stage and describes what they do by making a lot of small investments in tune of about $ 1-5 Million. The aim is not to own more than the 5% of the bigger companies. They know most companies may not see the entire life cycle therefore they do their do diligence well and invest quickly. The First tranch is the huge risk but the future investments are based on what they do with that money. Engaging with Communities of specialists in design, data and distribution which act as Elders or Mentors to these companies  help them grow. Usually the Distribution / Marketing aspect is the main factor which helps companies being successful.

Concepts of Marketing have changed dramatically compared to change in programming in the last 20 years. Therefore it is important to get the Marketing right. Entrepreneurs need to focus more on Marketing than on the programming. It is very important need to know the customer acquisition cost vis-visa-vie customer revenue being generated and the cost of financing the project for how long. Concentrate on the Indian Market, it will be easier to do business in an environment which you know of rather than a new international market of which you don’t know anything of. Things may not be that settled yet, but it will be in the next 3-5 yrs. Imagine if you are able to build now focusing on India and by the time support services improve, payment channels ease say in the next 3-5 years you as an entrepreneur will be able to go in for the kill. The Fruit will be ripe for plucking. Message : Look Inward and build slowly. Wait for the Time its just round the corner.

The Stage was set after two very insigntful speeches about what is yet to come. Kunal Bajaj then lead a B2B Space Panel Discussion with Ambarish Gupta from Knowlarity, Ketan Kapur of Mettl and Paras Chopra from Wingify  1)    How do you find the right person? Panel: The team was brought together through references and own networks. 2)    How do you market to customers? Panel – Start early, Be Focused and be Disciplined. 3)    How have you raised funds and raised capital? Panel – Raising debt in US much easier than in India. In India the process is Angel Money. But is important to know what your burn money is MOM enabling you pitch it right and get it.  Kunal then lead B2C Space Panel  Discussion with Aloke from Ixigo, Kavin Mittal from HIKE Mobile app, Rajat from SocialAppsHQ.

  • How do you find the right people and keep them engaged?
    Panel – The Challenge is to make people understand what a startup is. The Initial hiring was done through references and interactions through likeminded people. 
  • How do you market to customers and build Brands?
    Panel – Give swops on getting referrals to new clients. Understand your market clearly and go micro and specific.
  • How have you raised funds and raised capital?
    Panel – Raising debt and funds in US much easier than in India. In India to raise funds traction in business is very important. 

By the time the Panel finished answering the questions there was a group of over 55-60 people eagerly waiting to interact with them and the Geeks. 

 

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Geeks with Dilli Wallas

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. #GOAP is headed to India and after visiting Bangalore & Mumbai the geeks will be visiting Delhi from 27th to 2nd March ’13. We (91Springboard, ProductNation & Moonlighting) are hosting #GOAP while they are in Delhi. Come join us to meet the #GOAP team, most awesome startups & entrepreneurs in Delhi-NCR and other cool folks accompanied with a light lunch on 28th Feb ’13 from 11am to 2pm.

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is program initiated by 500 Startups, a startup accelerator from Silicon Valley. Through this initiative, founders Dave McClure and Christen O’Brien travel to technology markets with geeks and startup enthusiasts. The participants come from companies like GE, Wahooly, XG Ventures, SoftLayer, JESS3, Qualcomm Ventures, SendGrid, Google and more.

Tentative agenda:
1100 – 1115 hrs – Welcome & Introductions
1115 – 1130 hrs – Talk by Dave McClure – Go Local or Go Global (or both)
1130 – 1145 hrs – Talk by Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder, iSPIRT – Surfing the Innovation Wave
1145 – 1245 hrs – Lessons Learnt from Product Startups in Emerging Economies – Ambarish Gupta (Knowlarity), Aloke Bajpai (iXIGO), Kavin Bharti Mittal (Hike) Ketan Kapoor (Mettl), Paras Chopra (Visual Website Optimiser), Rajat Garg(SocialAppsHQ); Moderated by Kunal Bajaj – Advisor, iSPIRT Founder Circle
1245 – 1400 hrs – Networking Over Light Lunch with the Geeks

Venue: 91springboard

Entry free: Rs 500. Register Online. We have very limited seats, please do register online by filling up the form and we will confirm your participation. Here is an opportunity to meet and interact with the geeks. Register now to avoid disappointment. No on-site registrations will be allowed.