Ok, now that you have a good team in place to implement your idea, you need to estimate/understand the value of your business proposition. Before you start working on your business model, you need to consider the following factors.

Market survey

You should have a clear understanding about whom you are targeting at. Your startup should not create a problem and then try to solve it. Do a market survey among your target audience and get a feel as to whether they are really in need of such a service. Your idea always sounds great to you, but does it to your customer?

Your idea sounds great to you, but does it to your customer?

Ideally, 80-90% of sample set should have a craving for a service like yours and you should see a glow in their eyes when you brief them about the service. That’s when you know, you can strike gold! Initially, it’s better to create a niche market addressing the needs of your product which mainstream providers don’t do.

Customer obsession

Immediately after your team comes your customers. It’s not enough if you just like them, you must be obsessed about them! The moment someone else gives them a better service, they are going to shift. So, never compromise on the quality. Always take their feedback and work on it.

Know your competitors well

Before you jump in, have you done enough research on other players in your domain? Never assume that you are the 1st one to start, it’s most probably not going to be the case. Back in college, I remember meeting venture-capitalists to whom I would proudly say “This is the 1st of it’s kind!“. One of them threw me a simple question – “There are approximately 5 billion websites, are you sure none of them is similar to yours ?” Well, I really did not have an answer to that question. This just means that you need to spend a lot of time researching on similar offerings by other players.

There are approximately 5 billion websites, are you sure none of them is similar to yours

Once done, look at the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of your product and see how/why is it better than the other offerings. Does it really stand-out ? Do the customers really require it?

Aping it from the west

This is another new trend that has started to catch on people. The moment they find an interesting idea doing well in the west, they think it would do well here too! Am sorry, you are terribly mistaken. Again, it comes to understanding your customers, the demographics and the environment. You need to be a visionary and solve *real* problems. You can’t be an entrepreneur just for the heck of it! Understand your customer problems, build a tool and solve it!

Finally, I get some time to breathe! My schedule has been really hectic off late with 5 hours sleep being a luxury. Its been about 4 months since I started working on my pet project. Started off just as an idea, progressed as a normal project and now things are looking serious – will it turn into a startup? I have learnt sooooo much during this small stint that I can’t imagine how much I am going to learn if I branch out on my own. Anyways, I just wanted to share my experiences with you all.

So, what exactly does it take to form your own company? There are a zillion factors – market potential,return on investment, etc.. that play a role, but the most important factor is your team! No matter how great your idea is, if you do not have the right set of people to work with, you are heading for a failure! Following are some of my thoughts as to how a team should be.

• Are you passionate about the idea?

Being passionate is an understatement! You must live, breathe and think about your startup 24×7. When you see the other guy working for 10 hours a day (very small, mind you!), there should be a feeling that triggers you to expend 11 hours the next day, and there you see a vicious circle coming up. A healthy competitive environment is a must.

Growing a startup is like nurturing your own kid. You really got to love it so much and not fuss about the tantrums/problems it throws about – be it in the wee hours or on a nice Sunday afternoon. Your startup must be your life!

• Choose the right people

Choosing the right people to work with is the most important thing to start off! Never include your close relative/friend in a startup because he/she would feel left out otherwise. There are a million other ways to make them feel good. The team is the most important component and there should NOT be any kind of compromises made. It’s better to go with an average programmer whom you are comfortable working with, rather than a stud programmer with whom your rapport is under question

Call a spade a spade. Do not suppress your thoughts and wait for the other person to get back. Never go with the assumption that everything will be fine soon – the truth is, it’s not going to be!

• Do NOT fight for your role/stake

A CEO/CTO role initially is actually nothing to be proud of. C’mon you are the CEO of 5 people ? . I am not saying you shouldn’t assign roles to yourselves, infact it’s a must that you do so, but there should not be any kind of disputes while doing so. You assign a CEO to your startup because the angel investor or the venture capitalist needs to have a single point of contact. Of course everyone’s views must be taken into account before a decision is made.The question of who’s the CEO/CTO etc. should just have 1 answer – it must be unanimous. If it isn’t, well press the pause button and think it over again.

I am against dividing the stakes equally amongst the founders initially. Ideally, each one of them should take 5-7% of stake at the start and based on your performance, you get an increase in your stake. Do not ever fight over this issue, it’s going to leave a very bad sore at the end – something very hard to heal.

• Place your startup ahead of you

I totally agree, starting a venture is a risky business, but if you really want it succeed, you must place the future of startup ahead of your personal gains. People tend to think that there is a possibility that their startup would fail and then he/she would be stranded on the streets with no job. Yes, there is a finite probability that it might happen because of which so many people don’t take the plunge. But, did you give a thought about your startup’s future? What if a similar (probably the same idea!) startup like yours comes up in another 2 months? trust me, digesting that is very very hard!

You will curse yourself for not taking the plunge earlier and might even affect your current job. So follow your heart, follow your gut feeling – you don’t realize it’s power! Again, it’s not enough if you are the only person thinking this way, your entire team should have the same thought.

• Do you need a Phd/MBA graduate in your team? What is the minimum degree that you need to possess?

The only degree you need is passion!

So, pull up a good team and get started. Well, that’s all I have got to say in the first post of this series. Stay tuned for more!

My birthdays are generally a very quite affair with not much change in my daily routine. However, this time it saw an exponential increase in the wishes from all my friends and family – truly great talking to all of them after a loong time . But then, I just realized that my birthday wishes weren’t over yet!

After having a bank account in <undisclosed> I have become averse to the word courier – they spam my mailbox (literally!) . And as expected, when my mom told be about a courier that had come today, I quietly ignored it. But the courier was a little thick and was shipped from Mumbai! And a closer look, revealed it was from my roommate Prashant Yadav! He had packed in a Creative headphone set – something essential for every S/W engineer

I was just overwhelmed seeing the gift, indeed really touched ! Headphones have become an integral part of my life and little did he know that I lost my old (Philips) headphones at my workplace last week! I was really upset and my mom offered to buy me one for my birthday – thankfully got postponed . A really thoughtful gift at the right time. Thanks a lot Yadav!

Back after a long hiatus! I attended the OpenCoffeeClub edition in Chennai at IIT-M today. As stated in the website, the informal event started at 3 PM sharp. By the time I reached there, I was surprised that there were already 30-40 guys present – a good response! People started off chatting in small groups, when the organizer came forward to organize the event!

It began with a short introduction of each one of us. The profiles of people varied from students to S/W developers to entrepreneurs and freelance programmers. People came from diverse backgrounds which proved to be a perfect base for networking. Since there wasn’t any fixed agenda for the meeting, everybody was clueless as to what to start off with! A small question from one of the members on Patents in India formed the crux of the discussion – in fact the discussion itself!

From the discussion, it seemed that filing a patent in India seemed to be an incredibly herculean task! I never knew you could get a particular thing patented for different amounts! , isn’t that silly ? A patent can be filed for a meagre 15K to a whooping 8L! – difference being that the loopholes might be more in the former. Somehow, this entire concept of greater the money, stronger the patent seems ridiculous!

Greater the money, Stronger the patent!

The most important thing before you file a patent is to prove that the work done is indeed yours and doesn’t violate any other patents. Proving this would mean going through a 1000 other patents and deducing that your work is original. You could have well built a new product by then!

The rest of the people were mostly beating around the same point when finally a gentleman who had come from Silicon valley (yes!) summarized the entire situation.

1. Before you file a patent, analyze at which stage your startup is in and whether patenting at that stage really makes sense
2. Understand the industry before you patent a product. The patenting rule for a S/W industry is totally different from a Pharmaceutical industry
3. Build a solid technology before you even think of patenting! By solid, I mean something like a Facebook architecture. If facebook really needs to make money, all it needs to do is patent it’s back-end framework. On an average they handle 2TB of photos everyday! – now you know what solid means

I was surprised that the discussion ended here and the entire session got over! However, I think the main aim of these kind of meetings is to build your network. After the session, I got in touch with people from PearsCapital.com – pretty neat concept. However, I spent close to an hour interacting with Balraju – CEO of Btechguru.com. I really got some awesome tips as to how to take forward a dot-com website to end-users.I need a separate post to write about it

Altogether, it was a nice experience meeting people from a variety of backgrounds and getting to know different aspects of entrepreneurship. Kudos to coffee club! organize more meetings !