Ted India – Pranav Mistry on Potential of Sixth Sense Technology

This site (TED – http://www.ted.com) is one of the most interesting and impressive site I have come across – it gathers all the intellectual juice of the world (covering every field) and gives and easy access to see/hear them at one place.

This month (November) TED Conference was organized in India. Unfortunately, I could not attend the same but was going through the Ted site and found this interesting talk by an MIT grad – Pranav Mistry. Below is the Video of the same -

 

Entrepreneurship: The founding team of a Start-up from a VC perspective

Couple of months back I attended a Tie Networking event and the topic of the event was “Importance of team building and Team Dynamics”.  The major focus of the talk was on the starting up team – the founding members of a start-up.  Also, the speakers on the panel discussion were VC’s – so the insights here represents the VC community view on what they really seek in the founding team of a start-up.

Here are the few insights from the panel discussion -

1. Dont make your dining table your boardroom – A lot of start-ups are started by family members. Husband/wife, brothers, sisters etc. Usually its found that unless you are very professional, family influence in the business affects the way decisions are meant to be taken in the organization. The question that arises – Are the team members the best people to do what they are doing? Has a professional/equally competent person been evaluated for the same position? If not, then the hiring capabilities of the organization becomes questionable. Not that you need to have the most expensive resource on your payroll, however, you should never compromise on the team that you ideally need to build to make your company successful.

2. Undisputed leader – A good start-up has an undisputed leader. When companies are started, there are a lot of decisions that need to be taken at every stage. All the team members have equal right to raise their concerns contribute their opinions, fight/debate if they are against and be a part of the decision making process. The leader will make sure that all the pros and cons for the same are evaluated and finally takes a decision. This is a very important and desirable behavior in a start-up. In a young start-up, there may be a lot of ego issues which is very harmful for its growth. Having an undisputed leader makes sure that the start-up is going in the right direction with a clear focus and right responsibilities for each team member.

3. Magnet Founder – balanced team – The most desired founder of a start-up is a “Magnet founder” who is good enough to attract the best people to himself. This not only helps in building a good strong team, it also helps in getting the right contacts through networking. His charisma, clear vision and focus towards the goal makes himself and his team work very hard to give whatever it takes to achieve their goals.

4. Hire people better than you – The only way to grow a company is to hire people who are better and smarter than you are. When you start, you take care of a whole lot of stuff – but that limits your growth as you can do only so much by yourself. You need the smartest people on your team who can take over things and do it much better, faster and bigger than you can – who can take responsibility of specific roles and sprint with it – this is the success mantra for a start-up. This ensures that you grow at a rapid pace in all areas of your business.

5. Good people hire good people – Be selective about your 1st 10 hires – Its the people who make a start-up a success or a failure. A start-up is very scarce of resources. The only resource it has is – people. The founders have to be very selective about the first 10 people who join the start-up – these are the people who are going to hire you the next 10 and grow your team. Make sure that these are the best people in your team – who will attract the right talent in your team and grow your company in the right way.

6. Do what you say – “Actions speak louder than words” – The culture in your start-up is going to be built by the founding team. As a founder, you have to make sure that the motivation levels in your start-up are always high. You have to make sure that all the people are as excited as you are to make the workplace a fun place to work. You have to make sure that everyones vision is aligned and all are on the same page. You have to make sure that there is positiveness in the workplace and all are craving for the success of the company.

It was a great panel discussion and I hope it would provide good insights to entrepreneurs about their approach to a start-up.

Entrepreneurship – Ideas and Execution

Hi this is Kartik Jain, co-founder of Picsquare – an online photo printing and photo gifting website in India.

Some thoughts on idea’s and ideation:

Well, for entrepreneurs, their ideas seem to be the “next big thing”, “revolutionizing (something)”…I have put forth my thoughts on what is actually required to make things happen ..which is not just the idea, but let me call it Ideation.

i‧de‧a‧tion /ˌaɪdiˈeɪʃən/ Pronunciation Key – [ahy-dee-ey-shuh<!--[if gte vml 1]&gt; –>n]

A word very well found in dictionary has the meaning “the process of forming ideas or images”.

It’s very important to ideate your vision, your dream and then pursue it full throttle to execute it well. In an entrepreneur’s life, there are many miseries, or should I call it challenges (a much better and accepted word by entrepreneurs). Briefly, these challenges could vary from : I am unable to gather motivation, gather a team, grab attention, make things happen, my software doesn’t work, my hardware is dead etc etc…and the list goes on. And many of them think that “money” or “funding” is the nirvana or the only way that will make them or their company successful and vanish away all the challenges.

Interesting thought : Is the money required to solve these minor issues mentioned above?

Ideas are powerful, they are creative, they motivate, they spread, they convey, they solve all your problems, but they don’t earn funding. People are very very scary of even opening their mouths in front of friends/VC’s thinking that “their next big idea” is going to be stolen. Instead of working on “how people will use his idea”, they are busy preparing NDA’s and agreements for “how people cannot steal the idea”. To be very frank, if you are a young start-up your idea would not sell. Because ideas don’t sell.

My definition of ideation is:

Ideation = Idea + Execution (Working of an idea)

And believe me “Execution is the key”.

Unless you have a proto-type, a working model, or something in working condition to show, your idea would not carry any value. Most of the questions people would ask you without a prototype will revolve around “why”. As soon as you start talking about your prototype the questions will start revolving around “What and How”. Almost 95% of the people with ideas, give-up when it comes to execution. The most obvious reason for the death of the idea is given as “lack of funding”…which might be a genuine reason for some..but I can’t believe for all.

When Manish and I were thinking about Picsquare, we came across a club called “Bootstrap”. The concept is simple:

think of an idea –> Validate with minimum resources (and help) –> grow organically –> show results –> (keep growing/go for funding)

The advantages that I see here is when you go and tell your “working model” to people, they will listen and definitely get interested. The most difficult thing to do in the world is to make your product/service accepted by a human . The working model proves that you have crossed this threshold and are up for new challenges in the future

There are ways in which your idea needs to be conveyed to the right people at the right time as well. But I will cover it in my later posts.

To summarize – focus on execution more than the b-plan and paper projections.

Entrepreneurship – How it all started for me?

Entrepreneurship is something that I admire from my childhood days. The reason is that it not only requires courage and sacrifice, but creates a difference in the lives of not an individual, but the whole community. It is not about money and power, but about passion and dreams.

I always believed:

“There are 2 kinds of men in this world. One, who dreams about their life. Second, who is ruled by the life.”

Both kinds live their lives and get vanished in the pool of human beings with little or no traces.

The roots of entrepreneurship in me were germinated from my IITB days. It was at the Entrepreneurship Cell, IITB, when I met with hundreds of entrepreneurs, VC’s and people interested in starting up their own companies. Let me call them the “Third Kind“.

“These are men who lived their dreams. These are men who create the difference. These are men who put that extra bit to achieve excellence. These are men set out to change the way our world functions.”

And I decided that I want to be one of them.

Soon after doing my B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay, I joined QWest Communications as a software developer for a period of about 8 months. My curiosity and quest for doing something on my own led one things to another, and I decided to join Astra Zeneca (a pharmaceutical company) in their Informatics R&D center in Bangalore. During this while I was staying with Manish (again from IIT) and we used to talk about different ideas every evening and evaluate how its going to work and how big it could be.

One fine day we came up with this idea of Online Photo Printing and boom! We started Picsquare (www.picsquare.com) and it picked up very well.

A lot of support from TIE  (The IndUS Entrepreneurs) Bangalore Chapter – mentoring, advising, helping for funds and connecting to the right people, made it possible for us t take Picsquare where it is today.

Entrepreneurship is not easy, but it’s neither tough. The role of an entrepreneur is to find solutions to problems. He is a good problem solver. So, solve the problems that you get on your way and you will definitely reach your goals. Be focused, aggressive and fast. Energize yourself and your team to build the next big company.

A trip from Bangalore to Shravanabelagola

On the auspicious day of Diwali Smriti and I decided to go to Shravanabelagola – a jain pilgrim, well known for 57 feet monolithic statue of Lord Bahubali.

Since it was Diwali, before leaving home, we went to each flat in our apartment and shared sweets with everyone. Since this was the first time we were going alone, we were not too sure about the route to Shravanabelagola. Google maps came to our rescue. For people who would land up on this page, i’ll make it simpler – below is the route from bangalore to shravanabelgola.

View Larger Map

We left Bangalore at around 3:15pm. It was a 3-3.5 hr drive, approximately 140 kms. Leaving Bangalore was a bit slow because of the traffic and flyover constructions. However, the road for the rest of the drive otherwise is pretty good and well maintained. We reached the place at around 6:30pm. As soon as we reached, we settled in the room that we had booked earlier and left for Darshan of the temple near the Jain Math. People who stay close by invite you for dinner on the way and serve really good food.

The next day early morning around 6:30 am, we started climbing the Vindyagiri hill, where there’s a 57 feet monolithic statue of the Lord Bahubali. There are close to 1000 steps. Here are the snaps of the same.

A temple while climbing

Just outside the main temple

The climb

The lake below the mountain

The main statue of Lod Bahubali – 57 feet monolith statue

Maha-mastik-abhisek held every 12 years – next is in 2018

Chandragiri – another mountain just opposite Vindya giri

On the way back, we listened to the Pravachan of Maharaj Tarun Sagar Ji.

It was a great trip back home.

Tata Indica Vista Quadrajet Aura Review

Finally we picked up the vehicle on 15th October 2009 (on Dhanteras – auspicious day!).

And the chosen one is – Tata Indica Vista Quadrajet Aura.

Here are some pictures of the Car

The Aura version of the car is fully loaded. Here are some features that helped us decide for this car -

1. Very spacious. The front and especially rear seats have ample space.

2. Really good mileage for the diesel version – ~16 – 18  (in city, with AC) and ~20-22 (on highways, with AC)

3. Sturdy look (front view looks like a Sedan)

4. Good Boot space (~250L)

5. Height adjustable drivers seat, All 4 power windows, in-built audio system.

This car is really worth the price and ride. Highly recommended.

~k

One with the Car – Diesel vs Petrol

The quest for a car began sometime in August 2009. I always wanted a Honda CRV – its got a really stylish, sleaky, smooth and sexy look and is a beauty to watch on the road. However, right now we decided to settle for a hatchback, which Smriti will also be able to drive easily.

The major criterias we were looking at were -

a) Really good legroom. I hate cars which dont allow me to sit comfortably either in the front or rear seats.  I suffer from Chondro-malecia-patella (phew!! sounds serious) – its also called the classic cinema hall syndrome, which explains the need for the legroom.

b) The mileage of the car should be good.

Smriti was always on for  diesel vehicle. However, I was not very keen on getting a diesel vehicle. Couple of reasons -

a) No one in our family so far has had a diesel vehicle.

b) I thought that it makes too much of a noise and emits a hell lot of pollution (i want to go green! Really!).  AND

c) According to my calculation: Assume the average of the petrol and diesel vehicle is same (~14 kmpl, for ease of calculation). Diesel is cheaper than petrol by ~Rs 14. Hence every 1 Km I save Re 1. The diesel vehicle is ~80K more costly than the petrol version. Hence to cover-up the cost, I need to travel ~80000 Km.  On an average even if I travel 2000 KM per month, it will take me ~4-5 years to cover that extra cost up. Till that time, it will really not matter which vehicle I take now, as the life of the car will be nearly 4-5 years. Hence it wont make a difference really.

However, later I found out that -

a) Diesel vehicle has a higher re-sale value than the petrol version.  Simply because the demand for 2nd hand vehicles in the rentals segment is much higher for diesel vehicles.

b) Also, diesel vehicles give a much better mileage than their petrol counterparts.

c) Also, the new technologies that have come keeps the engine noise under control and are much smoother to drive.

So finally I got convinced that getting a diesel vehicle is not as bad as it looks. Hence we decided to go for the diesel one.