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

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

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

Every startup has a core team, consisting of the founders (or just the founder) plus other key early employees. The core team members are those who have displayed the intelligence, high learning ability, passion and appropriate skill-set required for a startup assignment. They are people with a successful track record, relevant experience and good educational background.

But, the very same successful track-record, many times comes in the way of “unlearning and re-learning” that is essential in a startup environment. And that happens when some team members play majority of their new roles with old rules.

The following rules apply to you if you are building the core team or are part of a core team, because in a new startup, different laws apply.

New rules (GO WIN THE GAME)

• Be open to learning and influences. Build fresh perspectives.
• Go on a journey to build things from scratch, build them block by block.
• Think fresh and think fundamental; understand a problem in ways which was never done before and then create a novel solution.
• You surely have a rich set of experience, knowledge, contacts and education. You must use it as source of reference to help you do a fantastic job. But its very important that you:
  • Adapt the past learning to the current context before applying it.
  • Don’t skip any steps while analyzing problems or building solutions, thinking that you have done similar stuff and don’t need to repeat.
  • Continue to take a fresh look at things with the new context in mind and not let the past cloud your vision.

Old rules (OFTEN LEAD TO FAILURES – DON’T PLAY BY THEM)

• The methods which brought me success in past will continue to apply without any change or adapting.
• I have enough knowledge, no more learning required for me. I will apply my existing knowledge and make the venture a success.
• During my days as part of the middle/junior layer, I have been part of teams who have executed many challenging assignments and built things bottom up. Now that I am part of the top management and I will build things “Top down” and the junior and middle layers will worry about the middle and bottom part.

Tags: core team, early employees, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, founder, startup, startup founders