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.
