All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Business|Last Updated:

Had a look the latest issue of Business Gyan and came across an interesting article titled “First step to be a successful business person“. As the author Shivaji Sengupta says the first step to being successful is: To develop a powerful Elevator Pitch

Note:
The article has been taken from Business Gyan and the credit for the it goes to the author.The article has excellent information and hence, has been posted on the blog biggrin

Below is the 5 step formula to create a successful Elevator Pitch:

List out what is unique about what you do and why you are special :
An Elevator Pitch is an ice-breaker and a marketing pitch-all rolled in one.The elevator pitch must have a hook “I own a flower shop downtown” does not hold up to a “I am a speciality florist who deals in rare, South American tropical flowers that bloom in the winter”.

Make it intriguing :
A superior elevator pitch increases your heart rate.It speaks about who you really are and what excites you about your business.It has integrity.What is it about your business that really motivates you?

KISS Concept – Keep It Simple Stupid :
A good elevator pitch doesn’t try and be all things to all the people.Rather, it conveys a clear idea in a short amount of time.It might be few sentences, but no more than a paragraph or so.Keep it under 30 seconds.

Who your customer is :
Be specific enough that people see the market, but not so specific that people wonder if there are more than five of these people in the world: “We even have flowers for boardroom romances”

Write it down & practice a lot :
Use the guidelines above and take a stab at it.Write down your pitch, say it out loud, write it, and then re-write it again.The first few times you try it out, your elevator pitch may be a bit uncomfortable. After a while it will become second nature to you.

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 6 Comments
Most of us who are thinking that we should have a startup don’t know “Which is the area that we should target” for example: If you are a blogger who regularly gets a fair amount of traffic, you may feel that you should jump to full time blogging.Or if you are a person, who has a passion for photography,you may feel that you should join a professional course in photography & turn into a full-time profession idea

The bottom line is “When you check your think tank , you start getting number of ideas” and in such case, the important part is to look at your inner-self & decide that “An Idea X is the one that I would perceive as a business“….The keyword in the discussion is “IDEA” and I would like to share some of my thoughts on generating ideas :

  1. Try to see where your interests lie.
  2. Read books [pertaining to your are of interest] to go a level deeper into your thoughts.You could also be tagged as “BOOK WORM” but that is indirectly a compliment wink
  3. Speak with different people since, it would always be great to get a two-sided opinion.They would see you in a different way that how you see yourself.
  4. Think illogically.Don’t reject ideas immediately.Some of them might be the one what people need/want but which no one has provided.
  5. Daydream about what you like doing.Dreaming something with open eyes is very important.This is area where your interest lies the most, so think of capitalizing on that strength.
  6. Brainstorm : Record each & every idea that comes to your mind in a safe place.Do not try to eliminate any of them, even though it may seem absurd.
  7. Think..Think…Think….When you are having a bath or watching TV or doing something in your leisure time.This is the time that can be best utilized as an “Idea Generator”.
  8. See the unexpected similarities in the world around you, permit yourself to make unusual associations biggrin
  9. Don’t always think in words, also think in pictures.Use all your senses to get useful ideas.
  10. Try to foresee “Solutions related to forthcoming problems” for example: Imagine the condition of India in the year 201X & try to visualize a current solution that might solve that forthcoming problem !!!

    Reader’s Contribution:

  11. Open source mind-mapping tool MindMapping, which is useful to organize and represent our ideas with picture.Download the tool from here. [Thanks Manish Panchmatia]
  12. Six Thinking Hats by Dr. Edward De Bono. [Thanks Mahesh Pidshetti]
  13. Think of serving the community back in someway, perhaps the downtrodden or the likes of such people. this only broadens the scope of interaction and perhaps even leads to the higher society people even at these events! [Thanks Srikanth Eswaran]
  14. See things that you like and see if the reasons you like them or the logic can be applied to other things too.In my case, I love Flickr and wanted to see something like that for Music. Muziboo was born ! [Thanks Prateek Dayal]
  15. The importance of doing some things only because they may be important links for one’s future business. Actually this was mentioned by Steve Jobs in one of his speeches. He had done some Caligraphy course which became an important tool while designing the GUI for modern OS almost 10 years later.[Thanks Harshad Desai]

Note:
This article was also an IDEA and this is the best place where I could have recorded(& shared) this IDEA wink

Point [7] also reminds me of an article “Sleep is a luxury at startups” which had an interesting comment from an Open Coffee Club group member – Venkat Ramana, CEO of OutSmart360
Essentially, we never stop working. We are always multi-tasking, looking for the next opportunity, whatever else we are doing. One part of the brain (the bigger part probably) is constantly thinking of solutions and problems and more solutions for them.

If you have some more ideas to generate ideas, than kindly add them in the comments & I would be glad to add them to the article.

|In: OpenCoffeeClub|Last Updated:
Most of know that a startup is like the birth of a new born baby but there were some basic confusions regarding the definition of a Startup.

These were the two questions that have raised some confusion sad and I hope that someone clears the doubt :

1. What is a startup ?
2. When does the transition happen from Startup to a mid-sized company?

I had posted the same question on LinkedIn here and there were some interesting & diversified answers…worth taking a look at it biggrin Your contribution in the form of comments or on LinkedIn would be highly appreciated !!!

|In: Business Plan Cometition|Last Updated:

Economic Times , Amity Business School & Knowledge@Wharton are coming up with what is considered as “India’s Leading Business Plan Competition“. The competition is open to all graduate and post-graduate students from universities from all over the country.

About the Competition:
The competition would consist of four member teams and the business plan can be targetted to any industry/sector.

Prize:
Mentorship through TiE and Amity Innovation Incubator

More details here and here

|In: Marketing|Last Updated: | 12 Comments
In one of the talks by Seth Godin , he mentioned about Sun Microsystems where Sun officials mentioned “We will take care of Technology and marketing would be taken care by itself ” and as Seth mentions “Technology just enables you to connect to people but marketing helps you reach that Technology to people“. Most of us are so much addicted to Technology that we always think in a technological sense but when we think of an idea , all the aspects are very important.

Every Business gets a shape with effective marketing and IMHO, every Business is like a DHANDA(in Hindi).My favourite example is “The guys who sell clothes in Fashion Street,Mumbai are the best marketers I have come across with since, they have the capacity to attract customers as well as compete very effectively with the surrounding competition.” biggrin

Marketing is one of the pain-points of any startup since, (as a startup) you don’t want to spend a single penny on marketing so, how do you still get your idea to the crowd? Below is a list of some the cost-effective marketing strategies , that might be used with a very high impact and good returns :

Note:
This article has been divided in two sections, the next one would follow very soon.

1. Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing :
This is one of the most effective ways to start your marketing campaign.You tell your friends, relatives & others in your vicinity about your product/service and get their feedback.But only if a person comes back with a feedback than that is the person who is expected to spread the word biggrin Rest others are just observers and they can be termed as the passive users of your service/product.

For example: Initially when you have a new blog, in order to get some traffic on your blog, you inform your friends about your blog.Simple isn’t it? But do you think each one of them would reach your blog? Na…Only people who are interested in the topic on what you write or who love reading/writing etc. would turn back to your blog.Rest of others are all one-time readers.
So ideal part is to identify the correct audience in your circle whom you can approach & after some time, they would surely revert back with their feedback biggrin So, the key is “Identification of the right audience to get the honest feedback“.

2. Blog Marketing :
With the increasing number of people going online and reading blogs , Blogs are one of the simplest,fastest & easiest ways to spread the word.I am sure that as a blogger, each one of us, would be receiving many mails asking for a review, feedback etc and this list will keep on growing as more & more companies/startups start realizing the importance of Blogs biggrin With a better Broadband penetration in India, Podcasting would also be one of the effective tools for do hard-hitting marketing.

3. Video Marketing :
Few months back, I had posted about the Coolest definition of Web 2.0 and you can check the viewer-ship statistics(which is already in millions) of the video here. But Youtube is not only about posting songs , videos but has also become a unique platform for startups to post Demos of their products. Just when I logged into Gmail, the bottom left corner showed the video(given below), which is a collaborative effort by the Gmail community.

So, what is special about the video? Well, Google has used YouTube to the fullest, to demonstrate the power of Gmail !!! If Google can use this medium, than a startup can definitely use the same medium to spread it’s word.In fact, Prof. N. Venkat Venkatraman of Boston University School of Management points out that Google should look to monetize YouTube beyond advertising!!!“. Video of Pakistani startup Scrybe demonstrating it’s Alpha on YouTube [Interesting video]

4. (Un)Conference Marketing :
Unconferences are one of the best places to network with like-minded people as well as spread the word about your idea/startup.Consider the niche of your product and you are sure to get a good percentage of audience from the unconference community.
For example: If you have a new Blogging platform , than the end users would obviously be bloggers lol Hence, BlogCamp would be an ideal platform for you to launch your new platform since, many of them would ideally turn out to be the end users of your service !!!

5. T-Shirt Marketing :
So, how does a normal half-sleeve T Shirt cost in India? May be in the range of Rs 100-150 but if you have a logo of your startup on it, it becomes priceless. When your team wears the same T Shirt, it suggests that the team is very well knit and also conveys your brand value. For example: T-Shirts have indirectly turned out to be one of the best tools for marketing unconferences !!! Every time you wear a BarCamp or a BlogCamp T-Shirt , you are sure to attract a million eyeballs !!! Below is the FOSS T-Shirt, which is bang of target wrt the punch line and many have unknowingly complimented me for the design of the T-Shirt wink T-Shirts have a very long reach with very minimal expense !!!

Image Courtesy : Alok Padhi

Listed above was a mix of conventional and unconventional marketing , the other strategies would be continued in the next article.Definitely, the new era of marketing has arrived and it can be used very effectively by startups !!!

|In: Books|Last Updated: | 4 Comments
While reading the book “Leadership when the Heat’s on” , came across some interesting lessons(at the end of each chapter). After reading the one liners(listed below) , I am sure like me; you would also feel that there is always something in each one of us, that requires change; which would help us in achieving our goals.

Below are some of the lessons(which are listed in the form of one liners) :

1. The ultimate reward for the leader of people is to be able to say, “I saw someone grow today and, I helped“.

2. Intensity (Goal, Focus, Action) + Enthusiasm (expectancy of better things to come) = Charisma.

3. High Performance is often the result of a sudden change in direction.

4. Accomplishment is your birthright. Limitations are adopted.

5. To achieve great things, know more than the average person considers necessary.

6. An organization quits improving RIGHT after the manager quits improving.

7. Help a team member grow and you will receive respect in return.

8. Team morale and customer service, on a scale of 1-10 receive the same score.

9. Take a mentor to lunch before somebody else eat yours smile

10. Determination makes failure impossible.

11. Be aware of their weaknesses, but talk to their strengths.

12. An organization will never rise above the quality of it’s leadership.

13. A person out of a place in his/her vocation is only half a person.

14. Deciding not to have a specific goal is a specific goal.

15. If you don’t know what to do on a daily basis to achieve your goal, then it is not a goal- It is a fantasy.

16. Goals are all found upstream.

17. Your team members are no better at planning time than you are. smile

18. Team member’s morale will never be higher than the leader’s morale…..for long

19. Aim for striking originality, it gets attention.

20. A leader never forgets that creativity is contagious and can build enthusiasm.

21. Conflict overcome is strength gained.

22. “Embrace Change” , it’s saying “Yes“ to Tomorrow and “No” to repeated yesterdays.

23. Some of the world’s greatest achievements were made by those who were self-instructed.

24. Fear has strength of its own , only that which you choose to give it.Ironically, that’s the very strength you need to overcome it.

Related Posts:
Good Leader or great leader