Steer Through

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"I'm launching a startup and looking for someone with complementary skills" Worst idea ever. Here's what you should do instead ↓ Look for a friend. Look for a person you ever fought with. Look for someone trustworthy. Look for someone who will fight by your side. Don't just look for a marketing or dev guy. ↓ Building a startup is more than just summing up people's skills. Building a startup is about creating a team of adaptable gladiators. ⚔️

PERSEVERE, PERSEVERE, PERSEVERE   If you're creating a start-up, you'll have all kinds of problems along the way. You've simply got to persevere, try out multiple options, pivot your business model, and be patient.   Don't give up.   Let me take the example of PlanetSpark, a company that we at Lead Angels have invested in. When they started off, they were in the business of organised tuition centres for children, for English and Science. Physical centres, not online ones, although they had a lot of digital content.   In 2020 this business collapsed because of Covid - because children could not come to their centres.   But the founders didn't give up. They pivoted to an online model, where the same content was made available online.   Unfortunately, this brought them into direct competition with the giants in the space - companies such as Byju's and Vedantu. Clearly, the tiny Planetspark could not possibly compete with these giants.   So what did they do? Well, they pivoted again, and moved to extra-curricular learning online - things like dramatics, painting, robotics, programming, music etc. They kept pivoting but nothing really worked.   The important thing is that these guys DID NOT GIVE UP. They kept persevering and pivoting their business model. And finally, they hit a gold mine, when they launched "Public Speaking for children". Once again online. There was a huge latent demand for this, and it was an instant success.   Today, Planetspark is a market leader in this field.   And that's a message to you, my friend: Don't give up. Keep persevering, keep pivoting!

When I started my first company, the first B2B product idea was to build financial analytics for SMB companies. After spending 4-5 months on that idea, I understood I had no idea what data to ingest, what reports to build and what would add value. I was 23 at that time and was living in a place where product companies weren’t main stream enough. So, not knowing what to build, we pivoted into something else (which also didn’t pan out BTW) But today, if I was starting out, and I didn’t know what to build, I know how to do customer discovery. One way is to speak directly with CFOs (in this example) or decision makers who are buying your potential tool. Now, founders and PMs are saying - we can’t get meetings with them. That’s fair. It isn’t easy to get to them and book meetings. It’s not that they don’t want to help, they are just busy. Here is a hack - find other companies that are ideally selling similar product or at least to the same exact buyers. Ping the sales, and marketing people in those companies. These are mid level (3-6 years) experienced professionals. Nobody is asking for their time to take their inputs (at least very few). They are also humans with motivation to help. When someone reaches out with the right message, they will get on calls. BTW, they are also very good at getting on calls (they do that for a living). Don’t ask competitive questions or ask them to show product or send screenshots. That’s stupid and unethical. Ask them about problems they hear, what creates aha moments in calls, how the industry has evolved over past 3-4 years. Ask about what are the AI questions they hear. Ask if they know 1-2 friendlies they can intro you to for further discovery. Design a Figma and show it to them. Take their feedback. If you find someone super good, engage them as an advisor. Give them some equity. Keep them posted over emails. Every human has something of value. If you know how to tap into that, you’d quickly find ways to learn and grow. Happy discovery, product building and company growth 😃

A smart candidate for smart hiring!

What happens to learning after college? There are trials and errors in one’s professionnal journey, but there is only so much we can play around with company funds (unless if you are a founder backed by big investors 😅). This is were the power of conversations and community shines. We get to learn from others’ mistakes and triumphs. It has been my go to source of education for almost two decades. Even blogs, if you can find any without the objective of SEO or being a cog to the marketing funnel, can only tell very little with no scope of follow-up questions! In the spirit of learning and sharing, Pushkar & I have decided to restart our #LinkedInLive series. These were conversations we otherwise do behind closed doors, put out in the open for folks to listen and participate. We will also benefit from your questions, hopefully opening parallel thought processes and new approaches. For this series, we are hoping to talk to a more diverse list of guests with focus on failed ventures, women entrepreneurs, ventures in uncharted territories or domains. Let us know if you have any suggestions on how we should structure these calls, any day and times that you find comfortable to participate and most importantly, any guests you would like us to approach. Comments and dm’s are open to your thoughts 🙏 #startups #india #founders #investors #startuplife

If you have a strong sales background (area sales manager/relationship manager) in POS/Saas products for F&B industry, are located in Bengaluru and looking for a challenging full time/part opportunity, please ping me on LinkedIn or send your resume at help@datadiveai.com

Every entrepreneur who's rolled up their sleeves to build a startup no matter how it turned out deserves massive respect. Every startup is guaranteed to have good times and bad. It’s part of the game. That’s why the effort deserves serious respect. The only ones who might not understand this are those who have never really been in the trenches building a business before.

How do you create a great startup pitch? In the clip below, Y Combinator Partner Michael Seibel breaks down the two types of pitches every startup founder needs: a 30-second elevator pitch and a two-minute pitch for investors. “A lot of people practice 10-minute, 30-minute, hour-long, pitches. I think that’s all garbage. I think you can get all of your points across in two minutes. And one thing I like to tell founders is that the more you talk, the more you have an opportunity to say something that people don’t like.” 30-Second Elevator Pitch: You should be able to explain to anyone you come across what your company does in 30 seconds. Two-Minute Pitch: This pitch is for people you’re actually trying to convince of something (e.g. investors, potential employees, etc.). You basically want to simply explain what you do and then ask for money. Credit: Startup Archive Check my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/djVbgiKG

MDI Megaminds is a great place to meet founders as well as investors Do submit your pitch here. You might get funding, but even more - you’ll get some very valuable feedback