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We started venturewoods two years back, and largely on an organic basis, it has acquired traction in the community. There are a few thousand members who read venturewoods, few hundred who comment, and more than 50 who write on venturewoods. Personally, it has been a great platform for me to learn and share with the broader community, and maintain the mental connect that could have been lost so easily as I moved from an entrepreneurial role to a venture investor role.
Multiple people have spoken to me in the past to extend venturewoods beyond just blogs. Suggestions vary towards becoming an entrepreneur-network, to offline events, and so on. Some such suggestions had given rise to venturejobs and venturetalent sections, which I believe have enabled a few people to find each other. This is a call for action - I would like the following to help us take the next step, and am looking for volunteers to help us achieve this:
- Suggestions on what direction you would like venturewoods to take
- Specific site functionality that you would like to add or organize better
- Product+Project manager who can take ownership to get this done
- Technical folks who can help us implement this on a suitable content management system (dont worry, whatever we do, we will not make this a white elephant :))
I hope this thread generates as much participation as some of the previous ones have - it will shape what this service looks like a few months from now!
Hey good post .
I had following thoughts/use-cases -
1. There is no easy way for people to simple ask questions apart from becoming members - may be time for ventureanswers.com
2. There is no easy way for a person to choose someone as mentor .. or someone to open up for mentorship …
3. I guess its also a time for a wikibook for - “Experience called Entrepreneurship” .. wherein wisdom of masses can contribute to a full experience of being an entrepreneur.
I can contribute technically, devoting some of my time …. if someone can pay for it .. all the better
good luck …
Lets have a Resources section where people can post resources avaiable for use by startups.
For eg, if i have an extra pc or some office space which i want to earn a bit from, i can give it on hire for cheap to a startup.
Startups really need these small small resources at one point or the other, and what better way than pooling in resources from other startups/entrepreneurs that spending a whole bunch of money buying new stuff !
What are your thoughts on this admin ?
Hi Alok,
This facelift would be greatly welcome.
Being an entrepenuer who is in the process of starting up, I feel a pinching need for access to the network of relevant people who are willing to come together to transform an idea into success. I am sure a subsection for this in venturetalent will help.
More Importantly there should be a section that can showcase Startup ideas/concepts. People who are keen to work on that idea /concept can express their interest or discuss it in a thread. Not everyone would like to discuss his idea in an open forum but still there will be many takers and we will have some interesting outcomes.
All the best….
1) Show the name of the poster in the post-page. It comes on the main page but on this page (where I’m entering the comment) it’s not there so I keep having to go back to the main page to see who wrote this article. And if you’re coming from a link, forget about it.
That should be such an easy item to tick off.
2) Resource Exchanges rarely work, in my opinion. Places like Ryze, LinkedIn etc.and even Orkut types are far more likely places for such exchanges; you’ll spend too much time and effort for too little. A simple forum implementation may be easier, and broad based enough to include most written contact-me type requests.
3) Allow user profiles more than the standard stuff that you can have right now - like a more detailed user entry, any interactivity like sending messages etc. would also be nice.
4) I think the site’s good enough as is, honestly, only one would like more specific posts on entrepreneurship in India, both tech sector and otherwise. I don’t think this should become a be-all and end-off of the startup world in India - for that you will need hajaar project managers and graphics designers and web programmers and ajaxification and all that stuff.
5) Give entrepreneurs here some ad-space
I will be hard pressed to take up an active role in the programming / management but I can write a long and frank beta test report of any new feature you might have. Armchair warrior, I know.
How about an IM chat window….?
Dear Angels of India,
You are asking for new shape of venturewoods.But an entrepreneur may not like a ready platform of resources.Let entrepreneurial journey of entrepreneurs a bit mystic one (Alchemist-you never know).We learn when we walk through this journey.
We some entrepreneurs are developing a concept of entrepreneurs network,which coincendantally matches your line of thought.
If a VC like you handles a entrepreneur network ,the theme might get lost.
What we are developing may not be the next big thing,but it would be the ‘the best thing’ for entrepreneurs in today’s time (in terms of resources sharing).
Let entrepreneurs contribute and find the gap themselves and make the network structure the way they would like.
Let venturesprings blossom, which would allow the Johari window of some VC’s to open (to enable them to find right people ,right investment ideas,right investment size)
My suggestion to venture woods is to grow organically and allow more qualified entrepreneurs as contributors.
Whether angels in india champion the cause of entrepreneurship through venturewoods or IAN or NEN or TIE what entrepreneurs want is a small advice,small respect,and small funding (even 5-10 lakh).Indian valley parents are different from silicon valley parents.Indians by and large still are unaware of this VC money.(who can give free money-they think)
Contribute to seedfund ,without which there may not be enough opportunities for VC funding.
Vikas - Thanks for the note. I wish to clarify that venturewoods has no linkage to the band of angels, or any other angel/VC group. It was conceived as a platform where different constituents of the venture ecosystem can come together and share ideas, and that is the theme that we’d like to take forward. There is obviously space for many other networks that enable this, and I am sure we need more. I sure dont think that I have the ability to “let” or “not let” entrepreneurs contribute and engage where they want to - venturewoods is a very tiny piece in the overall ecosystem that exists, and that needs to exist in India.
All - Great suggestions - do we have a volunteer who can get this done. I think we would stick with some open source CMS so there shouldnt be any ground up tech development effort.
All suggestions above are interesting. What I hear is “make this a hub for startups and launches”
My concern is not so much the software or it management, but the contribution of content. I see from the list of contributors that we have nearly 60, but most don’t even contribute once a month.
We need more contribution in:
- product launches
- jobs
- analysis/commentary of venture activity
- related news
- interviews
- thoughts
etc
I really like the posts Sanjay and Jaspreet have been making, regularly updating the progress of their ventures, giving this community a behind the scenes look at starting up; and at the same time building brand. A win-win. We need more of this.
VentureWoods also needs a group of core contributors who can come forward and commit to atleast a post every 2 weeks. This a rich community with entrepreneurs, VCs, gurus, journalists, valley crowd, fresh graduates, techies, etc. If you can contribute a little every now and then of your perspective…
I am happy to volunteer with the software and it’s management. My team has some experience with CMS’ as Flora2000 is building its own community at www.gosmelltheflowers.com.
Alok,
How about a community at www.ning.com? To add whatever flavour we need, the community can add widgets using their api and enhance the site.
Hi!
I’m happy to volunteer with the implementation of the new features. You may contact me through email.
Couple of things that have been on the list
1. A more structured job and talent board
2. Ratings for posts and contributors — kinda diggIt buryIt — should help us drive better quality of content
Also, just saw this - and I think this is an important aspect we should cover - how do we continue to build on quality and relevance?
never heard of Plugdd, doesn’t seem to have many readers considering there are virtually no comments to their posts.
I personally don’t find quality to be an issue here. The main issue is that we’re no active enough for people to visit us everyday. Sometimes days go by without posts. More contribution is needed from all.
Rehan, I dont think its relevant whether Pluggd is great or not - but there is a set of our past users out there who think we are being more noisy, and its a problem worth thinking about. I am hearing a few things:
- we could be more specific rather than 30,000 ft
- too much promotion and too little content
We may decide to act on some and not on others. But we should think about building self-regulatory community mechanisms to keep the quality high. Also, a broader set of contributors is essential, and we might need outreach to do that.
I think we should focus on what is needed for entrepreneurs in India
From my personal experience
We lack eco-system of bay-area where people can meet quite often to exchange ideas, form teams, look for funding.
That we miss in most of the cities. If we can make dedicated city and topic based networking forums on the portal which help entrepreneurs to network online.
Alok,
You need to move away from the comment style posting on VentureJobs and VentureTalent to something more usable and robust. I would recommend moving to an open source CMS such as TYPO3 or Drupal. We have expertise in both, specifically TYPO3 where we are knowledge and market leaders in India, and would be happy to help you migrate VentureWoods to such a system.
Let me know if you’d like to explore this further.
Regards,
Rahul Dewan
Well..I have been following www.pluggd.in for quite some time and have seen more relevant comments/posts than any other blog.
Atleast those guys are doing an awesome job with bringing in insights/industry stats..and interviewing indian startups.
anyways, what VW needs is building relevance and not 1000s of posts and comments.Quality vs. Quantity? You decide!
@ Rehan - honestly, if you havent found any issue with quailty here, then cant say much (since I strongly see a major quality drop here in VW)
Agree with self regulating community part. VW does have a real community here, mix of VC, entrepreneurs, students, managers, etc. You’re bound to get a broad range of posts, which I think is healthy. Whats nice is that most posts have healthy debate, whether its people rubbishing the post, giving a counter view, endorsing it, adding to it, etc.
Not entirely sure if VW was meant to focus on a specific subject when started and maybe a bit off course from that, but that happens once the community grows. No worries there.
I think it’s not so much of an issue of outreach as driving posting from existing community. Someone has to lead that. Personally I’d rather see VW become a slashdot style community, rather than a techcrunch type news site.
Please use a wordpress plugin to split large number of comments into pages.
for e.g. http://www.keyvan.net/code/paged-comments/
Your Venturetalent page frequently times out now (because of the number of comments)
-Sandeep
Hi,
I have been an old reader of Venturewoods. It started off and is one of the most read and respected Indian blogs. I however share the same feelings as a lot of readers which is - Venturewoods has been very shallow of late. Lots of articles have no analysis and are pure personal outpourings. I dont think the “broad range of topics” is a valid argument. When an invitation is sent to the blogger, a certain level of quality is taken for granted (which is fair). I think that quality level has fallen.
I have cherished posts by Sanjay and Alok for a long time. Alok, its a great idea to take a step back and try building a better Venturewoods.
I also think that most comments (including this one) here have discussed the decision than give fruitful suggestions for improvement (which I guess was ALok’s idea in the first place).
Alok
I’ve been a regular reader of VW and have posted comments sometimes.
my suggestion would be to have a section like a diary where entreprenuers could create a webpage for their venture under a codename and post significant events and learning on a periodic basis….something like sanjay is doing with eko.
this could be done on a no-name basis and without disclosing what the company is really upto.
what this would do is offer significant learnings to other entrepreneurs and sharing of some ground-level stuff.
also, the entreprenuer could ask questions on 1 biggest unresolved question he has during that week/month. it becomes very lonely if u’re a one-man-army and sometimes u do not have the luxury of a sounding board.
third, sharing your dream’s progress with a larger audience would give you enough kick to continue even in adversity and we might have a far higher success ratio on new ventures. of course, not requiring to disclose too much on the exact business or revenue model would help in a free discussion in these venture diaries.
carry on the good work Alok
regards
bb