The Startup Guy

Perspectives of an Entrepreneur from the Indian Startup Trenches.

Month: April, 2008

Chennai Super Kings Vs. Kolkata Knight Riders: Enjoyable.

I never thought I’d get into this. The IPL frenzie, I mean. Too much of pompous marketing hype, and a proof of what would happen if cricket was more than cricket and added bollywood and cheerleaders to the mix – thats what I thought. I had initially gotten some tickets from a friend, and had [...]

Hiring Strategies for Startups.

I am this closed to being convinced that the team, and the process of putting together that team is probably one of the biggest issues that a startup faces. While there are plenty of new recruitment firms popping up to target this very market, most of them are just a little better versions of the [...]

The Law of Startups.

I think I have figured something. It goes something like this. Markets and Companies are neither created nor destroyed. They just transform from one form to the another. I’ll give you some examples. Amazon.com when it started in 95 was a very ambitious project. A few years later, they were raking in 30million dollars as [...]

Build to Last: Follow the Old Fashioned way.

During a recent flight trip, I was mulling over what it would possibly take to build a company that lasts. I donno, call me weird or plan simple narcissistic, but I’d like to build a company that is around till I am, or even beyond. I meet plenty of folks, especially within the entrepreneurial community [...]

Build to Last: The Goldrush Strategy – Avoid it.

Up until a couple of years ago, the concept of “First movers’ advantage” had some credit to it – atleast in the web world since it was quite nascent. Lately more and more folks are realizing, and rightly so, that whatever happened in the PC Platform, is repeating itself in the web world. If you [...]

The Indian-European Connection… And even the Valley.

Seems like we are not the only set of folks who are wanting to fix the problems we see around us and build a “sustainable” atmosphere around us. There is a post by Ryan who runs FOWA taking a stance against the Web Mission effort that is getting organized by the UK Government and quite [...]

The Only Survival Strategies.

Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs call it Business Models. Economists call it as Game theories. They are such fabulously mind-stimulating equations. The equation which essentially makes someone give up hard, liquid cash in order to avail a service, and enable you to make a profit. It’s really quite as simple as that. How do you get [...]

A New Kind of Incubation Model. Part III

Ever since the journey with Proto.in started, about two years ago, I can safely say that I’ve sifted through atleast 300+ company profiles. I’ll hit you with the bad news first: Most of them are hopeless. They are half-baked solutions. They probably are great hobby projects and shouldn’t even allowed to be classified as a [...]

Who will save us from China?

Once a while I actually go on crazy cruise mode and just randomly search for keywords that strike my fancy, hoping to come across a blog or a news article that catches my interest. Its an excercise to get out of the “echo cloud” which happens quite often when you keep listening to the same [...]

Ideas to Toss: Getty Images for India.

Do you know how much India spends on Advertisement budgeting at the moment? a Whopping 400 crores. Did you know that the Times Group makes a heck of a lot of money in their outdoor advertisement business? I am quoted numbers as high as 60% of all outdoor billboards in Mumbai belonging to the Times [...]