Loading ...Some people may find it annoying, but I think I must write about this.
Almost a month back, I received an Email from NEN for participating in the hottest startup contest. I looked at the website and was impressed by the participation. What was annoying was the classification of a “startup”. I could see companies founded in 2003 with 70+ employees nominated by NEN with expert rating 8+ ??
Today I was planing to fill the form sent by NEN and suddenly I see an email from an unknown “startup” -
I, on behalf of my company, request you to find few minutes out of your busy schedule and vote us for Tata NEN Hottest Startups 2008 contest. Your vote matters!
The TATA NEN Startups Awards are the first ever people’s choice Awards to recognize the highest-potential startups in India: young companies with great potential to grow; with the ability to change their industries; companies that will create jobs and drive economic growth.
You can vote a***.com online at http://www.hotteststartups.inviewandvote.do?method=fetch&businessFn=viewandvote&startupId=2**
…. More SPAM <snip>
CEO and Chairman …
XYZ
And I swear to God, I hate spams. Specially from a CEO and on a Sunday morning …
IMO, this raises some questions -
- What distinguishes a “startup” from a “businesses”. Can a new Kirana shop call itself a startup ?
- Is “People’s Choice” genuinely a good thing or just means of involving people and promoting spam ?
- Shouldn’t mentorship be an important part and motivation factor for such competitions ?
- Is cash rewards a good thing to offer. I can see Eureka has it, But I also feel that it again leads the BPlan makers to project arbitrary stuff on paper ?
- Shouldn’t entrepreneurs be judged by entrepreneurs and not “respected jury” from some college or MNC ?
Jaspreet
I agree with you on both the points.
1. Startups should be really young companies max 3 years old - otherwise there should be some kind of levels. Established, incubation, prototype etc etc and they should be placed in these categories and judged in these categories. You cant expect a really young startup to compete against a yaatra.com or pagalguy.com in the same category.
2. There are very subtle ways to promote your company. This should not end up in a spam war, there should be guidelines for this. Maybe the public voting is a disadvantage for really small startups nevertheless it brings great exposure to the contest.
Whatever said and done this is the only good platform for startups to showcase ourselves and get some exposure. I appreciate TATA and NEN’s effort to but there is always scope for improvement. I am sure they will
At least, it has done one thing by bringing lot of young companies on one platform and in a manner create awareness. Other than that, startup owners need not associate much importance to it and keep themselves busy with value creation. Its because a real winner will be one who creates a compelling value for users.
“I don’t think upcoming trained classical musicians/singers ever participate in ‘Talent Hunt’ shows.. same goes with startups..”
Classical, trained singers who are interested in singing and making a career of it would and should be a part of the hunts otherwise the basic purpose of the hunt is lost! and that is true when dealing with start ups too.
strange that NEN has been getting spam complaints (saw one on Plugged and one on another site), they are a serious organization. Looks like some junior team members (yea they have a few kids in there) went whacko with the awareness campaign.
The problem with the public voting model is that it works only for Consumer product startups and not for enterprise and engineering products. Who would vote on a telecom networking optimizer startup? The public can’t get that space.
That said it’s a good platform for creating awareness and getting angels and startups together. It should also serve to show the fabulous opportunities for people to join a startup and help sell the space to quality talent.
Thought its not right to send mass emails to every one, who knows or does not know the importance of this award for startups. I think if the enterpreneurs are sending mass emails to the people in their respective domain, whom they see as their potential clients, I think the intent as right, which is nothing but to market and showcase their product/services. It helps startups to gain confidence of customers, who hesistate to buy product or services from a startups, I feel so because the same has happened with us too. My company is also nominated for this Awards, we have started getting good response from the potential clients whom we had been talking to for a long time and considered them as closed case.
“why any self respecting start-up would give time to a ‘reality’ show and spend time away from execution beats me…”
It won’t… we didn’t. I don’t think upcoming trained classical musicians/singers ever participate in ‘Talent Hunt’ shows.. same goes with startups..
the whole premise of public voting makes this platform which has 2 very respected brand names associated TATA-NEN… a mediocre show. Now that the organizers have allowed that.. they can only watch their reputation being degraded by spammers… inevitably.
I think NeNTataAwards attracts people towards startups and that is important. As for spam, I would treat this as ‘higher quality spam’ than voting on music channels.
And why is not someone who starts his own shop for selling sweets (traditional business) a startup guy? He is creating value by identifying a need and addressing it and that is what in the end startups are all about.