The Startup Journey

Anurag Jain , Doctoral Student at IIM-Bangalore writes in response to Arun Natarajan's article, "Where Money for Start-ups Really Comes From": I do agree with GEM researchers in their recommendations. However, my reading is that for every 285.981 million booting up with the Fs' support, there are more than double/triple that figure (that exact number would be interesting to know, as that would be a proxy indicator of the potential of economy) who couldn't get off the track due to the non-availability of even basic capital (say 1700$ as mentioned in article). So, yes, we do need to take measures that will enhance the availabilty of financing, more so to enable the wanting to 'cross-over'.

Where Money for Start-ups Really Comes From By Arun Natarajan Here's what the irrepressible Guy Kawasaki--former Apple executive and CEO of Silicon Valley investment bank Garage.com--says in his Forbes.com column in answer to the question "What are Venture Capitalists (VCs) doing these days?": "Mostly VCs are looking for companies with three "provens": Proven teams, proven technology and proven sales. Ideally, they'd like a team that's sold a company to Cisco for $7 billion, won a Nobel Prize with its technology, and is profitably selling $12 million worth of stuff a year. That's an early-stage deal. Unfortunately, using these parameters, no VC would invest in anything. Oops, there goes the next Yahoo!, Google, eBay, Netscape, Apple, or Cisco... In any case, it's tough to get an investment these days." The situation in India is not too different. "Investors like grey hairs now," says a recent Businessworld artic...