Xtreme Startups – a Non-Profit initiative to support / promote entrepreneurship is back again in Chandigarh with this months edition of Startup Evening.

Xtreme Startups is supported by Chitkara University, Morpheus Venture Partners (MVP) & Startupnews.in

This month Xtreme Startups will be on: June 20, 2009 Saturday

Between: 15:00 – 18:00hrs

Audience: Startup founders and select students

Discussion topic: Crossing the Chasm – how to scale the business once you have a few paid customers and initial traction. Everything from expanding the team, building products to raising funds and the challenges post that.

“Start-up Morning/Evening” events are organized with the support and help from a lot of friends in the startup community. Previous editions of the event have been held Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune.

If you want to bring XtremeStartups to your city / campus, do get in touch with us!

Format

• Event will be attended by 20-25 founders of start-ups from Chandigarh-tricity area and around 20-30 students
• The event brings together Startup Founders from the region to share experiences and interact with other start-ups in an informal manner
• The other guests, like you, will typically be experienced entrepreneur / investor / a person from the start-up ecosystem
• Participation is “invite only”, concentrated group of Startup Founders and others in the startup ecosystem
• There is no fee for attending the event

What will you gain from the event?

• Opportunity to interact with others in the startup ecosystem
• Share and learn from each others experiences in running businesses
• Potential to meet a business partner, investor, employee, etc.
• Opportunity to build a strong startup community in the Chandigarh Tri-City region

Want to be a part of this event?

Send a mail to nandiniATmorpheusventureDOTcom with a brief introduction about you and your venture.

Feel free to invite / bring along other entrepreneurs / startup founders you know.  Spread the word!

Tags: announcement, Chitkara University, entrepreneurship, morpheus venture partners, startup, startup evening, Startup event, startupnews.in, Xtreme Startups

The Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC), IIT Roorkee is organising a Startup Fair’09, in association with CSI, NSIT Delhi, to facilitate Startups to recruit.

Date:      Saturday, 25th April’09
Venue: Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT), Delhi

Tags: entrepreneurship, hiring, Startups

I am looking forward to participate in IIT Roorkee E-Summit @ 18-19 April 2009.  I am not taking my laptop, it will be a good break from my regular schedule, campuses are always good places to spend time at, students are so full of energy.

I am doing quite a few things as part of the event:

• Giving a talk  on “Accelerating your Startup“,
• Participating in a panel discussion  “What investors want?“
• Mentoring startups in the “Mentoring Clinic“
• And judging finals of the B-plan competition – ARTH

If you are planning to attend the summit, lets catch up this weekend @ IIT R.

Here are my notes for the talk on Accelerating your Startup, would love to get your inputs as well.

• Get out of planning and discussion phase
• Commit to deadlines
• Make decisions
• Execute, execute , execute
• Translating dreams to idea
• The art of zooming in: entrepreneurs always start with a grand vision, the art is to zoom into a small part of the vision and start by doing it well.
• Cost management,  Time management  (use tools like : spread sheets , desksway , white boards)
• Force yourself to release / launch fast
• Go get real users ->improve their life
• Start efforts to monetize the users
• Its possible to apply agile techniques to all parts of your business ( 2 week release cycles)
  • Agile Marketing
  • Agile Development
  • Agile Reading
• Ensure Quality, quality comes with care. Build products that are dream come true for your customers.
• While building your products, go around with your laptop, show it people in in cafe – get feedback, talk about it
• Measure, Measure, Measure – what can be measured can be managed
• The winning formula: 10L and 12 months
  • Upfront capital expense : 2 L
  • One year running expense @ 50 k / month = 6 L
  • Buffer: 2 L
  • Ensure revenues of company are higher than 50 k / month before the end of 12 months
  • You are cash flow positive, no dependencies on investors
  • You have got people to pay for your service / product – you are in good company (All of the long lasting tech companies figured the monetization very early : apple , google, ebay, paypal, MS, amazon , skype)
  • You have survied 1 year – you are on your way to success

Tags: Bootstrapping, E Summit, entrepreneurship, IIT Roorkee, Startups

CHANDIGARH

Chitkara University, one of the most popular educational institutes in the Punjab/ Chandigarh region, are initiating the First Open Cofee Club in Chandigarh.

The inauguration and and first OCC Chandigarh meetup is backed by Chitkara E-Cell (Entrepreneurial Development Cell).

Details below:

Date:       17 April, 2009

Time:      3pm to 5pm

Venue: Chitkara Corp Office, Plot No-11-12, Dainak Bhaskar Building, Sector-25D, Chandigarh

Nandini and I have been invited to interact with the OCC Chandigarh members.

If you are around, come by. Lets meetup and share our experiences as startup entrepreneurs!

Tags: announcement, Business and Economy, Chandigarh, Chitkara University, entrepreneurship, morpheus venture partners, Open Coffee club, Punjab, startup

Well – we did a media interaction yesterday in Chandigarh in collaboration with TiE to spread the world on entrepreneurship in the region and guess what? All three major newspaper have carried the article today

• Hindustan Times: Let’s Talk Business
• The Tribune: Recession override (Scroll down to find the article)
• The IndianExpress: What an Idea! (Link will be updated later. After looking for fifteen minutes I realized Indian express has not uploaded the today’s news paper on its website – now that’s an Idea which does not make sense to me)

Tags: Chandigarh, entrepreneurship, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, madhouse media, morpheus venture partners, MVP, nandini hirianniah, Punjab, sameer guglani, TiE, Tribune

The MVP team will be conducting a full day event on entrepreneurship  @ Lovely Professional University , on 2 April 2009, in collaboration with LPU & TIE. Details below. I am very excited about the event and look forward to interacting with the students.

LPU has built a state of the art campus near Jalandhar with around 30k students already attending various courses.Aadhaar Invite

Tags: Business Plan, entrepreneurship, LPU, MVP, startup eco system, Startup event, TiE

Just read the couple of articles written by Paul Graham : Y Combinator (answers what exactly does YC do?  or  Seedcamp, Techstars, MVP etc ) and Equity (explains why should you give 5-6% equity to a program like YC)

The thoughts expressed got me thinking about how should First Time Entrepreneurs (FTEs) go about building businesses in India. While a lot is in common between the approaches of YC, SC and MVP there are a bunch of things unique to the Indian Ecosystem which FTEs should consider.

Uniqueness of India

First things first, only during the last 10 years India has started seeing bootstrapped or garage startups by talented, educated, experienced and passionate folks who dont have access to a lot of capital but have the skills, will to solve problems and the staying power. The number of successes out of these have been limited and have not been really publicized for folks to get inspired by or learn from.

The VC industry is just about 8-10 years old in India as compared to 50-60 years in US and Europe; among them majority of the funds in India are under 5 years old. VC being a long gestation industry we are a good 5-10 years away from seeing major VC success in India. Most of the firms are focusing on the existing pipeline deals in the market and there are quite of few of these available – companies by serial entrepreneurs, companies started by Executives (CXO, VPs) from large companies, some of FTE companies where the traction is fairly significant, also since PE sector has performed very well and the bigger funds are shifting time and money to PE  deals. Clearly all of the above are the right things to do for the Indian VC firms, since the firms need to perform for their investors. None of this directly supports the FTEs, which is where the gap that needs to be filled in.  We need to create new pipeline of deals that will become successful startups and will feed into the VC pipeline 1-2 years later. That’s the role folks like MVP, iAccelerator, Upstart.in and others are attempting to play.

Another dimension of difference is IT / internet. The penetration of Internet and PCs in India is quite limited (9 computer for every 1000 people, as compared to 700 for every 1000 in USA). On the other hand the awareness and usage of IT in companies, specially SMEs is limited as well. There are a lot of other fundamental needs to be fulfilled in India (remember we are a developing country).

FTEs in India: What to focus on ?

First thing to ensure is to build a cash flow positive business within the initial capital that you have managed to raise (self, friends, family, fools). Keep lowest possible costs and create early revenues. Expenses should ideally be below 50,000 INR and in no circumstances higher than 1,00,000 INR a month.

Dont think of funding as a validation for your venture. Be prepared to wait longer, to build your business to the 50-100 crore revenues in 7-10 years, with VC funding coming after 2-3 years of being in business or no VC funding at all. If this does not appeal – don’t do a startup.

Internet only business models targetting indian market are not going to viable for atleast 2 years ( or more). View internet as a cheap way to build products and get the initial users with zero marketing budgets. From day one build alternate channels : mobile, call center, SMS, kiosks , shops , sales team into your model. Use technology as a enabler to drive costs down and to drive quaity upwards, but do not depend on customers using it directly via internet.

If your idea only lends itself to internet, think about doing it for developed markets like US and Europe.  India still has lower costs and we are very bullish on build here – sell to the developed world model.

So while you take into consideration the universal wisdom of building businesses, paying attention to the uniqueness of India can make an big impact on the outcome of your venture.

Tags: entrepreneurship, First time entreprenuers, FTEs, indian startups, Paul graham, Startups, Y combinator

Excellent post from Dave – HATS OFF.

Dave has done BIG FAVOR to the new / first time entrepreneurs by speaking naked truth. Many of them are doing a great job but at the same time they really need to be shaken up.

Here is some of what I see / hear / encounter in the Indian Startup scene and some unwanted TIPS:

- Just give me money and I will take care of every thing else (TIP: guys come to back to reality, it takes a lot to build a business. You gotta build something really significant with out external money and prove yourself, before expecting someone else to write a check)

- I have been working hard and smart for 6 FULL MONTHS, how come customers and VCs are not falling at my feet (TIP: be prepared to rot for another 12-18 months, before people really start noticing you)

- I am doing every thing right but these damn customers , bloggers are not getting it, someone should throw water at them.  (TIP – look inside, review your strategy and execution)

- I have talked to 5 VCs but they dont seem to get my product because they are fools / have vested interests / are incompetent etc. I am sure the next one I talk to will have better sense and will write be a check. Please dont tell me that I need to fix / improve anything on my end (TIP: No comments)

- I got funding, therefore now I am successful. I can spend as much as I want and have all my management stay in 5 Stars and travel Business and blah blah

- I have been running this business for 2-3 years, about time some body comes along to buy my business or give me 5 Million dollar funding (TIP: hey guys, value of your business is not a function of how long you have been runnding. Value comes from : market share, customers, revenues, traction, branding etc etc)

I dont mean to disrespect entrepreneurs, infact those are the creatures I respect the most. But some reality check will surely improve things, would love to hear from you…

Tags: building companies, entrepreneurship, hardwork, startup failures

The MVP gang is launching “Start-up Evenings” with the support of a few firms who are involved with start-ups and a lot of friends in the community.

The First edition of Start-up Evenings will take place on 20 Jan-09, Tuesday in Mumbai.

Concept

The idea behind “Start-up Evenings” is to facilitate “close interaction” between founders of young companies and experienced folks, allowing the founders to learn from the champions (the tricks and hiccups of the trade), and to network.

The event will be monthly, with one edition each in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

We did some sessions as part of our founders meet and saw that it was extremely useful for the founders and hence by popular demand decided to conduct regular “Start-up Evenings“.

Format

• Event will be attended by 10-15 founders of start-ups from the MVP portfolio, partners portfolios and other founders
• There will be one guest of the evening who will share his / her experiences and interact with the start-ups in an informal manner
  
• The guest will typically be an experienced entrepreneur / investor / a person from the start-up ecosystem
• There is no fee for attending but participation will be only by invitation
• No more than 15 participants will be allowed to keep the focus of the event
• Typical timings: 0700 pm – 0900 pm

This is a non-profit initiative and we would love to hear from you if you would like to collaborate on it. There is no requirement of any sponsorship for these events, since we are going to keep them quite bootstrapped. Some of things which can be help would be:

• A conference room / venue at your office for these events once a month (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore)
• Arranging / suggesting speakers
• Spreading the word amongst start-up founders
• Anything else

Feel free to share your thoughts / feedback on the initiative. If you are interested in helping / contributing in any way, write to nandini AT morpheusventure DOT com

Tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, founder, investors, MVP, startup, startup evenings, Startups, VCS