Monday, October 17, 2011

Startup Saturday - Hyderabad

The saturday before last, I was invited to give a small informal talk at Startup Saturday (SS). SS is organized by the Headstart Network Foundation - a non-profit organization focused on creation of a startup ecosystem in India. The following video gives a clear idea about what Startup Saturday is all about.



This meeting was held at LaMakaan and there was a very interesting mix of attendees. There were a few students but a lot of attendees were from either those interested in starting up or those having just started up. There were also a couple of reporters of startup related websites. There were some members from angel investor organizations or incubation centers like the IIIT Incubation Center.

The theme of the session was registration, compliance & finance for early stage startups. Every month there is a theme and experts are invited to talk about that theme. It started off with each of the attendees giving a short introduction and then there were a couple of sessions given by a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary about the theme. The format is quite informal and interactive and there are a lot of questions from the participants.

After this some startups were invited to talk about their ventures and their experiences in starting up. The startups who spoke were
  • Inforica - Founder- Sudeep D'Souza
  • Luminart- Founder- Prabhu
  • Acuvate- Founder, Amitesh Anand
  • HuSys.net- CoFounder, Kalyan
Again the discussion was lively and interesting with a lot of real world examples and experiences.

After this it was all about networking and exchanging business cards to continue networking beyond the event. I was asked how the startup environment now is different from how it was 6 years ago and the answer is that it is events like this that make it so much easier to startup now with information so easily available so readily.

I would advise anyone who is planning to startup or has just started up to attend this event. I hope more companies that provide services also attend so that startups are aware that there are experts out there to hep them quickly startup.

You do what you are

In the 2001 movie Along came a spider, there is an interesting quote by Morgan Freeman where he says "You do what you are" and the...