New Venture Creation - Entrepreneur Day

I have previously blogged about the New Venture Creation program at BITS Pilani. This last Sunday we hosted its first ever Entrepreneur Day. Students at Pilani are hidden away in a remote place and don't get to meet entrepreneurs that often. And even if they do, it is not with the purpose of being coached for their startups.

This E-Day was an event setup to get students face to face with Entrepreneurs, hear a couple of startup stories, practice pitching and then get 1-1 coaching for their startups.

Vish Bajaj, Founder and CEO of ValueFirst, gave a highly motivating and humorous talk about his personal entrepreneurial journey. Ajay Chaturvedi, Founder and CEO of HarVa, talked about his rural BPO and more importantly emphasized his startup's focus is on value creation and not empowerment or social upliftment. Gagan, Founder of ValueFirst, and Sujit Panigrahi, Founder of Convergent, also shared their experiences.

But the most exciting part of the day were the student pitches followed by coaching sessions for each team. The pitches were well rehearsed and most of them were quite clear about their business idea. Of course they need to tighten the business case and the launch plan which is the next phase for them. I am bullish that at least 3 teams out of these 9 will form a startup straight after graduation. Let's see!

For rest of the pictures go to the E-Day album.

My favorite startup and tech blogs

I have been following some blogs for the last few years quite diligently and have come to learn a ton about building startups, particularly in the Internet space. These blogs have informed, educated and inspired me in many ways. They cover a broad range of topics and I love the fact that there is so much to learn from their experiences. One of the things it has inspired me to do is share personal opinions on topics that appeal to me instead of just cursory coverage of information/news which is available plentiful on the web. Given that I have learned a lot from these, I decided to dedicate this blog post to the bloggers I have come to appreciate over time. Here we go in no particular order.

AVC by Fred Wilson: One of the most prolific startup bloggers and a rock star in my opinion. His VC firm, Union Square Ventures, has spotted gold with many startups including Foursquare, Twitter, Etsy among others. The insights that I learn each day from Fred are just brilliant and he’s my favorite blogger. This is a must-read blog for anyone in the Internet/mobile/media startup space.

Both Sides of the Table by Mark Suster: I came to know of Mark quite recently through Fred’s posts. I like his posts mainly because they cover all topics in a lot of depth. For example, he covered The Future of Television & The Digital Living Room in such great depth that it really strengthens one’s business understanding.

Ben Horowitz: His blogs are great to learn about people management at startups. Like Mark, he does a great job of covering topics with good depth.

Seeing Both Sides by Jeffrey Bussgang: I know Jeff from my b-school days and like him as a person. His blogs are great for VC specific topics and New England startup topics. He doesn’t write very frequently but his posts are well crafted and quite educative.

Above the Crowd by Bill Gurley: Bill is a legendary Silicon Valley VC. I heard him talk during my MBA Silicon Valley trek where he amazed me by the startup insights he shared. I have followed his blog since then and found it interesting. He writes quite infrequently but each post is very well thought it and highly opinionated.

Feld Thoughts by Brad Feld: He writes quite frequently and focuses more on sharing interesting news bites and startup advice. It’s a great blog if you want to hear about events and happenings in the startup world. He’s also one of my favorites because of two reasons. 1. He’s a sloanie 2. He’s the guy behind Startup Visa.

Some of the other startup blogs I follow less frequently are:

Venture Hacks

Guy Kawasaki

The Monster in Your Head by Jerry Colonna

Paul Graham Essays

And my favorite tech news blogs are the usual suspects:

Giga Om

Tech Crunch

MediaNama

If you think I should add some more to my reading list, please let me know in the comments below.

Enjoy reading these!

China Road by Rob Gifford

While I have never visited China, it has always mystified me. So I decided to read a book to get a deep dive into the nation that is a world in itself. I picked this book based on recommendations on Amazon and it turned out to be quite educative.

I had taken a course at MIT on China which focused mostly on all the success stories of its rapidly growing economy. But this book viewed China from a different angle, from the east going to west.

The author goes through a soul searching trip from Shanghai on the east coast to all the way Urumqi on the western end where it ends into Kazakhstan. He spends most of his time on Route 312 traveling by cabs, buses and other local commute options. And in true journalistic fashion interviews random people he meets on his road trip, with the simple purpose to learn from the stories of common Chinese people. It is brilliantly crafted and has a very personable reading style.

The book touches on various topics in the context of modern day China. Some of these are:
History: Rob gives a snapshot of the various dynasties from Qing, Ming, Tang and many others that ruled for several years followed by the modern era which ended the imperial rule. While the Republic of China tried to drive industrialization and modernization, there were several internal disputes that resisted significant change. Finally it culminated with the Sino Japanese war and the formation of a separate, smaller ROC, now Taiwan. This resulted in the formation of PRC under Mao Zedong who drove the socialistic transformation of PRC. 1979 was the inflection point when Deng Xiaoping embarked China on the road to economic reforms and a decent balance with Communism was achieved.

Communism: Rob seems like a die-hard believer of democracy. So while he still loves China for various reasons including its history, culture and people, he is unable to give in to the ideological differences he has with the country. There are numerous examples from the lives of common Chinese that support his standpoint. He goes further to explain why Chinese people have never been able to develop checks and balances on state power which he attributes to political, ideological and social reasons.

Rural China: Across rural China, there are millions of stories about lack of water (due to dried up or polluted rivers), lack of women (due to the one-child policy that made couples favor a son) and lack of opportunities. The road to the east is the only hope to a better future for most of them.

Chinese dilemma: The nation needs to empower its people to become strong but its Communistic roots can’t let the people be too empowered. The government wants advanced education without encouraging people to think. The tension is between the need to enforce orthodoxy in order to retain unity and the need to allow freedom in order to encourage creativity.

Tibet and Islamic China: He also makes a stop in Tibet and Islamic China. The Buddhist monks are afraid to lose their identity. Beijing is encouraging hordes of Han Chinese to migrate to these areas to keep communal tensions at Bay. For many Tibetans, sticking to the rules of the Chinese government is their best hope for their future generations so they put up with it. Similarly, while Uighars and other indigenous Islamic people are clinging onto their identity, the great wall in the minds of Muslim Chinese and the Han Chinese stands very firm. Beijing is trying to buy off the Muslim peoples with economic opportunities, education and transportation to the West.

China is a complex country with many socio-political tensions at various levels. There is a lot of subliminal unrest in people. But the rapidly growing economic opportunities are keeping any revolutionary tendencies at bay. Beijing is therefore frantically working hard to keep the economic pace as brisk as possible.

New Venture Creation

This is the second year in running of a new program we have started at BITS, Pilani called New Venture Creation. It’s a startup course for engineering undergrads and grads which is running very successfully and is filling an important unmet need on campus.

When I had started on this path, the objective was to create a seed fund for campus which students could utilize to launch their startup. However, I discovered through my early interactions that the real need is for formal mentoring and not money.

So we created this program in the form of a course where students are selected through an application process, come up with their team and idea, are assigned a mentor. They spend the entire semester then creating their startup by working on the nuts and bolts.

You can find a more detailed overview about the program on the CEL website along with the list of mentors and speakers.

We learned three main things through this program:
1) Huge demand: Students previously felt a void to learn the ropes of creating a startup. They have a center of entrepreneurship but it doesn’t teach nuts and bolts of business. But this program meets their needs very well in a practical manner. The program has 14 startup teams from two years and some of them had to be turned away because we couldn’t run such a large program.
2) Gap in industry connect: A unique aspect of learning is through industry connect. Students need to learn and interact with experienced entrepreneurs and professionals in order to learn the real deal about building a startup. There’s a big gap in this area and being 6 hours away from Delhi doesn’t help a bit. The way we are bridging this gap is through virtual lectures and mentoring, an integral part of this course.
3) Unlimited enthusiasm: I can distinctly recall my time at BITS, Pilani when it felt that everything was within my reach and I would conquer the world. That same enthusiasm and confidence is beaming through these kids and they are filled with ambition and passion to create the next big startup. Their risk appetite is much higher at this age and they are willing to learn and try new things quickly.

Last year, one startup from 5 teams stood out and was awarded a small seed fund, lots of mentoring, access to personal networks and incubation space. They went on to win their first customer within 6 months and just recently have been short listed in the top 20 finalists out of 16,200 applications in Economic Times’ Power of Ideas competition. The team has decided to pursue their startup after graduation instead of taking up a job in some large company.

This year we have 9 teams and they all have very interesting business ideas and we are confident that 2 or 3 teams will emerge with the ability to pursue this as a real startup.

I wonder about the potential of such a program in surfacing the best startup talent. If we conduct a similar program across the hundreds of engineering colleges in India, we can easily bring out hundreds of young entrepreneurs each year. Similar programs/courses in American undergrad colleges help bring out startup talent there and should be replicated more aggressively by Indian colleges too.

Energy and Execution

People often rave about cool ideas and great strategies in all companies big and small. I used to believe on the same lines for a while until I entered business school and saw the massive divide between thinkers and doers.

I know several great 'idea people' who amaze everyone by their innovative ideas for the world they live in, the companies they work for and for themselves. But many of them are just not able to execute or actualize any of their plans and ideas. As a result ideas remain just that - ideas! And that's how I believe the phrase came about - 'ideas are dime a dozen'.

One needs to have energy and execution to be able to make meaning of ideas. The ability to put thought into action and the motivation to drive things to fruition and generate measurable results are critical aspects for producing real, tangible success. Jack Welch's 4Es also include Energy and Execution as two key factors behind successful business leaders.

People who give too much credit to ideas waste too much time in perfecting their ideas as a result wasting too much time in getting started. I see tons of people at work creating pretty slides and sitting in countless meetings to perfect their 'ideas'. The counter intuitive thing is to get started. If one starts executing quickly, they will not only encounter potential problems sooner but are also able to solve them more effectively because there is a real context.

There's just a small catch though. It's not sufficient to run fast and get things done, you also need to run in a fairly right direction. Otherwise you achieve results but they are not sizeable and meaningful.

The reason I am typing this post is because I am seeing a lot of poor execution around me these days. These people and the companies they are in are unable to execute and are continuously attributing it to a wrong strategy or a bad idea. My simple answer to them "stop analyzing too much and get things done!"

Hiring Talent in India

I have been in India for about 8 months now and am launching a new business in emerging markets. During this time, I have experienced quite a few things about working in India. One area that's worth sharing about is my experience with hiring. You would benefit from this post if you are setting up a team either at a large company or at your startup.

When I started it was just me driving this business. We are now a team of 15 of which 9 were hired and 6 are from an existing team. We hired 1 product manager, 1 technical lead and 7 contract engineers.

Engineers need room to be innovative
Large IT firms are the starting grounds for many fresh engineering graduates. These firms are bustling with neophytes who have had little exposure. The IT services model encourages engineers to write code according to well defined specs and are incentivized by how many KLOC are written. We had a tough time time finding people who had real-world experience building mobile Internet services. We finally decided to pick individuals who we thought we could mould. We encouraged the hires to think innovatively and have an opinion on the stuff they were working. The net-net is that if you want to build standard stuff with a well defined process leave the entire thing to the outsourcing firm. If not you will have to manage the engineers on your own.

Hiring a Product Manager
It was quite difficult to come across candidates with the right blend of experience and innovative thinking. We sifted through several resumes and had a difficult time even shortlisting candidates. Most candidates could not even articulate PM responsibilities. We often ended up with candidates who were more project managers and less product managers. We filled this opening with a candidate from Yahoo! Lucky for us, many people were leaving Yahoo! and we got our hands on one of them. Realistically, referrals are your best option to fill non-technical managerial positions.

Specialized tech skills are difficult to find
I thought it would be quite straightforward to hire a tech lead given all the brouhaha about Indian IT firms. However, I was surprised that it was not so. While we received lots of resumes, most of them didn’t have any practical experience managing and leading teams. Many were aspiring to leave hands-on work and become ‘managers’. We finally found someone in Singapore through a head hunter. We are now on the look out for an operations engineer to setup and scale our Internet servers. Let’s see how that goes. Your best shot for specialized tech skills is looking through head hunters.

Over emphasis on experience
Generally speaking there’s too much emphasis on ‘years of experience’. Throughout our hiring process, I didn’t see a single resume that was less than three pages. In fact one HR person who I complained to told me that they filter candidates based on the length of the resumes! This culture leaves little room for meritocracy. Therefore you often see the smart kids chasing MNCs that don’t merely focus on experience or join startups where they get more latitude.

Finding talent is not that easy here. In my opinion there are two main reasons. One is that people don’t stick to a single job long enough which is required to develop professional depth. Second, there aren’t sufficient role models. For example you need good product managers around you to become a good product manager yourself.

In spite of all this, the trend is very positive. One consistent theme is that people work really hard! They’ll stay as long as it requires. That’s a very positive thing. And as they start to realize that to differentiate hard work alone is not enough, they’ll start focusing on learning new skills to differentiate themselves.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I just finished reading Outliers. I have previosuly read his Tipping Point and Blink and I can say that this book has also opened my mind in yet another dimension.

Unlike his previous books, this one starts with stories of people (Bill Gates, Bill Joy and Steve Jobs) whose stories I am generally familiar with. So it was quite interesting to learn about the events and situations that made them Outliers.

His stories about ethnicity of pilots and how it relates to plane crashes is quite eye opening and, to some extent, hard to believe. However, the chapter of rice paddy fields and it's relevance to the Chinese math prowess is simply a stretch.

The key point of his book - the impact of timing, family and cultural history - is something I can personally relate to. I grew up in one of the 'inner-city' areas in Chennai and it seems quite surprising how I was still able to get all the education and exposure. But its quite obvious now that there were specific things that happened in my life for the way things turned out. 

My maternal grand father, who was a lawyer, was educated in the UK at a time when it was not that common among Indians. Given his global exposure, he encouraged and supported my mom's education. My mom also became a lawyer, which was quite unusual in the 'marwari' community which does not generally encourage women to study and work. And because of her passion to educate me, I ended up in a top school in Chennai in spite of the not-so-educated neighborhood and society. Now this school had all the ingredients to prepare me for a professional career that I now have. 

I have always believed that more than half your life's path is determined in the context you are born - time, place, family, economy, culture, religion etc. Still there is quite a lot that is not predetermined and is left to the choices one makes in their lives. Those choices determine whether you live a happy life or not. Outliers does a great job of putting facts and research behind this belief.

First Impressions of a Returning NRI

I lived in Bangalore for 6 months in 1999 before I left for the USA. I am back now after 10 years. Although I have visited India regularly, it's very different to actually live and work here.

It's been just one week here, but it feels like a lot more as I have seen so much in so little time. So much positive change has happened in India, it's unbelievable! I had heard about many things but what I saw just blew me away.

Youth Power: The first day when I walked into my office on Outer Ring Road, I saw a sea of people working on a sprawling work floor. They were occupying a previous call center and were all sitting arms length away from each other in really compact work spaces. And when I looked more carefully I was having a hard time spotting anyone over the age of 25! It's amazingly empowering to know that half of india's population is under 25. Although we have come a long way in the last couple of decades, I just can't wait to see how this demographic will transform India in yet another decade.

Startups: I met several startups in just three days. They were doing a variety of interesting things in the mobile world. From Babajobs to Ziva and several others. And so many others mentioned in all kinds of mainstream media from The Times of India to India Today. The Indian entrepreneurial spirit often talked about in the US and elsewhere is easily visible here.

Diversity: Another thing that I witnessed for the first time was a lot more diversity. There are quite a few folks from all over the world doing full-time or part-time stints in India. Even more interesting was the CEO & Founder of Babajobs. This guy is an American who moved to India with Microsoft Research and then quit to found his startup that helps Indian employers find employees for household jobs ranging from drivers to ayyahs (maids). It is amazing to witness this kind of diversity arrive in India.

Retail: This is one area where there has been a dramatic shift. Sprawling malls and giant stores that are filled with people from a broad economic spectrum. Department stores, movie halls and restaurant chains that are available all over the city, not just in one part of the city as it used to be 10 years ago. Global retail chains like Staples and several others in the food industry have made presence here. Talking about cars, there are SO MANY makes available wih each brand offering upwards of 5 models. (Another reason behind all that traffic!). The Indian consumer is finally benefitting from the massive growth that the country is witnessing.

Infrastructure and Real Estate: While there has been good progress, there's a lot left to be desired. The positive signs are the magnificent Bangalore airport, several new fly overs, lot of new real estate for commercial and residential needs. However, the fly overs under construction have worsened the traffic situation. The roads are terribly crammed, buildings that are 2-3 years old look like they have been around for years. Roads and other properties need a lot of better maintenance. Lots more work to be done in this area.

Chaos: Something that I had expected to encounter was chaos; and the country didn't let me down a bit!! Finding a quiet spot is extremely hard around here. And once you are on the road, chaos goes to a completely new level. Jam packed and excruciatingly slow traffic. And I had forgotten that there is no concept of personal space :) You walk into a mall and there are LOTS and LOTS of people. Buses and airports are packed more than ever! But to my surprise the chaos extends into all aspects of life. My onboarding was a good example of how it creeps into professional world. There was nothing prepared to get me started at work. I had to chase down everyone from getting an access badge to a phone line. And it was common for people to pass the buck to someone else. It's typical for people to not return calls. And when someone says 'it will be done in 5 min', it still means an indefinite amount of long time in India :)

There's so much excitement and buzz all over the country. Progress is happening on so many fronts. And, of course, there are problems that come with that progress. But in short, all I can say is India has finally arrived!

The web is still a beatly thing and it's hard to get grips around the vastness of it. There is so much variety and so much to learn and do.

Knicks - Nuggets Brawl

Knicks and Nuggets Brawl - Anthony punches Mardy Collins

Strong belief and conviction can drive away fear.

Service industry related to housing is one big scam in south Florida. Any kind of service is a rip off especially when most of the work can be done very easily and in very little time. For example, I have been waiting for over a year to get my tiles placed on my house. Hurricane Wilma hasn't helped me much because the demand has shot up exponentially! Let's hope that some day the service industry down here becomes more efficient.

It beats me completely and I don't know what it could be? It requires a ton of patience! And the point of eruption has almost come...