Funding, Learning, Tips

Lessons from tennis – The one rookie mistake every entrepreneur looking for funding makes

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Admiring the shot instead of preparing for the return

Early this year I got a new tennis coach, since the one that was helping us left for Hyderabad. It was a big change for the entire family as we all got new coaches and the adjustments were tough. Most new coaches try to understand your game for a few weeks before they point out changes you need to make, but the new coach focused on only one aspect of my game.

Although the rest of my game is pretty average, I have a mean forehand cross court. I knew that it was good. So I’d never give up the chance to show how good it was. Play to my strengths has always been my motto. That still does not result in winning points, though. It just resulted in many people admiring my shot.

After about 15 minutes of playing with me, my coach stopped, asked me to come mid-court and said

The biggest reason you are losing more points, is because you are busy admiring your forehand cross court shot, instead of preparing for the return.

It took me a while to understand that. Having been told always I was good at that particular shot, I was expecting him to help me improve it. Instead, while he said it was good, he pointed out that I was too enamored by it to prepare for the return from opponent. That’s where I lost my points.

I see this also in many entrepreneurs who ask me to review their pitch deck before they seek funding from VC’s. Their pitch deck is awesome, super tight, glitzy and slick.

Their operating plan is an afterthought.

It’s almost as if they don’t expect the investor to take things forward, so they are unprepared.

Similar to my forehand cross court shot.

I expect most shots to be winners, so I am not prepared for the return, instead I am admiring the shot I just made. Trouble is over 50% of the shots were being returned.

Same with investors

In golf there’s an old saying.

Drive for show and putt for dough. (quote)

I am going to modify that for funding.

Pitch for show and plan for dough.

If you want to get funded, focus on getting your sales, marketing, hiring and financial plan in order, because that’s what investors value. Its showing them how you are going to use the money to create value for the company and a return on their investment.

Of course, without a good pitch deck you won’t get to the next step, but since most entrepreneurs do a fairly good job of focusing on the pitch deck, I’d recommend you spend enough time on the operating plan as well.

Entrepreneurship, Tips

Strong Entrepreneurial traits – How to develop a thick skin

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Over the weekend I was at the IPMA conference hosted by Ravi Padaki and his team. I was in at about 11 am and missed a good session by Ram from eBay. I was at the session with Alok Goel of RedBus. Long an admirer of Phani, I am even more impressed with his ability to recruit star players such as Alok. His talk was funny, insightful and full of great examples.

After the talk, I was part of a panel with Sanjay Jain of Kosha labs and Dhimant Parekh of Hoopos. Both are strong product management experts and I was excited to participate in the event just to hang out with them.

The session was billed as a product clinic, which is similar to the ThinkNext events we run at the accelerator and what we have done at Delhi, Bangalore and other cities. In this session 4 entrepreneurs were to bring their product issues or go to market issues and were given 5 minutes to present their company and problem and the jury got 10 minutes to help troubleshoot. The cynic in you might say this is “gyan” session and what some people term as “too simple”. I disagree completely with that thesis that you cannot provide some guidance, largely because most issues with companies fall into the basic 3-5 buckets of problems which are easy to diagnose but hard to provide solutions to.

One of the presenters was the founder of a company that started in July and had built 4 products. One of the products was a dentist appointment system for patients. When he presented he mentioned the market was fairly commodity and that his product was one among 5 others with similar capability.

It was fairly obvious that they were trying a lot of things to see what sticks, but it baffled me that if he knew that the market was commodity and he still chose to build a product with no immediate differences than what was already available. It seemed to me that he was really building a services company with an interest in products as opposed to having a product focus upfront.

I did admire the founders ability to build a team of 13+ people in <6 months, get 3+ paying customers but did not get a chance necessarily to point that out, given the short amount of time we had.

So I chose to point out the need for focus and mentioned that he ought to try and get one great product as opposed to 4 commodity ones.

He was genuinely upset.

I could totally relate to his reaction, given how tough it is to accept criticism of any sort towards your baby.

One of the things I do admire in a lot of successful entrepreneurs is their ability to have a thick skin – the ability to take criticism well, take a lot of body shots and still keep going.

Then I read an interview with Ratan Tata over the weekend.

“In my interactions with business leaders in India, as against elsewhere, there is this feeling that they are looking for cracks in your armor in order to pull you down; this happens not just to me but to everybody,”.

I am torn. I really admire Ratan Tata and I think he’s a role model for many, but I cant help but feel that the emotions are misplaced.

I try to help entrepreneurs do it with the intent of making them stronger and better. Not with the intention of “pulling them down”, but I can totally understand if it comes off as “beating them up”.

I never intend to really deflate another entrepreneur’s zeal, but a reality check is in order.

I think the best thing I could do is to “say it better”.

With empathy and emotion as opposed to with a detached sense of being.

So I am committing to do that.

If you are an entrepreneur and in any of the clinics I do make it blunt and you get a a sense that I am “beating you up”, feel free to call me out.

It will help me be a better person.

Regardless of people like me, please do develop a thick skin. It is the trait of strong entrepreneurs.

Funding, India

What’s getting funded by Indian seed investors? Winter 2012 edition

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I am going to write some quick posts each quarter (let me know in the comments if it needs to be more frequent) on the patterns I am noticing on companies / ideas getting funded in the seed stage. These are particular to India, and are based on a) interactions with entrepreneurs b) discussions with investors (angels, angel networks and seed stage investors) and c) database of investments from all types of companies.

How can you use it? My first reaction is ignore it.

Businesses are built not with financing alone, but with passionate entrepreneurs and eager customers.

Then why am I writing it you ask?

This might help you position your company differently with investors if you are seeking funding. The same company focused on a B2B market vs. B2C market comes out looking dramatically different even though the core “idea” might be the same. If you are a company that’s in the “not getting funded right now” list, take heart, sometimes it may be good to swim against the tide.

So here’s what getting funded or moved along in the funding stages with investors.

1. SaaS companies focused on marketing & targeting the US market. The mega trend is Marketing automation is going to be a large market.

2. Payments & payment enablers that help reduce costs for eCommerce companies in India. The mega trend is reducing costs for over 60+ eCommerce companies that have been funded over the last 3 years.

3. Software companies that build apps to help consumers take control of their health. The mega trend is the slow ageing population the world over and especially the unhealthy lifestyles creeping into India as well.

So whats taking longer to get funding or getting passed quickly?

1. eCommerce companies for physical delivery of products or niche eCommerce companies. Most (or all) are running into strong headwinds in trying to raise their Series B.

2. Consumer Internet companies focused on the India market with limited downloads or traction.

3. All kinds of education software companies – there’s a general pause I hear from investors since they are trying to figure out where in the value chain of education will there be money made.

P.S. I would love to name companies as examples for each, but I get so much hate mail from company founders I have funded myself on why they dont want the “unwanted” attention to their companies or their fund raising efforts.

Community, eCommerce, Entrepreneurship, Research

Microsoft Accelerator Research on Starts and Closures in Indian tech startups

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We are planning to release research findings every month week as part of our startup support program at the Microsoft Accelerator in India. There are about 50 different topics that we are curious about and are consistently doing research to find out ways to help our accelerator companies perform market research, target early adopters and focus on getting more customer traction.

This series is part of our accelerator database on engagement with startups, investors, mentors & entrepreneurship. Last week we did a report on Smartphone usage in India.

This week our focus is on the rate of companies starting and closing in the technology product space. Over the last few years Microsoft has been tracking new companies as part of its Bizspark program. Besides this we have access to several databases from multiple sources which has allowed us to consolidate all these into a single system to track startup activity. While we currently track over 73 different elements including founders, starts, closures, funding, etc. our focus is on trying to find patterns that can give us more clues to remove the roadblocks that reduce entrepreneurial failure early in the system.

We track over 6200+ entities – which includes services companies with a “product” they are building and also many viable side-projects, where the founder is generating some traction or revenue and 3900+ companies that are solely focused on building products (includes SaaS, eCommerce, traditional software, consumer Internet, etc.) in India.

On average there are about 450+ starts annually over the last 3 years, which has grown dramatically thanks to eCommerce.

While Bangalore has the most number of technology product startups overall, at neary 40%, Delhi/NCR came a close second in 2011, only to return to normalcy in 2012.

In terms of closure, 26% of companies still close within a year of them starting (either the founders giving up and moving on, or the company going dormant).

The biggest issue for closure (given that nearly 80%+ of all companies are bootstrapped) is collecting money from customers who have committed to paying for their usage of the product.

While not being able to raise funds is really #1, that seems to be a generic reason enough and a motherhood-and-apple-pie situation.

Unlike the valley (anecdotal information alone) most failed entrepreneurs dont go on to start another company or join a startup, but instead go to work at a much larger company (over 60%). Most reasons given were because of loans to payoff or pressure from parents (surprisingly not from any others).

Our recommendations are for new entrepreneurs to have a “cushion” of nearly 18 months in funds in their personal capacity before they delve into a new venture as opposed to 6 months.

We also recommend asking new customers for an advance in payment as part of the Proof of Concept instead of payment after the fact to aid in managing cash-flow more effectively.

Angel investing, Entrepreneurship, Funding, Tips

Why it is a LOT easier to raise seed money for your startup in India than silicon valley right now

If you are an Indian entrepreneur who is looking to raise seed funding for your startup do it now. There’s been no better time to raise money for technology product startups than this year and possibly part of next year.

I understand the issues entrepreneurs face with Indian investors in the seed & early stage. They take too much time to make a decision, they ask for too much of your company and wont fund anything pre-revenue.

There are 3 major trends that are making it easier to raise capital now than any other time.

1. The number of accelerators has grown tremendously over the last year. There are 30+ privately funded (6+ in Bangalore alone), for profit entities, who are all keen to add bigger batch sizes to their portfolio.

2. Many Venture capitalists, stung by criticism that they are not taking enough risk and are not early adopters are eager to engage with startups earlier in their evolution, and are tweaking their investment thesis to add a few more pre-revenue and pre-product stage companies to their mix.

3. Angel networks, seeing over 15+ VC’s raising over $100+ million funds to focus on India, are signing up new angel investors in droves, and expanding their footprint. 2 years ago only 3 large angel networks existed in India. Today there are 15, and each of them has over 25 angel investors and some have over 150.

Seed stage of the Indian startup ecosystem has never had so many things working for it in confluence.

The demand side of the equation is fairly consistent. Our database indicates that after the eCommerce boom of 2010 and 2011, this year has seen a modest fall in new product startups being formed, from over 700 to little over 600, which means fewer companies chasing more investment options.

Now, lets look at the valley.

1. There has been a boom in new product startups, and the competition is fierce. The number of new startups has increased from over 1700 per year in the valley alone to over 3000. As I mentioned in an earlier post, VC’s are seeing nearly 150+ companies in the SaaS market, each of whom are doing more than $1 Million in revenue. There are 2 times as many companies fighting in the valley for the same quantum of funds.

2. Venture investors, seeing the boom in the seed stage and seeing also far fewer exits are adopting a wait and see approach to series A.

3. The VC freeze on series A in the valley has led to many sapling round investments from seed and micro VC’s and super angels, who are increasingly picking and choosing the companies they put seed money in for an extension round or “sapling round”.

If you are an entrepreneur, raise your seed round NOW. Things will get more “sane” by June next year and there will be many who start to take a more cautious approach to seed stage investments.

The equation on series B in India, is not as rosy though.

Funding for eCommerce companies, many of whom raised series A at HUGE valuations last year has pretty much dried up. Most companies are doing inside series B rounds (from their existing investors) and 3 of the  CEO’s I spoke with claimed down-rounds (where valuation of this round is lower than the previous round).

Other

If you are not committed to your startup, dont expect anyone else to be

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I think this post might be one that generates a lot of discussion and debate, so I want to clarify – that is my intent.

I had an awesome 4 hour session yesterday at the offices of Saif partners in Delhi (Gurgaon actually) yesterday as part of the Microsoft ThinkNext event series. Mukul from Saif has been keen to get more events in the NCR region and he was happy to host us for a Marketing diagnostic clinic in Delhi with 30+ entrepreneurs. The ever charming Avinash Raghava from Product Nation used all  the powers of persuasion to pull together few more entrepreneurs and we had an awesome quorum of people to help understand how to get Go to market right for startups.

We had 6 pitches from companies – yonyx, croak.it, 91mobiles, reviews42, touchtalent and zumbl. The format was simple – you pitch your company and give us the GTM problem you have, and the team (everyone participated) helped diagnose & troubleshoot the problem and offer suggestions.

I wanted to highlight one part of the anatomy of the Indian entrepreneur that I find challenging.

From our Microsoft accelerator database, 45% of entrepreneurs have a full time job and  WONT work on their startup full-time until they get funding.

That’s just unacceptable.

If you are not going to take the risk of going into your startup full time, I dont think anyone else will.

If you are not committed to your startup full time, dont expect an investor to get excited about funding you.

I understand many people have commitments to families, EMI’s to pay, and food to put on the table.

I also understand many people feel their “dead-end job” is stifling their creative juices or their full-time job is just that – “a job” and their passions are with their startup.

I also am aware that many “side projects” lead to full time startups eventually.

BUT.

If you are looking to raise money from an investor and will not commit to your startup full time until the investor puts the money into the company dont expect any investor to sign up.

If you say however that you are working on your startup part-time and dont need funds to move things forward, or that it is a side-project or you will hire people just to experiment, by all means, do that.

I dont think the person is being “sensible” when they say they are seeing if the investor is “committed” to funding them by putting money in before the entrepreneur comes on board full-time.

I’d love to hear both opinions, but yesterday when I heard this from an entrepreneur, I was shocked he even asked me for funding or connections to investors who would put money into his venture before he was on board full-time.

Entrepreneurship, Mobile, Research

Microsoft Accelerator Research on Smartphone usage in India

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We are planning to release research findings every month as part of our startup support program at the Microsoft Accelerator in India.. There are about 50 different topics that we are curious about and are consistently doing research to find out ways to help our accelerator companies perform market research, target early adopters and focus on getting more customer traction.

This series is part of our accelerator database on engagement with startups, investors, mentors & entrepreneurship.

The first research today that we are sharing is based on survey of mobile phone usage in India. Specifically we wanted to focus on smartphones and the adoption of apps on the smartphones.

There were 3 important questions some of our startups that are building mobile applications had, which we wanted to find answers for.

1. Who are the early adopters of mobile applications on smartphones? By age, gender, type of phone & OS.

2. What types of apps get quicker adoption than others? Games vs. social and Connected vs. standalone apps.

3. What is the usage of mobile web among smartphone users?

There are 3 most surprising answers are:

1. Older people (>35) make up 40+% of smart phone users. Used phones make up 18% overall and nearly 25% of smaller city users.

2. While Blackberry is still strong among older users, Samsung has the most number of touch screen and smartphone users overall, followed by a wide range of local brands.

3. The awareness of apps among both younger and older audiences is miserably low. <27% have EVER downloaded an app in India. Over 33% overall and 44% of older users have no data plan.

What does this mean for app developers in India?

1) Like worldwide stats, games trumps productivity and other apps on the mobile. But if you have a game that requires a data plan you are in trouble. So for game makers, the ability to make money from “ads” that are served via a mobile ad server is limited

2. Given that a lot of users are buying used (second-hand) phones in India, expect to support older models for a significant amount of time.

3. Given very little awareness of “apps” among Indian smartphone users, look for offline mechanisms (kiosks) to pop up to support app distribution.

P.S. Some of the slides have not rendered properly on Slideshare even after 2 attempts, so, here is a pdf version. Smartphone usage in India.

Community

How to lose friends and anger people: Learn from my experience

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I am prone to opening my mouth and putting my foot in it. I did it a few days ago with a reporter from Reuters who was covering The Startup Village in Kochi. Not particularly sure of what the background was regarding the Startup Village, its goal or its focus, I went ahead to trash it even without understanding.

It was a) unprofessional b) stupid of me to do it and c) an uninformed opinion of an ignorant person.

What the Startup Village is trying to do is admirable. They are trying to change the face of entrepreneurship in Kerala. They have been able to do what most cities and states around the world would love to do. Get engagement from the political system to support startup entrepreneurship.

And I rained on their parade. I am so embarrassed to even link to the article.

I got a call this morning from Sony Joy who I have known for years. He was so nice, that his first question was “Were you misquoted”?

Sadly I was not. I cannot blame the media or the reporter.

I cant even say I was having a brain seizure.

I was just plain dumb.

So I have to own up and apologize.

Sorry guys. As I promised, I will be in Cochin soon to learn more about the Startup Village and do my part to ensure you guys are successful.

Angel investing, Funding

The rise of the “sapling round” in technology startups

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I was in the valley last week meeting with over 23 investors (primarily seed and series A stage). From Andreessen-Horowitz and Accel to Sigma ventures and True ventures, we had a chance to talk to partners who are looking at over 2000+ deals every year to invest in less than 10 (in the case of older funds) to over 50 (in the case of a16z).

While there’s lots of talk in the valley about the series A crunch and its impact on startups, I wanted to bring to attention a new (to me at least) trend that is consistent among all valley technology startups.

It is the rise of the “sapling round” of funding.

The sapling round is when a company raises between $250K to $2.5 Million, syndicated among  5-15 investors, and is largely (over 75% in the valley) a convertible round.

It is a round that is raised between the seed and the series A round.

The reason why this round is becoming more prevalent is a combination of the rise of startup incubators and accelerators and the constant “raising of the bar” among series A venture investors.

Typically the incubator puts in the first “seed” round of about $25K and provides access to another (in some cases) a $75K through its partners. In case the startup does not go through an incubator, they raise a seed round from angel list or friends and family to the tune of about $250K or less.

Then the startup goes through a 3-4 month program and before or at their demo day looks to raise another $250K to $1.5 Million in a convertible note.

Why?

1. Series A investors have raised their bar for what constitutes their round. All of the investors I spoke with would put $2M to $5M in the series A.

Sean of Emergence Capital, whose firm focuses only on SaaS companies, said he has seen in the last 11 months little over 150+ companies in SaaS with over $1 Million in revenue and they have only funded 2. Another early stage consumer Internet VC mentioned they looked at over 50+ companies with between 2.5 Million to 10 Million active users (not yet making revenue) and invested in none yet. One of the larger firms that does Cloud infrastructure investments and Big data only has seen over 20+ companies with a complete management team, over 20+ paying customers and great market traction to invest in 1.

2. Companies are realizing that “traction” alone is insufficient (in most cases) to get money from the series A investor. While product + traction will still get you a seed round, the later stage investors are looking for revenue and growth in revenue as the primary metric. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

3. Startups are realizing that its taking 12-18+ months to get to that series A, so they are raising more convertible rounds and bridge rounds until they hit those series A milestones. Even in the valley getting to $1+ Million in revenue in less than 18 months for a product startup is rare.

What does this mean for startup entrepreneurs?

1. Most entrepreneurs are in “forever raising” mode until their series A. One even called it “passively always raising” or PAR for the course. They are looking to gain one investor at a time, in chunks of $25K or looking for micro VC or super angels to put in $100K+

2. The teams are lean for longer. According to Ali at Azure Capital, most of them were at 5-10 employees shacking out of a co-working space even at $1Million in revenue.

3. There’s a big push towards breaking even with the sapling round funding, so there’s a constant battle in the entrepreneur’s mind between growth and profitability. One is considered a “safer option”, while another (growth) is what the sapling investors and series A are looking for.

What trends do I see going forward in 2013?

1. The rise of the “priced” sapling round. While most seed round are priced (6%-10% for $25K from the accelerator), and series A rounds are priced as well, the sapling investors are stuck in the middle with a convertible note. That’s definitely going to change next year as they also try to maximize their earnings.

This has major implications on startup funding. If the sapling round does get priced, then it is officially, series A. Which means the current series A investors will become series B. This is consistent with the theme that its taking less money to get to start a company and even less money to get to $1 Million in revenue, than before, so seed rounds and series A rounds will be smaller than they were 3-5 years ago.

2. Early stage VC’s will continue to raise the bar higher, forcing most startups to go for the safer option (breaking even faster, profitability) in 2013, which will lead to the “lifestyle” business discussion popping up, all over again.

3. Many convertibles will convert, without a series A, as sapling investors will try hard to look for buyers of their portfolio company among mid-sized companies in their attempt to get an exit.

P.S. The term “sapling round” was coined by one of the founders in the accelerator, Bhaskar who was at our lunch discussion yesterday when we were reviewing the implications of this trend on our startups.

Angel investing, Entrepreneurship

Indian Accelerators are from Mars and startups are from Venus

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Yesterday I was at the AngelPad demo day, invited by my friend Thomas. 12 companies presented their products & traction in a breezy 3 to 3.5 minutes per startup. Overall, super high quality of presentations and a great set of companies.

Some initial impressions.

1. Each had 12-15 slides, crisp transitions and a really good flow to their presentations. Most 90%+ teams were 2 founders, but only 1 person presented when another was standing at the front with the co founder.

2. No live demos, and the pitches had a consistent flow to them. A one sentence “what we do”, a good description of the problem and some market stats, sizing. Some even had screen shots of their product.

3. It was a packed house and I had a chance to meet (and reconnect with) over 60+ investors. Most of the investors were impressed with the presentations and also with some of the ideas themselves.

I also had a chance to meet with 9 of the 12 founders. They had really excellent follow-through and I got 7 emails this morning to schedule time for follow ups to discuss their fundraising.

I also got to ask them what they really liked about the program, the schedule and the help Angelpad provided.

Many stated Thomas’s personal involvement and his passion to help companies first. They were so happy to have his time and guidance, that they had felt privileged to have him as their mentor.

A few of them mentioned the location and some of the other mentors as the second best thing in the program, followed by the group of other startups that were in the same batch as them. They felt they were truly motivated by the other teams and a sense of camaraderie was obvious.

As part of the Microsoft accelerator we have reached out to 28 accelerators in India over the last few weeks to get everyone together for a day of best practices and sharing. The event itself is a closed door, 1 day session at Bangalore, and over 20 of them have committed to being here. Our intention was to understand how other accelerators viewed success so we can help figure out our engagement with them and startups overall.

We get many questions about our accelerator and the top one is why we don’t give startups money.

In speaking to entrepreneurs, investors and other accelerators in the US, the TOP item they felt startups need is mentorship and advice to get many things right.

In my small sample of Angelpad startups they seeme to value the same thing.

In India, most (not all) startups only value money. Its a small amount really, ($10 – $25K), but somehow that small amount seems to indicate a sense of “skin in the game”.

I can totally understand that, but for an accelerator such as ours, that small amount does not really make us committed to the startups any more than without the money.

Second, the angel networks and investors in our mentor program don’t like the fact that Microsoft puts money in at the early stage, which creates a perverse incentive for us to “get a return from our investment”.

Third it creates an issue for other strategic investors (such as Qualcomm, which has looked at one of our companies for an investment) and venture investors, who prefer clean capitalization tables.

Unlike other accelerators which are not a corporate program, the key value to Microsoft from our program is startup engagement. We take pride in engaging with the startups and are extremely happy if they are successful, but the financial return from our investment is going to be largely negligible to us. Even if 1 of the 11 startups “makes it big” and we owned 6-10% of the company when it went IPO or got acquired, it would not be a significant dent to Microsoft by any means.

I understand why most Indian startups don’t value mentorship, the space, free food, customer traction, marketing planning, PR with blogs & press, full time design help and credits on technology platform.

I have learned from Angelpad that our primary motivation should be to ensure the next batch of companies value those things more than an investment of $10K to $20K.

I understand the bar is much higher to provide mentorship to the same level as Thomas, but that’s the goal we are aiming for.

The personal blog of Mukund Mohan