The idea is good. The product has been spec’ed under strong product marketing discipline. The talented engineering team has delivered Version 1.0. Now it’s time to sell. So, how do you sell from India, without burning through ridiculous amounts of capital, without spinning in place?
So we have an Idea. We have the Product Marketing talent in the incubator to go from Idea to Spec. Next, we need to address the next major problem: Engineering Talent. Thankfully, India abounds in this class of talent. Unfortunately, however, this talent (a) does not like to work for startups due to branding and
In the previous post, we discussed the Idea Crucible. In this one, we would assume that an idea has been generated and validated. The next major skill-set missing from the early-stage venture equation in India is Product Marketing. India’s stature as the back-end services capital of the world, unfortunately, has left a gaping void in
As part of the discussion in the post India Needs More Incubation Funds, Dave Chen raised an important point: :: Rather than use the term incubator, I’d propose we ask what problem are we trying to solve? In Oregon we have a very large chip company with several thousand very intelligent dedicated employees and executives.
Similar to eFax, Indian entrepreneurs can also look at the YouSendIt service as a Concept Arbitrage opportunity. It is on online service for large file transfers. Here is the pricing, which you need to be able to undercut by 75%.
There is another type of concept arbitrage that Indian entrepreneurs ought to think about, which I discussed at length with Sridhar Vembu in the context of Zoho. That is, taking an already successful product, service, or SaaS and dramatically undercutting on the basis of price. Sridhar is mainly trying to undercut Salesforce.com on CRM. Here
I wrote a piece back in February called India Needs More Incubator Funds. I’d like to hear from investors and entrepreneurs who have a perspective on the topic, since I am working on some follow-on research on incubators for India. Please write to me here. Before you write to me, however, I would appreciate if
I have talked a fair bit about Qualys in the past, and also brought to you an interview with Philippe Courtot, Qualys’ CEO. I’ve also said before several times, that the SaaS segment is ripe of Concept Arbitrage by Indian entrepreneurs. In fact, it plays to the strengths of folks in India who have domain