Customers say the Dandiest things, sometimes

Most of the times entrepreneurs  get to hear complaints and good byes from the customers and they are constantly working to improve and do it better.

Today I am proud to share a couple of customers posts, where customers have gone out of their way and said very nice things about Deskaway and Commonfloor (two of our portfolio companies).

Good going guys, you make us feel really proud. Best businesses do everything to take care of the customers and you guys are living examples of that. Keep it going.

Startup Evenings: Now in Bangalore

Start-up Evening” events are organized by the MVP gang  with support and help from a lot of friends in the community. The first startup-evening was in held Mumbai earlier this month. We were more than houseful on the capacity, crowd was good and interesting discussions took place. Read coverage here.

We are excited to announce the first “Startup Evening” in Bangalore:

Guest(s): Founders of Picsquare – Manish and Kartik (More here)

Date: 05 Feb, 2009 (Thursday)

Time: 06:30 pm – 08:30 pm

Venue: South Bangalore

Audience: Start-up founders (MVP and non-MVP start-ups)

Format

  • Event will be attended by 15-20  founders of start-ups from the MVP portfolio, partners portfolios and other founders
  • There will be guest(s) of the evening who will share his / her experiences and interact with the start-ups in an informal manner
  • The guest will typically be an experienced entrepreneur / investor / a person from the start-up ecosystem
  • There is no fee for attending but participation will be only by invitation
  • No more than 20 participants will be allowed to keep the focus of the event

Interested in participating ?  Want to host a start-up evening? Have more questions?  Write to nandini AT morpheusventure DOT com or leave a comment below.

Launching “Start-up Evenings”

The MVP gang is launching “Start-up Evenings” with the support of a few firms who are involved with start-ups and a lot of friends in the community.

The First edition of Start-up Evenings will take place on 20 Jan-09, Tuesday in Mumbai.

Concept

The idea behind “Start-up Evenings” is to facilitate “close interaction” between founders of young companies and experienced folks, allowing the founders to learn from the champions (the tricks and hiccups of the trade), and to network.

The event will be monthly, with one edition each in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

We did some sessions as part of our founders meet and saw that it was extremely useful for the founders and hence by popular demand decided to conduct regular “Start-up Evenings“.

Format

  • Event will be attended by 10-15 founders of start-ups from the MVP portfolio, partners portfolios and other founders
  • There will be one guest of the evening who will share his / her experiences and interact with the start-ups in an informal manner
  • The guest will typically be an experienced entrepreneur / investor / a person from the start-up ecosystem
  • There is no fee for attending but participation will be only by invitation
  • No more than 15 participants will be allowed to keep the focus of the event
  • Typical timings: 0700 pm – 0900 pm

This is a non-profit initiative and we would love to hear from you if you would like to collaborate on it. There is no requirement of any sponsorship for these events, since we are going to keep them quite bootstrapped. Some of things which can be help would be:

  • A conference room / venue at your office for these events once a month (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore)
  • Arranging / suggesting speakers
  • Spreading the word amongst start-up founders
  • Anything else

Feel free to share your thoughts / feedback on the initiative. If you are interested in helping / contributing in any way, write to nandini AT morpheusventure DOT com

A wish is granted: Crederity launches consumer services

If you are a genuine online citizen, a online job seeker, or an individual looking for a partner online. You may have been looking for a way to showcase / highlight the trustworthiness of your profile and claim advantage over the fake / fraud online profiles. Your wish has come true.

After successful introduction in US, an MVP portfolio company, Crederity is launching its consumer services in India.

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  • You can create a FREE account here.
  • Add your credentials (address, education, experience and more) and have Crederity verify them for you.
  • You will get a “Crederity Card” which you can proudly display on your site, blog,  online or offline resume, social networks, online matrimonial profile or anywhere else you want.
  • It instantly highlights the “trustworthiness” of your profile and markets your profile to help you stand out and improve your prospects.

The team has worked hard to create a seamless service experience for both businesses and individuals. Any feedback from you will help to improve further. Go ahead, give it a spin and share your views.

Startup Madness

(This article is jointly written by Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hirianniah)

In recent days, while working with the MVP portfolio companies and reflecting back on the days of madhouse, we have identified this phenomenon we are calling ‘startup madness’.

It’s visible and present from the time when you start thinking of your million dollar/world changing idea to the steady state point (personal satisfaction, acquisition, IPO or maybe shutdown). Things that you do, don’t make any sense to outsiders and they are like ‘This guy is crazy’ and even when you look back at that period you think “what was I thinking when I did this?”

Looking back at the time when we got the idea to start madhouse, we did not know anything about business, we were just two 27 year old kids (later three of us, with Ankur joining us). We had tried a variety of things in our lives and had managed to do reasonably well in whatever we put our hands into, may be that’s what gave us the stupid confidence. Very importantly we were quite ignorant about ‘real business’ and hence came up with our own take on every business problem we faced.

This streak of startup madness showed at various places:

  • We did not hear NO:  not from vendors, not from people we were trying to hire, not from investors, customers, no one. A NO just meant we had to come back with new ideas and try again.
  • We would never get tired of talking about madhouse and we could talk to any one about it. Most times the other guy did not give a damn :-(,  for him/her it was just a blabber
  • We just worked non-stop for three years , not even a day off (except when forced by illness)
  • Other than work everything else was just plain unimportant : sleeping, eating, meeting friends, attending social functions, family, watching TV, movies, newspaper – all of this had very little place in our lives. We just filled all our day with work with average working day of 16-18 hrs all thru.
  • We worked out of anywhere and everywhere.  Our tools were a Fujitsu laptop and a CDMA phone which could be used like a modem.  Restaurants, inside a car / train / auto rickshaw / bus, out on the road, in the park, bedroom, living room and the loo, locations stopped to matter, every place was work place.
  • We did not need a lot of money to live and we were happier than ever (no purchases of over 1000 for 3 years, eating at economical places, shamelessly staying with friends / relatives / acquaintances in cities we visited on work )
  • ‘The world impossible was missing” – we just did not believe that there was any problem that we could not solve or anything we could not do. Our minds were one track – focus hard, think hard, work hard and just do whatever it takes.
  • We had access to this inhuman energy that allowed us to just keep going – “never get tired” or “never run out of steam”.
  • Each time we met a new person, we were constantly thinking of how this person can help our venture, . Everywhere we went, we explored if there was something there that could benefit our startup. Frankly we were classical ‘opportunity hounds” and quite shamelessly so 🙂
  • We were basically “stuck” in our own world in which we could not fail. While we adapted like crazy, we sort of forced business to work the way we thought it should work, without caring a lot about the outside world.

This madness is the essence of start-ups; it signifies the purity of a startup. It makes the startup tick and makes it successful and enjoyable. The same madness makes you innovate, over perform, challenge your skill set, think out of the box or even out of the world, take 28 hrs out of a 24 hrs a day, it gets you to focus but does not let you  blindly focus!

Its also important to figure out how can you keep re-fueling the desire, the madness, so that it lasts forever, not just for days, weeks or months, start ups that click need to be at it for years. For an individual or team to succeed as a startup, having the startup madness is a must.

If you are an entrepreneur look inside you and make an honest assessment. Do you have the streak?

  • If yes, great.
  • If no. But you think you can build it – nice, go ahead and do it at the highest priority.
  • If you don’t have it and you can’t build it – I am not sure you should continue being an entrepreneur.

On that other hand, if you are not yet an entrepreneur you should also look inside you and make the same honest assessment. Do I have the mad streak?

  • If yes, you fool, leave your job right now – the world of ‘startup madness’ is calling
  • If no, it would best for you to avoid the path of entrepreneurship, until the ‘madness streak’ gets to you 🙂

Commonfloor.com : Cool Weekend guide

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I have been meaning to blog about this for last 2-3 weeks. The guys at Commonfloor (MVP 08 company) have started releasing this really cool weekend guide for the members of commonfloor and other subscribed members. They send it every Thursday evening (great timing) and it has:

  • Selected list of movies coming on TV
  • Movies in theatre
  • Events happening in the city
  • Shopping sales, 
  • Weekend getaways 
  • and few other items. 

I have found it extremely useful, the design is also very thought of. The information can be found if one looks at various places, but these guys have done a good job of aggregating it in one place.

Check it out here and you can subscribe to it as well, if you have any suggestions do let us know in comments.

 

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VP Engineering for Crederity: Apply now

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Role

Looking for a core team member, VP-Engineering to lead the design and implementation of all the products at the company. The ideal candidate has extensive experience designing, building, and deploying public consumer facing web sites. We seek an experienced technologist that loves technology, thrives in a multi-disciplinary collaborative environment, and doesn´t mind rolling up their sleeves to code. The successful candidate will be one of the senior employees/partners and will help shape the company from the ground-up.

Responsibilities

Lead the architectural platform design and release products; Design, build, and test applications; Help to build & lead the development team; Be the first to help us get to the market.

Be a visionary, an evangelist, an entrepreneur & an innovative individual to lead the change…

Requirements

Extensive and demonstrable experience architecting, building, and deploying large multi-tiered consumer-facing web applications; Experience building scalable, flexible, robust, and secure architectures for high traffic applications; Driven by agile methodologies and test-driven development; Willingness to “own the code” and build pieces of the system; Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and technical team management; Solid knowledge of .Net/SQL/HTML/ XML/CSS/Javascript/Ajax/Flash, web application architecture, scalable deployment

Work experience: 8+ years. Should have relevant experience – been there done that or willingness/vigor to work diligently on gaps..

Compensation: Willing to take risk- salary based on experience/skills + equity.

Basically, we are looking for a smart, capable, and most of all a person who has entrepreneurial mindset to run it as business.

More:

To know more about Crederity go here. Write to careers AT crederity DOT com to apply.