Focus on things that won’t change

I am not sure whether 10 years from now we would be using Facebook wall to post things, but I’m sure that we would be using a calendar to schedule our days, weeks and months. The form of the calendar might change, but we are going to need it, now and always. For example, in Web and mobile, ‘speed’ is really important. Apps need to work fast, blazingly fast and we know, that 10 years from now, your customer is not going to wake up and say ‘I wish my apps worked slower’. They are going to say this today and 10 years from now the apps should be simple, fast, reliable and useful. Focus on things that won’t change and put your energies into that. The coolness quotient that comes with innovation wears off after some time.

Customers don’t ask for much

When we were at the drawing board for http://gridle.in, the core question we addressed was ‘how do we make a cool product?’ Our pitches talked about the new technology we had used and how the concept was innovative. Our potential customers didn’t understand that. Over a period of time, deducing from the questions they had asked, we realized that their needs were very simple. They have a really simple problem, they see a solution in us and it doesn’t matter what technology we use or how innovatively we do it. If they find it useful, they will pay for it.

Existing thought-processes

This approach is slowly becoming common sense, but applying this in practice is quite a rocket science in some cases. That’s where the Design Thinking as a framework, with defined models like IDEO’s 3I (Identify, Inspire, Implement) and British Design Council’s Double Diamond model work. Moreover, tools like Photo Safari (observe and document), Persona and Empathy Map, Mindmapping (keyword tree ),  Brainwriting ( silent brainstorming, replacing talk with post-its), Sketching, Storyboarding, Prototyping, Storytelling, User Testing definitely would come handy in the journey of creating “usefulness”. Useful things may not be sexy, but they will surely pay off.

If you disagreed with this article, we ought to talk on https://facebook.com/yashparallel .

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Jump without a rope!

In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman learns that you can go into full throttle only when there is no back up. Entrepreneurship teaches you to put all your eggs, fruits, hair-dryer, mobile-phone and everything else in one basket. If you have a backup, it’s you who have failed and not your startup. In any case, unless you took unreasonable risks while pursuing your startup, dealing with its failure will be an unpleasant and a ridiculously boring affair. It’s more like a step along the journey.

It’s about the journey and not the destination

As a startup, people will ask you “Where do you see yourself after 5 years from now?” while you are still figuring out which client will be paying for your next lunch. In a startup, you learn. You learn to react to insulting situations, uncomforting questions and demeaning feedbacks. In a startup, you build, modify, test, rinse and repeat. It’s an incremental and an agile perspective towards life. You will never want it to end. It’s certainly addictive.

The outcome is not binary

Chances are that you might not become a billionaire but also, chances are that you might not end up on the street begging. There are millions of shades of grey between black and white, there are infinite rational numbers between 0 and 1 and there are millions of outcomes possible when you have a startup. It’s scary, yes! But it’s even more exciting. That fear of uncertainty, that feeling of not knowing the outcome, that thought-process when you are not in control of everything; there are very few things which can trigger such emotions. They are so rare, the English dictionary has no words for it!

Businesses die, entrepreneurs don’t

A misleading element in the perception of success rate is that you only have one shot at it, so you better make it. Startups never sink or swim. They give you a swing of directions. You give up your corporate job, you put in all the savings, your company fails and you can’t get back to your original career. There, you have another direction all together. And mind well, if a startup fails, a negligible amount of people can go back to their jobs. You are addicted; ruined. You will flock with the most like-minded, risk taking, lean, suave and convincing SOBs around. And you will start another one! Entrepreneurship is a career. So long as you don’t hit yourself in the face with the bat, you can keep taking swing after swing after swing. If you’ve been reading this article till here, let’s connect on Facebook!

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Thumb rule 1: Keep it simple

Beauty, more often than not, is simple (yes, an Iron Man suit is an exception). Beautiful things are easy to grasp, read, understand or experience. If your deck has a bright red background and dark blue text, it is simply repelling. No, it’s torture! Make a 10 point presentation; allow only one person to present and keep the text to a minimum so that the attention is on you. Now, you have made a good first impression.

Tell-tell sign: If a jury member checks his phone while you are presenting, you are out. They have low attention span and are looking for something different. Give them a shock and less time to absorb.

Thumb rule 2: Team, team and TEAM

The panel does not judge just the idea. They need to estimate the capability of the team to implement it. They won’t magically make out that your Clark Kent is indeed Superman. Tell them. Don’t boast though, just make your credibility obvious and leave it at that.

Crack this: If you are a team of 2 undergrads showing that you are building the next big thing, they already think you are daydreaming. Crack this by putting in names of mentors with more experience in the respective industry than your lifespan. This might bring the situation to hospitably equitable levels.

Team Gridle at Microsoft Bizspark

Thumb rule 3: Numbers

Never go into too much detail of cash inflow, projections or target-market. They don’t want to know how much you would spend on buying stationary or what is your NPV. The focus should be the novelty of your idea and your capability to implement it. Slides with numbers should be backed by a logical deduction which should be put forward only if asked. And they will ask you.

Stay clear of this: “Market size is $ 1 billion fashion industry in India, if we capture 1% of the market, we are millionaires”

Thumb rule 4: Don’t tell everything

You should portray your weaknesses. If you think you don’t have them, you are yet to identify them. Once you identify, project it. Tell them. They often find it hard to believe a rosy picture. Show them some practical issues.

Thought process: Your idea addresses a huge problem. You can solve it. You have implemented for a segment and have user metrics. Your finances look perfect. This is just not possible. They, as jury want to pick-out a flaw. Give them that window. This is an opportunity to floor them.

That is it for now. There are many more rules and variants. It would be great if you could post some under the comments section.

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