Had my first interview today!
Nop, not the job ones, this one was for a magazine about entrepreneurs that Brand5 is making. Yaay!
Thanks to Abhishek and Prabhu for coming down. These guys are into marketing, making awesome things for startups (such as logo, website, stationary) and other cool stuff. Oh Oh.. hold on, they even have discounts for women entrepreneurs. How sweet is that.
Give them a look here.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
What I learnt by being a shop keeper!
Lets Create Crafts participated in 4 exhibitions so far.
Two of them went amazing, made profit enough to run the whole place for a few months, and the other two - were outright disgusting. -4 digit profits!
Was I Surprised - yes. Angry - yes. Cursed my stars - yes :). Lost faith in humanity - yes (laugh again!). Doubted if anyone ever will want my product again - Yes. Remembered my mom saying that business is tough and is not for me - Yes. Wanted to scream and go back - Yes.
Will I do it again.. - Hell Yes.
Though I had made negative sales, what I learnt from those 2 'failed' exhibitions was very valuable. Here are a few of those learnings:
1. It is DEFINITELY not luck
I met an uncle during one of those exhibitions - he basically was into advertizing for exhibitions, he collected numbers of women having stalls and gave them info on where the next exhibitions were held. He said "Stall lagana hamara kaam hai, sales kitne honge hamari kismat hai (Our work is to put up stalls, the kind of sales happening is our luck)"
Sorry. I don't think so.
I've learnt that homework is more important than the stall itself. You know your product - who will want your product, who can shell money for it and who won't.
Let me give you an example. If you are selling earrings which college kids would love (and buy) and you put a stall in a place where Marwari aunties constitute 90% of the crowd - on a weekday, dude you are going to have -ve sales and are going to feel pathetic about yourself at the end of two days. [I've mentioned Marwari aunties on purpose - I feel they have an awesome taste of dressing up and wearing jewelry - more than any other aunties I know - but there is only a specific type of jewelry they like and buy - yep, the one with American diamonds and those beautiful ethnic designs.. aah I love those!]
Ahem*, back to the blog.. So the next time you setup a stall, please do pray to god( it is very important) but also do a little (a lot of) research on the crowd that is expected to come in, if it is a weekday or weekend, the location of the stall, what the organizers are doing to promote the event, the type of newspapers they are giving ads in, almost EVERYTHING!
2. If you don't love it - do it anyway - atleast once.
Exhibitions are the best way to interact with LOTS of people. Imagine that. Where else can you get a continuous stream of people coming in, who want to give a couple of seconds of eyeballs to your stall? Unless you are holding a recruitment event - no! You get to meet a lot of people - customers, people who do same thing as you, your prospective evangelists, people who think what you do is silly!, people who get inspired by what you do and want to participate - lot of them.
So the next time I put a stall, I'd have lot of research behind it. And then guage the results.
Two of them went amazing, made profit enough to run the whole place for a few months, and the other two - were outright disgusting. -4 digit profits!
Was I Surprised - yes. Angry - yes. Cursed my stars - yes :). Lost faith in humanity - yes (laugh again!). Doubted if anyone ever will want my product again - Yes. Remembered my mom saying that business is tough and is not for me - Yes. Wanted to scream and go back - Yes.
Will I do it again.. - Hell Yes.
Though I had made negative sales, what I learnt from those 2 'failed' exhibitions was very valuable. Here are a few of those learnings:
1. It is DEFINITELY not luck
I met an uncle during one of those exhibitions - he basically was into advertizing for exhibitions, he collected numbers of women having stalls and gave them info on where the next exhibitions were held. He said "Stall lagana hamara kaam hai, sales kitne honge hamari kismat hai (Our work is to put up stalls, the kind of sales happening is our luck)"
Sorry. I don't think so.
I've learnt that homework is more important than the stall itself. You know your product - who will want your product, who can shell money for it and who won't.
Let me give you an example. If you are selling earrings which college kids would love (and buy) and you put a stall in a place where Marwari aunties constitute 90% of the crowd - on a weekday, dude you are going to have -ve sales and are going to feel pathetic about yourself at the end of two days. [I've mentioned Marwari aunties on purpose - I feel they have an awesome taste of dressing up and wearing jewelry - more than any other aunties I know - but there is only a specific type of jewelry they like and buy - yep, the one with American diamonds and those beautiful ethnic designs.. aah I love those!]
Ahem*, back to the blog.. So the next time you setup a stall, please do pray to god( it is very important) but also do a little (a lot of) research on the crowd that is expected to come in, if it is a weekday or weekend, the location of the stall, what the organizers are doing to promote the event, the type of newspapers they are giving ads in, almost EVERYTHING!
2. If you don't love it - do it anyway - atleast once.
Exhibitions are the best way to interact with LOTS of people. Imagine that. Where else can you get a continuous stream of people coming in, who want to give a couple of seconds of eyeballs to your stall? Unless you are holding a recruitment event - no! You get to meet a lot of people - customers, people who do same thing as you, your prospective evangelists, people who think what you do is silly!, people who get inspired by what you do and want to participate - lot of them.
So the next time I put a stall, I'd have lot of research behind it. And then guage the results.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Do you really need the money?
It is amazing to see little kids fresh out of college wanting to become entrepreneurs, met loads of them at a recent startup saturday that I had pitched at.
After chatting with a few of them, a pattern I observed the most was:
1. I need money to startup.
2. I will put forth the best product(s) I can make, then people will come.
No and No.
Let me explain. You might have setout to make something really different, but this is what I learnt from my first service based startup - LetsCreateCrafts
1. You don't need money to startup - atleast not loads of it - not even the amount you have in mind right now. No.
Startups are all about value.
There will always be someone who you can give value to (your initial customers) and someone who you can take value from (your initial sellers). These transactions need not be huge, start with smaller amounts of money. People are good. Period. There will always be someone who is willing to help you.
Plus, you don't need a plush office space, you don't need that Fast-track watch, you don't need that shopping trip. Rule - anything that you are not dying without(sorry for being so blunt) or something that is not stopping your work - need not be purchased.
Trust me when I say this. It can wait. Buy them from your 'assets'.
Good book to read - Rich Dad Poor Dad - by Robert Kiyosaki
2. I will put forth the best product(s) I can make, then people will come.
Thanks to our academic colleges, young entrepreneurs want to put forth their 'best'. Remember the projects and thesis you were graded on? Yeah!?
Welcome to the real world.
While you are spending your time making that 'awesome perfect product', here are things that could happen - someone else makes it - or you forget what you initially setout to make and create something else - or the best one, you give up - and after you have (luckily) launched your product - not many care. Sounds familiar right?
Stop what you are doing and read the book - The Lean Startup by Eric Rise - one of the best books I have read! He talks about something called as the M-V-P. In long - Minimum Viable Product - and this is what you must be building - first.
For example, if I was building a platform where people can purchase craft supplies from, what is the first thing I should do? I know the programmers among you would rush to find the best ecommerce platform, amazon web services, links to etsy, pinterest api, wordpress themes, hire awesome photographer.. right.. ? Wrong. The first thing that you need to do is answer this question - who wants these products? and where are they located? Call up a few crafty lady friends and see where they get supplies from and what problems they face? Try selling your stuff to them. Once that works, good! you have market. Next, try taking some 'good-to-go' pics, put them up on a blog and give your number to call if someone needs it. Try and sell them now..
Build your product in steps. Make a step, test it, mend it after feedback, and build another one.
That is all I have for now!
Have a happy day! Let me know if you have any questions.
After chatting with a few of them, a pattern I observed the most was:
1. I need money to startup.
2. I will put forth the best product(s) I can make, then people will come.
No and No.
Let me explain. You might have setout to make something really different, but this is what I learnt from my first service based startup - LetsCreateCrafts
1. You don't need money to startup - atleast not loads of it - not even the amount you have in mind right now. No.
Startups are all about value.
There will always be someone who you can give value to (your initial customers) and someone who you can take value from (your initial sellers). These transactions need not be huge, start with smaller amounts of money. People are good. Period. There will always be someone who is willing to help you.
Plus, you don't need a plush office space, you don't need that Fast-track watch, you don't need that shopping trip. Rule - anything that you are not dying without(sorry for being so blunt) or something that is not stopping your work - need not be purchased.
Trust me when I say this. It can wait. Buy them from your 'assets'.
Good book to read - Rich Dad Poor Dad - by Robert Kiyosaki
2. I will put forth the best product(s) I can make, then people will come.
Thanks to our academic colleges, young entrepreneurs want to put forth their 'best'. Remember the projects and thesis you were graded on? Yeah!?
Welcome to the real world.
While you are spending your time making that 'awesome perfect product', here are things that could happen - someone else makes it - or you forget what you initially setout to make and create something else - or the best one, you give up - and after you have (luckily) launched your product - not many care. Sounds familiar right?
Stop what you are doing and read the book - The Lean Startup by Eric Rise - one of the best books I have read! He talks about something called as the M-V-P. In long - Minimum Viable Product - and this is what you must be building - first.
For example, if I was building a platform where people can purchase craft supplies from, what is the first thing I should do? I know the programmers among you would rush to find the best ecommerce platform, amazon web services, links to etsy, pinterest api, wordpress themes, hire awesome photographer.. right.. ? Wrong. The first thing that you need to do is answer this question - who wants these products? and where are they located? Call up a few crafty lady friends and see where they get supplies from and what problems they face? Try selling your stuff to them. Once that works, good! you have market. Next, try taking some 'good-to-go' pics, put them up on a blog and give your number to call if someone needs it. Try and sell them now..
Build your product in steps. Make a step, test it, mend it after feedback, and build another one.
That is all I have for now!
Have a happy day! Let me know if you have any questions.
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