This seems to be buzzword in today’s web 2.0 scenario. We could see the mushrooming of social networking sites that are positioned for college goers, women, old age people, and may be to gay and lesbian (I’m not sure on this).
These sites provide tremendous opportunity for people to find new friends, enjoy time with people by getting date, even finding people for their business, people to sell their products and for satisfying day to day aspects in their life.
This space creates huge opportunity for intelligent guys who could possibly come out with innovative business model that could change the way we do day today things. Youtube is one of the greatest examples of this. This has certainly changed the way we think about our personal videos that could be shared online. It has really stood up against powerful competitors and eventually got acquired by Google for approx $1.65Billion.
Myspace is another example, but unfortunately founders of myspace couldn’t make killer compared to youtube (Even though it got sold around $565 million, analysts believe that it has more potential), but they made substantial returns. We knew the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckberg, a young genius who refused billion dollar acquisition proposal from Yahoo (How many of us have the guts and confidence to reject this mind boggling offer). And Ofcourse there is flickr and another killer www.last.fm. Its software creates a personalized streaming radio station based on the digital music you already listen to, shares your playlists on the Web, and suggests music from other closely related playlists.
Americans are traditionally strong in founding brilliant tech companies that use to have innovative model with great business viability. So why not Indian minds couldn’t come up with the model that could eventually make millions for its founders. There might be lot of reasons behind this. May be, innovative model in this space might have been unleashed by the likes of facebook, Orkut (Not a brilliant site, but having good market share in India) and others who’re already in this business. I’m very much confident that there is huge talent, Infact genius minds available in India that could possibly works in order to bring unbelievable model that could have ubiquitous place in the history of web 2.0 culture.
www.slideshare.net is one of the brilliant examples of innovative model. It’s an online PPT sharing site which is definitely having the potential to become another blogger and wordpress. I don’t know how they’re going to commercialize it, but it’s definitely an innovative model from Indian Entrepreneurs.
We need online community that could provide support for Indian start ups to large extent. There is no doubt that there are numerous sites like venturewoods, startups.in that are providing support for them, but we need extensive support for start ups. There are lots of sites that are there in United States, but we don’t have any great site that could be helpful for startups. Startups need advice from great guys viz., Alok, Mahesh Murthy, and others. There are infact numerous intelligent people who’d be having tremendous experience in various sectors. We need online community that could connect and work for both of them. There are really quality people who would work for equity, who could work freelance and could effectively contribute for startups.
We need to create trust between persons engaged in this noble issue of building startups. It’s difficult, but it’s quite possible. There might be site in waiting that could really connect experienced guys with start ups. Who knows, because Indians always springs up with surprise like recent missile announcement by DRDO? I’m not kidding!
- APPLE – Mind Blowing Facts - January 26, 2012
- Its Black Magic Stupid! - March 24, 2009
- Funny Sites - July 25, 2007
Well, as far as my experience with Indian VCs goes, it’s really difficult to sell them a technology idea. Most of them demonstrate ‘penguin effect’ (sorry for being candid)- infact, I am working on an idea and I am talking to few s’pore based VCs.
BTW – not too sure whether you guys know abt pluggdin, i.e. http://www.pluggd.in, its a site focused on Indian startups and interviews the founders. They hv got very candid interviews..you guys might want to check it out.
Well I think term “ADVICE” is a not as simple as may seem to us.What ist actuallu mean may defer with person to person and context to context.When guruprasad says indian entreprenuers hav shortage of advice I assume he is atlking about advice in broad sense from task specific day to day consult and direction (that a board provide) to generic ” who things may evolve”. To adrress such wide range we need people with differet skills (who are vocal enough to make feel their presence).We need successful entreprenuer turn angel,suject expert scientist, accountants and laywers willing to work with a one man start-up,a good numbers of wannebe entreprenuers.Now we have to execept that still we need lot more people in most of area of advice.
Second thing is as Iqbal has said advice come at a cost.Since resources are scare they are at premium also.Amonut of free advice is funtion of size and degree of vitality of ecosystem.Since Indian ecosystem is still very small and limited vitality (we have one or two search compnay where as accoring to a reputed sourse more then 200 seearch start-up are working in search area in silicon valley) we cannot not compare our ecosystem with other countries.
Third most indian entreprenuer (successful and failed both) are not as vocal.They hesitate in saying ” Guys I am doing this.If you are interested lets talk”..While almost every start-up in US try to build s atry around it with its founders talking about their work,about industry and personal stories their Indian couterparts hardly active over blogosphere.So we dont get that f”free advice” we seek about a technology,industry and product we often seek.
Fourth wannebe entreprenuer dont know what exactly they want and how to get that mcuh needed advice.They hesitate and fear loosing their idea.They have own preceptions about how ecosyetm works (which in reality is always evolving)and mental block created by rumours and hyper active media.They fear what if they sound stupid.Majorty of them lack people skill by vitue of which they feel unconfident.
They say “dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant’s shoulder to mount on” and I guess all of us are looking for “Gaint” but unfortunetly at wrong place at wrong time.Lets try to be “THE GAINT”
Satpalparmar@gmail.com
What amit kumar is saying is totally true.After spending two years and working in nite after job i could not build the product becuase we dint got any mentor to support our idea.I met many people all said the idea sounds good than nothing.Last month i was so frustrated that i have a break from it.Thinking to go abroad.
We indian entrepreneurs Not only need Advice BUT more than that Money to support startup with no revenues.People who write blogs and sounds very great they them selves dont do what they write in blogs and news paper when it comes to support a fresh new innovative startup with working experience of 2yrs or less.Every one tries to play safe ,No one wants to take risk and invest on it.People in india believe in milking the cow but no one wants to feed the cow.
I know i m bit harsh but the reality is this.I get very frustrated when experience people talk like this,indians cant build companies like youtube or myspace.Go and see thr how many more teams with similar such ideas r being funded everyday,once among those gets success and we here ask indian guys why cant u come up with such thing.First go and ask how many such stupid idea you are ready to invest in.The ans comes zero.
Instead blaming indian entrepreneurs I would blame Indian VC’s who are
The least Innovative and Risk takers.
Manish
Hi
I don’t think there is a shortage of advice, but all advice comes at a cost, not to the entrepreneur, but to the so called mentor in terms of time. There are also alot of online communities which are springing up, and offline events such as barcamps, meetups, events such as proto, BUT, and yes there is a BUT, I don’t feel the indian entrepreneur community is large enough to support all of these blogs, groups, meets, activities. There are possibly 5-10 blogs which cover startups, one large event, several offline meets, what is needed is a way/platform to take all these disparate groups and put into one large pile. If all the people who run/contribute to their individual sites/mailing lists etc, were to ALL contribute in one place, then we could really start something.
In addition to this, we obviously need to spread the word to the actual entrepreneur.
Iqbal
I would disagree with Amit – there are many angel investments that are now happening in pre-revenue companies- though there is huge scope for improvement. Google came to India last year with its own angel investment plan ($200K – $1.5 mn). I am part of a company that was angel funded thru professional investors on a business plan.
I don’t understand the message the article was trying to convey. Was it that SN is just over-hyped? or that Indians do not produce great start-ups?
I agree with the first point – SN is just way over hyped !! I know VCs who have stopped looking at anything that hints at SN but then there are people who invest in Minglebox 🙂