You would have easily guessed what this post is going to be about. Yes, I had the opportunity to attend the recent edition of proto.in and awesome would be an understatement! It started off with Mr. Atul Chitnis talk on how to run successful business. There two important points he stated

Assume connectivity

Always think ahead when building your product. Today is history

Following this was Start-up showcase where each team were allowed to present their ideas for 6 minutes. I was very impressed by a couple of start-ups – Lifemojo, indiakhelo. The ideas were really innovative and well implemented.We had a twitter contest going on and I tweeted like crazy from hari’s account . Sadly though, there were many more crazier people like me .

Post-lunch, there was an interesting talk by Paul Allwin founder and CEO of paagalguy. A Wharton grad, had interesting insights on the concept of a co-founder.

Don’t go in search of a co-founder for the heck of it. You can manage business on your own!

He gave some interesting facts about the crores of revenue this site generates through advertisements and how the attrition rate is less than 1%. A great talk! He had an interesting comment on his marital status

I don’t think, I will get married. Every time, my mom tells the bride’s family “My son runs a site named paagalguy!! and you know what the result is

That was pretty much the interesting part of Day – I.

The 2nd day had better events than the 1st. It started off with Mr. Bob Young’s speech – co-founder of Red Hat Linux, founder of Lulu.com. The talk had a great mix of humor,satire,advices, etc.. Everyone in the auditorium really enjoyed the 1 hour that passed by.

The Start-up showcase wasn’t that great compared to Day I. I can’t even think of any innovative start-up. Start-ups like remindo, fachak looked like an ‘old wine in a new pot‘. The other talk which was particularly interesting and very much applicable to me was ‘Fresh Out of College or Experienced – before making that leap‘. It was given by two young very inspiring entrepreneurs – Rajiv Dinghra ( WATBlog) and Dravid (theviewspaper.in). These two really instilled the belief and faith that if you really want to do something, you can do it! I had the opportunity to talk to them personally after the session, and they were truly inspiring!

However, the most important thing that came out of this event was the fact that I got to know truckloads of people from different backgrounds who shared their experience about how they started off their startup and the challenges they faced. I met the co-founder of letzknow and guess what – he is a 3rd year student in Amrita! I love these people who do what their heart says! I had an opportunity to meet Freeman and talk about tech entrepreneurship, incubation centres, etc. Hoping to meet him soon!

Everyone were given a badge which had their name and the company they belonged to. For some reason, I did not want to disclose my company’s name and hence filled the field as ‘Undisclosed‘. My badge looked like ‘Vivek Ravisankar,Undisclosed‘ . Many people thought, I was running a start-up and I did not want to disclose about it!

On the whole, the 2 days were real fun and I enjoyed the show to the max! It was a stud event, well organized with a good set of speakers. Proto.in rocks!

PS: A bigg thanks to Susa, hari and wally for helping me find my way in Blore. You guys also rock!