Now this is completely through experience. I did not do any of the following mention things and it hurt us BIG time.
- Increase your online presence BIG time.
- Start a blog. Even if you are not a great writer. Does not have stories. Just start the blog.
- Put up information from other blogs with links to slideshares/youtubes/celebrity blogs.
- Make sure you start sharing your URL with friends. Use simple SEO techniques to drive traffic.
- Keep updating the blog at least twice a week or so. Make sure you reply to comments.
- Comment on other blogs with link to your blog.
- Make sure you start an independent blog. IE something like sushrutbidwai.com rather than sushrutbidwai.blogspot.com.
- Twitter
- For now twitter in India is used by people who are very active on entrepreneurship scene.
- Bloggers, entrepreneurs are very active on twitter.
- Use it to connect with the community.
- Have a conversation. Build your network.
- LinkedIn
- Update your linked profile.
- Increase your network.
- Be active on groups related to the market your are getting into.
- But don’t be open net-worker. Desperation has not given any one results.
- Unconferences
- Barcamps and other tech camps like PHPCamp, OpenSocialCamp are great ways to connect with start-up community.
- Make sure you are regular at these events.
- Travel far and wide to reach out to the community across India rather than just your city.
- If possible present something. Conduct few sessions.
- Customer relations
- If you know who are going to be your customers, then start talking to them.
- Find out events these people go to and attend those event.
- Subscribe to groups related to your customers on linkedin and be active there.
- Start preparing list of customers you have in second-degree network IE contacts of contacts.
- Competitors relations
- Since you are just planning at this stage, competitors will not hesitate in talking with you.
- Conferences and unconferences are great places to talk to competition.
- Connect with talent working with competition.
- Investor relations
- This is probably the most important thing to do.
- You will find investors at conferences, events like Proto, HeadStart, WATBlog Mixer and many such events.
- Angel investors are also great help in providing mentoring. They are much more approachable, available and willing to help out young entrepreneurs.
- Do not mention funding requirements ever when you meet investors informally.
- Ask for advice, pointers, guidance. People help you when they like you.
<This is going to be a series of articles. I will also talk about how to prepare for the entrepreneurship itself>
Startup
entrepreneurship, networking, Startup, startup adivce, unconferences
Barcamp Pune 5 was overall a good experience. Uncoference community always put up great show and this was no exception. Few highlights-
- Attendance- Well lot of people did not show up. Around 100+ people. I guess postponing hurt the attendance to some extent. But its always quality that matters and not quantity. Lot of cool geeks, entrepreneurs, gorgeous girls turned up which made it highly enjoyable event. Enthusiam is always there in barcamps, actually it is the USP of barcamps. People travelling from Mumbai at 4am in the morning to attend it says it all!
- Content- Again few sessions I was looking forward to did not happen. But had lot of good sessions, discussions. Presentation by Anthony on Entrip was really good. He talked about his team’s experience at the SeedCamp which is THE Y-combinator of the Europe. Well done Anthony for making there and sharing experience. Rohan’s session on Google Analytics was also excellent one. He explained in lot on getting started with Google Analytics. Another good discussion was on SEO. Ankesh, Rohan gave lot of information about SEO and how to go about it. Its always to good have some SEO knowledge and Ankesh’s first hand experience about it was very useful. After that I have now installed the plug-ins they mentioned like All-in-one-SEO, Sitemap generator on my blogs. Thanks guys. Apart from that, there were few other good sessions by Freeman on Techstart, Navin on using Twitter, Arpit on Venture funding and Headstart to name a few.
- What we missed - Free T-shirts. I know you will think I am greedy (which I am though), but having T-shirt of barcamp gives community status. I won’t mind paying money to have the barcamp pune 5 t-shirt! Last night when I was heading back to Nasik, student (girls :D) from COEP who were in the same bus ,talked to me about what is barcamp and why you were attending it and all. I was wearing the BarcampMumbai4 t-shirt then.
After the camp we ganged up at Apache with Anthony, Sameer, Asfaq, Shardul, Nick, Freeman, Natasha, Rohan and few others (forgot the names, sorry guys). We talked a lot about twitter, entrepreneurship. Had great chat with Shardul, Rohan about enterprise market in India and swapped few stories we had in dealing with domestic markets.
All in all it was worth the travel and everything. If you are still not attending such events then believe me you are missing out on meeting lot of interesting people, missing out on all the GYAN given at free. Looking forward to next barcamp. And yeah announcement after receiving lot of encouragement from Asfaq and others, we are now putting in place plans for Barcamp-Nasik-Zero. We will announce details very soon. If you want to be on the planning committee then drop a comment and I will get in touch with you.
Misc
barcamp, barcamppune5, entrepreneurship, startup advice, unconferences
I have become sort of regular in unconferences, specially in Pune. There are many reasons for attending such events, unconferences. There are many more reasons in participating in such events!
Few reasons-
1. People - These camps are organized by people who share passion of entrepreneurship, are super geeks (hence super cool) people rather than typically big shots who are not approachable at all. So we are listened to in making decisions, changing few things around to make it better event. People who participate, attend such events are also very passionate, full of energy and life. Specially amount of young entrepreneurs attending/participating in such events is amazing! And yes probably only place to meet really cool, geeky girls for me, so :-D.
2. Content - Content of the barcamps is based on the people who attend it. So its really upto us to improve the quality of the content discussed. Overall I see great discussions happening on lot of issues related technology, entrepreneurship happening in these unconferences.
3. Open platform - You have something to say, you will be heard! You dont have to have big background to come and speak at unconferences. This gives everyone a chance to bounse off ideas, take opinion of fellow campers.
4. Networking - There are lot of networking events that happen all around India. Most of these events are having high entry barrier. Unconferences are typically free. But most importantly people attending these are full of energy, helping and understanding. These people come with passion of innovation and are more useful as a community to each other than the business suit wearing entrepreneurs who behave like businessmen most of the times.
So I am attending Barcamp Pune 5 . If you are there drop by to say hello!
Misc
barcamp, Pune, unconferences
