There is too much cynicism in this eco-system and frankly makes me feel quite sick.

— Mayank Sharma (@mayanks) February 9, 2012

People who have done it, never done it, have no plans of doing a startup, all together are calling a wolf in this deal.

This is the venture eco-system, this is how it is played. Companies are built, bought and sometimes brought down. Tejit, my previous startup went through two two (sic.) successive acquisitions in less than three years…and I’m still working. I am still below my quota of Fuck You money. Irrespective of what the end-game is, which seldom is a stalemate, the Silicon valley eco-system is built on two simple things:

1. Every startup is a success
2. No startup is a failure

This is exactly what needs to happen to India and this deal is one of the threads in arriving at that goal.

After the previous exits, the reason I was able to raise my hand and fill a gap in the Indian startup ecosystem because the startup experience gave me enough confidence to do another one, though Morpheus was on the other side of the fence and helping people getting started.

The current consolidation of Flipkart buying Letsbuy, irrespective of the dilapidated state of the latter is a good thing. Why?

1. It gives a necessary boost to the eco-system that bets can be paid off, when the vision is right but the markets are tough. If VCs are forced to write these deals off, it brings a black mark in their report card to their investors (LPs or Limited Partners). However, we as entrepreneurs need to keep the funding cycle alive and rotating every few years.
2. Venture Capital is an between food chain of money flowing from people who have it. Why have a spock mark when you can avoid it? While getting a degree, it’s okay to get a summer (or suppli) as long as you come out in that 4 years. Some of the startups are like that failed exam but the venture eco-system allows for “exits”. Would you want the annotation of “suppli” in your degree? Nor do they.
3. Entrepreneurs who did “okay” in the current startup become capable of taking even bolder bets. If the start-up simply fails, not that there are no learnings from the same, but parking an almost out of gas car securely is much better than leaving it in the middle of the road.
4. For the uninitiated who do not understand the intricacies of the deals, it’s a positive story and brings more people to take the plunge and start their own venture.

Yes, it’s a good PR. Can be written in bold in the resume and can even make you a VC, irrespective of the nature of the exit. That’s how sweet these exits are.

Off-topic: The most worry-some part of the current cynicism is not just the angst against the deals but the so called keepers of the ecosystem advising entrepreneurs to keep away from investors and also advising them to bootstrap their startups to death. They are at total loss to understand that these are venture startups and not a “baniya ki dukaan.”

Only 15? That’s how reacted when I saw Pluggd.in’s list of the most promising consumer Internet startups out of India. Why not 50 to watch? or even 25! India has plenty of raw talent, desire to not fail and kick-butts. What’s lacking is a light which shows them that entrepreneurship is yet another career option.

A quick analysis of VCCircle puts the count of angel deals this year to less than twenty-five. Let’s double the number to account for un-announced deals, that brings this to fifty. Freaking 50. That’s it. I’m sure Indian Angel Network alone has more than 100 members!

That’s my wish to Santa for India’s tech venture entrepreneur ecosystem–We need more angels who are ballsy and do ballsy deals. Another wish, we need more investors who really are worthy of being called angels. For me an angel is someone who does a) at least 5-6 deals every year or at least $100K in investments and b) Leads at least 25% of his investments. Hopefully, Indian angels who interacted with Geeks On a Plane travellers, follow up on their word and start closing. Rest are investors looking to double/triple the money in 18 months.

Merry Christmas.

E.O.E. These 3 words were uttered to me by an entrepreneur, whom I bought a cup of coffee. He was apologetic when I told him that’s not the way to do things and he should be building a company to scale and reach milestones–not built to flip. I narrated some tid-bits of the cover story done by Fast Company magazine which was prophetic and foretold the dot com meltdown which happened months after that article was published.

Agreed that there is more money than ever flowing in India in certain sectors and raising angel money is easier than before. However, chasing the sectors which are attracting a lot of attention is wrong way to bet things (His logic for betting on those sectors–It may be easier to raise money).

Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs in India are reading too much into the Silicon Valley funding & exit fire hose, which makes sense only in the valley because of the reasons we know. India is still a parched land in terms of high-tech early stage money; only 5% of total PE/VC is in Angel + Series A + Series B. Furthermore, of that pool a very small percentage is for Pre-Series A deals. India’s early-stage money is FFI (Funnel funnily inverted or Fully f**** inside-out). Think about it. Do you still want to be an Exit Oriented Entrepreneur?

[Interestingly, @brij and I exchanged tweets on this topic yesterday morning related to @cdixon's post]

In an effort to rationalize, tweeted the title of this post and bang came some great replies:

@brij said:

@1ndus you are on the crease. playing. that’s usually enough. Take a proper stance and cover your assets with a nice AD guard!

Another one by @zenx:

@1ndus Test match hai dude. Think sessions, not overs, even as you capitalize on the loose deliveries!

Finally, @riteshagar suggested:

@1ndus Simple think. Do as @sachin_rt does. Care only for the next ball; not for overs, innings or sessions !

There is a shift happening, although the day dreams of creating an 800-pound gorilla still persist, but the execution has become very pragmatic. This recent Techcrunch post by @petersims further nails it:

Don’t Bet Big. Little Bets Are The Ones That Turn Into Billion-Dollar Ideas

RIP, Sixer in every over. Welcome, six runs on six well-played balls.

On one side, I was having way too much fun talking to young entrepreneurs, speaking at events, giving gyaan, moderating panels, doing Friday sessions  at Leela, etc etc. Then I was getting rusted. The brain was getting claustrophobic, not getting into action. Hence decided to take the plunge again. I wanted to come out and write some code, do a few apps here and there, before figuring out what to do next.

It has been an awesome ride at Morpheus. We recently did the 2nd demo day (and the 1st Open Gurukul) at Bangalore, which was attended by 35 investors and 100+ entrepreneurs. Unforgettable, how the 2 years quickly passed. Portfolio swelled to 33, companies got funded, another half-a-dozen raised subsequent angel rounds (a lot of them not disclosed, yet). Even chased chickens at the Morpheus Gurukul last year.

Sameer (@guglanisam) & Nandini (@nandinih) are doing an awesome job, keeping the baton while I move on. I’ll be around in a limited professional capacity at Morpheus.

So It begins again for me. What I’m doing next? Honestly, dunno 100%. I have some ideas what to do next, but don’t ask Jyoti (my wife), she knows what should I do next!

If you are an entrepreneur and if I have ever bought you a tea/coffee, c’mon pay me back with a beer now

This blog post was not suppose to happen for another 15-20 days, but the news of the transition got picked up by VCCircle/Techcircle.

This is classic entrepreneurs dilemma when starting out. The choice a founder makes and the venture he is building would determine the outcome. I was at recently concluded unpluggd2 event where someone asked the same question.

A very interesting blog post is doing the rounds and was shared by Shashank, Sameer and others. Quoting the bullet #41 & #42:

41. Know what kind of company you are trying to build.  There are very few Googles and Facebooks.  A good outcome for your business might be a $10M exit or a $20M exit or a $100M exit or no exit at all.  Plan for the business you want to build.  Don’t just shoot for the moon.  From a money-in-your-pocket and return on time spent standpoint, owning 20% of a $20M exit in 2 years is much better than owning 3% of a $100M business in 5 years.

42. Related to #41, understand whether your business is a VC business or not. A VC business is expected to deliver 10x returns to investors.  That means if you’re taking money with a $5M post-money valuation, the expectation is that you are building for a minimum $50M exit.  $10M post-money valuation = $100M target.  That’s not to say that you might not sell the company for less and everyone involved might be happy with that outcome, but that’s not what you are signing up for when you take VC money with such a valuation.  Know what the implications of taking VC money are and what it means for expectations on you.

I don’t have to add any thing–the bullets say it all. You can overcome this dilemma by answering the following:

1. If I take Rs. 1 crore from an investor, can I return Rs. 10 crores back in 5 years or so?
2. Can the business double it’s revenues every year without adding a lot of people to it?
3. If my neighbor finds out about my business, can he also build it?
4. Am I building something which very few people have built?
5. If there is a list of top 100 innovative businesses, would the business qualify?

It’s totally fine, if your business is not a venture fundable business. A lot of businesses are like that.

I’m on my way back from the jungles of Tamilnadu, where I was off-grid for the best part of the week. Trekking, bathing, detoxing, imbibing nature, completing half-read books, reflecting on the last 24-month jaunt in India and pondering about the future. Today marks Dussera, a Hindu festival, where as per mythology, Lord Rama’s exile culminates with the killing of demon king Raavan.

Continuing the tradition, large effigies of Raavan is burnt along with his two other cohorts viz. Kumbhakarna and Indrajeet, to celebrate the victory of  good over evil.

A startup’s journey is crowded with demons, internal and external, who are ready with their poison arrows. One wrong stance leads to a certain gnawing death. An entrepreneur in business, who has started up, faces several such demons. Based on my experience working with The Morpheus portfolio companies, coming out victorious is just another milestone:

1. Feature overload Solve a small problem first, get the version 1.0 of the product out. Iterate quickly with feedback, instead of building features for every customer under the sun. Think what you can build as a minimum viable product, keeping a target customer in mind. Feature overload can easily be tackled by (a) Smart prioritization (b) getting feedback from potential customers, and (c) simply trusting your instincts.
2. Monetary shenanigans Startups are not about starvation, but it’s about being efficient with money. Kill your money demons. Some to be killed while starting up and some on the way (a) Save enough for the journey before taking the plunge (b) Ask family/friends for help (c) If you have a few customers using your product, then talk to a few individual angels (d) Get an incubator to support you. Talk to us at The Morpheus
3. People & Teaming Issues One of the major pain point a young venture faces is around people. Issue around people is the biggest demon. You may not have a team, recruiting the right people is a demon. If you have a team then making sure that they are motivated and ready to deliver is another. And then god forbid, issues between founders is yet another. A lot of young startups go on the wayside due to strained relationship between the founders or the founding team than anything else. There are a lot of ways of dealing with people/team related issues including (a) Right motivation for everybody in the journey (b) Keeping a clear line of communication and communicating more often than not (c) Not making assumptions about each other (d) Mutual respect for each other (e) Letting it go

These demons are multi-headed and get reborn. Killing them once is not enough. They come back in different life forms; like the mighty Raavan, who had consumed the nectar of immortality; only to be killed later with a strategic arrow.

A very happy Dussera to all and may you kill all the demons lurking in your venture!

Picture courtesy Jigisha.

Couple of months ago, while speaking at a business planning workshop, I was confronted by a senior academician on the subject of delivery of the content, rather than the content itself. The question came up when I gave a very candid feedback about one of the presenters after he delivered his ‘pitch’ in front of me and the rest of the audience. I stuck to the guns of the importance of delivery and said:

I strongly believe that the pitch is super important. Why?

1. You are convincing an audience to believe in your product
2. We are living in a hyper-competitive world. Unless you are able to communicate, your message remains confined to your vocal cords
3. If you as an entrepreneur can’t deliver a 5-minute pitch, how would you talk a customer into buying your product

Let’s take the perspective of the audience. The audience may have your prospective customers, investors, employees. In today’s hyper-competitive and noisy world, they get bombarded with marketing message all the time. Customers are inundated with options for various products, investors are bombarded with offer to invest. The best idea is to convince them when they have your attention as an audience.

The content is equally important. It happens all the time that the messenger delivered an excellent pitch, but the content is weak. Sure, for the uninitiated, who may not understand the content, may get hypnotized by the delivery, but it does not go beyond that pitch.

Moreover, presentation skills to get the job done are very acquirable. Here are some quick tips:

1. You have to start practicing. If you suck at it, then you need at least 20 hours of face-time with an audience to get better and stop being perceived like an idiot
2. Go to barcamp. Propose a session. Barcampers are forgetful, they see all sorts of presenters all the time! I personally have done sessions since 2005 and each subsequent was 5x better than the previous one.
3. Call up a college and tell them that you want to do a 1-hour session on some random topic of your choice. Don’t worry, students are forgiving
4. Record a 30-second greeting on your phone. Play it back. Even better, record yourself on camera, play it back, get embarrassed and fix it. Show the recording to friends you trust, take their feedback
5. Organize a karaoke at home. Call at least 2 common friends, you have never met. Sing.
6. Even simpler–Call up the customer service of a company. Towards the end of the call, ask for feedback, how fluent your english was. Not joking. Try it. Works.

You don’t have to be Guy Kawasaki to hypnotize the crowd–Instead, simply someone who stands comfortably in front of other people and is able to articulate the business.

image credit to aussiegall

Aptly, Morpheus was named after the greek god of dreams; to a more real (fictional to some) world captain of Nebuchadnezzar who brings the dreams back to the residents of the last human city.

Then in the 2009 summer, I joined. This summer we are adding another 7-8 startups (names to be announced on 10th June) which brings further variety in our portfolio from automotive, eco-textile, health-care to touch computing.

This weekend from 10th – 13th we are doing our 1st ever startup gurukul on the outskirts of Bangalore, where we are bringing the founders of our portfolio companies under one roof and kicking it off with “Apuroop” — a demo day. At Apuroop, Morpheus companies will be doing 5 minutes show & tell to investors & media.

We are also delighted to partner with Sequoia Capital who are supporting us in our initiative and sponsoring the gurukul.

We have come a long way since our nimble start where we were doing just mentorship to now where we are also investing a small amount of INR 5 Lakhs in each of the startups. There are more exciting things coming out of our bag, controlling my excitement, we would unravel them as time passes.

Thanks for participating with us!

I was offline for the whole of last week attending a marriage in my exetnded family.  While attending the event, I’d put myself out for stardom, popping my neck out wherever/whenever possible and making an ass out of myself at other times.  From participating in mindless discussions to taking split-second leadership roles; to managing wherever required and at times staying out of the loop sipping beer at the poolside … and of course flirting occasionally (Don’t worry, my better half never reads this blog).

I was able to enjoy the 7 days as I did not hold myself or the attitude and without worrying that I may look like an idiot in front of others for certain acts — On the contrary whenever the idiocy was on the rise (or the attitude was it’s natural best), the guffaws of laughter were at their zenith. I told my story to everybody, to strangers and even to the staff of the hotel I was staying.

Result…connected with a lot of family members with whom I had lost touch, made some new connections and solidified the existing ones…came back home, happy.

No holds barred immersion into your business is one quality which IMO keeps people at sidelines. If you don’t engross, how can you tell the story, if you don’t act foolish, how can you break the ice and win nay-sayers? If you don’t keep showing your face, how would people feel your presence.

You may have a product, you may have a team but are you engaging yourself with customers. Are you telling the story of the product even if there is only one person listening? Are you flirting with other investors when you already have a term sheet from your existing Series A dude. Are you exposing your gullible side to your mentors? Are you ready to experiment with your idea when people are ready to call you an idiot? Or you want to wait for a perfect product?

Are you ready to start dancing with 10 unknown people in the middle of the traffic with your best suit down? Or you are waiting for people to pull you in? You want to ignite rather than add logs later.

Picture taken while doing the ‘hands-up-in-the-air’ dance on the streets of Jaipur and later cropped on the boundaries to anonymize the identities.