Just a quick post to see if anyone attended, and what they thought. I’ve been looking through the ones that made it, and reviewed the Internet ones over on my blog, and web apps like routeguru, were simply awesome.
Having said that, I was a bit disappointed by the small volume, and also the quality, but since I have a biased view, am interested to know what others think, and in addition would like to get in touch with the ones who didn’t get to showcase, I see no reason why blogspace cannot be given to them also.
From a VC point of view, any VC’s who went …thoughts please
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I was there, and it was great to see the 22 startups. The event was well managed, and realy gave a chance for the 22 startups to mingle with investors, as well as learn from each other’s business models, etc.
I was there. The first day was presentations by VCs and the like which I found were extremely interesting. Lots of gyan for startups, like what not to like on a term sheet, the average turnaround time for funding, the general scene in India etc.
Funds of gargantuan sizes are quite active in India and one speaker (sorry, I forget who) mentioned the problem of size in a simple way (my interpretation):
“I have four people, who can be on a maximum of six boards at a time. That’s twenty four companies. Can’t get much bigger than that.”
To me that sounds like a 100 million dollar fund (is that the minimum today?) is likely to want to fund $4 million per company; that’s about 16 crores. If a VC takes 33% of your company, your post money valuation is 48 crores. For a 5x return the company needs to be worth 250 crores. I haven’t seen a single acquisition of that size (in tech) recently, though this is achievable going IPO. This either means lots of IPOs going forward, or that someone’s going to fork out the bigger moolah involved – or both.
One info I got was that Tejas will list publicly by the end of hte year. More power to them.
Being my first real interaction with other entrepreneurs/VCs on my new startup (http://www.moneyoga.com – not yet there but coming soon types) I found a lot of interesting views and opinions. I expected more of a “you’ll never succeed doing this” kind of approach but was pleasantly surprised by how much all the VCs helped with their questions and thoughts. (My personal thanks to you if you’re reading this)
The second day was presentations – very cool stuff. I feel for those whose equipment broke down the day before the demo – so they had to do a powerpoint presentation instead. I guess one has to plan for EVERYTHING and have hajaar redundancy in terms of multiple backup setups and all that.
We need more such conferences – there’s barcamp this weekend at IIMB, and I’m looking forward to that as well. What we really want, I guess, is that if entrepreneurs need inputs on scaling big, making deals, hiring employees etc. help is known and close-at-hand. The ecosystem needs to develop, and conferences like proto.in are speeding it up.
I went, and liked the event, though I was there only on day one. I just felt a lot of entrepreneurial energy, and the level of participation was a pleasant surprise. Quality can definitely improve, and it was encouraging to see some funded startups also entering the fray.
Hey, what about the Second Life event? Did it happen concurrently?
I foolishly and carelessly missed it, even considering that fact that i could have clubbed the trip with some customer visits.
bad, no beer for me 🙁
BTW, your blog entry is quite interesting. And looks like, i have a bad idea about how businesses work over web2.0