HeadStart Day 3 – Morning Session
HeadStart Day 3 – Morning Session

HeadStart Day 3 – Morning Session

Here we are; the last day of HeadStart 2008. The morning session started with key note presentation by Dr Peter Hofstee, Chief Scientist, IBM Research at Almaden Research Center, USA on Cell Broadband Engine.

Srini Vudayagiri LightSpeed VenturePartners

  • The largest Venture Capital is Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) with $1.2 Trillion in portfolio
  • Create a value for Stakeholders is the key in Entrepreneurship
With wireless sleep technology, people in my dreams can sent email to people in your dreams 🙂
  • Screening Ideas: 5 Questions
    • What important customer problem can you solve?
    • How are you going to do it?
    • How many customers are there that are willing to buy from you?
    • Why can only you provide the solution?
    • How can you defent against others?
  • Identify stakeholders – Who are they?
    • Do i want to become famous or do I want to be rich?
  • Identify Consumers
    • Consumers for Mobile space today in India are majorly in ABCD (Aaya, Bhai, Carpenter & Driver) consumer segment.
  • Funding Partner
    • Startup costs
    • Marginal costs
  • Capital / Financial Markets
    • M&A options for growth
    • Exists
    • Scarcity value: education/retail
    • Liquidity – local/global
  • How many Digital Signage companies got funded in India in last 5 Yrs? – 6 Companies
  • Employees
    • Talent Pool / quantity
    • Perceived positioning of sector
    • Compensation
  • Regulators
  • Analysis of Business Ideas
    • Truly new, novel and innovative ideas < 3%-4%
    • Rest 96% are Enhancement to existing ideas
  • Few thoughts of Srini
    • Most businesses fail in les than 2 years
    • Less than 1% of the business plans submitted to VCs get funded
    • Failures are PLANNED by lack of planning
    • VC funding does not mean me the business is path breaking/disruptive.

You can write to Srini with any questions/project proposals – srini {AT} lightspeedvp {dot} com

Startup Funding – Ganapathy Subramaniam, myDuniya

  • Entrepreneurship
    • Possessed by a Grand Vision
    • Market driven approaches
      • Products for a upcoming market
      • New ways of addressing an existing market innovative delivery
    • Capability Driven approach
      • Build a compelling busines model
  • Funding sources
    • Seed Investors (Friends, Family, Angel Networks, Early Stage VCs , Corporates, Incubators, Customer, Partners)
    • Venture Capitalists
    • Special funding programs (TDB etc)
  • An important aspect of checking your business plan is going to Seed Investors.
  • VCs Checklist
    • Vision Congruence
    • Large and growing opportunity?
    • Tam fully committed to the cause?
    • Experience relevant and sufficient?
    • Can the business model be validated?
    • Is it scalable and defensible?
    • Are the risks acceptable?
    • How can the risks be mitigated / eliminated?
  • VC Interaction Challenges
    • Small no. of deals get transacted per partner/firm/industry
    • Getting to reach/deserved attention is tough
      • Art of getting introduced
      • Elevator pitch
    • Research/Reference/Focus
    • Selling the idea to the partner/firm
  • VC Engagement Cycle
    • 3-9 Months for fund raising
    • No/interesting in a week
    • Multiple intensive interactions
    • Progress to Term sheet in 4-10 weeks
    • Closing in addition
  • Valuation
    • Rule of thumb/comparables
    • Competition/market factors drives prices
    • Serial entrepreneurs get a healthy premium
    • Alighment of interest and balance of motivation
    • Valuation + Conditions!

With this, the morning session concluded. Its lunch time. In thepost-lunch session, we have Product Management by Deepak Srinivasan and Cost based funding & culture in startup’s by Ashwin Mahesh. So, stay tuned.

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