Bangalore, Leadership and Human Capital

Human capital and leadership are intertwined and our session at SLP Bangalore on Leadership and Human Capital had amazing leaders to share their story and guide us along the way.

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2 steps to Email hosting on your own domain.

Read this post on Email Etiquette for Entrepreneurs on Pluggd.in last week. The first point was Do Not Use Gmail/Yahoo (personal) for official purpose.
This got me thinking how simple it is (2 steps) to have a mail id which reads like this: <mymail><@mydomain>

A lot of people (including many techies) are not aware how simple and inexpensive it is to have a domain and corresponding mail. Here are the two steps:

1. Register a domain.
2. Setup Google Apps Standard Edition

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Founders at OCC, and a few break through Insights

December 23rd will be one of the memorable days in the history of OCC. For the first time since the inception in August, we had more folks who are founders/co founders of companies than those who are planning to. There were 7 startups and the discussions that ensued was simply of real quality. There were two key insights from this meeting. Read on for more.

We had an informal discussions for the first forty minutes then we decided to get on a round where each of the founders talk about their startups.

DyAnsys is a medical instrumentation company. Gunasekaran a co founder is an active participant of both OCC Chennai and OCC Bangalore was present. DyAnsys is mainly into manufacturing and marketing low cost medical instruments.

udrool is to launch it's products in first quarter next year. The co founder Vaasu had some great insights into Marketing and why all startups should have a marketing guy in the founding team. Later on in the discussion he provided some great insights. udrool is the company which has a few products in pipeline and has technological offerings from a consumer perspective in the domain of sales, content aggregation etc.

adventure advertising solutions is a web design, graphic design, marketing, brand building company. Harsha one of the co founders is a very passionate guy. These folks have done some good work and are on an expansion path.

Steadfast has a product called Pactus is "an application aimed at SMBs handling product sales, service and contracts. It is an “easy to install and simple to use” CRM Software".We had Anand, one of the co founders with us. An organically built company, now on the way to move to the next level.

flipkart is an online book store. It boasts of pretty huge collection of books and decent UI for the site. The founders Binny, Sachin launched this a few months back and have done a good job so far.

maxheap is a technology company and they are launching a product in the sphere of social networking. They launched a networking site for residents of an apartment by the name Common Floor. An interesting concept of building a site for an existing community of apartment owners. Sumit and Lalit the cofounders have done a good job and with the vision they have for the product let's keep our fingers crossed and watch them.

muziboo the original music sharing site which promises to get you an audience. Prateek and Nithya who recently got featured in Economic Times for their startup promis to provide an audience for your latent musical talents.

Take Aways:
i) Include a Marketing person in your founding team. Most of us being techies ignore this fundamental requirement that we need good marketing folks on the floor. Vaasu has rightly pointed out that there is a huge gap in Indian startups in the founders abilities in technology and marketing.

ii) This is one of the favorite topics around. What social networking models will work out. maxHeap with their CommonFloor is doing something that I haven't seen any of the Indian social networking startups do. Provide a platform for already existing apartment communities. This and ensuing discussion let me to the following key point on what kind of social networks will succeed in India.

Traditionally we in India have a a large number of communities. My family network, my work network, and a lot of other networks. We are different from the western society in that, we are a community based society than an individual based society. However, what we see in the social networking space is companies trying to push the US specific individual social networking platforms in our community based society. What we need is products which identify the problems which existing communities face and address those issues. CommonFloor is one step in this direction. I am sure companies which figure this out will be the ones which will make a mark.

iii) The other hot discussion topic is the gap between the VC's and the angel's in India. We all agree that their needs to be more and more angel's than VC's. But, most of the discussions stop at discussing this point than offering a solution. Vaasu has a very good idea which I feel is very practical and will take the entrepreneurial activity in this country to a different level. For now read on how Vaasu addresses the issue.

"India needs not USD 40 billion VC funds, but 40 million angel funds. There is an imbalance that needs to be addressed in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem.

google had a Ram Shriram much before they had a VC. What India needs are many more such Ram(s). Where are they ? There are just a handful of angels or angel firms to to the dozens of VCs. A clear imbalance in the ecosystem.

A proposal should be made to the Govt of India to give a tax break for anyone or any company that makes a seed investment with a ceiling of USD 1 million. Or be even bolder and pardon black money that gets invested as seed capital The administrative mechanism can work on similar lines of giving money to charity.

This will inspire the many hidden Rams, who want a little incentive to make the leap. Bodies like TIE and NEN can channel these seed funds, as individual angels might not know the process.

We need the support of the press to champion this cause along with Entrepreneurs. Imagine an India bustling with entrepreneurs ! Isn't that what built America ?

Vaasu
"
Brood over it. A simple but very practical stuff according to me.

I will write about this in more detail in a later post.

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2nd Bangalore Open Coffee Club Meet to discuss Marketing 2.0

Ok!! We are nearing the second meet of the Bangalore Open Coffee Club. The first meet kick started with in a big way. The details of the second meet are as follows:

Venue: Brewhaha (Directions)
Time: Sunday (11Am)
Date: 2nd September 2007
Contacts: Ram(09342509088), Vaibhav(9986186194)

Plan to attend this meet, one of it's kind in this part of the world. Do not forget to register your presence on upcoming(http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/240840). This will help us in having an idea on the number of people who might come.

We will be discussing on Marketing 2.0 this time. The discussion will revolve around how to market your product/service in the 2.0 world. Entrepreneurs among you, share what worked and what did not. Those just starting out can put their marketing dilemma.

Check out Vaibhav's post for some more details.

Related Posts:
Open Coffee! Wanna have a Coffee in Bangalore
Bangalore Open Coffee Club Meetup
Bangalore Open Coffee Kick Starts with a Bang


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Bangalore Open Coffee Kick Starts with Bang

What do you call a meet where about 60+ people interested in entrepreneurship drop by to share ideas? That's Bangalore Open Coffee Club for you all. I am speechless at the number of people and the quality (many of them are people who run their own start ups, a few VC's) . When me and Vaibhav started the marketing of this event, we expected about 15-20 to be a good number to call this event a success. Now the numbers speak for themselves of the success of the inaugural meet. Read on for more details.

I was there at Brewhaha a few minutes before 11:00am, and man there were about 10 people already over there. There was a bit of silence and I felt a bit awkward, but the talk started rolling out and then there was no stopping. By about 11:15am, there was fairly a large crowd(yes yes!!), and then I started out with an introduction of what we were going to do over the next two hours. Then it was Vaibhav's turn to speak and then the ball rolled on to all others. More than 55 folks introduced themselves, and there expectations from OCC Bangalore. Jace, Hari tried to live blog the event thanks a lot to them(i guess, there was some issue, but do check out for their version). I will mention some of the folks who were present, at the end of this post (the rest of you please excuse me and my memory, I will include the link to you, if you send across a mail).

Some key people for the event apart from all the interested and enthusiastic folks were Laura A. Perkin from the finance of NEN Online, Mr. SameerKanth a consultant at NEN Online, Yiting Shen a MIT Sloan student (she manages a fund, more details later). It was really wonderful to have you here at OCC Bangalore, thanks a lot and hope to see you more at the event.

The introductions were mostly about who they were? what they do? and what they expect from OCC Bangalore? To summarize the expectations, my key takeaways are as follows(please feel free to comment/add to these)

There were three kinds of participants at the meet.

1. Those who jumped (Entrepreneurs who are already doing it).
2. Folks who are about to jump.
3. Those who heard about OCC and trying to find out what it is all about!!

The key expectations from OCC (not in any particular order)

• Meet like minded people.
• A meet where techies meet people from other sectors(eg. law, finance, marketing etc)
• Discuss/ Bounce ideas.
• Discuss issues that startups face.
• Meet VC's.

Then we had a discussion on what people want from a regular meeting like this. Rajan tossed of his ideas from organizing MoMo Bangalore. Then there was a flowing discussion where Tejas, Bhaskar V Kode, Sandeep, Amit, Guna(was there at Chennai Open Coffee) and lots of others pitched in on what could be the direction for this event.

• Some wanted discussions.
• Some wanted VC's etc to come in and speak.
• Some wanted small discussions ensuring in forming of small groups where things can be discussed
• Some wondered if it was right sharing the ideas in an open house (share the basic idea, and talk to relevant people was my take).

There were a lot more ideas that were tossed in but thankfully my memory again deserts me at the moment of writing.

Finally we concluded with the idea that we will meet again on 2nd September 2007 at Brewhaha from 11am to 1pm. This time we will have an agenda over which we will meet. Post your thoughts on what you want here on the group (opencoffeeatbangalore).

On a personal note, there were so many folks whom I knew by face from barcamp who were here, Harish, Hari, Jace, Aashish, Amit, Mansi, Shivku, Manoj, Piyush, Rajan, Keshav, Himanshu, Saurabh, Anand, Sandeep,Akshat (If I missed someone whom I knew, memory dump!!).

Some of the others who were there (mentioning those who run companies,others whom I missed out please let me know)

• Deepak Shenoy and his partner (moneyoga.com)
• Prateek (Muzicboo.com) (Name is wrong)
• Aashish Solanki (Yulop)
• Guna (Medical Equipment)
• Karthik (Picsquare.com)
• Keshav (DigitalStraits.com)
• Akshat (Activemobs)
• Venkat (Outsmart)
• Prashant (Model Design)
• Rohit Bansal (Jasper)
• Parvez (Water purification and bio diesel)
• Aditya (Authme, presented at proto.in)
• Piyush Gupta (Routeguru, presented at proto.in)
• Shiv Prasad (p2p lending space)
• Pooran Prasad (Zealousnet)
• Vishwanathan (People2meet)
• Kunal and Kalyan ( iHipo)
• Harinath aka. Hari (Softrel)
• Meera (runs something for local communities)
• Sandeep ( i forgot which company)
• Ashwin Nandakumar (i forgot which company)
• Harish (again forgot which company)
• Tejas (again forgot which company)

It was really interesting and to meet you all. Bangalore Open Coffee Meet is your meet. It's a place where you want to meet others, learn with others and grow.

Spread the word, drop by, share your experience, and grow.
See you at the next meet.

PS: Thank you all for paying up for the coffee/snacks you bought. In the scale of the event, some of you have missed out on paying your due. Thanks to Vaibhav for sharing the spoils.

Releated Posts:

• Open Coffee, Wanna Have a Coffee in Bangalore
• Bangalore Open Coffee Club Meetup
• More on Open Coffee Club Meet Bangalore

Post Event Blogging:
Vaibhav at Technofriends
Himanshu Sheth at Thoughts Prevail
Harinath at Harisays
Jace on Livejournal
Saurabh at the100rabh
Piyush at Silicon Tryst
Sid at Siddhi

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Bangalore Open Coffee Club Meetup.

There are lot's of entrepreneurs in Bangalore(a cliche isn't it). However, what we lack in here is an ecosystem where entrepreneurs, VC's, people interested in entrepreneurship,evangelists, and people like me(I don't fall in the above categories !!) meet in an informal setup and share/exchange thoughts . Open Coffee Club meet for Bangalore is one small step to address this issue. This meet will be on

Venue: Brewhaha (Directions)
Time: Sunday (11Am)
Date: 19th August 2007
Contacts: Ram(09342509088), Vaibhav(9986186194)

[sTory bEhind]
To give you a brief of what OpenCoffeeClub(OCC) is all about check out a previous post of mine. There I talk about the concept and introduce you to OCC. As you can see, I was planning to have an OCC Bangalore meetup earlier, but could not do so because of personal reasons. After that I was tad lazy until the BCB4. In BCB4 I met Siddharta, Jankiram, Indus, and a host others who felt there was visible need for people to group up on a regular basis in an informal setup. Thus was born openTIE.

The week following BCB4 Siddharta(aka. Sid) called for a Chennai OpenCoffeeClub meet. This was picked up by Kiruba on his blog. Finally the Chennai OCC meet happened on 5th of August. We at Bangalore were not behind, Vaibhav an avid techie. got in touch with Sid and Vijay(proto.in) to get some funda on how to organize a Bangalore OCC, and was directed by Sid to contact me.

The efforts started out with this post calling for OCC meet by Vaibhav. There is also a Google Group (thanks again to Vaibhav) where those of you interested can join to follow up on what's happening.

[wHat nExt]
As pointed at the beginning of this post,be there at Brewhaha coming Sunday(19th August) at 11am. Let's kick start the exciting times ahead.

Mind you this event does not carry any registration fee, but you need to pay for your coffee/other stuff.

Bloggers among you, post about the event and spread the word.

Update: Check the update on Bangalore OCC meet by Vaibhav.

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Decoding VC Speak

In an earlier post I wrote on various "Tips to ptich before vc". Today let me point you to some very useful insights on decoding the what VC's speak. In very much a similar way, VC's are as difficult as a girl to understand. However, the advantage with VC's is some of them give you insights into their working.

"I will partially reproduce here a post titled "Translating VC Speak" by Sanjay Anandaram. All too often hopeful entrepreneurs approach venture capitalists (VCs) and then keep approaching them with the same set of slides. After a while, disappointment sets in. ‘VCs in India are risk averse’, ‘They do not understand my business plan’, ‘None of them have operating backgrounds so they cannot appreciate the position’ are some of the common refrains. It is, therefore, worth understanding the language used by VCs during the meetings. “Interesting but…..” The word ‘interesting’ has many meanings but almost certainly never means that the VC is excited. The meaning of the word varies from ‘OK, nice’ to ‘intriguing’. It is also used as a place-holder or a punctuation mark. The ‘but’ that follows is dangerous. Means the VC is not positively inclined. “Who else have you talked to?” This is not a general innocent question. This is a way for the VC to know who else is looking at the deal and therefore, how he or she should pace the decision-making process. If a lot of VCs have been approached without much progress, the red flag goes up since VCs do compare notes about the deal among themselves. Usually, VCs work in syndicates and want to know if the other VCs being approached are people they would like to work with on the deal in question. In some cases, it can mean that the deal is getting hot and therefore, they need to move fast."

Please go to the post for more such tips.

[pErson pRofile]
Sanjay has over two decades of experience and belongs to the been there, seen that and done that breed of Indian techies. Some of his achievements as below.

• A Corp exec at Wipro he was involved in setting up various new businesses.
• Co-founded a VC backed startup in Silicon Valley, which got acquired.
• Started India's 1st e-zine for entrepreneurs in 1999-00.
• Co-founded JumpStartUp pioneering early stage VC fund focused on deals across the Indo-US corridor.
• An active mentor/advisor/angel to startups.
• An advisor to funds.
• Regular speaker and writer on startups and entrepreneurship
• His current engagements include, writing on startups at the blog "Startup Journey"and Financial Express (every other Friday), teaching a biz plan workshop elective at INSEAD (S'pore) campus and at IIMB, work with TiE and Nasscom to drive entrepreneurship.

[cRedits]

Tips to Ptich before a VC

Not very often do VC's, especially VC firms give an insight into how to deal with them. Whether you get money or not depends a lot on the how you make a pitch to the VC.

Sequoia Capital(Google!!) has the following list on its web site. A very good list. It is a solid example of KISS(Keep It Short and Simple) in my opinion.

Under the Elements of Sustainable Companies, I like the one "Clarity of Purpose". What are your favorites?

Innovation,The ingredients

Innovation is one of the most abused word in todays world. What constitutes innovation, what does it take to be innovative. Is innovation a gift or can it be cultivated. A number of such things are answered in this presentation. Check it out it is worth all the time you spend.




[lInks]
Un Managing Innovation

Entrepreneurship Presentation at NirmaLabs

Those of you who know me well also know that I was at NirmaLabs a Technology Incubator in India. I should say that the six months at NirmaLabs taught me more than any other period in my life. In summary it was a life changing experience. I have come out of NirmaLabs in February 2007, and have not written any thing about my experiences there since. (If you keep an eye on my blogging frequency, the period following my return was lean). Now I have decided to write about my experiences at NirmaLabs, my view about the place and much more.

To my international audience let me tell you what NirmaLabs is all about. It is a place like YCombinator where you can Incubate and launch your company. It has some wonderful people in the driving seat. They help you in meeting lots of entrepreneurs, validating your idea, providing the seed funding, and a lot of other things. More about them in later posts.

Check out the above presentation by Leo, Midhun and Prashant at "YOUNG TECHNO-ENTREPRENEUR AWARDS" conducted by NirmaLabs. Good one, inspires one to go beyond themselves. Keep tuned to the label NirmaLabs, I will write more on my experiences and what NirmaLabs is all about in the future posts.

Outcome vs Activity : Not Just for Entrepreneurs

Outcomes vs. Activity is an excellent post that I came across today. In that post Chris Michel talks about the importance of focusing on outcome rather than on the activities. An example from his life with military.com drives home the point.

How true, it's not just in running a company that one needs to know this but also in ones life. For your convenience I reproduce this post from FoundRead.

I am embarrassed to say that it took me 10 years to learn one of the most fundamental pillars of leadership: It is all about outcomes — and not activities. This business truth is simple and obvious, yet, extraordinarily powerful. Unfortunately, it remains strangely elusive for many founders, and most people.

I can hear you now, “Of course I knew that,” or “Not me … I’m all about the mission.”

Well, in my experience, I have found that most people tend to confuse activity with outcomes — and it is a breathtakingly expensive mistake. In a world of infinite choices, choosing which activities will occupy your day is likely to be your single greatest driver of effectiveness. Beyond picking the right objectives to pursue, you need to focus on the results, not just the means to that end.

Some people choose wisely and focus on high-impact activities that truly move the needle. Others, however, work the same number of hours without making clear progress toward measurable results. Focusing on what really matters is a difficult-to-achieve skill in our “attention deficit disorder” world. Successful leaders–and, therefore, successful founders–invest the time to clearly identify, prioritize, and communicate key goals. They then measure their success by real progress against those desired outcomes. By focusing on the end results, creative leaders can identify the shortcuts and often achieve those goals with less work.

As we talk about outcomes vs. activity, it is important to nail down the semantics. Outcomes, in this context, means a certain, generally measurable, end result — and one that matters a great deal. Activities, however, are a set of tactics that are used to achieve that outcome. Productivity might then be defined as the value of a certain outcome divided by the cost of the activities used to achieve it — simply put, the return on your investment (ROI).

If this is a bit confusing, that is good. Understanding this confusion is the first step to seeing how easily things can go terribly awry. Because many of us founders are so accomplishment driven, we tend to look at both activities and outcomes as accomplishments. While they both could be achievements, results should almost always be valued well ahead of tactics. A long day at the office often creates the illusion that we are creating value and driving the ball downfield. Ticking off tasks on your to-do list fills you with a sense of accomplishments but did you achieve the end goal? Many of the activities create some benefit, but is it making a tangible difference for the organization? Is it the most effective use of your time? Often, the answer is no and, unfortunately, few people are aware of it.

I learned this valuable lesson when I founded my first start-up, Military.com. In late 1999, we raised a good deal of venture capital, hired rapidly, and set to work at building the definitive portal for the 30 million members of the military community. In just a few short months, we had over 50 employees and were working non-stop on product development, marketing, hiring, brand strategy, user-testing, public relations – all the things a “dot-com darling” was supposed to do. The activity level could not have been higher.

As many of you know, the world came crashing down in the spring of 2000 when the bubble burst. The next two years were exceedingly difficult – layoffs, hurt feelings, and an overwhelming sense of foreboding that we would likely lose the company. In 2002, we were down to just four weeks of cash and about ten employees. It was during this most difficult period that we had little choice but to focus on absolutely the most critical element of corporate life support – cash flow from operations.

Against all odds, we were able to drive the company to profitability with less than two weeks of cash in the bank. And in that moment, I realized that our DNA had changed forever…and we would never again confuse outcomes with activities.

When forced to make difficult tradeoffs in an exceptionally constrained environment, good leaders focus only on those things that matter. *The pressurization of Military.com leadership forced me to choose only those activities that drove key outcomes: cash-flow, membership growth, and monetization. As I reflect over both those experiences, I realize that I had confused being busy — lots of activity — with accomplishing something of value. Today, Military.com has over 9 million members and has delivered double digit profit and revenue growth since those dark days in our history. In 2004, I sold the company to Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MNST).

Defending yourself against the myopia of task saturation requires a bit of planning. Defining key outcomes is the first step to getting back on the road to productivity and effectiveness. Are the results that we hope to achieve measurable and meaningful? Can we assign dates to deliveries? What are the key measures of success and an appropriate sampling rate? Successful practitioners focus on the goal despite the forest of tasks, distractions, and nice-to-do activities.

Once founders begin to assess their team against key measures, they are often surprised to see how quickly they can create a results-driven culture. In that kind of enlightened organization, it’s about ownership, trust, accountability — and not about hours worked.