Product, passion or perseverance - how much do you need it and when?

Many people will not forget the TechSparks 2013 at India Habitat Centre for quite a long time to come. One does not get to hear Deep Kalra’s story, learnings and insights into business coming directly from him every day. Amit Ranjan taking the stage reminiscing his first office, first employee and first company before SlideShare is not a regular happening too. Listening to the Hike’s story from Kavin Bharti Mittal makes it a special affair.

After the words from the speakers captivated the audience, the panel discussion became a highlight of the event. The panel discussion moderated by Shradha Sharma constituted of Gautam Mago of Sequoia Capital, Amit Ranjan of SlideShare, Kavin Bharti Mittal of Hike, Ambarish Gupta of Knowlarity and Vivek Rao of CISCO. The highlights from the panel discussion were:

Shradha to Gautam: You come across a lot of business plans every day, how do you decide which B-plans are good & you may consider for investment and how do you reject?

It is hard to choose but it is not rocket science. It boils down to pretty much the basics. The composition of the team – the founders and the early employees make a lot of difference. The second factor which we look for are the big markets because they create big companies. Large markets give you the chance to experiment and also allow you to fail. Some markets may not be large at the present moment, the market needs may be latent and entrepreneurs should understand this. Last but not the least, there is an intangible factor that comes in consideration. How passionately the team feels about the goals and the vision of the venture matters a lot because a startup is a long tough game.

Shradha to Gautam: The common notion is that if you are rejected for an investment by a VC, you will not get the capital from them even at a later stage. So, is first no a permanent no?

No it is not true that a no will be permanent. The real example is of MuSigma. Yes said a no to them before we said yes.

Shradha to Ambarish: You have built a company based on passion, scaled it up and have raised funding for it from Sequoia as well. How easy was it?

It did not come easy. Knowlarity is my second startup. I had started an apartment listing for rent and buying/selling earlier much before Magic Bricks and all came to the market. The demands of the market were different and I did not read it properly I believe. I worked on it for 2 years but could not generate any revenue. There was no growth and I chose to shut it down. I failed at that attempt. I went to the U.S, studied, worked and when I came back I saw a huge opportunity in cloud telephony and started Knowlarity. What it took was a lot of hard work, a lot of failures and learnings from those failures.

Shradha to Vivek: Entrepreneurs are so in love with their startups that they don’t know when to stop pursuing their efforts. How do you decide when is the time to persevere and when is the time to stop?

I have learnt from one of my mentors that when it comes to business, one should follow it passionately but not get involved emotionally in it. I completely believe in it. When you get emotional about your business, you become stubborn and want it to work out at any cost which may not necessarily happen in real life.

Shradha to Amit and Kavin: How to figure out the markets for your startups? How do you know you have got a product market fit?

Amit: You can know product market fit only when you go to the market. It is not a theoretical concept that you can apply and get the best answer. Don’t sit and develop for 2-3 years, go to your customers and interact with them. Build a prototype and be agile according to the markets. Iterate as per customer requirements.

Agreeing to Amit point of view, Ambarish added that if there is a demand for a product even the earliest MVP will sell.

Kavin: If you pull your product from the market and users will be pissed off because of it, you have found a product market fit.

The open panel had enthusiastic entrepreneurs asking the panel’s view on various aspects of startups and entrepreneurship. Here are the two of those questions which compelled discussion:

When is the right time to approach a VC?

Gautam: If you want to ask for an opinion, just come and ask. We are happy to talk to anyone. If you are confident about what you are doing, its never early for a conversation.

How to attract a good team when you don’t have the money?

Gautam: You got to sell your idea to the employees. You have to have the passion and intelligence of selling your dream to them when you don’t have enough capital.

Ambarish: It is extremely hard to get people when you don’t have the money but the ones you get that time are the right ones. They are the ones who will help you grow. In rough times, those are the shoulders to lie on and cry on. It is like how to get married when you are not rich.

Amit: Early employees join because of the founders and not the organization. How confident and clear founders are about the idea matters a lot.

Delhi was fourth in queue after Kochi, Mumbai and Hyderabad and from here, YourStory heads to Chennai for the 5th city edition!

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