Sudeep D'Souza

Here are my 15 reasons why every person who wants to be an entrepreneur has to attend startup weekend especially if they are planning to startup in the technology space.  Get to evaluate and try out your product idea in a risk free manner. If you have an idea and don't know if it will work you can come to the event and pitch it - if you get enough votes probably there is some credibility to your idea. Connect and network with developers and marketing and business professionals who can possibly work with you in the future. You can evaluate their skills over 54 hours in the toughest circumstances and find the right person who you can work with.  Get to meet mentors and spend 1 on 1 quality time with them when in real life trying to get even a few minutes of their time is very hard. They will help you fine tune your idea even further. Ability to brainstorm with experienced professionals and fine tune your idea to something that can be taken to market. Learn how to pitch an...

I went for a very interesting event today and its called Startup Funerals . I was surprised at the size of the audience that made it to the event and that stayed all through the event. The event had a very simple format of networking and a few speakers talking about their experiences. The event focused on startups that did not succeed, in other words they failed or they gave up. The idea of the event was to share the learning from these startups with the rest of the community.  The speakers were a couple of Hyderabad Angels who shared their experiences with the audience but the stand out speaker was K.Ramakrishna who gave a chronological history about his experiences through his entrepreneurial journey and he very openly explained about the reasons why the startups he tried out did not work out. There are not many who are very open like this about their failures. So its wonderful to see people starting to open up and explain what went wrong so that no one else makes the same m...

The last one year has been a very exciting year for me in terms of learning and growing. In September 2011 I signed up as a participant for Startup Weekend the first time it was conducted in Hyderabad and since then I have volunteered at Startup Weekend events in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi and have become an organizer at Startup Weekend Hyderabad and we are about to conduct the third event in the city which is going to be part of the Global Startup Battle. What is it about Startup Weekend?  It all starts off with the event itself - the event is in a format that facilitates one to learn in multiple levels. One learns from the speakers, getting inspired by them from what they have achieved and then from the mentors who guide and advice the participants until their ideas start to make good business sense and finally the participants who come from very diverse backgrounds with whom relationships form that carry on well past the event. The event itself is very unstructured with a...

From winner at the last Startup Weekend at Hyderabad , to volunteer at Startup Weekend at Mumbai to Organizer at Startup Weekend at Hyderabad in the second edition - I have in the sense been through the process of moving from the front to the back of Startup Weekend over the last 1 year and what an amazing journey it has been. The experience as a participant is of complete focus on achieving the goal of building something over the weekend, molded into shape by talking to the mentors and having it validated through market surveys and interviews. As a volunteer there is so much to learn in organizing an event and understanding all the nuts and bolts that go into putting together this weekend of learning an fun. Being an organizer makes it all so worthwhile to have so many different individuals come together over a weekend and build bonds that last a lifetime and probably even create products that may go on to become the next big company. The quality of the learning through action over ...

Startup Weekend Hyderabad is back - bigger and better this time at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad from the 13-15 of July. For those that are not familiar with Startup Weekend - read my post when I attended the last event as a participant. Watch this video preview of what happened in the last event Why attend Startup Weekend?  Startup Weekend is an event where ideas that have been nagging you for a long long time can be tried out and evaluated. Come to the event pitch your idea, if you get enough votes for it - the idea is immediately validated. For people who have a clear idea on what they want to do but dont have the team to execute it - Startup Weekend is the perfect place to seed this team. You get to work with your team for a full 54 hours in a very exciting and focused manner - giving you a great insight into your future team. The event is the perfect place to help fine tune the idea with many experts who have started and exited many startups...

It all started on Thursday when I saw a post on one of the blogs announcing that there was going to be a Startup Weekend being hosted at ISB in Hyderabad. Something in that article triggered my imagination that it would be a fun event to attend to understand and feel the start-up ecosystem. With a lot of encouragement from the home front I was all game to go. I went ahead and bought 5 tickets to the event and then started to ask all my friends and colleagues asking them who would like to come for the event and the 5 tickets disappeared fairly quickly. To tell you a bit about Startup Weekend, I copied a paragraph from Annkur 's post, one of the organizers about startup weekend " Startup Weekend is this 54 hours madness that brings together business folks, developers, designers and jack of all trades like me to build a startup over a weekend. Ones with an idea pitch it, voting follows and teams are formed organically. These teams have to come back with a product / prot...

Prof K Ramachandran of ISB gave a wrap up on all that we discussed during the full day session. Eliminate customer dissatisfaction, always. Dynamic business plan. Strategy is easy, execution is tough. Have detached passion. VC money: Be ready to have a bumpy ride. Documentation is huge. Constantly build resources. Resources are behind opportunities. Stretch them. Most critical resource is time. ROTI - return on time invested. Usually a lot more effective than ROI which most people use. Innovativeness is needed everywhere. Working capital is life blood. Working capital should be low. Compress cycle time. People and system key to growth. Share vision, build passion. Develop and maintain networks. Listen to others pick up signals. Related posts Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Amit Kishore Prasad, SatNav Technologies Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Samir Kumar, Inventus Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sandeep Singhal, Nexus India Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sh...

Amit Kishore Prasad is the founder CEO and MD of SatNav Technologies based in Hyderabad. Amit spoke about Execution - Building a team. Ensure you have bosses that the employees look up to and trust. People need to repose confidence and faith in the entrepreneur. Choose employees that have the willingness to learn and are willing to play multiple roles. Employees who have qualifications/experience and also bring an attitude with it will create a problem.  In an organization it is good to have written communication. It should be clearly outlined what is the carrot and stick when doing tasks. When someone comes with a problem ask them for a solution. Give feedback immediately but not publicly. Weekly action plans work well Retaining people - Involve them in the decision making process and keep them in the loop. - Defend your team in front of others When going for VC funding be ready to answer tough questions regarding your team such as are they qualified enough, can the d...

Sandeep was Co-Founder and CEO of Medusind Solutions, one of the leading healthcare outsourcing companies in India. Sandeep is also the co-founder and Managing Director of eVentures, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on early stage investments in India since 1999. Sandeep has held senior roles at McKinsey and Company, Digital Equipment and EDA Systems. Click here to read more about Sandeep. Sandeep spoke about developing differentiation Important to make your product/Service unique - This allows you to price better. - It is easier to sell. - It allows you to figure out where to focus. - Helps in prioritizing your resources. Sources of differentiation - Technology or patents - Processes - Business model - Marketing How to differentiate? - Build the right team. - Surround yourself with people brighter than you that will question you. - Develop a deep understanding of the target market. - Choose the sources of differentiation. - Execute fla...

Samir has been an early stage venture investor in India for the past six years.   Prior to co-founding Inventus, Samir built and led the India venture team for Acer Technology Ventures - a $260 million cross-border venture fund investing in early-stage technology and services companies across India, the U.S. and the Asia Pacific. Samir was an early member of two startups in India, and was part of the early team at Wipro. He helped Wipro grow revenues from ~$4M in 1989 to over $200 million in 1998. Click here to read more about Samir. Samir spoke about Marketing Strategies for a startup. Think big and execute in small steps It is important to have a good team. Very few VCs will invest in a single individual. Product Most important thing the entrepreneur needs to focus on. It needs to be thought through very carefully and diligently. Think from outside in. Look at it from the view of a customer. Important to include customers when conceptualizing the product. U...

Shantanu Surpure is Managing Attorney at Sand Hill Counsel, a law firm with offices in Mumbai and Silicon Valley. He focuses on venture capital and private equity transactions. Shantanu holds a BA from Brown University/London School of Economics, an MA Juris from Oxford University and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School and is admitted to practice law in India, California, New York and England and Wales. Shantanu spoke about Negotiating with VCs. Be organized and document everything properly. Hire a lawyer when negotiating with a VC because they will have one of their own. VC's will do a valuation and will ask for anything between 25% to 40% of the company in the form of preference shares. When the VCs have an interest in investing they will give you something called a term sheet which will have all the terms and conditions. VCs usually look at a 3-5 year investment horizon. In the term sheet there will be anti dilution terms which means that if the valuation of the co...

DD Ganguly is co-founder and CEO of Dimdim, Inc. Previously, as Vice President of Product Development at CA (NYSE:CA; $ 3.5B) he built and led an organization of 1000+ members. He joined CA in 2001 upon its acquisition of Boston based AIM, Inc. where he was founder and CEO. Click here to read more about him. DD Ganguly spoke about his Fund Raising Experience for DimDim which is a free web conferencing service where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees. Funding When looking for funding look for people that like you and what you are doing. Angel investors invest in your business because the align with how you think and what you do. Try and get journalists and bloggers to write about your product/service. This will help in popularizing and showcasing your product to potential VC's. You need to click with the VC for them to invest. Choosing a name The .com webaddress should ...

Professor K Ramachandran is the Associate Dean of Academic Programmes at the Indian School of Business. He has been a professor of entrepreneurship, family business, and strategy at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad since its inception in 2001. He is also the Thomas Schmidheiny Fellow of Family Business and Wealth Management at the ISB. Professor Ramachandran spoke about Entrepreneurial opportunities and Organization Building - A Road Map. He spoke about identifying the type of opportunity, the graph of time against turnover for a startup and elements of a business plan. Opportunities are identified through a pent up need or customer dissatisfaction in the existing offerings. By mapping the pent up need (Discontentment) on one axis and Criticality (dissatisfaction) on the other different kinds of opportunites can be identified. Any organization needs to balance Financial Needs, Technology Needs, Marketing Needs and Entrepreneurial Capability. If an entrepreneur can manage t...

Sateesh Andra is a Venture Partner with DFJ India. Sateesh started his Silicon Valley career in the early nineties and has extensive background in general management, marketing, product strategy, and technology development. Prior to DFJ, Sateesh was the fo founder and CEO of Euclid Software, a leader in the IT Governance space. He has also served in product marketing and engineering leadership roles at Tsqware (Conexant), LSI Logic, VLSI Technology (Philips), and Wipro. You can read more about Sateesh here . Sateesh spoke about the Spirit of Entrepreneurship - My Journey. Here are my notes from that session. Have passion in your idea for a period of time. Dream big. Study your idea. Understand the stated value proposition vs the implemented value proposition of your idea.  Is your idea a pain killer or a vitamin. In times of hardship people stop using vitamins but the do not stop using pain killers Raise money from the right people. Do not just take money...

Sashi Reddi is the CEO of Applabs which he founded in the year 1998 and today Applabs is the world's largest independent software testing company. Click here to read more about Sashi Reddi. Sashi Reddi spoke about the Spirit of Entrepreneurship - My Journey. Here are my notes from that session. Being a part time entrepreneur does not work. If you want to be an entrepreneur then you must be full time into it. There is no right time to start. The right time is when you are passionate about your idea. Jump in and then refine your plan. Jump in and sort the problems. There is no perfect business plan and if you wait for the perfect business plan then your venture will never get off the ground. Be an entrepreneur to make money. Do not start a venture where it is not clear how you will make money. Take a shot in a fast growing big market. The reason is because it is easier to capture the market when there are more customers. When starting think small on how to make money w...

I am going for the TiE-ISB Connect conference to be held here in Hyderabad from the 5th to the 7th of this month. Quoting from the website this is what it is all about "India’s most exciting annual networking event for entrepreneurs and investors, the TiE-ISB Connect '08 will be held on November 5th, 6th and 7th, 2008 at the ISB campus in Hyderabad. Organized by the TiE, Hyderabad Chapter and the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED), ISB, TiE-ISB Connect enables interaction of aspiring entrepreneurs, early-stage ventures, and growth-stage ventures with potential investors, successful entrepreneurs and mentors. " The conference is of two parts - one is the Jumpstart event that is a day long learning event. It is a day meant for young entrepreneurs to get a head start. The day is broken up into several workshop type sessions with each topic focussing on a specific area of entrepreneurial learning. From this session I am hoping to learn how to conve...

The Indiblogger meet sure seemed to have upped my popularity. It all started with a phone call from Ishita from Deccan Chronicle about my views on blogging and why I blog and after a 5 minute conversation with Mona and myself she seemed satisfied with the information that she had and before we could ask her anything more she hung up. On opening today mornings paper I was surprised to find this Then there are blogs that will guide you about the basic things like how to apply for a passport, create a website, good places to hang out in a city, as CTO of Infornia.com, Sudeep D’Souza does. Sudeep’s wife, Mona, is also a serious blogger. “I have a baby product company and though we don’t use my blog to promote the company as yet, we give reviews on different baby products available in the market. We make independent comments and also invite parents to give their feedback.” On closer examination they got my organization wrong - it should have been inforica.com and I have been told tha...