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Rahul has taken a project that I had done as a fellow at Stanford and scaled it. He has just got a grant from Ford Foundation for $250,000 and is looking for a CEO as described here.
If you know anyone who may fit the bill please ask them to contact Rahul directly.
At some point maybe VW can have a separate Venture Talent and Venture Jobs tab for social entrepreneurs. This would be useful only if there are no other blogs in India which already address this.
This is a company started by a bunch of ex- PayPal people which could be useful for startups to get themselves noticed and get feedback.
I just joined and put some information about myself and Eko.
At Eko we intend to play around with the site and see if it proves to be useful.
Easy to do since its free.
We are finally serving real customers. We still have a lot of work to do to meet our customer delight goal and we need a lot of support from banks, telecom operators and regulators.
Anyone who wants to try our service please do that. All comments specially suggestions for improvement are most welcome.
To read more click here
To view a slide show click here
Our use of restricted stock to get advisors/talent has worked very well.
Plans at Eko are aggressively on track and we have had some exciting developments.
We will be closing our early employee restricted stock offering by Jan 31, 2008.
It is already closed for other categories such as advisors.
We have also worked on a compensation policy for FY 2008-09 to attract and retain the best talent where we will not be able to offer restricted stock.
If you are interested in joining the Eko team please check out the open positions on our website.
(6 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)
Loading ...Subject: Go to Market
Going to Market is always a big event for a startup and I am glad to report that we went live today at our pilot location with real money and a real bank. For about a month we will be controlled and will go into full pilot only after that.
I will let VW readers know when we go into full pilot so that some in Delhi NCR may want to try the service.
I had also promised an update on our inner circle efforts where we would use stock to get advisors and build our team. That has gone exceptionally well as can be seen by visiting our website.
All the best to all of you for the holiday season and best wishes for 2008.
(5 votes, average: 3.8 out of 5) Loading ...He is a Mint columnist and I have not read all his columns as I have been rather busy but I remember reading one in August which I found amusing and instructive.
Here is the link
I hope to read more of Mr. Varma’s writing. In the US I was a regular reader of Walter Mossberg’s colum in WSJ on personal technology.
(4 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5) Loading ...Attracting talent is enormously important.
I saw some earlier threads on this so I thought I would share how we are trying to do this at Eko. We created a pool of stock that advisory board members and early employees can invest in. This stock is issued at approximately 3X the founders round. The 3X number was debated and we felt it was fair. Principal founders can buyback in case a person leaves . Buyback rights lapse with time.
Tax wise this works out better but upfront investment is required.
In our case a COO or CTO could invest to own as much as 3% of the company. As far as we know this is very generous but we feel it would be worth it if we got exceptional talent. The stake would get diluted as we raise more capital but at 50% dilution it still means over $10MM for each of them if we can get a billion $ exit. For smaller exits the math is obvious. In addition to this we felt we needed to pay 24 lacs per annum as the kind of people that we are looking for would probably command packages of Rs 50lacs to 1 crore per annum. We have retained Reffster a headhunting and referral startup to find and screen candidates for us.
For other positions we have similar combinations of cash + restricted stock at lower levels. Advisory board members get only restricted stock.
This has worked well for us. We have got early employees to join us and we now have two advisory board members.
In startups you want to use your limited seed capital to produce tangible things that VC’s /angels can look at, get impressed and invest. ( This assumes you want VC/angel investment)
These could be prototypes, beta customers, key business development deals or letters of intent.
At Eko we have just signed a letter of intent with a large bank for our pilot. This is likely to make it much easier for us to move forward on many fronts.
People recognize that it is not easy to get an LOI signed by a large company which is why if you can get that done it gives a lot of people including the startup team a lot of confidence to climb the mountains that lie ahead.
At Eko we managed to do this in a month after formal incorporation. If we can do it and LOI’s are relevant in your startup then so can you.
This is an extract from a post on another blog. Click here for the full post. In some ways I am trying to be a farmer sharing his seed corn when I write about trust or Eko. The major difference is that Eko is just starting and has won no awards but the intent to share and see others prosper as well is strong.
In his book Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are, V. Raghunathan writes about a farmer whose corn won top awards year after year. When a reporter asked about the secret of his success, the farmer attributed it to the fact that he shared his corn with his neighbors. Why, the reporter wondered, would the farmer want to share his seed when those neighbors also competed with him for the prize? The farmer’s reply was, “The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grew inferior corn, cross-pollination would steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors do the same.”
That Indians often fail to act like this farmer is the principal theme of Raghunathan’s book. Using examples as varied as their tendency to drive through red lights to their failure to protect the environment, Raghunathan argues that Indians often act in ways that focus on winning immediate gains at the expense of long-term benefits. What makes Raghunathan’s approach unusual is that his argument isn’t a moral diatribe: He employs game theory — a branch of mathematics — and related concepts, such as the prisoner’s dilemma, to present his case.
We have recognized the importance of creating a ” Circle of Trust” at Eko.
It is quite possible that trust may be an important element in the business of some other startups and they may get inspired by our thinking. With that in mind we have made the first version of our document available for free download ( no registration required) from our website.
We believe that the “Circle of Trust” will be an important part of our model though some of the external people we have shown it to are skeptical. We are also not sure whether the document is well presented and easy to understand.
For those of you who are interested please download, read and let us know what you think?