Posted by Deboprio on November 24, 2011 – 11:03 am
The cost of doing tech start-ups have drastically comedown in the last 5-8 years. It would have been hard to imagine that a motivated small team can actually launch a Cloud App within a span of few months and go public. Most of this has been facilitated by the advent of Open Source alternatives to the expensive proprietary platforms.
Open Source Technologies have greatly helped entrepreneurs (programming teams) in rapid prototyping and save dollars.
Some of the Open source tools that have helped me immensely and can be assets for any startups are
MANTISBT (BUG-TRACKING) - An excellent stable open source tool for Bug and Issue Tracking as well as Project Management
SugarCRM (CRM) - LAMP based Customer Relationship Management that is easy to set up and has a number of enhancement plugins.
UBUNTU - Good workstation OS with optional (paid) support
AMANDA - A very sophisticated enterprise grade backup and recovery tool
NAGIOS - Enterprise grade IT Infrastructure (network) Monitoring platform
Although we have never done a study on the exact dollar savings these tools gave us. A good estimation would be atleast $ 25000/year, which is substantial for a start-up doing extreme bootstrapping.
Posted by Deboprio on November 22, 2011 – 7:15 am
A lot of times young college graduates overflowing with ideas hesitate to take that plunge into entrepreneurship becaue of the old notion “Gain Experience”. Not that it is a wrong strategy, and it may actually work out in some cases. I strongly believe that once you have the urge to execute that idea that you have been thinking about. You should just do it.
This is especially true in these times, when the cost of doing tech-startups have dramtically come down. The opportunity costs involved in waiting and gaining that experience before taking a plunge is more driven out of fear for failure. This DOES-NOT mean that you should act without thinking or planning, but what it means that you should NOT be afraid to try out that IDEA that you think can make a meaningful difference.
While, I do believe that you should have some grasp over the domain that you plan to work on. But the concept of “EXPERIENCE” is highly overrated. For example if you want to develop a cloud based technology startup. It is essential for you to have a decent understanding of computer programming and technology concepts. But you need NOT be an expert on every aspect of it. While I never recommend outsourcing your tech development in a tech startup, but lot of your naiveness can be overcome with your ability to create teams that compliment your skills.
There are lot of advantages of starting out early
- When you are young, your responsibilities are less (most of the times)
- If you start and fail early (you still can get up and try again)
- The lesson from failure or success that you will gain will be one of the most valuable lesson that you would have learnt
- IT doesn’t that a lot of resources these days to do a tech start-ups.
- If you intend to raise venture capital, VC’s tend to prefer younger entrepreneurs.
The only disadvantage I see of starting early is that sometimes you will exposed to situations that require higher understanding of your domain. But most of the times I feel that is fine because once you identify the gaps while executing your idea. You will then make subtantial effors to birdge those and inevitably that act will push you beyond your peers. even if you fail, the experience that you will gain will keep you ahead of most of the people in your peer group.
Today doing A Tech-Startup is much cheaper, I strongly believe, that in itself should be a carrot for you to SART EARLY – START YOUNG !
Posted by Deboprio on October 11, 2011 – 1:09 pm
Effective Social strategy is key for a startups trying to gain quick social traction. Social strategy becomes even more important if you consider that most startups today start lean and what that means is that it essentially does NOT have the financial means to brute force its way to buzz and hype around its product.
So let me tell you a framework that I think works for most startups trying to get that initial buzz and hype.
- LISTEN
- Figure out what the social sphere is talking about your market through twitter, facebook and Linkedin.
- Find out what the market is talking about your present and future competitors.
- Try to find out small focussed niche audience for your product or service.
- PLAN
- Define your Objectives.Weave your Social Messaging.
- Plan your information exposure, like how, when and what information should be propagated
- Establish KPI’s like traffic from social media, reactions, followers and subscription on social media platforms etc.
- EXECUTE
- Execute your plan with a dedicated teamMonitor reactions of customers as well as competitors
- When you are starting, do NOT try to take the competitor Head-on.
