The 25th playbook roundtable held last week (01 March 2014) brought together about 14 startup practitioners to discuss and gain insights on some of the challenging aspects of Sales in product companies. This roundtable was hosted at Accel Partners office in Bangalore, and was led by Aneesh Reddy, from Capillary Technologies. In a span of about 5 hours, a diverse set of topics were discussed...
March 10, 2014
Key Takeaways from the 25th #PlaybookRT at Bangalore – Sales for Startups
10March
March 7, 2014
OpenSource: The Most Underused Strategy by Indian Software Product Companies
07March
Open Source has been quietly making its mark. Kickstarter just completed a billion dollars in crowdfunding. A lot of the work funded via Kickstarter is licensed for public use. Because the initial capital is pitched in by lots of people, the creators have a lot of incentive to give it back to the people. The Do-It-Yourself community in both software and hardware is also on the rise. This is an...
March 6, 2014
Why Startups are opting for Ruby to build their MVPs
06March
“By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers”~ From the pages of “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries. It is essentially true that by the time you finish building your product completely, your customers are already looking for something new! Demands of your customers change in a snap. So, in order to match this...
March 5, 2014
Customer Acquisition Models for a SaaS businesses
05March
Software-as-a-Service is paradigm shift for the software industry. The most profound impact of SaaS is on the software businesses revenue and cost models and therefore the cascading impact it has on the way the business is organised. Customer Acquisition for a SaaS business therefore requires a complete re-think. Since you are not going to get your money up-front, how are you going to fund the...
March 4, 2014
iSPIRT – CeBIT partnership to drive Software Adoption in India
04March
iSPIRT signed an MOU with CeBIT India organized by Hannover Milano Fairs India Pvt Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of the Global JV Company HMG (Hannover Milano Global). With iSPIRT’s partnership with CeBIT India, iSPIRT opens more opportunity to grow the software development industry in the country and encourage the right policy environment towards product entrepreneurship. The potential that...
March 4, 2014
What is your company’s IP Score?
In the scramble to get to market, protecting the IP of your invention sometimes takes a backseat. This is a mistake and one that can have potentially damaging long-term effects. In this article we examine how developing a proactive IP Strategy can mitigate IP risk for a startup. Startup Priorities Most startups begin with a good idea and an identified solution that solves a key need in the...
March 3, 2014
Can we build IP-based Product Businesses from India?
03March
My interest in knowledge management has always been from the perspective of knowledge creation. So, I readily agreed to participate in the CII Knowledge Management Summit this year in a session that focused on this dimension. Ganesh Natarajan, Sharad Sharma and I were together on a panel to explore the potential of, and challenges in, the creation of intellectual property (IP)-based businesses...
February 28, 2014
The Three Design Elements for Designing Platforms
28February
What does the traditional world of manufacturing have in common with the way networked platforms work? How can a basic understanding of factory design help us change the way we think about designing internet platforms, marketplaces and social networks? I’ve written previously about the distinction between pipes and platforms. If you haven’t already read it, you must definitely check it out. It...
February 27, 2014
Building that 1-Click magic in your Product
27February
Many startups struggle when it comes to building features for their product. Their product road-maps are a list of features they plan to include over next 6-9 months; once they are built out – its a feature mess ~ too many things to do that leaves the user confused. This does not stop here., entrepreneurs always have this gut feeling – the next feature will be ‘the one’ that will make it up for...
February 26, 2014
We do Cross-Border Investments! Domestic E-Commerce and E-Retail too! Nexus Venture Partners #ThinkInvestor
26February
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...
