Incubator Funds in India: Legal & Financial Structuring?

Judging by the kinds of questions that show up in various entrepreneurship related blogs and forums, financial structuring, otherwise known as the Cap Table, is something entrepreneurs often need help with. Here’s a quote from Alex Osadzinski on the overall philosophy of a good term sheet: “And, I can’t stress enough that a fair deal

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Incubator Funds in India: Distribution?

Distribution Logistics can be avoided altogether if you are dealing with Internet plays, but presumably, not every entrepreneur would be working with Internet businesses, so we need to be quite creative. India’s heartland, for example, is still not easy to penetrate. Nonetheless, it can be penetrated. One of my personal interest areas is Education. All

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Incubator Funds in India: Sales and Business Development?

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?

Incubator Funds in India: Engineering Talent?

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

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Incubator Funds in India: Product Marketing?

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

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Incubator Funds in India: Idea Crucible?

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.

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Incubators in India?

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

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Is Salesforce.com Hitting a Ceiling?

Recently, Salesforce.com (Nasdaq: CRM), a hot company by any standard, lost a key executive to another company that is dramatically less hot or even interesting. Rene Bonvanie, whom Salesforce.com had recently hired to head up its super-critical AppExchange program, left for Serena Software. Chances are, you have not heard of Serena Software, while you have

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