In my previous article, I had mentioned about Proto[the Startup event] , that I missed but it is nice to see lot of blogs already updated with the coverage To start with, let us look at the startups that demonstrated at the event….

Amit Ranjan of SlideShare & one of the co-organizers of the event has a crisp coverage of all the startups here

Few months back, we had a guest article from Nithya Dayal, co-founder of Muziboo & it is nice to see Muziboo getting shortlisted for the presentation !!! Prateek Dayal has shared lots of interesting views about the event & his experience on pitching in front of the audience !!!

Unlike some of the other startups, we had a walk through and no ppt. I think eventually turned out to be good as the response to the demo was very encouraging.

I liked the fact that proto mentioned that 3 companies have shut shop. I think its great to see that failure is no longer considered a bad thing. There was also a Proto for Dummies video which was pretty well done. I think the videos will be up on youtube pretty soon.

I had always heard that talking to investors gives you a good perspective and I think its true. I had also heard that there are quite a few senior startuppy people who give a lot of gyaan and try to pull you down and I think that is true too. In general its not very hard to find a few people in proto who look like they have come down there just to feel important by giving gyaan to clueless entrepreneurs like me.

You can read the complete article here.

Coverage across the Blogosphere:
There are lot of other blogs that have covered the event and you can find them here.

After checking the coverage of the event, I never felt that I have missed the event Thanks to all of them !!!!

Many times meeting investors becomes similar to applying for a job in a company.There are some set of basic questions which are repetitive and many times, the answer to these decide your fate.The only difference being in a job interview, the mistake may turn out to be less costly[since,it is only YOU who is affected] whereas any mistake while pitching to an investor won’t only affect YOU but everyone CONNECTED with you in the STARTUP.

Just came across an interesting and a worthy presentation which gives an insight into the basic questions and the answer to simple those simple questions

Reader Contribution:

Few months back, I came up with an article titled “What before a Business Plan”.Today, we would focus on something which is inseparable from the Business Plan called “Feasibility Study”. It is true that once we have the B-Plan ready, the very next step is to get going and focus on how to achieve the optimistic figures mentioned in the B-Plan However, few things mentioned the B-Plan is written keeping the investor’s in mind but along the entire journey; Customer is and will remain the HERO. !!! This leads to a report titled “Customer-Driven Feasibility Study” [from this point referred as Customer-Driven F.S. ] and my current read The New Business Road Test by John Mullins explained that to the core of it !!!

This article is divided into three parts namely:

1. What is Customer Driven F.S ?
2. Thin line of difference between B-Plan and Customer Driven F.S
3. Contents of Customer Driven F.S

What is Customer Driven Feasibility Study
During the course of any opportunity, the Market Analysis/Study phase always remains iterative.However, at one point of time, the evidence gathered through the research would help us understand whether the opportunity is REALLY an opportunity.This feasibility study is Customer Driven because , unlike most organization charts which has the founder/ CEO at the top and people serving the customer at the bottom, the feasibility study begins with the target customer, without whom there would be no business. It is an internal document that should cater to the seven requirements which are discussed later.

Difference between Business Plan and Customer Driven Feasibility Study
Though there are a number of overlaps in the B-Plan and Customer Driven F.S , there are three major areas where they tend to differ :

1. Customer Focus :
The purpose of any business it to win customers and the Feasibility Study completely caters to that requirement which is quite different from that of most B-Plans – to win an investor. If there is no likelihood for customers, there would not be any investors.

2. Fundamental Economics :
The feasibility study addresses the fundamental economics of the business, by identifying the key drivers of cash flow: revenue, required capital investment, gross margins etc. If these drivers are satisfactory, than detailed strategies like marketing, operations and financing can probably be developed to make the venture economically viable.

3. Mindset :
The purpose of the study is not to sell the venture’s merit whereas a B-Plan organizes the answers delivered by the feasibility study and goes on to develop marketing, operating and financing strategies in an effort to sell the opportunity, in a focussed way, to the investors and other stakeholders.

7 step “Customer Driven Feasibility Study”

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY :
This briefly describes what follows [tells the reader(s) what you are going to tell them]

2. MICRO- level MARKET assessment :

• TARGET market and it’s pain identified; benefits of your solution identified, with evidence that those in this segment are willing to pay a price that works.
• Target market segment, size and growth rate.
• Options to grow into other segments.

3. MACRO- level MARKET assessment :

• OVERALL market size and growth rate.
• Macro trends analysis to assess future market growth and attractiveness.

4. MACRO – Level INDUSTRY assessment :

• Five forces analysis : Whether or not the industry is attractive.
• Likely changes that may happen going forward.

5. MICRO – Level INDUSTRY assessment :

• Any proprietary elements.
• Any superior organizational processes, capabilities or resources identified that are not easily duplicated or imitated.
• Economic viability of business model established :

– Revenue Forecast.
– Customer acquisition & retention costs and time required to obtain a customer.
– Gross margins.
– Break even analysis.
– Operating Cash Cycle characteristics.

6. TEAM assessment :

• Team’s mission, aspirations and tendency for risk.
• Team’s ability to execute the mission.
• Team’s connectedness up, down and across the value chain.

7. SUMMARY and Conclusions :
Tell the reader(s) the key highlights of what you have told them – why this is/is not – opportunity attractive and future prospects of the opportunity.

Few days back there was a post on my blog which had raised some questions on the Web 2.0 phenomenon.May be post the dotcom-bust,Web 2.0 has been a savior for many of the companies.Was reading this week’s Business Today and found an interesting article titled “VC’s still love Dotcoms”(Page-72) , which gives an insight into dotcoms from the VC’s point of view.It has interviews by Ashish Gupta of Helion Ventures,Promod Haque of Norwest Ventures and Alok Mittal of Canaan Partners.Let me try to list down some of the important points mentioned in the article:

Last year, VCs invested $166 million in 27 internet companies,compared to $17 million and 2 dotcoms,the year before.So,VCs are quite optimistic about dotcoms

What sort of dotcoms are VCs interested in(by Ashish Gupta):

1. It must be one that addresses a customer pain point or fills a market gap
2. It must be differentiated and unique , and most importantly scalable
3. As per VCs , startups in education,financial services and healthcare are some of the most attractive areas
4. You’d better have a top-notch team that has worked together for some years,if you want to make raising money a cinch.
5. There’s so much more to do with the internet , since the old backbone that most companies relied on will soon be redundant

Other emerging areas around internet?
Ashish Gupta says “There are lots of interesting opportunities in the hybrid areas that combine the internet with BPO or the mobile phone”.Helion Venture’s investment in JiGrahak,a Bangalore based mobile startup is an example of this trend.

As per Rajesh Jain,Managing director of Netcore solutions, there are two obvious problems:

1. Indian entrepreneurs want to imitate the success stories in the west and VCs also feel most comfortable investing in them.
2. However,there are not many success stories in a given vertical.There is only one YouTube,MySpace or Orkut.

Below is the statistics of the VC investments in dotcoms(from January,2005 till date):

But there are other areas like Embedded market, Organized retail(though there are VCs already investing in this one), where we have lot of startups waiting for funding.It is obvious that the risk in such companies would be much higher , than in a dotcom This post on my blog focussed on two such startups in that field.May be,it is time when VCs should look beyond dotcoms since, the real innovation comes from such companies !!!

With the growing no of startups coming out of India,India has been under a scanner by VCs.The VC arm of IBM is positive about India and below is an excerpt from the article in Economic Times

“Innovation in India is growing at a rapid pace, in fact faster than how it was in China when we went there a couple of years ago. So we are looking to tie up with a few VC firms including a couple of local VC players to help us identify innovative companies and technology,’’ IBM Venture Capital Group MD Claudia Fan Munce told Economc Times.

What if an undergrad student from India has a bright idea but does not know how to go about executing the idea and getting the funding This article on Economic Times has the answer to all your questions where the article speaks about building entrepreneurs right from the college level.

The most striking part of the article were the lines given below:

The atmosphere the programme is trying to build up in campuses is “think innovation, think entrepreneur-ship”. And the reasons for the college-level focus is because they feeling “entrepreneurship can’t be inculcated at the mid-career level”.

For guys who have not read “Art of the start by Guy Kawasaki” have to think twice , may be you are missing something in your startup journey.

To give a small GIST,check the slide which contains “Guy’s-basic mantras for Entrepreneurs and startups”

• Make a meaning
• Make a mantra
• Get going
• Define a Business Model
• Weave a MAT(Milestones,Assumptions and Tasks)
• Nice thyself
• Follow the 10-20-30 Rule(when pitching to the VC)
• Hire infected(passionate) people
• Lower the barriers to adoption
• Seed the clouds
• Don’t the BOZOS grind you down(Trust me,you would find plenty of BOZOS)

First of all,the title of the post should have been “Megabucks:Day 2(+2) in a Nutshell” ,since two days have passed by since the event is over and damn,I have still not updated my blog.Jokes apart, let me try to recollect the event happenings on the second day in Megabucks.

Morning-Afternoon innings:
a.
The day started with case study competition and believe me it was very boring and I thought that the teams were very bad.Some of the teams did not even know to frame proper gramatical sentences , which made me think about our educational system for a while

b.
The highlight of the day was a talk/discussion on “Woman Entrepreneurship”, which was spearheaded by Ms. Vineeta Singh,Co-founder of Tenaday.Yes,you guessed it right,she is the one who is behind “The Deutsche Bank controversy”(she is the one who rejected one crore offer from Deutsche Bank to be an Entrepreneur) and she seemed a true Entrepreneneur.Myself and Ashwin managed to interview her and it was our first podcast(which would be uploaded very soon).We also gave her few tips on Blogging and she was quite impressed with us.Who knows,she may consult us for “Blog Marketing” Seen below in the photo are Vineeta,Ashwin and Myself(from L-R).I am looking very serious in the photograph

Afternoon-evening innings:
a.
There was a surprise in the package and we met our old friend(from the unconference circuit) Aditya Mishra,Director of Corporate Innovation,TCS.We three gave a talk on Unconferences,Blogging and opportunities in the mobile space(this is Aditya’s domain of interest).The response from the IITK guys was not good and many of them were not interested in the talk.I just tried to collect feedback from few of them-Some felt talk was irrelevant,some felt talk was too techie and some felt the talk was very boring Finally,I communicated the law of two feet(which is used in Unconferences) which says “If you are not feeling comfortable,use your two feet to go to a more comfortable place”.
Even though,our message to take unconferences to premier institutions like IIT failed or was not taken in a proper sense,still we managed to have a smile on our faces.Seen below in the photo are Ashwin ,Myself(in center) and Aditya

b.
After the sad ending to our talk,we thought of networking with few people.Again a surprise-We met guys from Jobs4Freshers who were interviewed for startups.in . It was the time for them to pay us back and hence,we picked up a free T Shirt from them and also,we had good conversation on the Web 2.0 market along with enhancements which can be made to startups.in
Seen below are the guys from Jobs4Freshers along with myself and Ashwin

c.
Finally,it was time to take dinner which as usual,very excellent .Just managed to borrow “Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki” from Rajiv,CEO of Jobs4Freshers and read one chapter in the night

Bye-Bye Kanpur:
Left Kanpur at around 11:00 AM on the next day(8th April,2007) and carried some good(and bad experiences) from IITK.

Moral of the story:
I have not studied from IIT and after this visit,I learnt one thing:“Every person studying in IIT is not a genius/highly intelligent,may be he/she has a slight edge over normal guys like us”.Would end my article with this learning.

Photo Courtesy:
You can find photos of the entire trip here
This is what Ashwin has to say about the event on 07/04/2007

Reached IIT Kanpur at around 1:00 in the afternoon on 6th April.The lunch at IITK was excellent and guess what happened after the lunch I slept from 3:00 to 9:30(due to the excess heat in Kanpur and also due to the tiredness of the journey from Delhi to Kanpur).

Spoke to some of the organizers here in Kanpur regarding the session on Blogging.There is a change in the plan and we(myself and Ashwin) have planned to have the session,the Unconference way.Yup,we would have an open session which would focus on the topics discussed in my previous post.

The reason for this change was that many IITK guys(with whom we interacted) did not know about unconferences and hence we decided a change in the plan The session is slated at 7:00 in the evening.The other sessions would start at 8:00 in the morning and we hope to go there on time.

We also received the Startups.in T-Shirts and it felt very nice to wear the T Shirt.For the other startup-ers who have missed this event,below is a small glimpse of the Front and Back side of the T Shirt

So,what’s happening for the next two days?
There are business competitions and interesting sessions on Entrepreneurship(check the image for the details) and not to forget our unconference session at 7:00 PM(on 07/04/2007).

Related posts : The CruiseManiac – Day 1 IIT Kanpur

More updates later