Start-up Financing Cycle

Start-up Financing Cycle

Lessons from a Failed Social Entrepreneur

Mike McGlade has posted a post on HBR Blog Network. Based on his social entrepreneur experience and its failure, he advice here in the blog

QUOTES for Start-up Entrepreneurs

1.     Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable- Coco Chanel

2.     The biggest failure you can have in life is not tying at all- Emil Motycka

3.     The only place where success comes before work is in dictionary – Vidal Sassoon

4.     Your most unhappy customer are your greatest source of learning – Bill Gates

5.     If i’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse –Henry ford

6.     High expectations are the key to everything - Sam Walton

7.     Remember that the 6 most expensive words in business are: ‘We’ve   always done it that way – Catherine DeVrye

8.     Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they give up- Thomas Edison

9.     The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing - Walt Disney

10.  I’ve always worked very, very hard, and the harder i worked, the luckier I got - Alan Bond

11.  Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops- Thomas J.Watson

12.  I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man.- Jay-Z

13.  The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning – to create a product or service to make the world a better place  -Guy Kawasaki

14.  In life and business, there are two cardinal sins: The first is to act without thought, and the second is to not act at all -Carl Icahn

15.  Motivation is waht gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going -Jim Rohn

16.  The only limits are as always, those of vision -James Broughton

17.  To be irreplaceable one must always be different  -Coco Chanel

18.  The greatest failure is not to try  -Debbi Fields

19.  Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere -Albert Einstein

20.  A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise our creative instincts - Richard Branson

21.  It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy        - Steve Jobs

22.  If you can dream it, you can achieve it -Zig Ziglar

23.  Even if you fall on your face,you’re still moving forward -Victor Kiam

24.  In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity -Albert Einstein

Hiring of TEAM for Start-up

Before finaization of TEAM, it is important to categorize the employee,  A player: Fully self-sufficient and takes initiative that positively impacts the company. B player: Does some things well, but not fully self-sufficient, and not consistently strong. C player: Just average, and does not excel in any area. D player: Poor performer, and shouldn’t last long if you are a half-capable manager. F player: Should be out…like yesterday.  

Funding Options for Start-ups

Venture capital not the only funding option for start-ups Entrepreneurs, if they want to be taken as serious investment cases, need to do much more than write a business plan ........ by Poyni Bhatt

Sourcing of Fund as per Startup stage

You have the idea. Where will the funding come from? The answers differ widely depending on whether you are looking for seed, inflection or growth capital.......by Nandini Mansinghka

College idea turns puja kits

College idea turns puja kits into Rs.5 cr revenue business Prakash Mundhra began making puja kits with Rs.6 lakh capital; the business today is growing 60% every year puja kits

Technologies for Startups

Fast application development these days can be attributed to the amazing new technologies for startups. Lets dive into some of them :

1. Ruby on Rails 

RoR lets you do Web development that does not hurt.

What does it really mean? Ruby on Rails has significantly lowered the barriers of entry to programming. Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or months to develop can be produced in a matter of days. Simply put it lets you build cool applications quickly, lets you ‘Fail Fast’ and come up with prototypes with a shorter time line.

What can I make from this? Virtually any web application can be easily and quickly built on RoR, and mind it tons of companies have used it for some very serious application development.

Who’s using it? Twitter, Github, Basecamp, Walmart Labs, Groupon

2. Django

Django is a web framework for perfectionists with a deadline. Its lets you build better apps quicker with less code. Django focuses on automating as much as possible and adhering to the DRY principle. It solves practical need of a fast-moving online-news operation, to handle two challenges: the intensive deadlines of a newsroom and the stringent requirements of the experienced Web developers.

What does it really mean? Django makes it possible to quickly build, deploy and scale powerful applications in just days. Its adherence to the DRY principle allows you to write only that code which matters to your applications.

What can I make from this? Just like RoR you can make any web application in Django. 

Who’s using it? Instagram, Pinterest, Disqus, EventBrite

3. Node.js

Node is a platform in JavaScript built on the top of a beast called V8 which is the  Chrome’s JavaScript  Runtime engine. Node uses an event driven,  non-blocking I/O model which makes it lightweight and efficient, and hence perfect for real time applications across distributed services.

What does it really mean? Node makes it super easy and faster for one to build cool stuff in an app that happens in real time, giving the users an amazing experience. You can smartly implement a cross browser solution using Node.js

What can I make from this? Real time collaboration tools, Chat applications, Any application that would require synchronous operations and Real time multi-player games

Whose using it? Yahoo, Microsoft, Walmart, Mozilla, Linkedin

4. NoSQL

NoSQL databases are very useful when one has to store humongous amount of data which may not have very complex relational schema involved. Its most useful when your purpose is to store and retrieve a lot of data quickly and efficiently, with the bulk of processing being done at the interface layer.

What does it really mean? There has been an explosion in terms of the amount of data being collected and processed. Traditional relational databases have started to fail in certain cases, and here NoSQL comes to the rescue. NoSQL databases let you store huge amount of data and then manipulate it in the app. Some popular NoSQL databases are Cassandra, Redis, CouchDB, MongoDB

What can I make from this? You can seamlessly build applications which require a lot of data to be stored, quickly retrieved and processed without having to worry about performance issues in your traditional databases .

Who’s using it? Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Twitter

5. JSON

JSON  stands for JavaScript Object Notation, and it is a lightweight format that is used for data interchanging. It is also a subset of JavaScript’s Object Notation, i.e. the way objects are defined in JavaScript. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language. Its also easier to read and understand by humans.

What does it really mean? JSON  becomes much more structured and efficient. Simply put it lets different interfaces of your application seamlessly communicate with each other. JSON is really great for exchanging or retrieving data that needs to be manipulated, massaged, mashed up or otherwise tweaked.

6. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing can be attributed as the single most important factor for such high speed growth of tech companies today. Companies like Pinterest, Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit, Instagram etc have been able to grow so seamlessly to millions of users because of the cloud technology. Cloud computing symbolizes the concept of ‘Lean Development’ by replacing the up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scales with the business.

What does it really mean? Cloud computing allows you to host your Web applications in a highly scalable way and yet you only pay for the resources you actually use. It keeps away the worry of your hosting and scaling cost, until you have finally made it to the point where every cent you pump into your hosting translates into satisfying revenue. Cloud hosting is great for variable load/ traffic or for those who have seasonal spikes. You may not save a lot in the very early stage of your startup or once you reach to the stage of heavy constant load, but its absolutely great for the transition from the former to the latter.

Who’s using it? Pinterest, Linkedin, Airbnb, Quora, NASA