Tag: startups

Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

AI Startups. Keep a close watch.

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

There is normally a lot of hype around any new tech that comes into the horizon. Specially those VC’s think will deliver the next bunch of Unicorns. Last year it was Blockchain (and the mad rush of ICO’s when unthinkable amounts of money was raised on the back of white papers). This year it is AI/ML. There is hardly a product that does not have a customer slide on AI. And how their cutting edge disruption will be driven by AI. A lot are deep fakes. Some are onto something. A lot simple decision tree based outputs.

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

Discover MVV (Minimum Viable Value)

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

I am thinking a lot about Startups and the new generation business and how today we can so easily jump start. The cloud, open source, gig economy, co-working spaces. They all make it easier than ever to get us started. You get the drift. That’s quite obvious as I am in the middle of one with Pitch.Link. The challenges of something new that in turn challenges the status quo is for another discussion. Today let’s talk about Value. The Value that we need to deliver to our prospective customers which in turn helps us get to sustainable revenue. That sounds simple, right? It could be the route to Startup Success Rate going from the current 10% to, say 50%. Occam’s Razor!

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

Are you getting the word out?

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

Getting press and coverage, and in turn building links back to your site is a big challenge startups face. While you are busy building, validating your product, trying to get the first 10 paying customers you are following Paul Graham’s advice and doing things that don’t scale. Add to this for tactical measures as many of them will provide a big pay back.

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

Is your Sales and Marketing aligned?

What I Learnt Today, Sales 1

An IDC Survey found that up to 80% of marketing generated content goes unused by sales teams. While building Pitch.Link one key issue we wanted to address was sales and marketing alignment. This we did by ensuring that while Marketing is building entire pitches (not only a particular collateral – but the flow where they envisage it will be used) they could ask for feedback from the sales team and fine tune the messaging and narrative to make it most useful for the value communication process. 

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

The Gestalt (Language) Protocol

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

The Startup life full of challenges. Managing relationship through difficult situations that need discussions and decisions is critical. Not without reason co-founder conflicts seem to be one of the key reasons for startup failures. That made me reflect on how many of our difficult discussions with colleagues and contemporaries devolve into nothingness and how we can possibly change the approach to make it more meaningful. Giving feedback or discussing tactical issues at hand can be tricky. They tend to land up in debates, the need to defend ones position becomes imperative. It is rare to have an environment which is safe and open for the group to share openly and that’s where the Gestalt (language) Protocol comes in. 

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

A Founder’s course on Spreadsheets.

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

Lindsey Rogers Cook, editor for Digital Storytelling and Training at the New York Times wrote this very interesting piece on How We Helped Our Reporters Learn to Love Spreadsheets. One of the key reasons Journalists became journalists was because they were not interested in Math. Or so we thought. But it is now apparent that an increasing number of journalistic disciplines are dependent on data and those who control the narrative – governments, politicians and corporations all want to twist those numbers in support of their own agendas. It is akin to the earlier question of whether Journalists should learn to code. While the answer to that was a resounding “No” , those who did learn to code went on to “have mashed databases to discover wrongdoing, designed immersive experiences that transport readers to new places and created tools that change the way we work.”

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

Where is your strategic plan and BMC?

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

Earlier this month David Cummings raised this question in his blog On Startups – Why the lack of a Strategic plan? 

Why indeed?

I was meeting with Rahul Gupta, a prolific angel investor in New Delhi and he echoed very similar thoughts. Why is it that founders are not able to articulate their priorities in a simple 5 quarterly targets format? Many a times, according to Rahul, the fact that there is no-one outside the team to whom the team/founder is accountable, makes the difference. 

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Posted by Subhanjan Sarkar

Fundraising in 2019. Update.

What I Learnt Today, Startup 0

Will start with the Good news. According to Tomasz Tunguz the fundraising scene has become extremely sophisticated “along three dimensions: diversity of product offering, pricing sophistication, and efficiency of investment processes.” The types of rounds and ways to raise them has become more science than art. Five flavors of seed, wide range of A, B and C rounds with a wide array of sources – “Founders can raise $7M Series As and $15M Series As. Would you like a series A from a generalist fund or a specialist fund? Founders can raise a $15M Series B or a $200M Series B. Would you like that Series B from an opportunity fund, an SPV funded by direct LP investment or from a third part?” The options of IPO, ICO, secondary markets, venture debt – for businesses with the right indicators neither valuation nor money is going to be a problem, according to TomTunguz all indications are that 2019 will be a strong fundraising market. 

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