Tag: startup

7 Ways to improve on your startup that will lead to investment increase

There is something to be said to gaining experience through real-life problem-solving in your business ventures, but you can save time by not learning lessons the hard way and fast-track your path to business success.

Experience is largely listed as the single greatest attribute an entrepreneur can cultivate any time they begin a new path to improve the overall odds of success. While that isn’t exactly groundbreaking, the data behind the difference that experience makes is significant:

  • Founders who have successfully cultivated a business previously have a 30% higher chance of success in their next venture.
  • Founders who failed at prior businesses have a 20% chance of succeeding the second time around.
  • First-time entrepreneurs have an 18% chance of success.

There is something to be said to gaining experience through real-life problem-solving in your business ventures, but you can save time by not learning lessons the hard way and fast-track your path to business success. Here are a few tips:

Spend Investment Capital Wisely

Again, not groundbreaking advice, but you’d be surprised that this is one of the most common pitfalls for a young company managed by an inexperienced entrepreneur. Early on, companies can be funded through small groups of angel investors, but it’s often the entrepreneur’s own savings.

If you’re fortunate enough to gain investors and raise investment capital through private funding, don’t let it lull you into a false sense of security. This influx of money can help you beef up your team to meet aggressive growth goals, but it can also help you spend ahead of need. Aggressive expansion timelines are more often than not overly optimistic, which can burn valuable resources much more rapidly than a young company can afford.

Most industries already have formulas to work through this, so do your research. Whatever money you end up asking for should be completely planned for and put to good use.

Don’t be scared to invest in your team, but focus on A-players who can play multiple roles early on. Choose quality talent over quantity.

Protect Company Assets

If you’re inventing, intellectual property can be invaluable. Spend early and often on protecting your property. Legal can be invaluable in the product-based business and even in service-based or knowledge-based industries to protect intellectual property.

If you’re attempting to acquire capital, you want investors to feel secure in the fact that their money is going to be relatively protected and that the capital is going to good use. Be prepared to know if patents or trademarks exist and who owns what. Giving investors an understanding of what and how you’ve reached product-market fit is important as well.

Spend your money on attorneys who can provide protection to company assets. Hire a lawyer to draft a solid client contract- poorly worded contracts will cost you.

Spend Time Creating Revenue-Driven Solutions

Services or technology that easily demonstrates ROI in a direct manner is low hanging fruit for young companies. Plenty of companies succeed by focusing on solutions that drive savings to their clients, prospects get more value (and buy more frequently) when solutions are revenue-driven.

Understand Your Timeline

When working on bringing transformative technology to the market, it’s important to remember that often, this solution is disruptive. This can create a situation where users have to adjust their systems and processes in order to experience the best results possible.

This is challenging- people don’t like change. No one does. But big and meaningful change takes time which can present a challenge, as clients won’t experience results immediately. If your business is built around disruptive tech, it’s important to set expectations at both the client level and the boardroom level. The potential for reluctant transition with clients is absolutely there and you must set reasonable expectations at all levels about delayed returns.

These are not easy conversations to have as they’re difficult realities to accept when real dollars are being spent and you’re burning through capital every month.

Invest In PR Early

Many founders consider public relations and media outreach to be fluff- something that is a lower priority until you have a bigger budget. However, securing placement in reputable publications when you first hit the market can help a young company in a number of ways. Targeted exposure is extremely effective in getting the word out, driving an initial wave of leads.

Articles in respected publications can enhance buy-in and help prospects convince stakeholders to take a leap with new tech or a new process. Press can help substantiate timeliness, but more importantly, it can help educate prospects.

Build Outside Relationships

Building relationships with third parties will allow you to establish relationships that can vouch for your work. This provides ongoing value for a young company and its emerging technology or services. This can take the form of validating success through white papers, third-party research, or case studies.

Have Reasonable Expectations

People assume that launching a tech company brings overnight success and riches, but it doesn’t typically work that way. Most things of value take time and it’s incredibly important to remain resilient and flexible. Learn quickly from failures and mistakes and then regroup as necessary to press on towards success.

Building a successful business is incredibly difficult. By taking your time, doing your research and starting from the beginning can help you get your startup off the ground. Make sure you do the proper steps to plan the remaining steps to launch the company and prepare yourself so that you’re ready to raise money.

Without proper financial planning, your business doesn’t stand a chance. Make sure you’re network is on point too- you’ll want to surround yourself with the right people. It’s incredibly important to find people who can help you in areas that are not your strongest point of expertise.

Placing your business in the best position to establish a steady clientele will help to grow your startup. Launches are never perfect- you should always prepare for unforeseen circumstances. Proper planning is absolutely crucial to help you clear and anticipate any hurdles.

Great startup business tips and strategies for launching a new brand

Taking a look at some of the top strategies and startup business tips for new entrepreneurs.

So, you’re looking to build a startup and follow in the footsteps of greats like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Michael Dell. Great choice!

But before you go about making the world a better place and filling your pockets, you’ll want to get some advice.

90% of startups fail, after all, so the right startup business tips can keep you from making these same mistakes. Keep reading to find out how you can prepare for success!

Don’t Chase Trends, Solve Problems

There’s money in chasing trends. However, that money dries up quickly once people move on to the newest flavor of the week.

For your startup to have longevity, you should aim to solve customers’ problems. How can your product or service make the lives of your customers easier?

If you can manage to make people’s lives a bit more convenient, you’ll find yourself with repeat customers, and thus, stronger revenue.

Set Your Business Apart with Custom Packaging

The more ways you can set yourself apart and stand out, the better. Custom packaging is an often overlooked way to help your company stand out.

Think about it: if you were in a room full of packages, you’d be able to suss out the Amazon package in a matter of seconds thanks to the logo on its shipping boxes and its custom tape.

You can use the same strategy for your business! Once you have a logo you’re satisfied with, order labels online and customize your shipping boxes. That way, customers will get excited about their order before evening opening the box.

Know When to Outsource

Even if you’re an expert multitasker, there’s never quite enough time in the day. But don’t think you have to tackle everything yourself.

In fact, doing so might be detrimental to your business.

Instead, consider outsourcing certain tasks that either take up too much time or require too many resources.

Let’s say you’re looking to market your company. Instead of dedicating hours to learning the ins-and-outs of managing a campaign, subscribing to services, and carrying out the task yourself, you’d be better off hiring a dedicated marketing company.

While it might cost a bit more upfront, you’ll ultimately get better results since you’re working with a team that knows their stuff.

Research Tax Tips

69% of startups are headquartered in the founder’s home, continuing the long tradition of home-based businesses like Apple, Amazon, and Google.

It’s a smart move, as working out of your home can save you tons of money on rental space. But did you know that you can write off the office space in your home for a tax bonus?

Small business taxes are killer, and you’ll need every tax cut you can get. Keep track of your expenditures, whether it’s a chair for your office, a hotel room for a conference, or even your Internet service.

Create the Next Big Thing with These Startup Business Tips

By following these startup business tips, you should have a strong foundation for your business that allows you to save money, time, and manpower. Now all that’s left to do is put your plan into action!

Don’t forget, we’re here for you! Keep checking back with our blog for more great startup tips.

How Elon Musk Started – The Life Of SpaceX and Tesla’s Founder

Elon Musk is now Earth’s most future-oriented person. How did such a person come to be?

Elon Musk is now Earth’s most future-oriented person. How did such a person come to be?

Also read: How Bill Gates Started – The Life of Microsoft’s Founder

In a hundred years, when most people reading this and the person writing this are long gone, Musk’s cars and rockets will still be circling the Earth and the skies. How can such a person get started against all odds is the question. And, more importantly, what can we learn from him?

Learning From The Outlier

Learning from Musk might seem naive. After all he is an outlier even among billionaires. We think this is exactly why he is worth studying – you don’t get insight into the extraordinary by studying the ordinary. Even with a sample size of one Musk we may find something in the way he started out that is fundamentally borrowable.
Sure, we can’t recreate the exact circumstances of his life for ourselves – we all have different parents, live in different countries, and have different bodies. Despite all the differences, we have control over our mindset as much as he does over his. This part of Musk we can borrow. The ways he deals with uncertainty, the books he reads, the ways he makes promises, and patches up his own mistakes are all borrowable, for example.

Thinking From First Principles (And Not Just By Analogy)

You might be skeptical about how studying another person’s life can help. His circumstances are not like yours. Musk would be the first to remind us here to think from first principles, as scientists do, rather than by analogy. Why should you think like Musk? You might know better than him after all. It’s true that thinking from first principles gives a truer result. But it also takes time which is limited for all of us. Yes, it’s best to think about your situation from scratch. But reasoning by analogy makes sense given that life is finite. To minimize our own mistakes we don’t need to borrow the exact decisions Musk made but study the way he makes them. Then we can apply his thinking method to what we know to be true for sure.

It’s Easy to Explain Greatness in Hindsight – The Narrative Fallacy

One psychological barrier to learning from other people’s lives is the narrative fallacy – making a neat story out of facts that at the time of their happening made little sense. As the classic book on improbability The Black Swan explains, we do it to deal with the randomness of life – we explain it away because we know how the story ended. We’d rather not figure out why we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

The media often write this way. Articles about Musk call him a “genius”, which he is. But labels like this make his accomplishments sound like a foregone conclusion. They aren’t. For example, he still has to deal with big oil companies that want to see Tesla go down.

We might assume he knows what to do with this because he is a “genius.” But genius is not a strategy. And his victory is far from certain. As you are reading this, he is doing something to deal with the uncertainty of his situation. What sort of a mindset is he in?

Life = Decisions + Circumstances + Results

Life is a combination of decisions – things you do; circumstances – things that others do to you, including people you’ve never met, like politicians; and results – your decisions + the circumstances.

Labeling each significant event in Musk’s life on a timeline produced a lot of decisions, unsurprisingly. It’s fair to say he is a product of his decisions more than his circumstances. Musk seems to have been decisive and deliberate from the start. A quick glance at the timeline shows that his decisions by far outnumber his circumstances.

Also read: How Jeff Bezos Started – Life of Amazon.com’s founder

Learning Faster Than You Are “Supposed To”

A pivotal moment in Musk’s life came when he got his computer. It came along with a BASIC programming language workbook. The workbook was supposed to take 6 months, but he decided to stay up for 3 nights in a row and finished the whole thing. Within 3 days he basically was a programmer by the 1984 standards. His new skill brought his first success – he wrote a video game called Blastar and sold it for $500.

Even today in most countries universities don’t encourage you to graduate faster even if you learn faster. Lawyers and doctors are required to be in school for a certain period of time regardless of their learning speed.

The Immigrant Mindset

Do you need to move far away to bring out the best in you? Musk plotted his escape from South Africa ever since he had access to information about America. His idea of America was cliché – he didn’t overthink it. He wasn’t interested in criticizing the system – he wanted to move to the land of yes-men, and he was one himself.

Getting His Hands Physically Dirty

Musk doesn’t seem to think that physical work is beneath him. He embraces it. When he moved to Canada at 17 on his own, he sought out a job that required him shoveling dirt in a boiler room wearing a hazmat suit. Even today, with his designer clothes on, Musk walks the floor of his rocket factory and sometimes gets physically involved in the process – his clothes ruined with epoxy.

Sharing Wildly Ambitious Plans

Compared to other people and companies, Musk has an unusually futuristic outlook. He has made and shared his plans for as far away as his death on Mars after he helps a million people move there on his rockets at $500,000 per ticket. It’s easy to dismiss this as marketing hype – and people did dismiss a younger Musk. By now it’s clear though that he lives up to his ambitions.

Not Looking Back

Musk is known for not hanging on to things or people. He looks forward. Ironically he might have a lot more to look back at and be sorry about than many. His first child died at 10 months old, he divorced his first wife, the first 3 times he launched his rockets they blew up – one of them destroying an expensive NASA payload. He has blown promises, missed deadlines, miscalculated costs and had to charge customers extra after they had already paid (Musk had to ask 400 customers who already prepaid to add extra $17,000 for each Roadster). This list alone is enough, I believe, to make most people look back and infer that maybe it’s time to reign in the ambition, to mend relationships, etc. But that is not the point – for all his failings, Musk is capable of greatness. His products justify his mistakes. At the age of 44 he still has more to gain than he has lost – more rockets to launch, more cars to manufacture, and even more children to have.

Starting Really Small

Compared to what Musk is doing now – electric cars, rockets, and solar panels his first businesses were ridiculously straightforward – selling computer parts from his dorm room, running a glorified speakeasy from his house in college. Would he do this if he saw a straight path to making electric cars back in college? I think not. It looks like he took incremental steps towards a goal he had no idea how to reach at the beginning.

Just Enough Money To Start

Most people would say that it’s the lack of money that prevents them from starting a startup. Musk’s biographer helpfully tells the amount he had when he started. Between him and his brother Kimbal they had $28,000 that came from their father plus $6,000 from their friend Greg Kouri, who joined as a co-founder of Zip2. Today the $34,000 adjusted for inflation would be $53,000. This amount was enough to set up an office in Palo Alto. Musk and his brother slept in the office, showered at the YMCA, and subsisted on a diet of fast food.

Teaching Himself From Books

When Musk decided to do something with space he apparently realized that he needed to learn about space himself. He correctly estimated that money alone, which he didn’t have enough of to start a rocket company either, does not solve the space problem. Wealthy people have done this before – threw some money at a space project and watched it fizzle out helpless without the engineering knowledge. Not Musk. Jim Cantrell, an aerospace engineer that Musk cold called back in 2001 said this about how Musk learns, “He literally sucks the knowledge and experience out of people that he is around. He borrowed all of my college texts on rocket propulsion when we first started working together in 2001. ”

Over-Optimism, Over-Promising, and Over-Delivering

With both SpaceX and Tesla there is a pattern: make a wildly ambitious promise, delay the reveal several times, finally unveil the product, promise to deliver it soon, delay the delivery date, deliver a product that surpasses expectations.

In design I’ve learned that you can have only 2 out of the three things: amazing, fast, or cheap. Musk doesn’t seem to compromise on amazing. He is definitely striving for cheap (100 times cheaper rockets than now, Model 3 at $25,000 after tax incentives). So you don’t get fast. The Model X, for example, came 3 years late.

How Many Tries Does It Take?

It took 4 tries for Musk to successfully launch his first rocket. This number is low compared to his competitors who blew up a lot more hardware before it would fly.
There is one key difference, though – Musk only had enough money to launch 4 times. If the 4th time didn’t fly that would have been it.

Not Failing

“I’d rather commit seppuku than fail,” Musk tells an investor to explain why he should get the investment. This is a theme with Musk in negotiations, physical activities, and relationships. He might move on but he doesn’t fail. He might be late on his promises, he might come across as too pushy, or get kicked out of the company he started, but he doesn’t let things fail.

Also read: How Steve Jobs Started – The Life Of Apple’s Founder

This article was originally published in Funders and Founders

Image credit: abcnews.go.com

How your startup can break into the e-commerce market

Here are a few pieces of advice to provide your business with the necessary kickstart into the world of e-commerce.

It takes a lot of courage to follow your dreams, leave your full-time job, and start something on your own. It would be wonderful to believe that everything will be a smooth sail from that point on but as many new entrepreneurs know, this is rarely the case. However, this isn’t a call for you to get demoralized but to take control of your e-commerce business even before the launch to ensure the best possible start.

Having a solid foundation will help you build and adapt your business along the way instead of having to make major changes quickly which could leave serious consequences on your financial state. So, here are a few pieces of advice to provide your business with the necessary kickstart into the world of e-commerce.

Look into the competition

This piece of advice doesn’t have copying as an aim but instead, learning about your competition can show you useful pieces of information about bad practices and not just good. You also need to know what you are up against so as to focus your resources and capacities on the right cause. If a particular market is oversaturated and analyses show that it will remain so in the foreseeable future, perhaps you can opt for a niche product whose market offers more convenient conditions.

You can learn about their marketing strategies and use that knowledge to invest in paid ads or work on organic marketing more. By researching their website, you will be able to see about their return policies, shipping fees, and the level of transparency which are all vital data in terms of creating a competitive advantage for your small e-commerce business from the start.

Research the customers

Your prospective customers will be the consumers and judges of your products and services so you need to make sure their interests are satisfied. Even the most specialized niche products, such as a slick drill collar can find their customers online because instead of purchasing at their local poorly supplied dealerships at high prices, they will find exactly what they need in your online store and have it delivered safely to their business address.
To understand what moves your customers, you need to look into the age, gender, occupation, educational level, location and make assessments when it comes to creating the most efficient marketing strategy that will target just the right audience. With this way of thinking, you will minimize the bounce rate because people will not wander into your website but visit it purposefully. ’The bigger, the better’ is not always the best policy and in your case, it can even be discouraging to see a high bounce rate, so targeting the right audience is your best bet.

Tend to your website

The website and the e-commerce platform is where the magic happens. It is where those leads convert into sales and to make that happen, you need to ensure that many of the website aspects are up to par. For instance, if the website isn’t loading fast enough, you will have people leaving by the bunch without even taking a look at your offer. Also, if you are slow to answer their inquiries, you will see many abandoned carts.

The purchase page design has to be pristine because any glitch with the currency, price or irregular display of certain data can lead to customers becoming suspicious and leaving your website to find another offer that is more transparent. Even after you kickstart your e-commerce business, you need to always be on the lookout for the things that could be improved or replaced because don’t forget that success in the e-commerce business is not a spring but a marathon.

Leverage on social media

If you decided that your website will be the only place of purchase for your products, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be your brand’s only form or online presence. Social media platforms have a major influence on businesses nowadays because they allow for more direct collaboration with your customers and real-time contact, should you choose so. Different social media platforms host different audiences and offer different benefits so you need to research which would suit your customers and products best.

What’s important is that your customers can maneuver with ease to your website so it is necessary for the posts to have a link to your website. Also, it is useful to have the links to your social media profiles on your website because somebody who came straight to your online store might want to praise your product and services across different media and even become your brand ambassador. All in all, knowing what a powerful media social networks are, it would be a waste not to harness that power for your brand’s benefit.

Wrapping up

If you have an idea, some capital, and lots of enthusiasm, it is vital you prepare well before going into the world of e-commerce because no matter how specific your products might be, chances are that there is already someone with similar products on the market. Looking into your competition and your customers will teach you how to best market your products. Social media are another useful tool in this regard and they can be skillfully intertwined with your website to achieve maximum results.

Why every startup CEO needs a coach

If you’ve successfully created your own company and want to have better insights and external assistance in managing tasks, hiring a CEO coach would be your best choice.

If you’ve successfully created your own company and want to have better insights and external assistance in managing tasks, hiring a CEO coach would be your best choice. Wait, CEO’s have coaches? Well yes. Even the most successful CEO today has worked with a coach to achieve the results that they have right now.

If even the most successful CEO’s are hiring one, then shouldn’t you too? A startup CEO coach is an excellent investment for your company. A coach can offer various services and could get you from having zero profits to being a money-making sage in a short amount of time.

What are the Benefits of Hiring a Startup CEO Coach?

● CEO Coaches have invaluable experience in the field of startups. Having a coach to teach you the in’s and out’s of your industry is worth the investment. A great coach will assess your current skill level and knowledge to craft the perfect program for you so that you will get better faster. Remember that improving your skills as the CEO is directly proportional to improving your company.

● A coach helps you ask the right questions. This one is the difference between a coach and a consultant. For consultants, they will give you the best answers. Coaches, on the other hand, will help you ask the best questions, making it easier for you to go for the best solution.

● A great coach assists in overcoming problems and challenges. A startup CEO coach also helps in assisting you to overcome daily challenges for your startup company. Having a coach will make your life easier, and you’ll learn how to overcome challenges as a CEO of a startup.

● A great coach will make you an innovative leader. The goal of a startup CEO coach is to mold you into the best version of yourself and make you a better leader. They will push you to your fullest limits and will help you overcome it consistently.

● A coach focuses on your growth, learning, and knowledge. Having someone who is focused solely on your growth will accelerate your learning process. A startup CEO coach will also track your progress so that you’re staying on track and becoming a better version of yourself.

● A coach is always ready for professional advice whenever you need it. Hiring a startup coach will help you make sound and reasonable decisions that are on-par with the company’s mission and goals, whether it is short-term or long-term.

You wouldn’t want your business to lose traction mid-way and miserably crash and burn. Hiring someone who is knowledgeable and knows what the best action moving forward is an excellent investment that would bring more profits in the future. Investing in a startup CEO coaching for oneself is a long-term accomplishment. That investment will aid you not only in business but also in your personal life as you acquire valuable life skills throughout the journey.

6 websites every aspiring entrepreneur should bookmark

These websites are absolutely important for an entrepreneur to follow as it provides them with information, strategies and also teaches to use the various tools for a successful business experience.

Learning is an integral process for every entrepreneur and with the gamut of data available, an entrepreneur definitely receives a lot of help. The website has sufficient information which helps the budding entrepreneur to strategize and build his company accordingly.

The following sites are absolutely important for an entrepreneur to follow as it provides them with information, strategies and also teaches to use the various tools for successful business experience.

1. Entrepreneur.com

This website definitely lives up to its name by motivating budding entrepreneurs and helping them learn the tricks of the trade. The content on this site is packed with information, tools and strategies regarding how to start and build a whole company. The blog of the website is filled with articles related to marketing, business and finance tips to guide an entrepreneur. This website will educate and motivate the entrepreneur at the same time.

2. BusinessOwnersToolKit.com

This website helps to you start at the very basic stage. It is a simple guide which doesn’t believe in frills and provides you with relevant and versatile content. The versatility appeals to all kinds of entrepreneurs and while starting from scratch, this is the website to be hooked on to.

3. ChicCEO.com

This website calls out to the female entrepreneurs of the world as the name suggest. However, due to the nature of its enriching content, it garners traffic from both genders. The website helps you by providing step-by-step tutorials of website creation, creating a mission statement and more, all through e-mail. To make your life easier, the website also offers downloadable guides on a variety of subjects.

4. ASmartBear.com

This platform created and managed by Jason Chen has over 40,000 subscribers because of the level of information they churn out. A lot of marketing and entrepreneurial advice and tips are doled out on the website which have helped struggling entrepreneurs over the years to build and run their companies.

5. Ben’s blog

Living up to its tagline “CEOs are made, not born. Teaching You To Become One”, Horowitz’s website teachers entrepreneurs at a nascent stage about how to build their company and serve as proper and diligent leaders and CEOs. Once you delve into this blog, a lot of relevant information presented in a unique form is made available to you. The rap lyrics and accompanying music used will entertain you and help you make your business more alive.

6. YourStory.com

An Indian website founded by Shradha Sharma aspires to help all budding entrepreneurs to make it big by providing them with exclusive tips, guides and success stories which motivate entrepreneurs to make their companies successful.

These 13 successful Indian college dropout entrepreneurs prove that college is not necessary for success

We came up with a list of college dropouts turned entrepreneurs from the Indian startup ecosystem who have taken the country by storm.

Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg! Everyone has heard the names of these wildly successful founders of two equally revolutionary behemoths. Acknowledging their success, it is often highlighted that they were college dropouts. So we decided to figure out what exactly makes a college dropout stand out from the crowd, if at all? Is it their zeal to achieve or their out-of-the box thinking which sets them on the path to success? Or were they just one-off coincidences as are most successful startups and founders?

We came up with a list of college dropouts turned entrepreneurs from the Indian startup ecosystem who have taken the country by storm.

Varun Shoor

A self-taught programmer at 13 and web designer, he took a natural interest in the development of web applications. Seeing a clear market gap for an easy to use, user centric approach to web-based ticketed support and visitor engagement, Varun established Kayako in 2001. He serves as Chief Executive Officer of Kayako Infotech Ltd. and oversees the overall direction as the leading product architect, takes an active role in the design and development of the product line. He started the company in 2001 when he was just 17 with its first office in Jalandhar after dropping out of college.

Kailash Katkar

Born in a small village at Rahimatpur in Maharashtra, Kailash Katkar worked his way to the top to be chairman and CEO of INR 200 Cr business. He is the man behind Quickheal technologies Pvt Ltd. He started with a job at local radio and calculator repair shop and later went ahead in 1990 to start his own calculator repair business. In 1993 he started a new venture, CAT computer services where around that time his younger brother Sanjay developed a basic model of antivirus software which helped in solving the biggest problem of computer maintenance at that time. Later in 2007 it was renamed as Quick Heal Technologies. He achieved all this without any formal education.

Related Post: 6 reasons Indians choose not to become entrepreneurs

Deepak Ravindran

A computer science dropout from LBS College Of Engineering in his 5th semester in 2007 end, Deepak never let his ideas caged by book and syllabi, he broke all the bounds imposed by the education system and followed his passion for computers which made him follow the entrepreneurial way. He founded Quest technologies which let people answer someone else’s question which has been asked by a text message. His primary company was Innoz Technologies which was behind ‘SmsGyan’ handing internet’s knowledge to people via texts. His latest venture is Lookup, which is a local commerce messaging app which lets users chat with local businesses and shops.



Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Agarwal is the man behind the ‘Ola’ for rooms, OYO Rooms. The startup is a network of technology – enabled budget hotels. This Gurgaon-based company, was founded by him in 2012. It is backed by Lightspeed Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Green Oaks Capital and has more than 700 hotels under its brand. A college dropout who founded Oravel when he was 18 received its share of fundings and accolades and later he rebranded it to OYO Rooms. He completed his higher schooling at St. Johns Senior Secondary School.

Kunal Shah

Freecharge, the famous platform which revolutionized the online recharge system with three step recharges along with providing offers of same value was the brainchild of Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon. The company was founded in 2010 and was recently acquired by Snapdeal. He did Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Wilson College and later went to Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies from which he dropped out later.

 

Related Post: 7 college drop-outs who are successful entrepreneurs today

Mahesh Murthy

Mahesh has spent 29 years helping big brands with marketing counsel, and 13 years helping startups with marketing counsel and funding too. 19 of these years have been in digital media. Mahesh dropped out of Osmania University, sold vacuum cleaners door to door . He won notoriety and awards as Creative Director on Unilever, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV for whom he wrote and shot a series of top award-winning commercials. He is now the founder of advertising company pinstorm which is an ad firm offering pay-for-performance solution to companies across the world.

Azhar Iqubal

There must be something wrong with IIT, Delhi because this is second dropout who made ‘news’. He dropped out in his 4rd year of college(seventh semester). He made news by introducing News in Shorts the one and only app which cuts to the chase delivering only vital details in a news to all those lazy people and even to those who don’t have enough to go through all of them. The app makes sure that each news is conveyed in less than 60 words. Got a minute to spare? Keep up with the world with news in shorts. It started as a Facebook page and now it has made its share of fame so well that it received INR25 Cr in funding three months back.



Rahul Yadav

The brain behind Housing.com’s rise, Rahul Yadav is one the co-founders of the company and a dropout in his fourth year (seventh semester) from IIT Bombay. This didn’t deter him from stopping what he wanted to achieve. He knew that he was building a brand and working to solve a problem which no one ever tackled head on. Being in a mire of controversies, he has played it cool, be it resigning or then taking it back or giving away half of his shares to his employees. This guy has a brash attitude with a load of confidence.

 

Bhavin Turakhia

Bhavin Turakhia is the founder and CEO of Directi, an internet domain name registrar company founded in 1998 by him and his brother, Divyank. He managed to have a vision about the internet industry in India, which only a few have rivaled. He is credited for the impressive growth of Directi into a global web products company, with a number of businesses and millions of customers worldwide! Though he is an engineering dropout who cut off from it after 12th, he never stopped dreaming big. In his words, “Everything the Byte touches should be our kingdom” is the vision that Directi is looking forward to.”

Related Post: Is IIT IIM degree a must for startup success?

Pallav Nadhani

Pallav Nadhani is the co-founder and CEO of Fusion Charts and RazorFlow and CEO at Collabion, seemingly a serial multi-tasker. He started this company in 2001 at the age of 16 from his bedroom as he found himself dissatisfied with Microsoft Excel’s charting capability while completing his high school assignments. The company is a service provider of data visualization products and owing to its success it was included in NASSCOM EMERGE 50 leaders in 2009.

Even after he dropped out from University of Calcutta, this setback didn’t stop him from achieving what he aimed for. He later earned his degree in Masters Of Computer Science From University of Edinburgh.

Abhishek Gupta

He is an entrepreneur who loves to code and instill people with new ideas, being engrossed with the idea of connecting people through web and mobile, he co-founded Frankly.me with Nikunj Jain. Frankly is a platform which is based on the idea to expand the horizon of conversations that people take part in. It has onboarded various celebs and many people have taken it to the platform to ask anything from them and getting video answers in back. Prior to this he founded Zumbl.com. Though an IIT,Delhi dropout where he was pursuing Computer Science, he wants to increase the IQ of an average conversation on Internet.

Ankit Oberoi

Ankit Oberoi is co-founder of Adpushup, which provides optimization of ads so that publishers and bloggers can benefit from their existing website traffic without the need for any coding skills. The company uses A/B testing to compare between different ad variation like different placements and different sizes. He dropped out from Maharaja Agrasen College in the first semester because he found it was a waste of time, in his words, “You don’t have to be at the college to learn something – Internet can teach you better”. His fascination with internet made him find Tamranda Web Solution which provided web hosting, domain registration and more. He served as director as Innobuzz before starting up adpushup.

Related Post: How to start a startup in college



Amritanshu Anand

Amritanshu Anand is the co-founder of Retention.ai, which allows app developers and marketers to track uninstalled users and understand their behaviours. It also enables companies to re-target users who have uninstalled the app. He started his as an advisor at Entrepreneurship Cell at IIT Kharagpur where he worked to foster spirit of entrepreneurship in India. Though, he dropped out of IIT he didn’t let anything stop him from pursuing his interests which made him found his company in May 2013.

 

To Dropout Or Not?

This ongoing debate has been getting a lot more spotlight as we see more and more of the youth starting up early on. Before reaching to any conclusion, though, lets hear out both the sides.

The Pros

1. Many people find earning a degree arduous because either they find it a waste of time or they think they can do better things than that. Some are of the view that there are bigger problems that need to be handled and earning a degree and going for a 9 to 5 job is not their cup of tea. Thus, dropping out gives them a head start and time to start out early on things they are passionate about.

2. College teaches one on how to go on a full month on a few thousand bucks while not giving up on one’s ‘lavish’ lifestyle, giving one a before hand experience of a bootstrapped startup. No matter how meagre a startup’s income, it keeps on going and surviving because it believes in itself.

Related Post: How a Farmer’s son and College-dropout became a Tech Millionaire

You will not be an ordinary person like the vast majority of graduates, because you will be forced at times to “think outside the box”. You were not told for 3-4 years about what is impossible or what should never be attempted which will give you the edge to get out of the box. Being a dropout will require you to be able to look at every problem from a fresh and investigative perspective that might help in working your way around a problem.



1. Not having a formal degree makes you ineligible for hiring at the outset because people don’t take a dropout seriously unless he or she is somewhat exceptional.

2. “You miss the college life, the fun, last minute assignment submissions and those bunking hours of college but who cares when you have your startup and it is worth it.” – Ankit Oberoi

3. College is the time, especially in India, where one finally gets the time to explore one’s capabilities and interests. These are the formative years which could help discover your passion and direction in life, not to mention the network you build. Missing out on this could have a big detrimental impact.

Related Post: 5 habits you need to get rid of in order to be a successful entrepreneur

Even though these people are dropouts, they made their path to success but this doesn’t work the other way around. They proved to be an exception because they never lost their passion and kept working towards their goal without any loss of enthusiasm. These were the ones who were so idea-centric about their passion that every time they made a breakthrough they were filled with zeal all over again. This made them overlook their education and follow their idea blindly.

In his blog post even Bill Gates states, “Although I dropped out of college and got lucky pursuing a career in software, getting a degree is a much surer path to success”. He further adds that college graduates are more likely to find a rewarding job and earn higher income than if they didn’t have degrees. The problem is not that enough people are going to college, it is that not enough people are finishing it. Even though enrollments rates are soaring but so are dropping rates. Even though above mentioned dropouts have struck gold but not everyone can do so because they don’t know ‘where ‘ to look. That perspective, that imparting of skills is provided by formal education.

On a lighter note, college leads to overall development of an individual. It not only provides with education skill but also important life skills which go a long way. Earlier, people used to stick to their passion and were not easily demoralised but the scenario is different now, with ever-shortening attention spans and lack of patience thereof, the road to success has become a treacherous path for many.

Related Post: 7 Secrets that all successful entrepreneurs are hiding

In Kunal Shah’s words, “They say people with high IQ have a good chance to be an atheist, but it doesn’t mean one will become high IQ by stopping to believe in God.”

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~ John Dewey

As with most debates, there are merits to both sides of the story. We’ll leave it up to you to choose your side!





14 Things no one tells you about starting a start-up

We asked 14 young entrepreneurs what the one thing no one told them.

We all have ideas about how starting a company will be. You’ve heard about the hardships, are aware of the perks, and are ready to tackle the challenges.

Like anything, though, there’s always going to be things you won’t know until you get your feet wet.
But what if we could get an inside glimpse? To learn the less-common things to be prepared for, we asked 14 young entrepreneurs what the one thing no one told them – the thing they wished they’d known – was when they started. Here’s what they had to say.]

1. There Are Incredible Highs And Lows

Running a startup is truly like riding a roller coaster that doesn’t stop. I’ve had some of the highest highs and the happiest moments I could remember while running my business. But it also comes with some of the lowest lows, and I’ve endured many sleepless nights. Rarely are there any feelings in between, but I think it’s important to celebrate even the smallest of victories. -Ross Cohen, BeenVerified

2. Networks Are Critical

I started off as a solopreneur with a small freelancing gig. For the first six months, things were very slow. However, when I joined my first official mastermind networking group, the business took off immediately. Surrounding yourself with the right people from the start (ideal clients, business mentors) will help you tremendously both when you’re starting up and down the road. -Patrick Conley, Automation Heroes

Also Read: 7 Things I learned from my first startup failure



3. Camaraderie Is Important

I wish someone had told me to be prepared for the feeling of isolation at times as an entrepreneur. On a daily basis as an entrepreneur I am faced with new challenges, many of which I must tackle alone. I have since brought in others to assist in building the business. Knowing that you are going down the path together definitely brings a feeling of camaraderie to the company. -David Schwartz, EMMDeavor (DBA Qruber) and Wireless Watchdogs

4. Mentors Are Necessary

Having someone who has walked the path as an entrepreneur is vital. You can gain wisdom from your mentor’s experience and discover insights that you would never have had before. I’ve missed out on so many opportunities to build my ideas because I didn’t have someone to shine a light in the right direction. Having a mentor is imperative. -Rob Fulton, Matikis

Also Read: 15 quotes which will motivate you to follow your dreams

5. There Is No Set Path

You have a big dream and you know exactly how you are going to get there—until it all changes. It’s great to have a business plan and a strategy, but I wish I had known that it is totally OK if you have to change directions. In fact, that’s good business! -Vanessa Van Edwards, Science of People

6. There’s No 4-Hour Work Week

Don’t get me wrong – I love that book. But no one ever told me that I would be trading my 50-hour work week for a 100+ hour work week when I first started my company. The one piece of advice I would give new entrepreneurs is to plan on investing all of your time and then some if you plan on being successful. It’s worth it in the long run! —Roger Bryan, Enfusen Digital Marketing

Also Read: 12 Signs that you need to grow up and stop ruining your opportunities for success



7. Everyone Has Unsolicited Advice

No one told me just how opinionated others would be about my business. People will come out of the woodwork with what they believe to be sage advice, when they’ve never even been in my shoes. People who have had corporate jobs all their lives will tell you exactly what you should be doing to run your business. Just nod and smile. -Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media

8. Early Success Is Temporary Luck

When you start a new business and achieve some early success, you need to be disciplined to always keep your ego in check and keep your starting vision in mind. I learned this lesson the hard way when I divided my team’s focus early on in favour of building an unproven product. Avoid the same mistake by staying focused. The best entrepreneurs are paranoid and never believe their own press. -Matthew Ackerson, Petovera

Also Read: 8 powerful tips for entrepreneurs to excel as a public speaker

9. Advisors And Consultants Are Useful

When starting up, I bootstrapped in every sense of the word. While this enabled me to propel my company forward, it was the hours of consulting and advising from industry experts that truly helped me make positive, long-lasting business decisions that continue to have a strong impact on my company and its success today. -Zach Cutler, Cutler Group

10. Starting Up Is Unpredictable

Oftentimes people compare their expected entrepreneurial journey to what they hear or read about from others who’ve succeeded, and assume their experience will be similar. Or, they write a business plan and anticipate it will go according to that plan. Rarely do people let you in on the secret that your plan will not be the way it looks—it will be a meandering path, not a straight one. -Darrah Brustein, Network Under 40 / Finance Whiz Kids

Also Read: 8 Obvious signs you were built for entrepreneurship



11. Partnerships Can Be Good

Partnerships can be challenging, but they can also be rewarding. If you are really going after a game-changing concept or something big, odds are a partner is a good thing. They can help carry the workload and keep the vision or dream going when things get tough. -Matt Ames, MN Pro Paintball

12. Learning From Other Entrepreneurs Is Invaluable

One of the most impactful ways that I was able to grow and succeed as an entrepreneur was by connecting to and learning from other entrepreneurs. Nobody ever told me this or mentioned this to me. Immediately connecting to other people who have been there is crucial for your success. Learning from others’ successes and failures will accelerate your growth process. -Matt Shoup, MattShoup.com

Also Read: 10 Things I wish I’d known when I started my start-up

13. Ideas Themselves Are Not Worth Much

I have seen many early entrepreneurs get excited when they think they have a billion-dollar idea. We feel that just because we thought of it, we own it. Here is the bad news: Chances are that multiple people have tried most of these ideas in some shape or form. In most cases, it’s your team and your execution that will differentiate you rather than the idea itself. -Karan Chaudhry, DropThought

14. Family Comes First

Family should always come first. You’re going to take big risks and risk almost everything, but I recommend that you never risk losing your family for your entrepreneurial adventure. It’s really not worth losing what’s most important in your life. -John Rampton, Adogy

Also Read: 6 ways to fall in your love with your work all over again





9 ways in which entrepreneurs can make some quick extra bucks

Why not put your skills to use to make some quick bucks to pump into your business?

Entrepreneurs are always in the dire need for money while setting up. So, why not put your skills to use to make some quick bucks to pump into your business?

Here are a few ways in which entrepreneurs can make some extra bucks:

1. Sponsored posts

If you are a social media addict with a huge number of followers on social media platforms, you can get brands to pay your to share their posts. You can also enter into long term agreements with companies to make those quick bucks in no time.

2. Sell photos

Again, you could use your amazing Instagram skills and your large number of followers to start selling photos on your Instagram.

Related Post: 5 reasons why following your passion is the best thing you can do

3. Babysitting

Babysitting is an easy job which helps you earn easy money. As it is a concept which is catching on in the country, you can easily take up this job to make some extra money.

4. Pet sitting

If you are a person who loves animals, you can easily take care of pets of families who have gone out for vacations or short holidays. This way, you can make money and make furry friends.



5. Freelancing

Freelancing is a great way to earn money by making use of their skills like content writing, photo editing etc. Websites like freelancer.com, odesk.com etc have great opportunities which help you make money.

Related Post: 8 freelance skills which are in high demand

6. Tutor

You can also help other people by teaching them skills that you possess. With online tutoring becoming increasingly popular, you can extend your skills to various students across the globe willing to learn.

7. Take surveys

Start filling in questionnaires and taking surveys online to make some quick, easy bucks. The best part of taking surveys is that you can take unlimited surveys to earn more and more money.

8. Watch videos and click ads

You can also avail these simple tricks to make quick and easy cash. Certain websites like swagbucks lets you make money by simply increasing the number of views and likes on videos and ads.

Related Post: Simple ways in which you can change your passion into a pay check

9. Secret shopper

If you love shopping, you can easily avail jobs which require a secret (mysterious) shopper who shops for the client either virtually or in real life. Mysterious shopping is a great way to make money.





5 Signs you picked the wrong partner for your startup

65 percent of high-potential startups fail as a result of conflict among co-founders.

Picking a business partner is like deciding on a college roommate. How well do you get along? How well do you actually know your potential partner?

Do you know what skills and experience they’re bringing to the table? (No skills involved in being a roommate except for cleaning.)

How open and honest is your communication? Do you foresee any issues arising during your partnership in the upcoming years?

If you can’t decisively answer these questions or you have an inkling of doubt in your mind, it’s probably a better bet to step back for a minute and reanalyze your options.

A common reason businesses go belly up is because of toxic partnerships. In fact, “65 percent of high-potential startups fail as a result of conflict among co-founders.”

So, how can you make sure you aren’t getting into bed with a partner who will lead to the start-up’s demise?
Below are a few red flags you should keep your eye out for.

1. They have ulterior motives

The truth is that everyone has a personal agenda, so don’t take it personally. Everyone is working towards personal goals, but that doesn’t mean they look to subvert everyone else. However, it would be prudent to keep this in mind when choosing a business partner.

You should be aware of what other ventures prospects are involved in, and what a partnership between the two of you would mean for them. What exactly are they looking to get out of it?

Related Post: This is why you need a co-founder for your startup

That said, one of the worst possible things that could happen to your startup is to have your partner leave after just a short period of time.

If you plan to divide ownership equally, your partner could just up and walk out on you with half of your company. Thus, to prevent the above situation from happening, the two of you must devise vesting restrictions.

If you receive pushback from you partner regarding the matter, which should immediately raise a red flag.



2. They don’t treat employees and colleagues well

It’s embarrassing to have a partner who blatantly disregards others. Not only that, but to put it bluntly, it’s bad for business. If your partner doesn’t respect your other employees, it will spell misery for the latter and put a cloud over the entire office.

The last thing you want is to worry about when getting a startup going is turnover rates. It’s doubtful any employee would feel comfortable approaching their boss about their other boss, so one can expect sudden resignations along with a dismissive business partner – neither of which any business owner wants in the end.

Related Post: How female co-founders can be a tremendous asset to any startup

It’s important to maintain constructive criticism and be an assertive leader; however, a partner who abuses their role and creates an uncomfortable environment for employees is not someone you want to keep around.

3. You see too much of yourself in them

As in most other relationships, both platonic and romantic, opposites do tend to attract. If you and your partner have the same skillset, the same expertise, the same opinions, the same – then you.

If fact, you’ll probably end up butting heads constantly since both of you have the same ideals, but potentially different methodologies. You want someone who can claim different areas of expertise and reliably utilize those skills.

You want someone who will challenge your ideas and put them through the ringer. A good business dynamic includes differing opinions, and if you share too many, you won’t be able to evolve.

Related Post: 5 Things to know before starting a business with friends



4. They want all the perks without the work

You cannot share equal partnership but not thusly divide the work. Yes, there will exist periods where one will have a larger workload than the other; however, this is because theoretically each will be focusing on different aspects of the business.

In other words, as the business itself fluxes, so will each partner’s respective workloads. The workload may not always be the same at a given time, but the overall amount of work put forward should be one-to-one.

If your business partner arrives at 8 AM and leaves at 4 PM on the dot everyday while you stay in the workplace for 12 hours straight, that’s not a partnership.

Responsibilities should be outlined right from the start, and both partners need to monitor the other to ensure equal contribution to the business on both ends.

Related Post: How to form the right startup team

5. You wouldn’t want to hang out with them outside of the office

Perhaps one of the easiest tests of all: would you want to spend time with your business partner outside of the workplace? If the answer is no, then you’ve got a big issue to address.

Ideally, your business partner should also be a friend – someone you can confide in, seek help from, and is supportive should you experience extenuating circumstances that may temporarily take you away from the business.

If you can’t picture yourself vacationing or even going to happy hour with your business partner, you two have no friendship and thus probably have just as poor of a professional relationship. Owning a business, especially a startup, is a commitment: it entails hard work with long hours and disappointment and frustration.

You will oftentimes spend more time in the workplace with your business partner than you will with your own family. So, with that in mind, you better make sure that you’re making the right decision.

A business partner can either make or utterly break your startup. Although choosing a business partner can be a frustrating and drawn-out process, it’s important to invest the time and energy to make sure you make the best choice.

Unfortunately, you must always prepare for the worst. Partnerships that sour and the ensuing steps you should take to handle the situation is a whole different issue.





Five things every investor looks for in a startup

Here are a few things investors seek in start-ups while taking the decision of investing.

For an investor, it is important to know what he’s getting into while taking a decision of investing in a company. No one wants to invest in a business which isn’t profitable and viable in the future.

Here are a few things investors seek in start-ups while taking the decision of investing:

A strong team

An investor looks at a start-up as a team which works together and not as a one-man show. The management team’s capabilities and history is very crucial for an investor because it helps him assess what the team is capable of doing in the future.

You might portray a very colourful image of your team but if an investor can break through the rosy portrayal and see the rifts and lack of unity in the team, he might not invest in your start-up even though he liked the idea.

Hence, it is crucial to have a strong founding team in which everyone is sure about their roles and responsibilities.

Related Post: How to form the right startup team

The business plan

The investor doesn’t know everything about your business so you need to let him know about the most important things like the break-even point, financial plan and the marketing and sales plan through your business plan. Because your business plan is a major factor the investor judges you upon, make sure it is made properly and consists of all relevant and required details.

Also, try charting milestones so that an investor has a better idea of your business.

Related Post: All you ever wanted to know about a business plan



Company’s uniqueness

If your idea is the same as the one being offered in the market, an investor will not be interested in investing in your business. He is looking for a unique idea which will appeal to the customers and give him enough profits. VCs often look for competitive advantage and propriety features over the financial structure.

For instance, the most unique ideas are often sponsored in Shark Tank over ideas which are done and dusted with already.

Related Post: Meeting with Investors – Before, During and After

Effective long-term Business Model

A start-up might be doing extremely well in the initial stages and making profits but what is important to judge is whether the business will survive in the future as well. A number of companies are closing down due to mismanagement of finances, low sales, no profits etc.

Amidst cut-throat competition, all an investor wants to know is if your business is likely to withstand the test of time and continue doing well in the future.

Related Post: 7 ways to build a successful startup revenue model

Growth potential

It isn’t enough to be a sustainable business; the company must also have growth potential because no one wants to invest in a company which is standard and stagnant in terms of profits. Your company should be able to growth at a fast pace and introduce new products and services to the mix and attract more markets in a short time. A potential market size is a great way of determining the potential growth rate in the future.





5 simple ways in which entrepreneurs can increase their influence

If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you definitely need to increase your influence over you team.

If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you definitely need to increase your influence over you team. Increasing you influence doesn’t mean becoming autocratic, it simply means adopting some changes in your personality due to which people will perceive you as more impactful and significant.

1. Be Assertive

Being assertive shouldn’t be confused with being bossy or dictatorial. Assertiveness means being confident about your decision and willing to justify it with solid reasons. If someone counters your view, you should be able to answer them with logic and persistence and not raise your voice. Explain your part of the idea rational and logical reasons and in a calm, composed and dignified tone. This will create respect in the minds of your employees for you and because you know your stuff well, they’ll be more likely to trust you.

Related Post: 8 qualities every entrepreneur requires to be successful

2. Be empathetic towards others

Everyone needs security in form of concern, love and care from others. When one is going through a crisis, you need to be emotionally curious and try and support that person in his hard times. If you can in a way manage to provide him emotional stability, you will be seen as a better leader and this will lead to an expansion of your ring of influence.



3. Be specific

If you’re indecisive about the company’s goals, visions, and meetings and practically everything, people are going to perceive you as unreliable and not very influential. Your decisions are what define you as an entrepreneur and a leader so make sure you decide on very reasonable and specific goals and methods to achieve them. Also, you should be aware of everything that goes on in your own company.

For instance, if there is a loss of 5% in the last quarter, you should know exactly what caused the loss.

Related Post: 8 Things entrepreneurial people do differently

4. Dress the part

You might be an assertive and logical person, but, if you don’t look the part, no one’s going to recognise your importance. Dressing is a powerful tool and needs to be used carefully in order to make an impression. A suit with a solid-coloured shirt and well-polished shoes defines influence in its entirety as opposed to a guy wearing a graphic tee and chappals. For women, wear crisp formals over casuals to make a statement and leave an impact. You accessories speak a lot about you; keep them confined to a watch or statement jewellery.

Related Post: 8 attributes of successful entrepreneurs

5. Be an inspiration to your team

Instead of coming to office with a bored face, enter brimming with enthusiasm and with a contagious energy which inspires others to wake up as well. This is a very difficult skill to master but it is majorly dependent on an entrepreneur’s communication skills and depth of passion for what s/he’s doing. When leaders are excited about a project or a challenge, they tend to impart some of it to the presentation and employees as well which they should be able to positively use. Also, to inspire further, a leader must always stand by his team and constantly inspire, encourage and help his team to achieve their goals.





9 ways to validate your startup ideas

Check out the infographic below for some other tips in validating startup ideas that you could also use.

The most effective ways to validate your startup ideas include conducting surveys and following up the feedback. You want to test the waters at this stage. Interacting with your target audience is a must. The good thing about surveying them is that they won’t hold back with their thoughts.

If they like something, they will say it right away. Otherwise, they could be blunt about their dislike. This will let you know exactly the common reactions of your sample group. From there, you can easily determine if your ideas are worth pushing through or not.

However, if they have better reactions this time, your idea could be worth giving a shot. When it comes to business ideas, you must not just trust yourself or your associates. Always listen to what people have to say. They are your target consumers. If they don’t like what you offer, there is nothing you can do to change their minds.

You must be open to suggestions. Don’t start anything unless you are totally certain that it will work. Once you have started the business and the reception is cold, it would be too late for you to do something about it. This could also mean losing a lot of money especially if you want to start over again.

It takes time polishing your ideas and making them better. Check out the infographic below for some other tips in validating startup ideas that you could also use. The goal is to see how people feel before spending your money.



This article was originally published in Growly.io





15 Important startup lessons for new entrepreneurs

Fifteen CEOs of new and existing companies reflect on what they’ve learned, and impart their best lessons to aspiring startup founders.

No matter how much industry experience you have, you won’t know everything there is to know about running a business the moment you launch your first startup. There’s a pretty steep learning curve, and odds are you’ll find yourself saying, “I wish someone had told me that,” at least a few times along the way.

If you want to prepare yourself for some of the more difficult and unexpected challenges of entrepreneurship, it’s crucial to listen to the experiences of those who have been in your shoes before. Fifteen CEOs of new and existing companies reflect on what they’ve learned, and impart their best lessons to aspiring startup founders.

Your role

Follow your mission

“Let your core mission/ideology be your guide. It is your core that started you down whatever entrepreneurial path you’ve chosen, and it is your core that is the key to unlocking the strategic steps that make the most sense for your venture. If you continuously remind yourself why you’ve embarked on a particular journey, you’ll continue to move closer and closer to your ultimate objective.”

Related Post: The new startup mantra: “learn, try, fail, and repeat”

Don’t be afraid to break the mold

“To succeed as a CEO you need to be steadfast in your beliefs and not always conform to the perceived ‘norm.’ CEOs will ultimately be measured and respected by their actions, reactions, rate of success and how they impacted the world during their time at the helm. Today is the best time to ever be at the executive level of a company, but the power a CEO has goes way beyond producing great results for your company. It has more to do with leaving your legacy. We all can help bring the world to greater frontiers.”

Become an all-around expert

“As a CEO, you are an all-encompassing employee. Be sure to learn from all fields of your business, whether it’s data entry, technology, legal, HR, PR, sales or even from the manual and physical labor side of things. When tasks need to get done, when questions need to be answered, when upgrades are required or additional research needed – even though it may not be your field of expertise – you are the only answer.”



Recognize when to scale up and change your role

“The characteristics that make a startup entrepreneur successful, being nimble and multifaceted, can prevent the company from scaling. Every company has a threshold at which point that founder has to understand that his role has fundamentally changed and he needs the skills of a good CEO – someone who can set the vision and build the capabilities to achieve the vision — to continue to scale the company.”

Related Post: 7 common mistakes made by new entrepreneurs

Your team

Hire people who are smarter, better and faster than you

“Forget your ego – this isn’t a contest! Don’t believe that people who are smarter than you won’t respect you or support your decisions. On the contrary, they know if you are in your position, you’ve worked hard to get there. If you hire people who are ineffective, you will end up doing a majority of their work for them.”

Have a backup plan for your team

“As a startup, we have ingrained in our minds that we must operate as lean as possible, including staff. However, it’s equally important to hire for growth, especially when it comes to specialized positions. You should never have a [situation] where, if [a certain staff member] were to leave, your operation would slow down or stop.”

Your product

Look at everything as an experiment

“No product is perfect, no idea fully formed. You will make assumptions, and you should trust your instincts, but the only real way to prove your product is by testing it on real customers. So, don’t be afraid if the first cut of your product isn’t perfection. It will invariably change over time.”

Related Post: 12 powerful lessons for new entrepreneurs

Listen to your customers

“We’ve got an experienced team of developers, product managers and marketers, but our customers know the app inside out. We know that they are what brings the product to life. There is nothing better than a customer suggesting a product feature or opportunity that we hadn’t thought of. By being open-minded to consumer feedback, we’re able to build a better product to serve them.”



Find people who already believe in you

“Our global site live in September. We learned that, instead of launching the site primarily in the India, we needed to focus on our existing U.S. audience because that’s where we had eager ears. This doesn’t just apply to people launching a successive product or service; it’s sage advice to people who have networked in fields related to their upcoming offerings. If you get like-minded people who already know and are interested in you behind your launch, you’ve just growth hacked your amplification potential.”

Your operations

Define and focus on your niche

“Looking back at 2015, we stopped chasing extravagant customer deals and focused more on our core customer base of small and medium-sized businesses. These are the customers that get duped by some of our competitors and the ones we know we can help the most.”

Know when to be aggressive

“You must win and re-win clients every day, even the comfortable ones. We were focused on making a better product to solve [an important client’s] problem, but we did not engage them in all we were doing. We were passive and polite when we should have been a little more aggressive and forthright. Had we rocked the boat, we would have had a chance. Instead, the boat sailed and we missed it.”

Related Post: 10 Great places to find a new business idea

Pay attention to fundraising and investors

“In 2015, we successfully raised the largest round of funding on AngelList … and learned how well crowdfunding really works. It provides not only an efficient fundraising model, but also adds valuable investors to your team who can be very helpful in accelerating the business. We also learned the true benefit of including a strategic venture investor, Summation Ventures, to our team.”



Your decisions

Be aware of your opportunities and challenges

“There will be many distractions/opportunities that will try to steer you off course from your plan, which will lead to a high probability of failure. There will be opportunities that you will not want to pass up, they just have to be vetted thoroughly. Being aware of everything around you such as the market you are attacking and additional influencers or investors will help make you a more effective leader.”

Be open to criticism

“As a CEO, you sometimes can get stuck in routines of innovation and development that don’t always factor in the opinions of your subordinates. We routinely have meetings where employees at all levels can provide insights and opinions on how to improve and optimize how we work. You will be surprised what you can discern from individuals that don’t have any other vested interest in telling you anything but the truth.”

Related Post: 6 delusions of every new entrepreneur

Harness the power of ‘no’

“There are so many opportunities to consider and it may seem counterintuitive to forego them. The problem is that while these opportunities are attractive and create return, they come at a cost, and these costs can be disastrous for the company. The nature of a startup is to become a leader in a chosen market segment. It is far from a trivial target: How does a small company with limited resources become a leader? Only through focus and utmost discipline, and knowing when to say ‘no’ to certain opportunities.”





9 big Indian startups that shut shop in 2016

While 2015 saw launch of three to four startups a day, the second quarter of 2016 witnessed a lot of layoffs and shutdowns.

While 2015 saw launch of three to four startups a day, the second quarter of 2016 witnessed a lot of layoffs and shutdowns. Lack of funds, plummeting sales and rising competition were the major reasons for the shutdowns. 2016 was ‘deadly’ especially for food startups such as TinyOwl, Dazo, ZuperMeal and many others.

Here are 9 leading startups that shut shops in 2016:

1. TinyOwl

Food-ordering firm TinyOwl shut down its operations in May in all 11 cities where it was operational, except Mumbai. Founded in 2014, the startup faced several financial problems and laid off more than 600 employees between September 2015 and January 2016. In June 2016, the company was acquired by Roadrunnr and rebranded as Runnr.

2. Dazo

Dazo, an app-based service that curated and delivered meals, shut down its operations in October this year -— barely a year after it was started. The startup was backed by bigwigs such as Google India chief Ranjan Anandan, TaxiForSure co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna, and former Freecharge chief executive Alok Goel.

Related Post: 20 Indian startups that died young in 2016

3. PepperTap

Gurgaon-based grocery-delivery startup PepperTap shut down its operations earlier this year after months of struggle to stay afloat. The company was facing tough competition from rivals including Grofers and Bigbasket. The startup was launched in November 2014 and had raised funding in four rounds from Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Snapdeal and others. It had also acquired another budding hyperlocal grocery marketplace, Jiffstore.

4. Fashionara

Bangalore-based Fashionara, which was launched by former Reliance Trends CEO Arun Sirdeshmukh and former Times Internet chief technology officer Darpan Munjal in 2012, closed its business in May 2016. It raised $4 million from Helion Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners and scaled business in apparel, accessories and footwear segment.



5. Purple Squirrel

Purple Squirrel, an EdTech financial startup, backed by Matrix, closed down business in May 2016. The Mumbai-based startup was launched to connect students with industry leaders and big companies for industrial exposure and training. However, it was forced to shut down due to continuously dipping sales and increasing cash burn.

6. AskMe

The consumer internet search platform AskMe shut down in August. The company is said to have been facing severe cash crunch. The shut down is said to have triggered due to the exit of its principal investor Astro Holdings. The shutdown left about 4,000 of its employees jobless. A variety of reason, from weak technology to aggressive acquisitions, are said to be responsible for the online retailer’s failure.

Related Post: Snapdeal shuts down Exclusively.com

7. Zupermeal

ZuperMeal, a home-delivery food venture backed by celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor, too shut down its operations this year. The startup shut shop in May, some eight months after it raised seed funding.

8. GrocShop

The Mumbai-based startup offered grocery shopping from the comfort of homes or offices at competitive costs. The startup was founded in November 2014 by IIT-Bombay alumni Rahul Kumar and Ayush Garg. It was a part of Microsoft’s startup programme, BizSpark, and also among the 16 startups which were selected for the Google Launchpad programme.

9. FranklyMe

Another name in the failed startups list is FranklyMe, a video micro-blogging website founded by Abhishek Gupta and Nikunj Jain in 2014. It has raised $600k seed funding from Matrix partners. In another round, it received an undisclosed amount from investors. Despite the fact that it has been a well-funded company, it failed to capture the market attention and closed down all operations in February 2016.

This article was originally published in GadgetsNow.com





10 Great places to find a new business idea

Do some research to make sure the idea is legal and feasible, and then visit our step-by-step guide to starting a business.

All successful entrepreneurial ventures have one thing in common: They solve a specific problem. Whether they fill a gap in the market or improve upon what’s already out there, good business ideas demonstrate what the issue is and why they have the unique ability to address it.

If you’ve been racking your brain for a way to start your own business but keep coming up short, you might just need a change of scenery. You never know where inspiration will strike, so get up and explore these 10 places to find solvable problems — and, therefore, great business ideas.

Think you’ve found your perfect startup? Do some research to make sure the idea is legal and feasible, and then visit our step-by-step guide to starting a business.

Your smartphone

In the “there’s an app for that” era, it may seem like every mobile application under the sun has already been thought up and built. But that’s not necessarily the case, as many people discover when they scour their smartphone’s app store searching for something that doesn’t exist. Perhaps an app you recently downloaded doesn’t function the way you’d hoped it would, or doesn’t offer a certain feature you wanted. To find out if there’s interest in the newer, better app you want to create, ask friends, family and others in your network. Once you’ve done your due diligence, you can use a DIY app maker or, if you have very little tech experience, hire freelancers to build it for you.

Related Post: 7 part-time business ideas to generate extra income

Search engines

If you’ve ever done an exhaustive Internet search for a specific item that returned no results, you have three options: settle for something close enough, give up entirely or do it yourself. If you’re the kind of person who chooses the DIY method (and can do it well), you have the opportunity to turn a frustration into a lucrative business. Check forums to see if others are searching for the same product(s), and then open up an online shop to sell them. This can also work well for specialized service-based businesses.

Social media

If there’s one thing people like to do on social media, it’s air their grievances about everyday life. Most of the time, these types of updates are mundane (and probably a little annoying), but if you pay close enough attention to those hashtags and status updates, you might start to see some patterns emerging. Look for phrases like, “Why isn’t there a … ” or, “I wish there was a …” — you may be able to offer a solution.

Related Post: 8 Start-up ideas for Indian entrepreneurs

Online reviews

As with social media, people love to talk about the products they’ve purchased and places they’ve visited on sites like Amazon, Google and Yelp. Most consumers will read and use negative reviews to determine if they should avoid the product or establishment, and that company’s loss could be your gain. See what people are complaining about, and try to come up with a business idea that would fix the problem.



Your home

Look around your house or apartment. What are some of the frustrations you encounter there? Dusty air vents? A messy bathroom? Unraked leaves on your lawn? If you’re noticing these things in your own home, there’s a good chance other people are experiencing the same problems. By launching an in-home service business, you can help others take care of these time-consuming household tasks.

Related Post: 3 Questions to ask before turning your good idea into a successful company

Your neighborhood

The people who live near you can be a great inspiration for business ideas. Think about the demographics of your neighborhood or local community. If your town has a lot of working parents, a service that offers to run errands or provides child care might be in high demand. A neighborhood with a lot of senior citizens could use independent home health aides. Are there a lot of dog owners nearby? Try a pet-care business like pet sitting or dog walking.

Your office

If you want to start a part-time business outside your current job, ask your co-workers what kinds of products or services they’re missing in their lives. Maybe someone else with a side business is looking for a bookkeeper or financial adviser. Others might be looking to enroll their children in affordable art or music classes. Small talk in the break room is bound to lead to at least a few viable ideas.

Related Post: Idea-stage startups: How to value enterprises that are yet to take shape

The grocery store

Are you a food lover? Seeing what’s missing from the shelves at the grocery store or farmers market could help you come up with a made-to-order culinary business idea. Jams, baked goods and specialty diet items (gluten free, vegan, etc.) are especially good choices for an artisanal food startup. Alternatively, you could test your gastronomic skills with ingredients from the supermarket and open up a restaurant or food truck.

The mall

While you might not actually open up a brick-and-mortar retail location, perusing your local mall might give you some ideas for a business of your own. You could launch a line of homemade natural cosmetics to rival the pushy salespeople from that kiosk, a clothing line to produce something different from the same old items in every apparel store window or an online craft shop to offer personalized alternatives to generic card-store knickknacks.

Related Post: 10 Rules for a great startup idea

Your child’s school or day care

If you’re a parent, you know that any product or service that will help your child is worth the money. Think about the gaps you see in the market, and next time you pick up the kids from school, ask other parents if they feel the same way. Not a parent? Ask family members or friends with children what kinds of things they want (or want improved) but can’t currently find for their kids.





15 Best financial advices to succeed in your business

Rule No. 1 : Never lose money. Rule No. 2 : Never forget Rule No. 1.

1. “Rule No. 1 : Never lose money. Rule No. 2 : Never forget Rule No. 1.” -Warren Buffett

2. “Price ain’t merely about numbers. It’s a satisfying sacrifice.” -Toba Beta

3. “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” -Robert Arnott

4. “The goal of retirement is to live off your assets-not on them.” -Frank Eberhart

Related Post: 15 Financial terms every entrepreneur needs to know

5. “It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages.” -Henry Ford

6. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” -Epictetus

7. “I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.” -Malcolm Forbes

8. “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.” -Benjamin Franklin



9. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” -Ayn Rand

10. “We at Chrysler borrow money the old-fashioned way. We pay it back.” -Lee Iacocca

Related Post: 4 financial mistakes every entrepreneur makes

11. “It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.” -Albert Camus

12. “Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.” -John Locke

13. “Invest in yourself. Your career is the engine of your wealth.” -Paul Clitheroe

14. “Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we’ve got 24 hours each.” -Christopher Rice

15. “You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.” -Dave Ramsey

Related Post: 7 Ways you can finance your new startup





Bitten by the entrepreneurship bug? Read on to find out how it affects a person

The surge of wanting to start a venture of your own is often referred to as “bitten by the entrepreneurship bug”

What is the entrepreneurship bug?

The surge of wanting to start a venture of your own is often referred to as “bitten by the entrepreneurship bug” as the bug is considered to be infectious because it affects people seriously. Often you are exposed to success stories of people rising from ashes to becoming millionaires or observe family members and friends close to you do very well in the entrepreneurial field, which inspires you to venture into entrepreneurship as well.

Earlier these pangs of entrepreneurship were shadowed by the fear of failure but with rising willingness and culture of start-ups, these fears are shrugged off and thus, we see more creative start-ups crop up daily.

When can the bug bite you?

The bug can bite you when you are very young or have crossed 60. It can also infect you through one mere incident or a situation which channels your inner entrepreneur. When the bug actually infects you, you shrug all feelings of failure and fear and start gathering resources and making plans on how to make your plan work.

Related Post: 10 Reasons why entrepreneurship is awesome



How will you know if you have been infected by the bug?

The signs of being affected are very obvious and if you concentrate upon the symptoms a little closely, you will be able to find out if you are a victim. Listed below are a few signs:

• Every single day you get the urge to quit your stable job and build upon your creative idea. You now want to be your own boss.

• You are no longer scared of financial issues and failure. Moreover, you are willing to take the risks.

• Every day you brood over how you can actually build a company around your idea and you’re willing to invest long hours of work into making it count.

• You start building on the skills required by a leader and start mentally/physically devising a plan for your enterprise.

Related Post: Four signs which show that you have a hidden entrepreneur in you

Getting infected can be life changing

When the bug bites, your life is bound to change as you will follow your passion without thinking about the risks of failure involved. The bug will also make you more determined and relentless to achieve your dreams which in the long run will determine your real worth.

Related Post: 5 Reasons people choose to become entrepreneurs





4 cyber-security measures that every start-up should take

Cyber security is something every start-up should look into because a simple breach could cost you all data and important documents.

Cyber security is something every start-up should look into because a simple breach could cost you all data and important documents. If stringent measures are taken, one can easily prevent any kind of cyber attack.

Here are a few cyber-security measures that every start-up should take:

I. Be cautious while setting passwords

Make sure that the passwords to your accounts are strong and not something which potential hackers can easily guess. Use a combination of upper case and lower case alphabets with numbers and symbols to make your password strong. Also, avoid using the same password for all your accounts in order to protect them all from getting hacked at once.

II. A reliable anti-virus system is a must

A reliable anti-virus program is something you shouldn’t compromise on. Along with that, it is absolutely necessary to install an anti-malware software. These two softwares protect your accounts from any kind of attacks which enter your security network as they get detected at an early stage. These softwares also make sure that your e-mails and downloads are free of virus.



III. Secure the wifi

Most companies use WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) network which makes your internet prone to breaches. To protect your wifi network from hackers, switch to WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2) instead, and revise the name of your routers which is also known as Service Set Identifier (SSID). To make your network absolutely secure, use a Pre-shared Key (PSK) passphrase.

{Partnering with any IT firm can help you out with these measures}

IV. Train your staff to fight cyber security breaches

Your employees also work with the company system which can lead to cyber security breaches which is why it is important to train them regarding cyber security. Educate them about the company policies while handling any kind of business information and also train them about internet security and data confidentiality. It is necessary for them to be able to detect any kind of abnormal developments on their devices which could be the precursors to a cyber attack.

Image credit: Brian D. Colwell