Who should startup? An experienced professional (been there, done that, now wanna do it my way!), or a rookie (fresh perspective, lots of energy but no experience!)?
Mission Statement:
“We are on a mission to bring relevant and useful content to the web, driven by community. Unlike our competitors, we don’t believe in pushing anything and everything to you.”
The focus of this article is on the new start-up mantra that is happening in India. The new age good fellas are neither the experienced folks nor the newbies – the new generation is starting up while having their day job.
The best part about these ‘day-job, night-start-ups’ guys is that they are technically savvy and business smart; and that translates to quick development and feature testing.
Most importantly, they appeal to the Indian tech community. Everybody wanted to help these guys in their initiative, there was an emotional connect with these guys who were trying to achieve something great. Everybody wants to play a part in the making of next ‘rock stars’!
NextBigWhat is an Indian based online portal that reports news on entrepreneurship and technology.
NextBigWhat’s headquarters is located in Bangalore, Karnataka. NextBigWhat generates $100K in revenue per employee NextBigWhat’s top competitor is FactorDaily, led by Pankaj Mishra, who is their Co-Founder & CEO. NextBigWhat has 569 followers on Owler.
Driving factors:
Useful: keeping present and future in mind.
Relevant: keeping one’s interest in the context.
The company is mainly following 5 broad topics:-
Growth & Marketing : Every startup/company needs. There is so much of wisdom out there and so much to talk/discuss and learn.
AI & ML : The world beyond tech and how it will shape the future.
FYI: That is, data and truth. Interpretation is up to you.
Culture & more: Well, you can’t really design for the next billion if you don’t get the cultural aspect of humanity.
Startups & Products : Of course, the new new products from startups to the biggies, we bring them all to you.
The company has also recently launched product management course
NextWhatBig shares startup stories
The story of every engineering edtech startup in India; Start with Disruption, Cash on Confusion
More on startup stories:
They all start with the aim to disrupt education space
Because degrees do not matter. Skills do.
Most colleges / formal education do not add value (the 4 year degree is a waste of time from application-based knowledge perspective)
You are better off learning hands-on from industry experts (than academia).
Voonik Story : From An Idea To Building Traction. This Is How They Did It
Voonik, a personal shopping app for women, just announced its Series A investment from Sequoia and Seedfund. Sujayath Ali, CEO & Co-founder of Voonik
Just Another Internet Startup Story [Ideacts @UnPluGGd]
Sharing another presentation @UnPluGGd event – Ideacts, a company that is bringing structure to cybercafe market in India and in the process, owns the access point for Internet users.
At UnPluGGd, Rudrajeet shared his perspective on the Internet market in India as well as shared the journey [they started with a similar concept in 1999, went bust, the team came together again and launched Ideacts in 2007].
Startup Pitchdecks: The Grand Daddy Collection of Pitchdecks from 25+ Global Startups
Startup Pitch decks: The grand daddy collection of all pitch decks from globally successful startups.
While these pitch decks might look innocent (just check out Facebook’s sales pitch deck and look at where the company is now!), there are tons of learning in these pitch decks.
Indian Cab Industry : Survival of the fittest
Recent news on Softbank, writing off its investment in OLA; and change in revenue model by Uber; clearly validate the below hypothesis which was published in my previous article.
Hypothesis# 1: – Cab aggregators are not working towards answering the most important question of this industry
Neither Ola nor Uber is satisfying unit economics; but just burning cash to incentive either side of the equation.
In a market like India, where there is a need of on-demand, cost-effective, safe and reliable transportation, the real question becomes, which of the two business models: asset-heavy or asset-light will survive in the long run?
However, careful study of both models brings us to our next hypothesis.
Hypothesis #2: – Neither asset-light model (Uber/Ola) or asset-heavy model (Meru) will survive in the long run.
In association with IIM Bangalore, we did a focus group study with consumers who avail cab services in Bangalore, Faridabad, New Delhi, Gwalior, Mysore, Indore and Coimbatore.
Why Is raising funds not the greatest thing for a startup?
Founders today think about raising funds much before they think about starting up their venture. Questions like; can this idea attract funds? What will be my burn rate? How can I raise a large Series A?
Will I become a unicorn by Series C, etc. are some examples of mindset that young and budding entrepreneurs carry today.
In fact the growth of an organization is also defined by the amount of funding round that they raise. In this kind of a scenario, where funding is the key business metric to define growth, founders are losing the real charm of building businesses from scratch and are also loosing the true essence of a startup.
While the true essence may get lost somewhere, what I have realized that funding is a double-sided sword that comes with a lot of disadvantages along with the benefits of scaling up. Its either the nature & mindset of this funding game or the investor pressure to show exponential growth or simply that phase where the young founder suddenly gets access to a lot of money and is unsure what to do, which leads to some of the most common mistakes that have a large impact on the organization.
AI Startup Mad Street Den Raises Series A From Sequoia Capital
Chennai and US based Mad Street Den has raised Series A funding from Sequoia Capital. The startup earlier raised $1.5mn seed round in 2015.
The company’s product, Vue.ai helps ecommerce companies integrate AI-based optimization into their online store. Mad Street Den works closely with several fashion brands in India.
