"Entrepreneurs are the ones sleeping on the floor"

Bob Pritchett has a post that helps distinguish managers and entrepreneurs based on an experience of a business owner who deciced to sleep overnite at the office floor instead of paying a premium to get a locksmith repair the lock at a late hour. (Please note the entrepreneur was also resourceful enough to have his wife drop off a bed roll!)

As you grow a business you learn to delegate. You give other people some of the chores you used to do yourself. You become a manager. But in times of crisis you can distinguish managers and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs will sleep on the floor.

Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence India, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.

How I Raised Funding - Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry

You have to be confident and shameless while crowdfunding. Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry shares on how to succeed in crowd funding with Venture Intelligence in this interview. Priyanka also candidly shares how the team built Wishberry, raised funding from top angel investors like Rajan Anandan, on pivoting, and difficulties in raising capital for entrepreneurs operating in niche spaces not chased by VCs. Q: What does Wishberry do? Priyanka Agarwal : In its latest avatar, Wishberry has pivoted into crowd financing of low budget films (INR 1-5 Cr). We are essentially trying to create an internet platform for investment opportunities for HNIs in films including Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, or films targeting the global diaspora. L-R: Co-founders Anshulika Dubey & Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry Given that you are building a marketplace, how did Wishberry solve the Chicken and Egg problem? Beyond the “all or nothing” model what did Wishberry do to pull in more arti...

Profile of Career Forum founder

The Starship Enterprise column in The Economic Times (not available online), featured Sujata Khanna of entrance exam training institute, Career Forum. The company, which started with just seven students in Pune, now covers over 39 cities reaching over 15,000 students. ...The most important milestone I think was in 1995 when we decided to incorporate Career Forum into a Company. This brought in a lot of professionalism and we also went for expansion. ...Strong technical network is our unique selling proposition. We have a strong ERP system running across all centres in all areas of business from distribution to logistics... Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the Private Equity and Venture Capital ecosystem in India. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.

Should VCs buy out angels?

Interesting discussion at VentureWoods between Deepak Shenoy and Roshan D'Silva on this " perennial topic ". Here are their first posts (in the comments section): Deepak Shenoy said, Alok, true - there is reason to think about why one wants to exit. As a stock market investor, I have made decisions to sell companies at (say) 400% profits, when the company went on towards 1000% of what I bought - yet, I wasn’t sulking in a corner. Because a) 400% is pretty nice and b) I’d reached that comfort level of profits. Angels may not want to stay the distance, which could be much longer than their cash needs, and if the current valuation is attractive enough for them to exit. As individuals I would imagine that angel investors are the kinds that put in Rs. 10 lakhs to Rs. 50 lakhs in a business - and honestly, there are a number of such people who have this kind of cash lying idle in bank accounts (idle = they don’t need it right now). Such people can be angels, but they won’t b...

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