When I started out as an entrepreneur the journey was fueled by big dreams that were perhaps a bit too daring. It wasn’t smooth sailing and early days were tough. Life in a startup is dotted with challenges that can be overcome only by sacrifice. Bootstrapping required a lot of restraint – both professionally and personally. Leaving a good-paying job at Zoho and trying to build a company...
February 9, 2017
How limited access to paid tools as a startup made me realize the need for a community
09February
February 8, 2017
I am the Product Manager
08February
Of the various hats I have worn all these years – Founder, Sales guy, Deployment Specialist, Level 1 and Level 2 Support, DevOps, Coder, Cheque depositor – I have come to realize I was a Product Manager all along – right from the get go. Putting a label on what you do is extremely important. It helps you define the job you do, appreciate it, read more on it and helps you improve...
February 7, 2017
A Framework For Building SaaS Products That Don’t Churn
07February
When you say “reduce SaaS churn”, most people will immediately imagine tactics like drip email campaigns, great onboarding, customer marketing, gamification and automated alerts when users show signs of leaving. But this post is not about tactics. This post recognizes that users are smarter than any of the cute tricks we can come up with, and it attempts to get to the core of why there are some...
February 6, 2017
Announcing #BeyondFounders – Connecting Entrepreneurs in need with Doers indeed.
06February
As an eco-system builder, I’m always challenged with finding more Founders to contribute or help other early stage Founders. Normally, successful people have very little time to contribute and many a times, there is no formal platform which allows them to engage on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, our eco-system has many fake mentors and founders who know it all 🙁 I have been fortunate to have...
February 6, 2017
Volunteer Hero: Vivek Raghavan
iSPIRT volunteers build public goods inspired by open-source Linux and Wikipedia. Our volunteers are selfless, committed and conflict-free. They are animated by a burning cause. One such cause is about creating technology platforms that will help make India a Product Nation. Building a successful country-scale technology platform is hard. And doing this as an open and public platform is even...
February 4, 2017
How we built iSPIRT from scratch, with nothing except a lot of spirit. #iSPIRTturns4
04February
I missed the 4th anniversary celebrations of iSPIRT in Bangalore today as my father has been unwell for the last couple of weeks and I have been avoiding travel. I thought it will be good to refresh my memory by reading up some of the old emails and also share the journey of the 9 months of preparation before we officially launched iSPIRT. In the early months we called ourselves as...
February 4, 2017
2017 iSPIRT Annual Letter
Problem solvers, responsible builders of companies, communities and ecosystems are the foundation for progress and growth of any nation. What drives all of them is a sense of challenge, ownership of problems, allegiance to autonomy, demonstration of personal accountability and the thrill of finding a solution. This energy is fueling a growing product movement in India. iSPIRT is proud to be part...
February 3, 2017
A budget for “Digital Economy” sake
03February
Looking deeper in to the budget 2017. [An immediate official iSPIRT response to the budget was issued as a Press release on 1st FEB 2017. It is placed in media section. You can access it here.] Budget can’t be construed as main stream policy making exercise. Yet, the policy analysts and experts, track it with utmost seriousness, to understand Government’s thought process in economic policy...
February 1, 2017
RBI allows convertible notes for Startups from foreign sources
01February
As part of policy hacks, we covered the issue of Convertible notes being recognized by Ministry of Company affairs (MCA) in our earlier blog here. For benefit of users to start, the convertible note has been explained below. What is a convertible note? Convertible notes are debt instruments that converts in to equity, at a later date. The lender initially gives a loan with an understanding that...
February 1, 2017
Are AI and Automation dirty words for some?
Man being replaced by machines has been a topic very well documented in our academic and social history. While, designing machines that can replicate human intelligence is ‘the dream’ for many, the idea has seen its fair share of resistance from anxious workers afraid to lose their livelihood. It would be a mistake to think that the phenomenon is only very recent. The Luddite movement, which...
