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Playbooks is one of the key pillars of iSPIRT bouquet.

Playbook in iSPIRT denotes entrepreneurial learning meant for Indian software product startups to become world class and be successful.

Roundtable is a format of learning intended for startups that have reached a happy confused stage. In this format 8-12 non competing startups are brought together to discuss deeply on a topic that holds them from jumping to their next level.A facilitator, who is an in the saddle entrepreneur deep dives on the topic by becoming metaphorically naked and shares his experience and gets a peer discussion going on the topic.Coaching including peer coaching happens through multiple mode – judgement of the discussion (VC mode), sharing experience (Sage on Stage), being a mirror (Guide by the Side). Playbook Roundtable tend to be more of the last category of mirroring.

playbook-ispirtThink of this as group study for 7th class students in an age where there no school & teacher and one has to pass the 10th standard board exam. Some one who has done that leads the group study.

Playbooks have a longitudinal impact so they are tracked via an input metric.  At the end of every roundtable session a Net Promoter Score (NPS) is calculated via survey, the average NPS score of last 85 roundtable that were held is about +80. (iPhone as a product has an NPS of +71).

Roundtable was initially architected by Shankar Maruwada, Ashish Gupta, Vivek Subramanian & Aneesh Reddy. Some learnings from past roundtable are captured here

Key organizing principles behind creating playbook roundtables

  • In the saddle entrepreneurs are the best to teach upcoming ones. Age, company brand plays no role.
  • Quality > Quantity which means traditional format of 1 to 100 classroom style  and metric of footfall attendance should be questioned.
  • Safe environment are absolutely necessary to have deep discussion.
  • Curation is highly important, ie. have non competing participants and bring people together in similar stage of startup growth.
  • A facilitator and organizer checklist.

I have had the privilege to shadow about 40 of 85 roundtables that have happened in last 3 years. If I describe it as saying that gold dust of the tacit knowledge gets shared it won’t be an exaggeration. Chatham rules apply in a roundtable i.e. to protect the safe environment no quote is attributed to a person. However this deck those captures some of the discussed tacit knowledge as directives

A good mental model to decide which roundtables can be used from the market map

2-3-map-by-rajan

Check details at the events section in PN blog

Playbooks is more than roundtable

The initial focus of Roundtable was happy confused product startup founders a later realization was that playbooks will need to extend across the spectrum of entreprenuership lifecycle.

kindergarden   > discovery (1st to 7th std) > happy confused (7th std) > pre-scale (10th std) > pre-growth(pre college)

Playbooks Progression
Playbooks Progression

 

Some of these additional formats emerged

Playbooks sets down one of the most critical foundation layer for India to be product nation.

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#TheWayForward for M&A in India

2013 was a hot year for Global Technology M&A:   204 announced Tech M&A deals took place at an overall valuation of ~$100B, of which 70% were pure software companies. Thanks to a strong stock market, 51 Tech IPOs took place in 2013.

The story for the India software product industry has been different. Despite huge innovation and rising entrepreneurship, most Indian product companies have lacked meaningful exits.

ThinkNext CorpDev PanelLast Friday, I hosted the M&A Panel at Microsoft Think Next in Bangalore, with a very interesting setup: 2 VCs, 2 entrepreneurs and 2 Corp Development folks from MNCs.   The theme of the discussion was “The way forward for M&A for the Software products out of India”.    Our star panel consisted of Ashish Gupta (Helion Ventures), Bharti Jacob (Seedfund), Ken Foo (Autodesk), Prashant Gupta (Microsoft), Sanjay Shah (Invensys Skelta) & Phani Sama (Redbus).   We had a marquee audience of VCs from IDG, Lightspeed, Qualcomm, Inventus etc. who contributed their insights and really made the discussion lively!

Here is a glimpse of the insights generated during the panel:

– “Discovery” continues to be problem #1 for India software product companies.  Most Indian startups don’t show up on the radar of the big US acquirers. Autodesk first discovered Qontext (their marquee acquisition in 2012) through analyst reports in the US, and didn’t know they were an India company until later in the process.
– Corp development folks are mostly agnostic to the location of the company.  As Ken Foo from Autodesk put it, “we don’t start our day thinking:   today I will acquire an Israeli company … or an Indian company”.  They are looking for a specific product or technology fit & location is secondary.
– One interesting insight was the Investment bankers didn’t really seem to play a role during the discovery process, and all of the participants (buy side, VCs and entrepreneurs) felt that startups shouldn’t expect a banker to help with strategic engagements.  iBanks do play an important role in helping negotiate the deal and running the process to a positive conclusion.
– Acqui-hires (acquisitions with the sole intent of acquiring engineering talent) are extremely hot right now, due to the shortage of big data, analytics & android/iOS engineers.  Obviously, VC investors are less excited about acquihires & view them as a “last option”.  As Ashish put it, a VC will entertain an acquihire deal only when he believes that scaling the company is no longer possible, and the company is in danger of running out of cash.  On the other hand, Corp development folks at the MNCs view acquihires as a ‘badge of pedigree’ for the founders!
– Entrepreneur readiness continues to be a challenge during the M&A process.   Indian entrepreneurs traditionally are techies and don’t spend time building a clear differentiation story or preparing themselves for organizational and financial diligence.  iSPIRT does offer an “M&A hotline” to entrepreneurs where we formally provide advice in the event of an inbound M&A interest.
– A new generation of MNCs: Traditionally, MNC companies have established captive R&D centers in India (eg: Intel, Cisco) and then looked at M&A to enter the India market or identify new technologies.   However, the panelists beleived that M&A activity in software products will be driven by a new generation of MNC companies, such as Facebook, Salesforce, Autodesk etc. who have limited or no presence in India, and are looking to use M&A as a means to acquire global talent and/or establish a presence in India
– Future M&A:  Based on the “Virtual Mandates” that iSPIRT has received, we believe that future technology M&A is likely to happen in the areas of Machine Learning & Analytics, SaaS disruptions like HR and Recruiting, Cloud Infrastructure & Mobility.   Companies that have aggregated large groups of customers & partners within India (small medium businesses, classifieds, consumers for finance etc.) are also interesting for acquirers.

I enjoyed the frank conversation & clear thinking from the panelists, and left with a  huge amount of learning and ideas that I will use to guide iSPIRT’s M&A connect program.