TechSparks 2015

If Bangalore is Bollywood, then startup events are like the most awaited blockbuster movie….

And Successful CEO, CTO, Entrepreneurs, Investors are the lead actors .They find a huge fan base from the folks from new startup. Believe me, as an entrepreneur our heroes are different. We look up to them for advices and success stories. At times, we also adore them as the star of the startup world.

Recently, I bought ticket for this blockbuster event “TechSparks 2015”, organized by YourStory . It was a 3 day event. The first day (29^th of October 2015) was reserved for Hackathon.  I participated in the event on the other 2 days i.e.  30^th and 31^st of October in Sheraton Grand, Brigade Gateway, Bengaluru. By the time I reached on Day 1, the first speech by Mr. TV Mohandas Pai was about to get over. Heard someone talking at the conference

“I had a jet lag this morning..

I travelled from Whitefield to TechSparks”

Well, if you are from Bangalore, you would understand what I am trying to say. It was the same case with me as I travelled from Whitefield to Yeshwantpur on a working day. Anyways, let me share the excerpts from the conference. While most of the detailed coverage is done by YourStory and other media, I would like to share some takeaways which I could remember

Some Tips from Shailendra Singh of Sequoia Capital:

• The CEO of the company inculcates the culture. Most of the people in your organization will look upon to you. I would definitely agree to his statement. I believe that good culture starts from the top and the CEO has to imbibe this culture.
• When asked to Shailendra about the secret for selecting a startup, he mentioned that there are lot of checkboxes but every startup is evaluated individually. As an investor, they would like to see if there is a spike in any metric at any given point of time. For example, it could be customer acquisition or revenue.
• He said that do not exaggerate the metrics. Investors would prefer to see the real picture rather that an extrapolated sales pitch.
• When talking about the characteristics of a CEO, he mentioned that they should be really passionate about what they are doing. They should be excited to take a call at 11:00 p.m. or work on Sundays.
• He also stressed on the effective communication to the investors
  • When reaching out to investors, keep the mission statement ready. You should be ready with 2-3 lines about your venture for elevator’s pitch and email introductions
  • Keep the power point presentation ready. Don’t worry much about adding high-end graphics and UI for the same but make sure that the information is correct and updated. Accuracy of data and claims should be double checked. Do not make spelling mistakes. You should give attention to the details. Make sure that you have competitor’s information in your sector.
  • Ensure that you send regular updates to the investors, board of directors and Advisors. Weekly updates are acceptable but it will be nice if you can keep in touch on other days in the week to highlight any specific achievement.

Some Tips from Naveen Tewari of InMobi:

He talked about the appraisal system and the HR policies

• When you are hiring, try to find people internally before going for external hiring. They made a mandate to hire internally for the open positions. 35% of the position was filled by their internal talent pool.
• He talked about the Appraisal System. He said that “Appraisal system is made for predictable growth and not for unpredictable growth”. This truly holds good in a startup environment as you don’t know how far your company will grow. You cannot have defined metrics for the growth which you have not anticipated.
• Good people do not fit in the appraisal system. They do good work because they want to do good work. Quarterly bonuses might not be motivate them but a challenging work would do. I would agree to him. I am seeing that lot of companies are reinventing. Accenture changed it’s appraisal system few months back
• Why do people leave? Because they don’t find growth. If you can give them growth opportunities in your own company, they would not look outside for opportunities. For example, some Engineer might want to explore Marketing to see how their product is doing in the market. Give them the opportunity to see it what they have been coding for.
• InMobi removed the appraisal system for travel reimbursement. Naveen said that the employee should be able to judge that their claims are valid. 99% of the employees are penalized because 1% break the rules. I would agree 100% to this. In one of my previous companies, I was asked to sign a declaration for claiming Rs. 100 for an auto! It was a sheer wastage of my time in taking printout of the form signing, scanning and uploading on the finance portal.

And the Talks by the Flipkart guys

How can the startup event be complete without the Flipkart guys, the poster-boys of the Indian e-commerce dream.

>> Amod Malviye, ex-CTO of Flipkart talked about “The Engineer”. He said that he gets surprised when he sees that companies are hiring Java Engineers or dot net Engineers. He said that an Engineer is an Engineer. His effort should go in engineering a great solution rather than coding.

>> Sujeet Kumar shared his insights on how they scaled up the operation. When they scaled up from 50 orders to 500 orders, it was a very high volume for them. Now they have scaled up their operations astronomically. He shared his experience how he had to wait for 4 hours to meet a 2^nd tier publisher. He said that they had trouble in opening a bank account in Bangalore so one of the co-founders got it opened in Chandigarh.

Tit-Bits from the Finance

Several sessions were conducted by PwC.

• They talked about internal as well as external audit. If there is an error, it should be rectified within a year
• Disclosure by the board of directors is important.
• Vendor Due Diligence can be done by PwC. They can also prepare the financial reports. At the time of acquisition, the investors will directly ask PwC for the report.
• Take care of indirect taxes.

How to handle press

This is what they said:

• Correct the fund-raise amount. All the co-founders should say the same
• Do not exaggerate the metrics
• Conduct small  press meet up. It should not be the case that you talk to the media only once you get funded.
• Use blogs,twitter and other digital medium.Credibility is everything.
• Don’t change the logo too often. Of course you can change it but keep it consistent once changed.

There was an iota of fun, cricket and glitter from Bollywood too.

• Praveen Kumar, a standup comedian entertained the audience with his witty remarks.
• Murali Karthik, Former Indian Cricketer talked about the spirit of Entrepreneurship.
• Kunal Kapoor, the famous Bollywood actor talked about Ketto, his crowd funding venture.

Overall, it was worth attending the event. We exchange our business cards and finally got back to business after the event.

“The curtain was closed after 2 days’ of the startup event. But for many startups it’s just the beginning.”