Vijay Anand, Curator, Proto.in asks, “If we make better companies, and if we are darn better in hard work, and are more than well aided in terms of talent and capacity, whats it going to take us to the global spotlight?”
And he has the answer too. “ I think its going to take the support of the community as a whole to make that happen.”
The Economist profiles Sridhar Vembu who, they feel, can take a shot a shot at becoming software’s Michael Dell.
In the mid-1990s, though, venture capitalists gave Mr Vembu the cold shoulder when he shopped around a business plan for software that helped to manage telecoms networks.
This rejection, says Mr Vembu, led him to do the right thing: be frugal and stay independent. When they set up the firm in 1996 he and his five co-founders had to use their own money. Having no cash to waste—unlike so many others in those giddy times—they based AdventNet in Pleasanton, an hour’s drive east of Silicon Valley and much cheaper. Even today it has only a dozen employees there; the rest are in Chennai. Such penny-pinching allowed the company to survive when the telecoms bubble burst in 2001.
With no outside investors, AdventNet could switch to a different business. Venture capitalists would probably have killed off a few of the 18 web-based applications that AdventNet has since come up with under the Zoho name. Several are essentially interchangeable with services that are already offered by Google, the online giant, and will be by Microsoft, its main competitor.
Yet Zoho is no mere clone of Google’s applications. It is the most comprehensive suite of web-based programmes for small businesses, including even services to keep track of a firm’s employees and its customers.
Here are some brands that had no launch at all: Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Harry Potter, Google, William Morris, The DaVinci Code, Wikipedia, Snapple, Geico, Linux, Firefox and yes, Microsoft. (All got plenty of PR, but after the launch, sometimes a lot later).
Great publicity is a treasured gift. But it’s hardly necessary, and the search for it is often a significant distraction. Full post by Seth Godin
The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad’s center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship started recently. The center is part of IIIT-H initiatives to combine research and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship with highest quality education. The center was set up to imbibe creative, strategic, managerial and transformation thinking amongst students.
SETU software systems became the first company to be incubated & housed inhouse in IIIT-H, with the base technology offered from the CEO, Prasad Pingali’s PhD work at the institute’s LTRC lab. The co-founder of this company is Prof. Vasudeva Varma, who is also the chief scientist in the company. SETU Software system is a product & services company operating in the area of Indian Language search & information extraction.
As part of their academic partnership within 2 months of setting up the innovation center, SUN Microsystems extended support to the Institute by giving servers and software platforms. The Institute received financial support to projects from Governmental scheme DSIR’s TePP and DIT’s initiates for entrepreneurship development.
“More often than not success will take longer in coming than you think. There will be times when at the end of the month there will not be enough money to pay the office rent and employee salaries… There will be years on end when you will be financially the worst off person in your batch from business school… So before making the jump ask yourself a question – will I love doing this for the rest of my life even if I am not financially successful?” Sanjeev Bikhchandani adds.
Passion in low doses is called a hobby. I won’t get my car fixed by somebody who is very passionate about cars, but only does it on weekends from 3-4 pm. Similarly, I will not buy CRM from a guy who only works on it on the weekend. This is again mostly a derivation of the first point, but I wanted to say this out loud.
From Atanu Dey’s Blog
“All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes, and make them come true.” - T.E. Lawrence
Guy Kawasaki’s list of the five most important lessons he has learned as an entrepreneur. Please check out the entire posting here.
The five points are
Please check out the entire posting here.
Sramana Mitra, entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley for nearly 25 years, has a very interesting series of essays on future of multiple entrepreneurship in India. It is currently on to its seventeenth running segment and one can do no better than introduce it by quoting from Sramana’s preface to his Vision India 2020 Series:
I invite readers to take a journey with me into the future through the minds of multiple entrepreneurs, who by addressing the opportunities I see today, will perhaps shape the future of India.
But in this series, we will close our eyes, and exist in this future, and BE each entrepreneur.
Sudhanshu Raheha has a thought provoking post on Bootstrapping or Fund Raising
Excerpts: It depends on what does you startup want to do. If it would take you a lot of time before you can start making money, then you need some external money to keep clear the bills, but if you can find a way to start getting paid immediately, you are better off without giving out your equity.
Ranjan Varma Personal Finance 2.01