Roundtable Recap: September 22 – How Do You Catalyze A Region’s Entrepreneurship?
I have thought a lot about the issue of how to stimulate a region’s entrepreneurship over the years. Today, at the roundtable, we had a discussion around the topic, especially in the context of specific geographies that were represented at the session: Dublin, Ireland, and Kolkata, India.
Today, building Internet businesses, or businesses that are primarily marketed through the Internet, is viable for entrepreneurs all over the world. It is no longer Silicon Valley’s exclusive domain. So, there is no real reason why places like Dublin or Kolkata cannot create significant entrepreneurial energy locally.
And yet, most regional development efforts are still floundering – at best, moving slowly, and not very surely – and we need to understand why.
Over the years, we have heard many explanations. One is culture. A geography that doesn’t support a culture of failure doesn’t do well in drumming up entrepreneurship. Risk is an essential part of entrepreneurship, and risk assumes a high probability of failure. Cultures with deep roots, low immigration and long memories tend to punish failure, instead of celebrating the effort.
Over the last few years, however, several geographies have come up. Seattle, Portland, Austin, New York City and Chicago have come up in the U.S. Chicago has even produced one of the most talked about companies in recent times: Groupon. We are also seeing significant companies come out of Europe. Gilt Groupe from France and Xing from Germany are good examples. There are pockets of entrepreneurship developing in various European capitals.
In Singapore, the government has been extremely supportive, and there is entrepreneurial activity, although we have not yet seen very significant companies emerge. Malaysia is trying hard to build a hub and finding it difficult.
In India, five of the seven major metros are seeing significant improvement in entrepreneurial energy. Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Chennai are all producing a steady stream of interesting ventures. Kolkata and Hyderabad are behind. For Kolkata, I think the lack of the culture of risk is a real issue.
But there’s also a real lack of understanding of what it takes to bring a venture to market. As Abhishek Rungta from Kolkata pointed out today, “Entrepreneurs do not work out the details of their ideas.” I think this is one of the key issues.
No matter where you are, an idea needs to be chiseled and refined. Your idea is like that large block of stone that Michelangelo started with when he set out to sculpt David. It needs to be chipped away. It needs to be chiseled. It needs to be sculpted. The tools with which an entrepreneur crafts a business are positioning, segmentation, competitive analysis, market sizing, etc. These do not require reinventing the wheel. They do not require taking any risks. They simply need the diligence and work ethic to learn and to implement.
My hypothesis is that people fear risk when it looks like a large blob of unknowns. But if a population can be thoroughly educated in the mechanics of building a venture, gradually, the fear goes away. The unknown turns into a blueprint.
This education – teaching the framework of business building – is at the heart of catalyzing an entrepreneurial culture.
Let’s look at today’s presenters.
Jade Magnet
First up, Manik Kinra from Bangalore, India, pitched Jade Magnet, a crowd sourcing platform for creative services like logo design, website development, animation, video production, etc. Jade Magnet currently does about $50,000 a month in business volume and charges 25% of the project price as a fee. Having validated the business idea, the company is now looking to scale. The bulk of our discussion today was around scaling and customer acquisition strategies.
CustomerDiscovery
Then Gerard McDonald from Dublin, Ireland, discussed CustomerDiscovery, a concept-stage venture around online marketing services using social media mechanisms for customer acquisition.
Gerard started off by saying that anyone looking for a customer on the Internet is a potential customer for this business. This, as you have heard me pointing out over and again, is one of the most commonly made mistakes in entrepreneurship. Gerard’s is a business that has neither been positioned nor segmented.
And that brings me back to the issue of these common errors that cause tremendous infant entrepreneur mortality. Gerard, in fact, cited a scary number today: 1,100 companies go out of business everyday in the UK. I am not sure if the number is accurate, the US number is about 600,000 per year. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that a tremendous number of companies DO go out of business every year.
And, we at 1M/1M are trying to do something about it.
You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable here. As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PDT on the following dates:
Thursday, September 29, Register Here.
Thursday, October 13, Register Here.
We will be holding our 100th roundtable on Thursday, October 6th. To celebrate the occasion, the 1M/1M initiative is inviting a dozen 1M/1M premium members from all over the world to step in front of the camera to share their entrepreneur journeys — their ups and downs and next steps — as inspiration for other startup entrepreneurs. They will also share how they are using the 1M/1M program in that journey. You can register to attend here.
If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program and the FAQs. If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note, that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.
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This segment is a part in the series : Roundtable Recap
. March 25 – A Mixed Bag Of Advice . April 1 – Bootstrapping Tips . April 8 – A Focus On E-Commerce . April 15 – Small Is OK; The Goal Is Profitability . April 22 – The Original Runners . April 29 – Finding The Right Direction . May 6 – Defining Value Proposition . May 20 – Validation, Validation, Validation . May 27 – Is The Venture Worth Your Time? . June 3 – Defining Market Segments . June 10 – Efficient Targeting . June 17 – Online Education Startups . June 24 – Three Startups That Can Hit One Million Dollars . July 1 - Get Your Pricing Model Validated . July 8 - The EJ Methodology . July 15 - A Market Of Late Adopters . July 22 - Bootstrap Using Services . July 29 - Startups In Malaysia . August 5 - Paying Customers =>Validation =>Valuation . August 19 - Niche E-Commerce Is Great For Bootstrapping . August 26 - 85%-90% Of Search Traffic Comes From Organic Search . September 2 - Find High Velocity Channels . September 9 - Open Opportunities In Cloud Computing And Rural BPO . September 16 – 5 Cloud Computing Opportunities for Entrepreneurs . September 23 - Do Not Spray And Pray . September 30 - Investors Don't Fund Broad Ideas . October 7 - Try To Get At Least $2M Pre-Money In Seed Round Valuation . October 14 - Professional Investors Do Not Invest In $20 Million Markets . October 21 - Bootstrapping Comes In Many Flavors . October 28 – Convert Potential Competitors To Partners . November 4 - Premium Lounge Sneak Preview . November 11 - African Tech Entrepreneurs Emerging . November 18 - Not Coming To The Rescue Of Victory . December 2 - Niche Marketplace Businesses Can Be Interesting . December 9 - Where Should You Raise Money? . December 16 - Top 10 Tech Trends To Watch . January 6 - Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends For The Decade . January 13 - Top 10 Online Advertising Trends For The Decade . January 20 - Personalization Remains An Open Problem . January 27 - Non-Dilutive Financing Through Revenue Sharing . February 3 - Indian Entrepreneurs Are Maturing . February 10 - When Keywords Are Competitive . February 17 - Indian Company Plugs Gap In Google’s Enterprise Solution . February 24 - VCs, Angels, Incubators, Accelerators – What Are You Doing With Your Rejects? . March 3 - Spotlight On The Northwest . March 10 - Spotlight On India . March 17 - Spotlight On Latin And Central America . March 24 - 75th Session Spotlights The Midwest . March 31 - Microsoft’s $100,000 India Startup Challenge Grant . April 6 - 1M/1M Announces Important Partnership With MAD Incubator, Malaysia . April 9 - 1M/1M Announces Partnership With TiE Chennai . April 16 - 1M/1M Partners With Indian Angel Network Incubator . April 17 - High-Octane Energy In Pune . April 21- Incubators Are Reaching Out To 1M/1M . April 28 - Guerrilla P.R. & SEO Most Profitable Customer Acquisition Strategies . May 5 - Ownership Matters . May 12 - Two Really Cool Companies . May 19, Making Money From Blogs . May 26 - Twitter, LinkedIn - Why Not Affiliates? . June 2 - 1M/1M And Incubators - What We Have Learned . June 9 - Silicon Valley . June 16 - Exciting Companies Lined Up For Microsoft Startup Grant Finals . June 23 - New Assessment Tool For Entrepreneurs . June 30 - Continued International Participation . July 21 - Crowd Sourced Funding Exchanges - An Emerging Trend . July 28 - Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation . August 4 - How Do You Bootstrap Freemium Ventures? . August 11 - Menlo Park And The Silicon Valley Renaissance . August 25 - How To Use Twitter For Lead Generation . September 1 - Fall Call To Action . September 8 - A View Into Israeli Start-ups . September 15 - Do Your Homework First . September 22 - How Do You Catalyze A Region’s Entrepreneurship? . September 29 - From Poland To Argentina . October 6 - Dedicated To Steve Jobs, Reinforcing Mission To Restructure Capitalism . October 13 - FREE Is Not A Business Model . October 20 - Non-profits And For-profits . October 27 - Check Out Stanzr . November 3 - VCs Are Not Always Right . November 17 - Business Schools And Early Stage Entrepreneurship . December 1 - 1M/1M Premium Company Freshdesk Wins Funding From Accel Partners . December 8 - Three Open Opportunities For 2012 . December 15 - Web 3.0 And Social Dancing; Romania Emerging . December 22 - Free Apps, Ad-Supported Business Models => Dangerous! . January 5 - ERP Galore . January 12-13 - Spotlight On IIT Kharagpur, India . January 19 - Are Media Sites Fundable? . January 26th - Spotlight On Jacksonville, Florida . February 2 - YCombinator vs. 1M/1M . February 9 - Are You Fundable? . February 16 - What’s Happening In Turkey? . February 23 - Microsoft Israel To Offer 1M/1M Scholarships . March 1 - Strategy Gaps Need To Be Plugged . March 12 - Winners Of Microsoft Israel Scholarships . March 15 - Spotlight On 3 Day Startup Tel-Aviv . April 3 - Rendezvous In Bangalore . April 12 - More From Indian Entrepreneurs . April 19 - Tyranny Of The TAM . April 26 - A Rare Women-Only Session . May 3 - Some Wonderful Opportunities With Corporate Partners . May 10 - BlueSnap-Elance Contest Applications Deadline This Weekend . May 22 - Winners Of TechHub-A&N Media Battle Of The Startups Contest In London Win 1M/1M Scholarships