Proto.in

We have decided that if you are a company that has presented in Proto.in in the last edition or any future edition of Proto.in, you will be sent an invitation to attend any upcoming edition – for two delegates from your company (preferably the founders who made the presentation). So for the 27 companies that presented during the last edition of Proto, we’d like to request you to go book your travel plans for the dates of July 21st and 22nd, in Chennai at the earliest.

The reasoning is that, most of the startups do require other fellow startups in terms of alliances, clients, partnerships or even for the simple matter of a network. We would like to enable that.

To borrow the lines from the Chronicles of Narnia, “One a Proto-ian… always a Proto-ian”.

As always we always look forward to your feedbacks and suggestions. Do keep in touch.

Subrato Baguchi, the CEO of MindTree [They just went for an IPO, and made it sucessfully] has an interview with Knowledge@Wharton, where he gives some serious advice for entrepreneurs.

The first piece of advice is to just do it. No amount of simulation is equal to the act. You absolutely have to do it. That’s why the last portion of my book I had written that it’s like falling in love. It’s also a little like having a baby. No amount of spasm is a substitute for conception. So be seized with it, get pregnant and, for heaven’s sake, deliver.

Having said that, here is my second piece of advice, if you are 20 something, don’t be in a big hurry to be another Bill Gates. You should work for a while, for somebody because you know that in today’s world, you have 40, 50, 60 years. We started the company when one of the co-founders was in his late fifties. Three of the co-founders, including myself, were 42. The rest were about 35.

So the message here is that when you are about to build a large sustainable organization for a long time to come, take your time, see the world a little bit. Understand how other people build organizations. Go try and sell to some real paying customers on behalf of somebody else. Gather all that experience and build a little maturity before you start an organization. While there is no law against starting a company when you are 19, 20, 21 or 22, by all means you can try and do it, yet you will acquire more “street smarts” and that comes only when you have walked the street.

Don’t be in a big hurry. The world will wait for you to come and change it. Go observe, absorb and then go and do something that is memorable and worthwhile. These are the two messages. Do it but don’t think that the world is rushing past – the time to do it is now. The time is now if you have done all the things right. You have done the mission, vision, core values we’ve talked about, and you have put a complementary team. You know you have a good reason why somebody should invest in you. You think you can go out and get a paying customer. Then go and do it!”

Read the full article here: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4188

I do realize that most of us are strapped for time. Here’s the summary of
the email:

• Greylock Partners Confirms Participation as a VC Firm.
• The Band of Angels will be present in Proto.in SE 2007
• Nominations are steadily coming in. Hurry up, if you still haven’t filed it.
• Presentation Principles – a note to the companies that are nominating.
• Media Links: Venture Intelligence, PluGGd.in, IAMAI Publicize Proto.in

We welcome Greylock Partners and The Band of Angels to the cause and network
of Proto.in. I believe everybody by now must be quite aware of the Band of
Angels – a group of Angel Investors who by their own claim are “Dedicated
exclusively to funding and advising seed stage startups”. We welcome them to
Proto.in.
We also have a confirmation of Participation from GreyLock Partners. The
firm that has been behind investments such as Doubleclick (yep, the same one
that got acquired by Google quite recently), Facebook, LinkedIN, Digg etc.
It’s a pleasure to have you with us Ganesh.
The nominations are open and are are receiving applications in a steady
manner. If any of you are in the barcamp circles, I would very much like you
to send a mail out to the group letting them know about Proto.in – in case
there are startups that are looking for a platform.
While the nominations are open, I think its the right time to be talking
about the presentation that the companies will be making. I do hope the
companies pay close attention to this. This time we will be absolutely
strict on the time. After six minutes you will be given one extra grace
minute and we will pull the plug if it goes beyond that. I believe we will
have to do this to be fair to the other companies that will be presenting
after that, and to keep time – since we do have to manage it efficiently.
Do visit some of the presentations that are made in DEMO at www.demo.com,
which will give you a good idea as to how to make effective presentions and
in leveraging the best out of your product and vision to convey the essence
of your venture. You can use at the maximum about two powerpoint slides to
describe the vision of the company or to put up your contact address, but I
wouldnt recommend it more than that. I will also be the first to admit that
it takes immense amount of work to effectively convey what you are doing -
and capsulate it all, in under seven minutes. It takes time and practice.

But Proto.in or not, I believe it will be something that will be quite
useful when you are trying to make your elevator pitch to someone. In some
cases, it will make you ponder, what really is the reason behind the venture
that you are investing your time and energy into. It will help you focus,
and focus is crucial. Do get in touch with me if you require information on
this regard at vijay at vijayanand.name

Venture Intelligence, the newsletter that does extensive and impressive work
in covering the activities of Investment capital in the subcontinent, has
given their support for Proto.in. There is a short introduction for the
event at their blog at http://ventureintelligence.in/blog/

PluGGd.in, a blog run by Ashish Sinha has made a podcast (with a short
interview with me covering the essence of Proto.in) and you can listen to
that at:
http://www.pluggd.in/2007/04/proto-podcast-startups-chennai.html

IAMAI will be linking to Proto.in as one of the upcoming events in their
website. They have shown extreme appreciation and support for Proto.in. The
entire team here, on behalf of the startups, companies and the investment
group, do thank IAMAI on that regard.

On an off-note, I will be in Bangalore during the dates of May 8th and 9th,
for the IBM Innovation Forum. If you are going to be there during that time,
do let me know and let’s catchup over a cup of coffee.

It sure feels like everyday there is a new height achieved in Proto.in these
days and we are given a bit of ample time this time around to get everyone
involved. I will dive into a bit of updates with this email, and follow up
with an opportunity for you to get involved directly into Proto.in:

There has been a couple more updates this week in regards to the upcoming
event. I am having a conversation with Josh Bornstein of Footprint Ventures
this week to confirm their participation in the event. I would also be
present in the IBM venture group meet held in Bangalore on the 8th and 9th
of May, as they seem interested in attending Proto.in and also to meet other
stakeholders in the ecosystem and to extend an invitation to them. Thanks to
Sasha Mirchandani of Bluerun Ventures, and the founder of the the Mumbai
Angels, there will be a fair bit of Angel Investment community that will be
present for the event.

From the list of prominent people who will be present during the event, I
did miss out Rohit Agarwal of Techtribe in my last update (Sorry Rohit).
Rohit is a veteran entrepreneur and has recently written a book on how
innovators connect. Known to be a good speaker and he has a background in
building companies and successfully making an exit from them. It will be
valuable to have folks such as Rohit in the event, for the value they can
provide for the up and coming startups and entrepreneurs. We will look
forward to having you with us Rohit.

From the Press and Industry coverage, Tonse Telecom will be giving the
Telecom companies the fair bit of exposure they require. Sridhar heads Tonse
Telecom a industry intelligence newsletter which has a fair and wide reach
to most of the telecom industry executives across the world. Tonse will
provide valuable addition and feedback for the detailed analysis that
telecom companies require. We are also looking to partner with Venture
Intelligence, run by Arun Natarajan and are working out ways in which we can
jointly bring value to the table. I will post an update on that regard next
week.

This is where I get to the part where I would like for your involvement and
support. If there was one thing that we didn’t do justice in last time, it
was in terms of the widespread reach that we needed to announce the opening
of nominations and of this event to the companies that we are trying to help
here. I strongly believe that what we are doing here is not an event, but
the building of an ecosystem and the bringing together of the necessary
elements and everyone who is equally important and essential for a healthy
network for innovators to be born, built and to succeed. I would be the
first to admit that we wouldnt even come to close to achieving that without
your help and support.

This is my request; If you do know of contacts in the Media – both print,
and web, I would strongly urge you to talk to them about Proto.in and
explain to them why this is important. When we organized the last edition of
Proto.in, a lot of the media was skeptical as to what is it that we can
accomplish. This time around, we have numbers, people, and the goodwill that
bringing like-minded people together – to prove the impact that such a
platform can generate. Please do get in touch with me, if you can help on
this regard. If you know of a PR agency who would be committed to this cause
and can help us, I would like to get in touch with them. I strongly believe
that startups, and companies that build Products are, without a shadow of
doubt, the only way to sustain the economical growth that this country is
seeing today To nurture them, and to provide them with the ample space to
breathe and flourish is crucial.

I look forward to hearing from you, and thanks again for your support.

Oh yes, We’ve already started receiving nominations. Do send in your
nominations, if you still havent done so. Nominations close on June 5th,
2007.