8KMiles in NEN-IIITB startup jobs event

Last week, my company (8KMiles) participated in the first ever NEN start-up jobs event in IIIT-B. It is a great feeling to go to your alma mater as a potential employer and actually hire some of the brightest and bravest students (brave because they made a conscious decision to join a start-up when they had a choice of taking up jobs with the big names in the IT industry).

The event was informal, interactive and an experience to remember. Lots of interesting views on taking up jobs in start-ups was shared by Prof.Sadagopan (IIIT-B), Mr. Sanjay Anandaram (Jumpstartup ventures), Mr. Sridhar(Techvoyant) and many others.

I mentioned things like low burn rate, higher risk taking ability early in the career and a great learning opportunity as determining factors for considering a position in a start-up. My technical team was amazed at the quality of the students and had a tough time in choosing one over the other.

Sincere thanks from me and my team to NEN, Prof.Sadagopan and Prof.Debabrata Das and the IIIT-B students and placement committee for giving us an opportunity to participate in this great event. Look forward to be there next year too…

More info about the event can be found here and here…

Sun Startup Essentials workshop – follow up post

This is a continuation from my previous post on Sun startup essentials workshop that happened in Bangalore a few weeks back. Misplaced the notes that I had written down and found it only now…that’s the reason for the delay!
Sanjay Nayak mentioned that the bandwidth availability in Indian homes (metros) should get to 10Mbps within 12-18 months. That would have a significant impact on ecommerce in India.
Sanjay Nayak’s keynote was followed by Sanjay Sharma’s talk on Sun startup essentials program. He stated off talking about why web 2.0 is not a bubble (lower entry barrier, online ad growth)
Sun is doing a great work with its Sun startup essentials program trying to help the startups with not just discounted Sun hardware and hosting but also engineering support absolutely free of cost. If you are building your startup on Sun platform, participating in SSE program would be of immense value.

Sanjay Sharma’s talk was followed by a panel discussion on technology choices for startups. No clear guidance came out of the discussion and so not worth writing about.

Next up was a panel discussion on Go-to Market strategy for start-ups. It was an interesting session where the panelists and the moderator discussed on things like Understanding customers (Awareness leading to Interest leading to Users who turn to remain Loyal), Time to Market, Tackling competition (through positioning) and Keeping the idea secure (Patents)

T.C.Meenakshisundaram of IDG ventures gave a short but effective talk on what is an investment ready business. The key points to consider according to him are:
1. Great team (3-4 founders covering the critical aspects of the business)
- Team should have worked together or studied together
- Have complimentary skills
- Think differently
2. Business Idea
- Disruptive businesses (3-5 companies in the business take 80-90% of the market share)
- Early stage
- Potential to be in top 3 in 24 months
- Faster, better, cheaper/ Taking advantage of intersection fo 2 businesses coming together
3. Proof of concept (have a prototype or early customers or launched with some traction)

Sun Startup Essentials workshop - part 1

As a member of TiE, Bangalore and Sun’s Startup Essentials Program, I was invited for the SSE workshop that happened in Bangalore on 31^st May, 2008. It had many flavours starting with the key note speech to panel discussions to guest speeches to one-one sessions with VC’s. 

 

I had jotted down a few points from the meet. Will try to list list them out in this post and the next one.

Key note speech by Sanjay Nayak, CEO of Tejas networks:

Sanjay gave a background on Tejas and how they have got to where they are. His “lesson’s learnt”:

-         Set a grand vision but stay focussed.

o       Set aggressive but realistic milestones

o       Critical to focus on few things but try to be the best in it

o       Start-up should think themselves as a “zero billion dollar” company

-         Markets/customers:

o       Global ambitions starting from India

o       Be open to partnerships for a global reach 

-         Sustainable advantage through aggressive R&D and innovation

-         Team is the Key

o       High-energy talent (need not be IIT’s) with a “can-do” attitude

o       High quality board of directors

o       Regular communication and updates

-         Funding

o       Quality of investors is important. They must understand, appreciate and add value to the business

o       Always take more funding than less!

He also mentioned about the Chinese competition (Huawei, ZTE) and how tough it is to compete with them because of the unfair government support they get. (He mentioned about a friendly credit policy where these companies don’t have to bother repaying them…don’t think it can get any friendlier!)

 

The key note was followed by a talk on the SSE program by Sanjay Sharma, Worldwide Director of the SSE program. Will cover that along with the other things in the next post…

Jack Welch on the characteristics of a CEO

Mint newspaper (www.livemint.com, a business newspaper in partnership with WSJ), has a very insightful column called “Winning” by Jack and Suzy Welch. In one recent column, Jack had mentioned 5 main characteristics to look for in a CEO:
1. Vision: Ability to see around corners, probe consensus thinking and swiftly make a change when the market demands it.
2. Leadership: Track-record with people: How one supports and guides people who are working with him/her.
3. Crisis-management ability: Experience and courage to overcome a crisis. How one successfully handles oneself in the midst of heavy criticism.
4. Runway: To continuously see the organization and its future with fresh eyes.
5. Authenticity: Genuinely excited in watching people grow, candid and listens to people.

Good traits to nurture in anyone aiming for the top job…coming from Jack Welch, have to be looked at seriously..

Interesting slideshows- SlideShare

SlideShare is a great plcae to go for a whole load of presentations on different topics. Worth giving it a shot.

Came across 2 very interesting slideshows in SlideShare.

One is titled ”Bad to Worse” - a short guide for start-ups. It explains in a very crisp and to the point manner the things that a startup needs to do so as to avoid going down the drain…

The second one is on marketing: specifically, the way forward in marketing and advertising. This one too is a very informative deck that gives a good understanding on marketing, branding and advertising. A few important observations

-the product should have marketing embedded into them. Simply put, build a remarkable product, marketing will happen on it’s own. 

- Have great/engaging content

- Have some utility value for the consumer

- Be a part of the web 2.0 movement to be on top of things. Watch the slides for more info

Branding - Kotler

I’m currently reading the book- “Marketing insights from A to Z” by Philip Kotler. The book is a collection of some of the key concepts in marketing identified by Kotler. One of the chapters is about Branding and I have tried to list out a few key thoughts mentioned in the chapter.

•  The sign of a great brand is how much loyalty or preference it commands.
•  Brands are built holistically, through the orchestration of a variety of tools, including advertising, PR, sponsorships, events, social causes, clubs, spokespersons and so on.
•   A new brand should strive to establish a new category, have an interesting name, and tell a fascinating story.
•  Learning about a brand from others creates credibility. Learning about it only through paid advertising is easy to dismiss because of the biased nature of advertising.
•  Great brands are the only route to sustained, above-average profitability. And great brands present emotional benefits, not just rational benefits. And in the future, great brands will show social responsibility – a caring concern for people and the state of the world. 

In my start-up, we are trying to create a new brand and are following the prescription mentioned in the highlighted point above. We are trying to establish a new category; we think we have an interesting name (8kmiles is our start-up name;let me know if you didn’t find it interesting) and we would soon be telling a fascinating story…

Back from a lengthy hiatus…

I have not been doing enough justice to my blog of late. There were no posts for quite a while. Things like naming the company, working on the registration, hiring and whole lot of other stuff took most of the time and blogging took a back seat.

Most of the said things are getting settled and I would be back to regular blogging from now on (hopefullyJ)

 

The start-up as I had mentioned earlier, is getting incubated out of IIM-B. We have named our start-up as 8KMILES. It is an abbreviation for 8000 miles, which is the approximation of equatorial/polar diameter (of earth, of course!). Before you jump to any conclusions, let me make it clear that 8KMiles is not a travel/automobile portal. Check out our website (www.8kmiles.com) for some teaser info about what we are planning to do.

 

My Start-up @ iim-b

It’s official…Me and my team have got the approval for our start-up to be incubated out of NSRCEL in IIM-B…We would officially inaugurate the office on Friday (15^th).

 

This is a great achievement for us. We value it a lot for many reasons. Most importantly, we see this as an approval of our idea (from people like N.S Raghavan, Prof. Kalyani Gandhi, Prof. K. Kumar and 4 other eminent people)…As I had mentioned in a previous post(http://paddydefies.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/nsrcel-iim-b/), there are lots of benefits to being incubated in iim-b (space, library, access to professors and consultants etc). It feels invigorating to be working out of a calm and super serene location right inside Bangalore city (calm and serene and Bangalore are becoming an oxymoron these days!). We would try to optimally leverage the facility (In fact, I already had a good and very useful 3 hour in the library today!) in the days and months to come.

Watch out for us…

Ten Commandments of Branding

In Citizen Brand, Mark Gobe (author of Emotional Branding) lists out Ten Commandments that help in creating a long term emotional relationship with people.

The Ten Commandments are listed below:

These commandments seem to be common sense stuff but we hardly find companies implementing them (reminded of “commonsense is not quite common”). If understood and implemented in the right manner, these commandments would have a profound and positive impact in the way people connect with the brand.
IMHO, everyone in the team (UI designers to system architects to marketers) needs to appreciate the value of these commandments.

NSRCEL @ iim-b

If you think you have a great idea (if you don’t who else would!!!), and you live in India (better still if you are in Bangalore) and you have made the start (in terms of identifying your core team, understanding the market, framing the business model etc) but bogged down by the need for resources (like place (thaz a huge thing in Bangalore), computer, internet connectivity, professional help for marketing, strategy et al) you don’t have to worry a wee bit. NSRCEL is there for your rescue.

It is an initiative of iim-b with support from corporate and individuals (N.S Raghavan, co-founder of Infosys) that aims to provide start-ups (primarily) with a platform to kick start their activities. You can find a lot more about them on their website (http://www.nsrcel.org)

NSRCEL has been around for quite a while now and in the process has incubated a lot of companies (We are trying to have our start-up incubated out of there … We have crossed the first few stages. Still some way to go though…). From my own personal experience, I can say that the people in NSRCEL (Prof. Kalyani Gandhi specifically) are very courteous and more than willing to help budding entrepreneurs realize their dreams.

NSRCEL and other institutes (like iiit-b, iisc) are doing a great service in trying to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. We need more of these support system if we have to go anywhere near what Silicon Valley has achieved.

The downside of all this: You have one less excuse to be confined to your cubicle in the office!!!