There was a trend earlier when people after gaining experience in the corporate, making some handsome savings, quits their Job to take on startups; but these days the scene has gone entirely reverse.
Students are now no more interested in joining other organisations, learning how the system works. Even they don’t know how to to market & whom to target & what to sell but starts their own startup. Which is good as per the increasing statistics of startups in the country but on the other hand it’s creating an imbalance in the entire system, & provoking other established players to lower their price with low standards; As they want to compete on price rather than quality.
If you see the cross-border startups, you will find that they research the market thoroughly, understand the need(s)/want(s) then prepare Go-to-Market Strategy and then jump into it with their alpha version ready & fully functional. They love providing & discovering synergies between other startups, to increase their offerings, user exchange programs & Support each other. But if you look into the Indian Startup Ecosystem, you will find some pathetic situations. E.x:- there will be 10+ different startups, having the same idea & same vision, some of them will be needing a technical guy CTO, someone will be needing a perfect CMO, some in a need of CFO, CSO & the list is on; if you ask them about each other, instead of supporting and praising, they will start criticizing each other. They never want to discover synergy and start working together, which proves that this rat race is not going to create Unicorns.
Next Big thing that you will find in this rate race is the eagerness to “Raise Funding” for their startup. Everyone here thinks he/she has a billion dollar idea & it will be the next Facebook, Google or Amazon. They have a very big business plan which is totally illogical. I will explain this by a live example that happened with one of my advisor’s:-
“A startup approached him for some connects with investors for fund-raising, as he(Advisor) had some quality network with the investor community, so he said I would love to.
Founder : Sir this Idea is totally out of the Box & well all 3 founders are working hard to take it to next level
Adviser: Ok! Sounds interesting, so how much are you looking to raise ?
Founder: Sir, not much just 1 or 2 crores in Indian currency.
Adviser : Okay! And what is the stake you want to dilute
Founder : Upto 10%
Adviser : Laughed at them & said Dude, do you know what you are saying, the range of your amount is 100Lakhs, so if I consider 1 Cr. your valuation will be 9 Cr. & if I consider 2 Cr. your valuation will be 18 Cr. Why the hell are you approaching investors if you don’t have any clue how the investment cycles work & wasting their time. Spend some time in studying about it & then come to me”
So I hope now you have understood how this rate race has become a headache for all investment fraternity.
Every college pass-outs think that if (s)he gets funding, (s)he can create the next big thing; Keeping the same in Mind I did a small survey with the startup founder, & the result was completely strange.
The majority of them feels that experienced co-founders are the key to success rather than Funding, so a message to all budding startup & entrepreneurs, this article is not to demotivate you, infact your visions are also phenomenal; But you need to understand that running small communities, sharing motivational stories won’t take your startup to the next level, for that you need to learn everything by experiencing it, probably by working for someone else, understanding the system, discovering synergies & appointing experienced co-founders with complimenting skills. Only then you can avoid failure, have some funds for product Alpha & a network believing you, whom you have already proven your skills.
If you think I am wrong, Post your feedback in a form of comments; I am always ready for debates.
This is a Guest Post by Shibam Sarbswa, Founder, www.a2zee.co
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