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There are 2 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" ‘Start now and you’ll thrive when the market is booming’ - Insights from Startup Saturday, MumbaiThere have been quite a bit of anticipation regarding this month’s Startup Saturday, organized by HeadStart, in Mumbai. In addition to 2 startup demos by the founders of Librarywala and AdoRoi, there was also a panel discussion scheduled, with speakers like Mahesh Murthy (from SeedFund), Hemir Doshi (from IDG Ventures), Rohit Nalwade (Ex-CEO of ConsumerVision) and Gopal Krishnan (of Mobile2Win fame). The topic of the panel discussion was - What should a startup do in a slowdown? Highlights from the discussion -This discussion session was every startup CEO’s dream! The combined knowledge of 4 stalwarts of the industry made it quite an unique, interesting and learning experience. Here is what WATBlog learnt from the same. Start now and you’ll thrive when the market is booming. There are a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs out there who have been dreading this recession period. So many well wishers around who advise against taking the big step when everything around is falling apart. Despite everything, every single man present at the discussion agreed to the fact that there have been no better time to start a company, fresh up. Yes, it’s true that recent times have made your pulse go racing. But, if one does manage to survive and create a business during these tough times, any other time should be a cake walk for him. Moreover, if a business gets washed away in the very early stages of its lifetime, the only loss it chances to incur is enthusiasm. Revisit your business model. Recession is a good time for house keeping. There must be that little thing that you wanted to discuss with your partners and employees, that little payment option that you wanted to modify. There could have been no better time to set things right, oiled and rolling. It might also be a great time for you to revisit your business sense and question its validity. Talk to your customers, reach out to them. Let them know that you care and get more feedback. Make your solutions more customized. You could also negotiate with them and devise a new payment structure that might help you cuts costs too. Help them take decisions. Typical great entrepreneurs never took funding. Citing examples of Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, Narayan Murthy, Dhirubhai Ambani and the likes, the panelists unanimously agree that funding should be the last option an entrepreneur should look out for. They say, it is very important to figure out whether one needs venture funding or angel funding should be enough to do the trick. Of course, it ain’t rocket science to know which one to take up if you have both available at your doorstep, a very rare proposition. Never sit on money at the cost of profits. With all the talks about being a spendthrift and cut costs, experts still advise that it is better to spend money when there is an opportunity to grow business than to sit on it fearing the worst of recessions. Big guys are victims of their processes. A so-called recession is the best time to get at the big guys ‘coz, during these times, they spend more time trying to figure out where to cut costs than look at the competition. This is the best time to steal their businesses away from them. As Hemir Doshi puts it, “Big guys are big, fat and lazy. Smaller ones are hungry.” Change compensation structure. Have the guts to ask your employees to take a pay cut. But beware! you should lead it by example too. You can also modify the compensation structure, reduce the variable pay and encourage performance oriented remuneration. Such a structure works the best for both the company and the employees too. Protect what you’ve got. In your search for the better unknown, never ever leave your own at the fray. The first priority should always be to take care of what you have already got before taking a plunge around. Well, amidst all the jargon among the professionals and veterans, this was the crux that made sense to the author. Hopefully, he gets wiser after this event and manages to cater to the more intellectual readers of WATBlog. One thing is for sure, if you weren’t at the event, you definitely missed something. Related PostsAlso Check Out: WATBlog Panel Delhi - Insights and AnalysisThe panel was initiated with the question on what has been the panelists experience of dealing with brands and how brands look at the digital medium then the discussion moved on to what were the reason for the gap i.e. the digital divide and what steps can be taken to over come the same. Multiple insights and discussions happened during the panel and Ive tried my best to summarize all of them in this post (Given that I was moderating the panel at the same time as well). The WATBlog Panelists were:
These were the insights ROI is killing Branding - There was a clear consencus at the Panel that ROI was killing the brand opportunity that digital possesses. All panelists felt that the extreme focus on driving ROI had type casted the medium into one which could be used for nothing else but driving leads. There was also though that the mediums biggest strength i.e. transparency had become its biggest fallacy. We cant have sales people selling branding concepts. Product and sales need to be different in digital - This was another interesting insight where in Alok mittal pointed out that Sales guys should be like horses that should be told what to do and not allowed to think. He felt that there should be a marketing and product team that should do packaging and conceptualization for the brands and digital agencies should wake up to hiring such marketing folks. The offline conceptualizers need to move to digital - Sidharth Rao of Webchutney stated that the Offline brand consultants need to move to digital. He felt there were very few brand consultants for digital and that’s where the gap lies. Coming back to how digital media will transform traditional media Sanjay Trehan of NDTV Convergence made an interesting point. he said that Newspapers will become Viewspapers - He stated that most newspapers in the country today cannot do without a digital arm and hence he predicts that most newspapers would become viewspapers in the future with equal participation by readers in the discussion. He cited example like the chicago tribune and its eventual downfall in the print business and rise in the online business. Reach VS Relationship - How do we position digital? - The big debate at the panel happened around reach vs relationship initiated by Neeraj Sanan of Star News i.e. how do the we as an industry position the medium. If we talk about reach the numbers are questionable and no where close to traditional mediums. But what could be done is that digital could be sold as an engagement medium rather than a lead generating medium and thats where the real potential for digital lies. Both technologists and sales should be focussed in this direction.
These were the main insights of the panel. We should have a video package up for you soon on WATBlog so stay tuned! We thank our Presenting Sponsor NetworkPlay.in for supporting this event. We also thank our Travel Sponsor Cleartrip for making our travel simple. Related PostsAlso Check Out: More Recent Articles
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The bottom line is, avoid funding by any means, if that’s possible.
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