The world is under a siege by the mother nature with the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Humanity as a whole has been brought to a standstill, where voluntary quarantine is essential for this enormous danger to pass. However, this is a golden chance, a once-in-a-lifetime moment for the world to reset itself, its practices, leave behind […]
How to and Not to build an AI startup
“AI” as a buzzword has been around in the startup world for a little over 10 years by now. It started with the early days of OCR system reading address in postal mail and parcel distribution, Email spam prediction on mass scale, multi-language translation systems to name a few. Besides these, all other efforts were […]
What’s your Customer Culture?
Last week, I was booking a hotel through a large global booking platform – there was an error on their site due to which an incorrect booking happened. What happened next was surprising – customer service denied that there could have been an error on the site, and refused to help. They claimed that they […]
Lead Nurturing Strategies for Start-ups
This is the most critical and heart-breaking part of acquiring customers. It can sap even the most persistent. But there is no alternative if you want to convert your qualified lead to an invoice. In the first place, consider yourself lucky you have a set of qualified leads. Most start-ups do not enjoy that luxury. […]
Lead Generation Strategies for Start-ups
Being a young enterprise, you have a product and you have your first set of paying customers. Now the challenge is to take your product to market, generate volumes and gain market share. What are the strategies and plans that you need to adopt to generate a list of prospective customers whom you could pitch […]
What is the role of a Product Manager?
When hiring, I have quite often seen people confusing the Product Manager’s role with that of a Product Development Manager. These are two distinctly different roles and it is important to clearly understand these roles to avoid confusion and heartburn. The product manager is the owner of the product and plays a pivotal role in […]
Entrepreneurship lessons from the Aam Aadmi Party
How could I resist Snigdha’s hint to opine on startup lessons from AAP’s historic Delhi performance! So here it goes on startupcentral. Key lessons: – Great businesses are created by playing into market shifts – Startups need sharp focus and positioning – Run a well-designed proof of concept – The founder is the best salesperson […]
The 5 P’s of great presentations
A quick cheat sheet for you to start making great presentations now. Plan: For both the audience size as well as their expectations. Pitching your idea to a set of 5 investors is completely different from getting 500 people to vote for your start-up in a large competition. Do your homework to make sure that […]
When should a start-up go to an investor?
The unfortunate fact is that though being in the business of risk investments, most VC’s and Angel investors in India are highly risk-averse. This is why start-ups in India struggle to get off the ground. Past experience has made investors extremely careful with their investment decisions and despite such extreme caution still end up with […]
Should start-ups pay for Mentoring or Advisory services?
This has been a much debated point in various forums and is a question that plagues start-ups all over the world. Having taken part in numerous such discussions and understood different points of view, I felt that this would be a topic that would interest first-time entrepreneurs in India. So, should a start-up pay for […]
Pricing Strategy for Start-ups – Value Based Pricing
Apart from dealing with the unknown factor and building credibility, pricing is one other hurdle that most start-ups find hard to overcome. How much to charge? Am I overcharging or am I leaving money on the table? Questions that plague every entrepreneur. When it comes to pricing, a simple cost-plus strategy may not work because […]
Finding ‘Product-to-Market Fit’ starts at ideation
In the course of interacting with so many start-ups I have found one common factor. Problem with articulating the problem statement. If you have understood the problem completely then defining it in two sentences should not be a problem at all. But therein lies the problem! A problem is a problem only if it is […]