The Startup Journey

There’s a great audiocast of an entrepreneur panel at The Churchill Club – moderated by Guy Kawasaki - that discusses tactical information for building a successful startup. Example: Never use a headhunter for start-up hires. Hire only people you have worked with and if that’s not possible, people who have worked with people that you have worked with. Just download and listen . Its both fun and useful.

Jason Caplain, a partner with Raleigh, NC (USA)-based Southern Capitol Ventures, shares a list of "exceptional strategies implemented by some of our portfolio companies and others in the market to give them an advantage over their competition": 1. Service your competitor's customers when they have problems Are some of your prospects using the competition, but they struggle to get help when they need it most? Offer your assistance at this pivotal time. Furthermore, tell them to call you anytime. Eventually, they will bring their business to you as they realize that you are readily available and your competition is not. 7. Work with partners, not service providers Think of all the people you work with: lawyers, accountants, bankers, etc. Are they thinking about just the tasks you give them or are they thinking about you and your company? There is a big difference. A lot of local firms with help make introductions to potential customers, employees, partners and venture capi...

Venture capitalists never like deals where their money is used to buy the shares owned by founders and other early investors. They like the money they bring in to go "into building the company" - ie, towards hiring people, building a product, etc. Unless, that is, they are desparate to get in on the deal. Gary Rivlin of The New York Times reports that such "founder sales" deals are now becoming more common in the US. Companies like eHarmony, Webroot Software, Fastclick, etc., have witnessed the founders "using venture deals to cash out some of their equity without the bother of a public offering or an acquisition". If the VCs are so hungry for the deal, why do the founders want to cash out early? Are they not as confident as the VCs about the success of their business and hence, a getting a much larger payoff at a later point? The reason, Woodside Fund partner Thomas Shields explains, is since a founder is typically "stock rich but cash poor". S...

Sunil Goyal , who is with Gurgaon-based mobile content technology start-up Wirkle (where all employees blog! ), has a great post on why he thinks more people in India can now afford to venture beyond wage slavery: I think there is NO risk at all. And if any to the minimum. My perspective to this question is "What's the worst situation I can be in ?" May be I loose out on money, spent months on something which didn't work, may be at the end I don't have a job. I can't think of a more worse situation, if you can please do let me know.. On the other hand, any one who joins a startup will have steep learning curves both in technology and management, see how small startups need to work, how product has to be conceptualized, developed, deployed. Everyone in the team works for that. One enjoys the journey which might be bitter at times. Experience and the work that one learns, I think a corporate environment lacks that dynamism. So you can learn in 6 months what you...