We are now only about 90 days away from what will be a first of many sorts in the Indian ecosystem. The #PNgrowth camp at the Infosys campus in Mysore will be the first long-term program ever initiated for product startups in India. That much has been established. But at the Google hangout we were in yesterday, where we talked about what to expect at #PNgrowth and the process by which we were screening applicants, there arose a question that needed to be answered.
Some of our applicants are asking themselves about the need for a program like this when they have already been getting a lot of insights from our hugely successful Playbook RTs and other events.
I just wanted to make clear the difference between them, as they are both completely different beasts.
First, on content
The Playbook RTs are solutions for the problems that startups face in the here and now. Startups have an extraordinary amount of daily challenges and decisions to be made. Playbook RTs are designed to help founders and employees navigate them. On the other hand, the #Pngrowth camp is a long term mentorship/peer learning program that is focussed and has only one one aim – category leadership. The Playbook RTs are pointed, razor-sharp workshops, the #PNgrowth camp is a university course. The former will award you a diploma and send you off, the latter will give you an education for life.
Second, on numbers
Around 860+ people have, until now, been part of the Playbook RTs. The #PNgrowth camp will have only 200, and that’s it for the whole year. The #PNgrowth camp is selective, and open to product startups at a particular stage of their life cycle – when they need to scale. This selectiveness also means that we have to disappoint several startups who will want to join the program but aren’t in the perfect stage to. We intend to be very choosy here; this is a premier program whose graduates will come out with skills that can never be learnt elsewhere, and therefore it has to be this way.
Third, on the question of overlap
The Playbooks are tactical meetings almost, with different approaches aimed at something immediately tangible. #PNgrowth will design the architecture for the path ahead for startups looking to scale. Playbook RTs are peer-fuelled. #PNgrowth has a important component of academia involvement that will make sure that it succeeds as a long term program for improvement and action. Though the two can be complementary, they are definitely not substitutes. They are very different from each other, and aim to do two completely different things for the ecosystem.
I hope that makes clear the distinction between both of them.
Lastly, I’d like to stress once again the fact that #PNgrowth is going to be incredibly selective and there will be no last minute places. Each applicant goes through a screening process, and there will be no exceptions to that rule. Which means that if you are even slightly interested, please do apply immediately.