Startup Madness

(This article is jointly written by Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hirianniah)

In recent days, while working with the MVP portfolio companies and reflecting back on the days of madhouse, we have identified this phenomenon we are calling ‘startup madness’.

It’s visible and present from the time when you start thinking of your million dollar/world changing idea to the steady state point (personal satisfaction, acquisition, IPO or maybe shutdown). Things that you do, don’t make any sense to outsiders and they are like ‘This guy is crazy’ and even when you look back at that period you think “what was I thinking when I did this?”

Looking back at the time when we got the idea to start madhouse, we did not know anything about business, we were just two 27 year old kids (later three of us, with Ankur joining us). We had tried a variety of things in our lives and had managed to do reasonably well in whatever we put our hands into, may be that’s what gave us the stupid confidence. Very importantly we were quite ignorant about ‘real business’ and hence came up with our own take on every business problem we faced.

This streak of startup madness showed at various places:

• We did not hear NO:  not from vendors, not from people we were trying to hire, not from investors, customers, no one. A NO just meant we had to come back with new ideas and try again.
• We would never get tired of talking about madhouse and we could talk to any one about it. Most times the other guy did not give a damn ,  for him/her it was just a blabber
• We just worked non-stop for three years , not even a day off (except when forced by illness)
• Other than work everything else was just plain unimportant : sleeping, eating, meeting friends, attending social functions, family, watching TV, movies, newspaper – all of this had very little place in our lives. We just filled all our day with work with average working day of 16-18 hrs all thru.
• We worked out of anywhere and everywhere.  Our tools were a Fujitsu laptop and a CDMA phone which could be used like a modem.  Restaurants, inside a car / train / auto rickshaw / bus, out on the road, in the park, bedroom, living room and the loo, locations stopped to matter, where place was work place.
• We did not need a lot of money to live and we were happier than ever (no purchases of over 1000 for 3 years, eating at economical places, shamelessly staying with friends / relatives / acquaintances in cities we visited on work )
• ‘The world impossible was missing” - we just did not believe that there was any problem that we could not solve or anything we could not do. Our minds were one track – focus hard, think hard, work hard and just do whatever it takes.
• We had access to this inhuman energy that allowed us to just keep going – “never get tired” or “never run out of steam”.
• Each time we met a new person, we were constantly thinking of how this person can help our venture, . Everywhere we went, we explored if there was something there that could benefit our startup. Frankly we were classical ‘opportunity hounds” and quite shamelessly so
• We were basically “stuck” in our own world in which we could not fail. While we adapted like crazy, we sort of forced business to work the way we thought it should work, without caring a lot about the outside world.

This madness is the essence of start-ups; it signifies the purity of a startup. It makes the startup tick and makes it successful and enjoyable. The same madness makes you innovate, over perform, challenge your skill set, think out of the box or even out of the world, take 28 hrs out of a 24 hrs a day, it gets you to focus but does not let you  blindly focus!

Its also important to figure out how can you keep re-fueling the desire, the madness, so that it lasts forever, not just for days, weeks or months, start ups that click need to be at it for years. For an individual or team to succeed as a startup, having the startup madness is a must.

If you are an entrepreneur look inside you and make an honest assessment. Do you have the streak?

• If yes, great.
• If no. But you think you can build it – nice, go ahead and do it at the highest priority.
• If you don’t have it and you can’t build it – I am not sure you should continue being an entrepreneur.

On that other hand, if you are not yet an entrepreneur you should also look inside you and make the same honest assessment. Do I have the mad streak?

• If yes, you fool, leave your job right now – the world of ‘startup madness’ is calling
• If no, it would best for you to avoid the path of entrepreneurship, until the ‘madness streak’ gets to you

 

Second annual Open Web Awards.

Checkout the Second annual Open Web Awards and see if you want to nominate your startup.

 

It takes a leader to deliver – Blue Dart

“It takes a leader to deliver”

This is the slogan of Bluedart – which was written on the posters all around me, when I went a Blue Dart Hub to send a courier to Mumbai.

I went in, asked for envelope, wrote the address on envelop, waited 5 minutes for my turn while keeping an eye on a guy who came after me but was trying to push his packet ahead of mine.  The bluedart guy took my packet looked at it and said “We need complete From address” and gave my packet back into my hands and started processing the other guys package.

I was thinking “Why was this not mentioned to me before while I was asking for the envelope ? Why is their no written instruction on the wall saying one needs to have full From address ?”.

Anyways, I had no choice so I wrote the From address on my package and gave it back. The guy started processing it and asked me to pay 230 bucks. Which I thought was too high for a Bangalore – Mumbai courier. I mean Bluedart is (so called) high quality and more expensive courier but, Is it worth 5 times the price of others?. Anyways since the courier was urgent I decided to pay 230 bucks.

I gave the guy 300 bucks, he took the money and asked me if I had change, I told him I dont have change. He looked at me as if I have committed a big crime and looked at me for some time. I guess he was hoping that I will go and arrange some change. When that did not happen, he waited a little more and then went in to arrange change. I was already quite irritated, that these f***s want to charge 230 bucks for a 50 bucks service but won’t keep change.

He returned in few minutes and told me “Sorry sir we dont have change”, expecting me to do something, may be go out and start looking for change or may be cancel my order.

At this point, I got really really pissed I said “Fine, give me phone number of your manager, I will talk to him”. Suddenly his face changed, he quickly completed the documentation, once again went in and with one minute came back with exact change and gave it to me.

Do you think I will go back to bluedart after this? To get ripped off and get shitty service.

 

Reporting Live: Google chrome crash

Just 10 minutes back the famous chrome gave me the same “problems” which it claims to be solving. Here is what happened:

• I was on chrome (on XP) and had a few open Tabs  gmail, google apps and my wordpress blog and google docs
• I was jumping between Tabs and there you go!
• The dreaded browser hang happened, the problem in one TAB causing all TABs to hang.
• I waited for a few minutes to try and see if it recovers, I also tried taking a screen shot to publish it on this post, but hang was so bad, it did not let me do that as well.
• As a next step I opened “task manager”, here I see 4-5 “chrome.exes”, all of them on top when I sorted by memory usage
• Since the whole thing was hanging, I proceeded to kill each one of them one by one.
• But the last one was not going at all, it just kept hanging in there “end process” / “end process tree” , nothing was working at all
• Since I wanted to finish some work, I opened FIREFOX todo the same and it also hanged. Basically the chrome hang caused the whole OS to hang
• So I went and did a RE-START on Windows
• No use here also
• I had to do a  HARD REBOOT of my laptop to recover

Disclaimer: I do realize that its a initial beta release and problems are expected to happen. This post was just to report my experience and see what others are seeing.

 

morpheus featured @ Financial Chronicle

Start-up samaritans: Morpheus helps rookie entrepreneurs survive Valley of Death

 

morpheus covered in Economic Times

Here is the article on morpheus that appeared in the Economic times – Chandigarh edition – Fri, Aug 1, 2008.

Madhouse founders chart new path, to mentor startups

 

Looking for Co-founder @ exciting sports based startup

My friend Kamal wanted me to put up his requirement, if this excites you, please write to him – kamal DOT raghav AT gmail DOT com

Start up Venture – Sports has broken the barrier of being a pure entertainment channel to being an attractive business opportunity. Currently, this space is dominated by traditional players with an traditional value chain. The venture plans to carve out a niche in this space using innovative methods of reaching out to customers.

Role – Co founder apart from taking full ownership of the technology backbone, would be involved in all operational decision making. Must be a highly motivated individual with lots of enthusiasm, should be comfortable with start-up environment and be able to play different roles. Should have simple and elegant design sensibilities. And most importantly be a fun individual to work with and must like sports!

Status – Legal registration is underway. Future – plans can be discussed on a one-to-one basis.

Location : Bangalore.

The person can expect an unstructured but fun environment (of course its a start-up!). Complete freedom to innovate, share and execute his ideas in this space. Also, uncomplicated work life balance. Of course, equity ownership is part of the deal.

 

morpheus – ContentSutra Q&A

Following questions were answered by myself and Nandini for Cerius Shah @ ContentSutra. Reproducing the Q&A here:

CS: Are you going to relegate Morpheus to start-ups or build it into a more generic web consultancy?
SG: Morpheus will be be focused only on early stage startups, our goal is to work with teams who are 0-12 months old or may be even at the idea stage. Teams who can build scalable and fundable businesses

CS: Why the YCombinator model as opposed to an Angel or Seedfund?
SG: Because thats where we believe the gap is most wide. Today there is enough supply of capable entrepreneurs, folks who are taking the plunge – quiting their jobs, putting together a team, building prototypes and dreaming to build a big business. At the same time the supply of money to be invested in startups is also quite enough. Many VC funds, seed stage funds and plenty of angels. These guys are happy to investment in companies who are at the right stage, with the right team and the right model. So we add value to both the parties i.e. the entrepreneur and the startup investors using the morpheus/Ycombinator model. For about 4-6 months we work closely with the founders to build the right product, getting the right team, getting initial customer traction and have something impressive ready which will allow them to raise professional funding. To investors our value add is that we are helping in building high quality fundable startups, we will also be conducting demo events where all morpheus companies will demo the products and the investors can interact with bunch of high quality startups.

CS: What value does Morpheus Venture bring to a start-up?
SG: For about 4-6 months we work closely with the founders to build the right product, getting the right team, getting initial customer traction and have something impressive ready which will allow them to raise professional funding. We make introduction to potential investors, partners, lawyers, accountants, domain experts. These only few main things, the real collaboration will include many more things, needs of each startup are unique and we will adapt to them.

CS: What is the average equity you look at obtaining?
SG: Morpheus will be looking at taking 4-8% equity, there is absolutely no monitory fee that we charge. We are in for the long haul and willing to wait for 4-7 years, which a startup may need to reach the exit point.

CS: What is the average exit period Morpheus is looking at?
SG: I would say average would be 5 years, assuming the M&A market continues to develop.

CS: Can you share some start-ups and their products with whom you have been working off late?
SG: We currently have three portfolio companies, two of which have already raised venture funding ( www.Instablogs.com, www.commonfloor.com) and third one is profitable (www.foodathome.in)

 

Lessons from failures

Kamla bhatt blog has a very good interview with Rajiv,  he shares some candid but real learnings from the world of entrepreneurship.

Rajiv’s current company callgraph has built a very cool and useful product that works with Skype calls and allows you to record, store, search, tag, transcript your calls. Give it a spin..

 

morpheus – pluggd.in Q&A

Following questions were answered by myself and Nandini for Ashish Sinha @ pluggd.in. Reproducing the Q&A here:

a. What kind of startups are you targeting? College grads? Boostrapped?

Morpheus is open to work with all kinds of start-ups. However, the following would be our focus area:

1. Early stage start-up teams who have not received any professional funding so far. (Professional funding comes with good amount of advise, mentorship and contacts)

2. Teams which are still in idea stage and have not started of as yet.

3. We’d prefer start-ups with more than one founder (will help single founders find co-founders) and founders who just refuse to fail

4. A team that can bootstrap or has bootstrapped, as that is an essential ingredient of an entrepreneur and a start-up.

5. An idea/product/solution that is solving a real problem and targets a large market. Team should have an open mind to morph their idea, as market realities are often very different than the assumptions made while designing the product/solution.

b. Avg. Investment size that you are interested in?

Our primary value add to the startup teams is the advise, mentorship, guidance, access to the right network, creating opportunity to meeting relevant people, team strategy, product strategy, launch strategy, fund raising strategy (intros and more), getting the right advisers onboard with the right kind of terms, etc.

The most important thing we do is work with startups on their ideas. We’re entrepreneurs ourselves, and we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to make things people want.

The first 12 months are the most critical period in the life of a start-up, they are also know as the “valley of death”. Most people save money for a year, quit their jobs and take a plunge into entrepreneurship and if things don’t go well in the first they will have no choice but to go back to jobs. It is during this period that they require non-monitory investment in terms of guidance in doing it right and doing it well. Morpheus will provide them with the required support to help them validate their idea and roll the venture out.

However, we are evaluating an option of raising a small fund and making very small seed investments into the companies. But even with that, money will remain a very small portion of what we bring to the table. Our goal is to get the team through the first phase. This usually means: get it to the point where the team has built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.

c. As a mentor to several startups, what are the industries you are most bullish about?

Morpheus is bullish about team which can solve real problems and which refuses to fail, come what may. We would like to work with start-ups on all verticals and not just limit ourselves to a technology or a web-based initiative.

d. suggestions/tips to young entrepreneurs?

• Look for problems around you, and think about solutions that are much better than the existing ones
Remember that the power lies with you, the entrepreneur.
• Think big, dream large.
Listen to your customer, as he’s the one that matters and make every penny work for your customer. Rest will follow!
• (Our favorite advice): Be fair to every one, people who you work with, people who you meet at conferences, on the blogs and otherwise. Startups need a lot of help (and all kind of help) from people around to build their dream product/service and if you are fair to people, they will come forward and help you.