For the past 3-4 months, I and a couple of my colleagues at the HeadStart Foundation have been involved in creating a framework for formal collaboration between corporates and startups for jointly identifying, pursuing and executing business. The HeadStart Foundation is launching that initiative on the 9th at the HeadStart and Compute 2009 event in […]
A Start up for Citizen Led Change in India
I just saw Shashank’s post on a political startup. Prior to doing a startup potential founders often brainstorm. If there are some people seriously interested in brainstorming on this idea in Delhi at my home in RK Puram please contact me. 0
Avenues for getting ~$1M funding in India
I am not sure if this topic has been discussed before – pls direct me to the post or if people have newer insights, it would be great to discuss. I am curious about opportunities to get funding in the $1M range for start-ups in India. 1. Most of the VCs in India seem to […]
Canaan invests in Chakpak.com
Happy to announce our investment in chakpak.com – the largest online community for Indian entertainment. We are excited to partner with Accel in financing the company, largely because: Entertainment is a high usage and engagement category – As per Comscore, 18 million visitors in India already access entertainment content. Add to that the NRI base, […]
Social Mutual Fund
Interesting company kaChing – of course there are challenges around sustainable returns, building credibility, and marketing. But a very interesting disintermediation effort between capital and investment managers. Would you use something like this? 0
Accel Partners raises $1B in new money
Even in this environment, there is lots of money around after all. It’s just that LPs are more cautious, seems to be the takeaway from this NYT blogpost: Who says that money is tight for venture capitalists? Accel Partners, the Palo Alto, Calif., venture capital firm behind companies like Facebook, Glam Media and MetroPCS, announced […]
Startup Saturdays across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad : Agenda ...
There are four special Startup Saturdays across the country, ie, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, this coming weekend 13th December. Startup Saturdays are monthly meetups organised by the HeadStart Foundation that promote interaction among entrepreneurs, advisors, investors, corporate adopters and professionals. So far, in 2008, more than 30 meet ups have taken place in India. […]
Enterprise Collaboration tools: Adoption and Benefits?
There’s been a lot of noise about online collaboration tools / Enterprise 2.0 / Knowledge Management, and we have seen a lot of products in the space. There are players ranging from the traditional Enterprise tools vendors like IBM and Microsoft with all encompassing heavy products, to a bunch of start-ups with their wares trying […]
Top 6 Tips to Expand Your LinkedIn Network
Given the proliferation of Social Media, your profile on Social and Professional networking sites deserves a significant attention. Globally, people are harnessing the power of social media for varied purposes – to attract customers, partners and talent are some of common objectives achieved through professional networking. But, not everyone is equally successful in meeting their […]
Canaan Entrepreneur Pitch Workbook
Here is a short presentation that outlines the information that we, at Canaan, like to see in business plans. It is also a useful tool to think about what questions one should try and answer, besides just ensuring that a certain format is used. Personally, I don’t fancy paper copies much, especially when all of […]
Why Not A Political Startup
Given the mess that our political system is in, I wonder why professionals have not seriously looked at creating a political startup. Present service providers have been providing low quality services for decades in what really should be a buyers’ market given that we are a democratic country. People have been crying for a better […]
Do we need Teams who have delivered before?
In continuation from my last post “do great startups solve a problem”, I’ve got another pressing question, which seems to perplex me, but seems to be required by just about every VC/startup I have ever interacted with. Having looked at some really good startups (my criteria for a good startup is quite simple…its big, people […]