AuthorNari Kannan

Cheap Kills, Value Wins!

C

Competing on price is never a great strategy! Cheap Kills, Value Wins! As long you as you have a clearly differentiated offering, you should calculate the value your solution provides your users, and base your pricing on that! And stick to it! Competing on price creates a spiral of death for all competitors, no matter what the industry, no matter what the offerings are! Some eons ago, in one of...

Processes in Start-ups! Can't live with them! Can't live without them! Seven ways to address this!

P

Processes in start-ups are like the proverbial Men or Women – “You can’t Live with them! You can’t live without them!”. Striking the right balance between having processes and not having them is an Art, not a Science. Getting them right in a start-up means all the difference between a surviving and thriving one, and one that chokes on itself either through chaos or...

6 Steps to prevent your Product from becoming multiple Applications! All in Cartoons!

6

Somewhere along my long software engineering career, I sat one more time rolling my eyes and clucking mentally that one more product is about to become a series of applications! We are about to create multiple code line monsters that will be demanding and expensive to maintain! Yet, this is what happens in reality in most “Product Companies” that start out with the greatest of...

All I know about Product Startup Recruitment…I learned from the movie Moneyball!

A

Today, I was watching Moneyball, the movie for the third or fourth time! Every one of those scenes and dialogues was a lesson in recruitment that every product startup could use! I have used them and they have worked for me in fantastic ways! What better way to learn lessons in startup recruitment than watch a highly enjoyable movie with fantastic actors like Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill! Having...

If you want to do something, don’t over-analyze it! We do mostly Series A Funding! Helion Ventures #ThinkInvestor

I

ThinkInvestor is iSPIRT and ProductNation’s new initiative to serve as a catalyst between Venture Capital firms, Angels, Angel Networks and Entrepreneurs. It is to go beyond brochure ware and dig deeper into the whole life cycle of a typical investment; from introductions, funding, styles of on-going engagement, to exits. And in the process, capture their views on global and local trends...

The redBus Founders on Motorbikes Story! Interested in India Domestic Consumption Start Ups! Seedfund #ThinkInvestor

T

ThinkInvestor is iSPIRT and ProductNation’s new initiative to serve as a catalyst between Venture Capital firms, Angels, Angel Networks and Entrepreneurs. It is to go beyond brochure ware and dig deeper into the whole life cycle of a typical investment; from introductions, funding, styles of on-going engagement, to exits. And in the process, capture their views on global and local trends...

Ideas are NOT dime a dozen! At least good ones! Building an Innovation Culture! #ThinkBig

I

Ideas are dime a dozen! It’s all in the execution! So goes the popular wisdom. Indian start-ups and accelerators keep talking about identifying problems and solving them. True. There are great companies like redBus.in that were built using this approach. However, there are other great companies like Twitter that were not born out of any urgent problems that people had. They developed a...

We invested in Ezetap, the Square for Emerging Markets! Mobile, Internet, Payments interest us! AngelPrime #ThinkInvestor

W

ThinkInvestor is iSPIRT and ProductNation’s new initiative to serve as a catalyst between Venture Capital firms, Angels, Angel Networks and Entrepreneurs. It is to go beyond brochure ware and dig deeper into the whole life cycle of a typical investment; from introductions, funding, styles of on-going engagement, to exits. And in the process, capture their views on global and local trends...

8 Lessons for Start-ups from Genghis Khan!

8

I could not put down Conn Iggulden’s five volume, historical fiction series on Genghis Khan and his successors all the way up to Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson. Genghis Khan was of course, brutal in his conquests and annihilated those that opposed him. It was the 13th century and building empires was the name of the game at that time.            ...

We do Cross-Border Investments! Domestic E-Commerce and E-Retail too! Nexus Venture Partners #ThinkInvestor

W

ThinkInvestor is iSPIRT and ProductNation’s new initiative to serve as a catalyst between Venture Capital firms, Angels, Angel Networks and Entrepreneurs. It is to go beyond brochure ware and dig deeper into the whole life cycle of a typical investment; from introductions, funding, styles of on-going engagement, to exits. And in the process, capture their views on global and local trends...