How to Validate an awesome startup idea today

Got an awesome startup idea? Here’s how to validate

Startup ideas can be found in abundance and there is no shortage, but there are few that get off the ground. How to validate that the idea doesn’t have a quick expiration date.

1. Being new or first is not enough

It doesn’t always pay to be first to market with a product. It is not necessarily the person who gets their idea to market first that wins. iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it defined the category. Being innovative or new doesn’t work if your product doesn’t matter to anyone.
Sometimes, it is better to sit back and learn from others before jumping in.

2.  It is indispensable

Ensure that your idea is absolutely necessary, even if people don’t know about it. Think of something which might not be a one time use, but things which people would need from time to time.

3. Excitement of execution

It starts with you and your team, idea needs to be that exciting that you enjoy doing it. At the end your journey towards execution matters.

4. Solves a problem

The problem should be significant and something that impacts a large group of people. If there aren’t a lot of people who have the problem or if it is not a problem that people really care about solving, move on.
In case of Google and Facebook, the problem were big, and there was opportunities to innovate the business model and adapt to the change.

5. Potential for expansion

Is your idea something that can grow either geographically or through product extensions? The best business ideas start out small but there is a ability to grow and expand.
There needs to be a business model that allows your idea to grow.

5 Ways to come up with a great startup idea

Are you excited by the idea of starting your own startup? You have passion, energy and enthusiasm of an entrepreneur, but one key thing is missing – a good startup idea. Don’t worry, the inspiration is all around you. And, here are the 5 tips of finding a good startup idea.

Problem solving

A great startup idea is one which solves a problem. Start searching for a problem in your own life, and look for problems that no one has addressed yet. These might be the problems that you are having yourself, such as how much you wished that that kind of product or service existed. Alternatively, look for problems that other people or companies are having.
This works best when you have experience with certain company, and can understand the gaps and the needs. Your idea can be built from the experience that you are having.

Side project

Sometimes awesome ideas comes from your side project. If you are having trouble with finding your next startup idea, start with a side project. Just sitting down and doing the brainstorming for startup ideas doesn’t work well for most.
Instead, choose a side project based on the area that interests you, and look for the problem and issues that arise while you are working. Search for a problem that needs a solution, and then find ways to solve the problem. The side projects is where you will find the foundation for an awesome startup idea.

Your business network

Some best startup ideas come when you work with others, instead of your own. Don’t work in isolation, sometimes great people have wasted their years pursuing terrible startup ideas.
Ask people who are around you for introduction to the most interesting business person they know. Another source that may inspire new business idea is LinkedIn. Look out for industry specific business groups on LinkedIn. Get familiarised  by reading some of the articles and discussions. The recurring questions or problem will give you signal towards potential business idea.

Entrepreneurs you don’t know

If you’re really serious about finding the next great startup idea, reach out to individuals beyond your own business network. Its surprising to learn how easy it is to open doors and have conversations in industry. Just ask some ‘Can you spare 30 minutes to help me understand what works well, and what doesn’t, in your industry today?’
Ideas develops as you start looking for it, feedback from these people helps you determine whether its good or not, because you are attempting to solve a real world problem.

Outside of work

Are you getting frustrated because you just can’t find that great startup idea? Stop looking for it. Sometimes you don’t find a great startup idea, the idea finds you. The ideas can be anywhere home, neighbourhood, office, mall and other different places.
Usually the best ideas are conceived with a pad of paper and pen while in a calm, isolated area. Take a pad of paper and pen while in calm, isolated area like the beach or mountains.

Every great startup idea starts with a blank piece of paper

In today’s technology driven world, a blank piece of paper can be quite intimidating. Being creative and filling the paper up with original ideas is often overwhelming for entrepreneurs, which leads them to give up on their projects if that requires coming up with a new business idea.

So, if you are looking at the next big startup idea, and afraid of blank piece of paper, you’d better face your fear and fast. Paper brings spark of imagination and discover an untapped market. To start the journey, you need two things – a blank paper and a beginner’s mind. Each innovation starts with fresh thinking and putting down in the paper.
You must constantly re-invent the wheels, use the blank piece of paper to ask questions in a way you’ve never asked them without thinking about the past. Explore the unexplored opportunity which you haven’t seen yet.
A successful entrepreneur is one who is a storyteller, dreamer, thinker and a leader and pursue the impossible and unknown. So lets look at the three tips that will help you to start using black piece to its advantages.

Think about tomorrow

Lay the groundwork for tomorrow. Modesty is often seen as a virtue, but if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s a tragic flaw. What if Steve Jobs’ ambition was to simply make electronics a little bit better? He started out with only $5,000, but he also had a grand vision that he believed in. Don’t get tied in today that you don’t lay groundwork for infinite possibilities tomorrow.

Find people who match your skill set

Every startup starts with an idea, and building the business around the execution of the idea. This may create self-employment but also closes the opportunity for growth. So you need to trust others to get the work done, or you cant pull yourself away to develop new ideas, products and opportunities to grow. Hire people who can handle technical aspects, so that you can free yourself to explore, experiment and test.

Everyone working towards the same goal

The success or the failure of the startup is based on the system where all the parts contribute to it. This require co-ordination to move forward and all working towards the same goal. Foster creativity, enthusiasm and energy by clearly communicating the dream and the importance and value of each person’s contribution toward it.

It’s all in the name for startups, the naming game

 What’s in a name?

But guess it’s all in the Name for Startups. Name selection is often an overwhelming, frustrating, and exhausting experience.You know that naming a startup and securing a great domain is difficult, but you’re committed to the cause because you realize it’s important.

What you call a new venture can very well turn out to be one of the most important decisions you will make in the early days of a company. The business name will dictate which Web domain you can register, your trademark, and how people identify what you do.  For the majority of the naming process, you’ll be iterating on two steps: creating a list of words that are related to your product or service, as well as creating permutations of these words to determine the final name. But there definitely is something that will make your venture stand out in the crowd.

We will take you through the various things that you must keep in mind while naming your Startup.

• Understand the naming game: Most people already know intuitively what makes a good business name. It’s not that you can’t pull of your business with a bad name, but the fact remains that a bad name will hurt you, and that there’s no reason to inflict this damage upon yourself. Once you are confident you’d know a good name if you saw one, you need to come up with a few keywords to get you started.
• Generate the Root Word: You can possibly generate more than one root words. Start by gathering root words that represent a core aspect of your business exaple; product category or the product function.
• Generate Metaphorical Concepts:Eventually extend your list of these root words to names, ojects, feelings that might be related to this root word. These concepts are generally more original and interesting than their literal counterparts, and their domains are readily available or cheaper to purchase. While drafting this focus on the details and come up with everything that comes to your mind.
• Look around for Words that are similar in meaning: Adding synonyms helps broaden your list of words and thus gives you a better opportunity to play around with the possible words.
• Compile a list of these keywords: Keep a log of all the new names and keywords that you come up with in the process. You can source these original keywords by thinking about your company’s market, what makes your company unique, and what your value proposition is.
• Easily understood by the Customers: The name should strike a chord with the Target audience, hence make sure that they understand the name and and hence will help trigger the idea behind the name easily.
• Picture to support the name: A picture is worth a thousand words, especially while expressing ideas. Try associating a picture to your word. Pinterest is probably the best tool for this, given its robust database of high-quality images, but you can also use e-commerce sites like Etsy or a simple image search on one of the major search engines.
• Use Unfamiliar Names: Some foreig names like in French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.that have a meaning resembling your thoughts  might strike a chord with your customers.
• Add Prefixes and Suffixes: It is a good idea to add prefixes or suffixes to your name may be of Latin or Greek origin. It makes the word easy to remember and connects well to the audiences
• Sometimes its OK to play around with the spellings: This permutation can be achieved by removing vowels or changing letters in a regular word. Though it looks different, the new word benefits from the fact that it sounds the same as the original.
• Use numbers in place of alphabets: Add numbers to your word to make it more interesting. The best names feature a number that has a meaningful relationship with the root word.
• Writing the word backwards: In case you are running out of ideas, try writing the name backwards. This makes the word interesting to read.

It will sure be fun to name your upcoming venture. You are going to use that name for a long time so make sure you find the best one.

Customer is the King

The most important component around which any business thrives is “Customer”. All of an entrepreneur’s efforts will go in vane if we there are no customers for his product or service. And this is precisely explained by the quote,

“Customer is the King”

Not just a king, we feel that customer is the kingmaker too. The mindset that “The customer is always right” underscores the value we place on our customers, regardless of our industry. Especially in today’s economic climate, most companies recognize that their existence largely depends on how well they can engage and service customers and offer them the products or services that they need.
But if we take this to a broader meaning of the work. We will find that Customers are sub-divided into two:

1. External Customers
2. Internal Customers

While we all know that external customers are of utmost impetus but we should not deny the fact that internal customers are equally important for the growth of a startup. So, let’s take these one at a time.
To begin with let’s focus on the External Customers, who are the end users of our product or service. With the current evolution on work and business settings, coupled with ever-increasing technological advancement, ‘customer is king’ means more than just subscribing to good customer service, it means really practising it too.

• Give them best return on their investment: Even if you give your customer the best possible product, the thing that they will try to find is the value for their money. This is what you have to give them. Even before you think of treating them well when they’re buying your services, you should always keep customers in mind when developing new products or offerings.
•  Never underestimate their power: It’s great to know their power. You should never offend your customers because it can result in a serious loss to your business. In fact, it is truer in today’s economy where customers hold more power thanks to social media. In the past, what made a customer king was their ability to boycott your products and influence others to do the same through word-of-mouth.  Today, social media upgrades that power. Negative words about your company or your brand can spread a lot faster over the web.
• Avoid Aggressive marketing: Don’t tell your customers what to do because a customer doesn’t want to be told what to do. Studies show that aggressive marketing may actually turn customers off. They however tend to listen and trust the opinions of their advisers, so, the best you can do is to influence them by targeting these advisors. These advisors should be the target of your marketing strategy.
• Make this Simple for them: In today’s fast paced world, people want to save as much time, money and energy as possible. Hence, make sure you’re accessible to your customers. You should be where your customers are because saving them the hassle will make them more likely to buy from you. If you’re running an online campaign, for instance, the rule is to make sure the mechanics are simple. The easier it is for them to participate, the better.
• Give them the creative freedom: By this we don’t profess that you let them run your business. What we basically mean is sometimes you could let your customers dictate what they want or how they want it. We’re talking about letting your customers participate in product development. Let them provide ideas about the product they desire of. There are many successful ventures like Starbucks and Lego who go by this model.

Whatever industry you are in, whatever business you run, your customers and would-be customers will always be one of your most valuable stakeholders. How well you treat them will have a large impact on your business. Never treat your relationship with your customers as transactional but instead as a long-term relationship that needs to be sustained.
While, we say that, let’s not forget the other customer who is equally important, i.e; our internal customers or the Employees, who often don’t get that much attention. Better known as “employees” or “staff,” these internal customers are often viewed by what they can deliver to you or your organization. The unfortunate result of this perception: Internal customers lack the care and feeding that is given to external customers. We should never forget the fact that our internal customers are as valuable to our success as our external customers. They act as the ambassadors of our company and hence, happy and motivated team members in turn create happy external customers.  Let’s see what we can do to maintain these Internal Customers:

• Communication:  For any two way relation to grow and develop, communication is the most important feature. In case of your employees, we suggest, start by listening to them. As an addition to keeping team members informed through scheduled meetings and ongoing written communications, make sure that management is visible and accessible. Walk around the office and speak with your team members informally. Find out any concerns they may have and their suggestions for improving the workplace. And take this a bit further by actually implementing the suggestions that you think will work in favour of your set-up.
• Get to know your Employees: Understand your employees and their professional development goals and needs. Help them maintain a healthy work/life balance and by giving them certain amount of freedom.
• Create a friendly and progressive environment: Try to create a progressive and family friendly environment for your employees. Try to offer them a flexible work schedule to accommodate work/family balance. Since everyone has to take on more work now, try to make sure that staff members don’t feel too overwhelmed or stressed.
• Opportunities for Growth: Have a growth plan with a proper career path for your employees. Take an interest in their development. What do they need to do in order to grow? What new challenges can you offer them? What type of training would be helpful?
• Technological advancements: Understand what technological tools your team needs in order to work better and provide them with it, before they are frustrated.
• Rewards and Recognition: Recognition is one of the most important human needs. Hence, reward and recognize the great work of your team members. It’s amazing how valued team members will feel when you commend and recognize them in front of their peers.

If you go right with these two customers, your business will surely reach massive heights and you will agree for yourself that “Customer is the King”.

How to stay positive and deal with negative feedback on your startup idea

Your startup is like your child. You spend considerable amount of time and effort nurturing it in hopes that it will see the daylight, go out into the world and become successful. So, when someone thrashes your startup, it can be a big demotivating blow.


But, if someone says that your idea of startup will not work, then it shouldn’t mean an end of world for you. A critic may believe your idea is impossible because it hasn’t been done before. Take their comments as a complement as all great entrepreneurs have encountered strong criticism whenever they started to pursue their dreams. Have the confidence that you can make your way out with a brand-new idea.
Here are the five tips to stay positive when faced with negative feedback about your startup idea.

• Have a deep faith in your startup – It is essential that you believe in your idea when faced with negative criticism from those who have concerns. This will always keep you motivated and will keep you away from being discouraged. There are people who will say “you can’t make it”, but don’t let anyone take you out of pursuing your dream.

• Don’t give up when run up against barriers – Find ways around those barriers to success as those are most rewarding and fulfilling part of entrepreneurship. When you dig around obstacles, you feel like you can accomplish anything. And, the truth is, you can.

• Keep yourself away from distractions – Everyone will have input on how you should build your business. Some will tell you not to bother. When you are given an advice, think for a moment whether the advice adds value to your idea. If you try to make everyone happy by incorporating each and every suggestions, even the one’s which are not inline with your goals, you will only harm your product.

• Create something that you want to see made – The driving force in creating a business is always to see it succeed, but if you truly believe in the product or the idea, then you are more likely to see that idea through to completion. No one can predict the outcome of a startup, but if you and your team truly have lived the dream then you will overcome all the barriers to come successful.

• Surround yourself with positive people – In a cutthroat, competitive world full of negativity, it’s important to build a team that shares a collective vision. As an individual, you can feel stuck, but with a motivated team, the common goal creates a bond and a momentum that will grow exponentially. No one person can attain a substantial goal without the help of others.

Quick guide for advertisement and marketing for Startups!

Again, we received a lot of questions about advertising and marketing for startups  and we are more than happy to help. We have tried to list below few tips and tricks, that you can make use of-
Social media:

Source:wersm.com

• Facebook and Twitter is not just for gossips, use it to promote your business. Oh, you don’t have a facebook /twitter page for your company yet? Why would you do that?  Studies have shown that, around 75% people search about products on social media platforms to be sure of the customer reviews and followers that the product has.
• An account on the top 5 social media sites: Linked in, Facebook,YouTube, Pinterest and Twitter is a must. Again, you have to research, which platform your target audience uses, make sure that you are on those ones at least. As a free tip, if your product is sound on visuals, make sure you are on Instagram or Pinterest, Facebook can be considered as well. On the other-hand if you are more into information-sharing,  you need to be on platforms like Twitter or Facebook and blogging websites.
• I was recently following a show on TV ( Dynamo- Magician Unlimited) where he showed how our everyday decisions were influenced by the images we saw, the decisions are ours to say, but they are solely driven by the images we have been seeing. A video or picture is registered more quickly and for longer than text. Make small, economical and relevant videos and upload them on YouTube to attract attention. It is especially important if you are bootstrapping your business.
• And being there isn’t enough, make sure that you are engaging with your existing customers and also have enough substance to attract more people. Again as an example if you are say a service based startup, keep giving some updates on the numbers you have achieved so far, publish positive feed-backs from your existing customers with pictures. Thank people for mentioning your startup in their posts. Be quick and responsive to the messages that you may get on these platforms.
• Get your self some FreePR – There are websites which offer press releases/ feature your startup for free. Go for them right away. But make sure there is enough substance in your startup for it to be featured, and that it is at a level where you think people will be interested to know about it. If your answer is yes , you can also get featured on Knowstartup, by just filling up a form !

Networking

• Online networking: Use Professional networking groups to connect with people, talk to them about your startup, and let the world know. Join relevant groups on LinkedIn, Reddit and YCombinator. That is how people get to know that are are creating something. In addition to that you can get feedback about your idea/ startup. You can even join groups that have your target audience, to be able to predict and design your product based on customer preferences. Present your self as a focused entity, this will enhance your brand value.
• Conferences and  Startup events: Make sure that attend conferences and startup events regularly. If you are not yet eligible to participate, at least visit as audience. You will get to know a lot about what you should be doing and more than that these events are a great platform to interact with budding entrepreneurs, angel investors and mentors. Spread the word out about your startup.
• Partnership with established companies and influences:  What better time to use your partnerships than this. Identify other people in your segment that can help you advertise your product. If an established entity is talking about you, that adds credibility to your brand as well. Again, I cannot emphasize enough on the role that networking will play here. Identify people in the industry that will help here, someone who has followers from the audience that you want to capture, once they talk about you, their words will be reaching across exactly where they should.  And nature of partnership can be different from this as well, you can partner with companies that are not your competitors but have the same target audience. As an example, if you are into bridal makeup business, partner with someone who is into bridal attire, or catering or an aggregator. But when you do that, be specific in your terms – about what you can give and what you want in return!

Email

Source:www.reachmarketing.com

• Free email services: Be shameless to use emails as a means to reach your prospects and keep your clients engaged. There are many cost-effective email solutions that will work for your startup. Companies like MailChimp have several free plan that allows sending emails to up to 12,000 subscribers per month. 12000 is great for a start as soon as you have more money you can run more elaborate email campaigns.
• Online message signatures: If you own a startup, change your email and all online messaging signatures, update your social networking profiles  to mention that you are the founder of so and so startup. Believe me people notice signatures, and once they do , they are sure to ask you about it.

Press releases:

Source: blog.kissmetrics.com

• Press releases are a very effective way to advertise about your startup, but for this you will have to have something newsworthy to report, and it should be something that can capture readers interest.  If it is not going to be catchy, don’t do it yet!
• Secondly, identify which newspaper to approach- approach the one that your target audience would read.
• Take due care to frame it in a way that highlights your company name at the top, remember, visuals are a very strong tools, use them to scribe your company name in your audience’s heads. Give a headline that makes people read more.
• Also don’t forget to give contact information about your company in your press release.
• Another thing, not everyone is blessed with effective writing tactics, which is acceptable, so if you think you will not be able to do justice, hire a professional or hand this over to a friend / relative to write for you. Proof read and make sure it is flawless.
• Include quotes, from people in the company, that not only brings more insight but also gives a real touch that makes your press release more genuine.

Your website:

• Your website – Your website is like your shop, if it is not attractive, clean , crisp, responsive, full of stock, you are not going to get a second visit.  Yes, its over and above the effort you are putting in your social media pages, the sole aim of having presence on social media is to get more people( read potential customers) land on your company’s website, to be able to turn them into real customers. Therefore, make sure that you are investing on your website. Make it appealing, easy to use, remove the clutter, make it intuitive and you will add customers for sure.
• Benefits over features:  Remember, how while buying even electronics when we compare two products we always end up buying the one that has more benefits, even if that means being a feature or two less than the other product. The buying action is always influenced by the benefit,  and not the feature. It really matters how you  highlight the benefits that your prospective customer is going to get, over and above the features.
• You can also make use of Guerilla Marketing, which means using creativity instead of money to market your product.

Focus your customer:

• Contests and competitions: Use social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to hold contests and competitions. You can provide the winner with a prize or a discount for your product or service. Competitions get hundreds of people talking about your brand in public but you only need to reward one winner. I myself have many photographer friends who got people talking about them and their business by means of such competitions and then offered portfolio shoots for discounted rates, who doesn’t like to get clicked!
• Customers: Remember when you are a startup, you have to leave no stone un-turned to keep your existing customers happy. they are not just your customers they are the ones who also market your brand and that too for free.
• Be a problem solver:Solve a problem that your customers have. This is one of the best form of marketing you can do. Be innovative, when you do that and give them a good solution, your customers will market your startup to others with similar problems.

Blogging

• Entrepreneurs who are bloggers enjoy a lot of benefits. Start telling your story from day one, record your journey with your audience. Telling your story makes customers connect to you and the company, which leads to high retention rate. With that you are also establishing a brand, getting industry expertise if you are a regular blogger and have managed to gain followers, free marketing  and greater visibility for your product.

Communication must not stop:

• If you are in the Service industry make sure you build up a relationships with your customers by caring about them. Follow-up phone calls let customers know they matter to your company. Drop e-mail, text messaging, and social media can be inexpensive and beneficial if used sparingly and in a way that the customer values.

You obviously can choose among these ways and follow the one that suits your pocket and product, but make sure you have a marketing plan in mind for your startup. If you haven’t started it yet, do it now !

Scientific ways of marketing your product that actually work

You thought of a new product idea? Great. You made your product perfectly according to your plans? Even better. So you are finally ready to go to the market and now it’s time for marketing. But in an age when all the brands are fighting for shortening attention span of the consumers with their marketing efforts, how do you make your marketing efforts stand out?
As a small business, the question may have crossed your mind more than once. Is there any way you can effectively reach out to your target audience and turn them into customers? Do you even have a chance of standing out when advertisement from different products keep popping in front of your users time and again? Yes it’s possible, with little help from science.

Here are 5 ways to make your marketing efforts and hence your product stand out from the crowd:

1. Use Multiple Mediums

We are better able to encode a memory into our brain when we use multiple senses at once to input it. A firm example lies in the fact that you maybe able to learn better while ‘reading and reciting’ a piece of text as compared to simply reading the text. While reciting the text you are reading, you are not just provided with a visual cue but also with an auditory cue along while making verbal efforts of speaking out the words. All these thing work together and help you in encoding the information in your brain more precisely. Hence, it is highly recommended to use different mediums together such as videos and podcasts to reach your audience.

2. Tell stories

It is in our human nature to pay attention to good stories, think of a movie that connects with you so well that you are not able to take your eyes off the screen. More and more brands are reaching out to their customers by telling stories that really connects with them. Stories and memories with strong emotional association are often remembered more clearly as if the mind took a “flash picture” of the moment, these memories are called flashbulb memories. Hence, just telling a story is not enough, if you truly want to stand out, make sure that your story invokes a strong sense of joy or fear.

3. Give rewards

Who doesn’t love a good reward? But providing rewards can be an expensive affair for a small business, hence to make sure your investment goes in the right direction there are a few things you should definitely take care of. Firstly, don’t just hand out freebies, make sure that the reward requires a significant but not too much amount of effort to be won. A good example would be asking your audience to answer a question and tweet it out to win the prize rather than just offering the prize in exchange of a tweet. Also spreading out your rewards at well-timed intervals can be highly beneficial if your budget allows.

4. Crafting the perfect marketing content

In an age when there is an abundance of content, how do you make sure that your marketing content makes the maximum impact on your audience. Simple, keep your main message in the beginning and ending of your content. This is the Serial Position effect in play which suggests that information at the beginning and ending of a list is more clearly remembered. A demonstration of this involves giving people a list of words to remember and asking them to recall the words. It has been found that words at the beginning and ending of the list are more clearly remembered because of the primacy and recency effects respectively.

5. Marketing through side projects

One of the most effective marketing method nowadays is to create a manageable side project or a small product that is really useful to your audience. Make something that will be useful to your audience on a regular basis no matter how small the need is. Want to reach out to entrepreneurs? Make a small website recommending the best books on entrepreneurship. Want to reach out to photographers? Create a small app that makes their work better even in the smallest possible way. Not only will you be reaching out to your audience effectively, you will actually have people loving you for creating something that is really useful to them. Who knows, if you are lucky enough, maybe your side project will end up becoming even bigger than your main product.

Where do amazing ideas come from?

Imagine this for a moment: all that you see, hear, smell and taste are nothing more than electric impulses in your brain controlled by an enormous machine which needs to keep it engaged even as it powers itself from the bio-chemical energy of your body. These impulses keep you happy. It’s like you are in bliss forever. But, are you really happy?

It’s a fantastic thought — and if it sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the premise of the super hit film Matrix. I remember hours spent on discussing the parallels between Matrix and the concept of Maya, and the dangers of artificial intelligence and robotics. That’s what best of ideas do, they make you ask questions. They stimulate thought, challenge status quo, and prod us to push the boundaries of our world.


While I appreciate the power of idea in the realms of science, art or philosophy, my concerns are more immediate — the power of an idea in the realm of entrepreneurship. For a startup, an idea, above all, must solve an immediate problem, and it is better if lot of people need the problem solved. If the idea lends itself to being viral and the business is capital efficient the valuation is more attractive.

Think of an iPhone. Before it became an ubiquitous product, it was an audacious idea: that a phone, a music player and an Internet device can be wrapped into a single product, with an amazing user interface. I remember the exact moment, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in his 2007 keynote. By any measure, iPhone is a beautiful device, and a fantastic idea. People were willing to stand in queue and pay a premium to get their hands on the product .

These thoughts were not far from my mind when I ran the half marathon at Disneyland recently. Disneyland was born out of the idea that there should be a place where both parents and children have fun at the same time. It’s also an amazingly successful business — expanding globally, attracting over 16 million people every year.
Both mark the power of an individual idea. The takeaway is simple. Ideas come from people. And amazing ideas come from amazing people.

What makes people amazing?

Neither Jobs nor Disney were qualified in the traditional sense of the term. Apple turnaround story is probably studied at every top business school in the world, but Jobs himself never went to business school. In fact, he was a college dropout. The most sophisticated customers might put their blind faith on the brand Ralph Lauren when they pick up clothes and accessories, but Ralph Lauren himself didn’t go to design school.

Similarly Walt Disney might have fired up the imagination of millions of children across the world, but before he achieved his fame and wealth, he used to work in a newspaper called Kansas City Star. He got fired because his editor said, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

As a venture capitalist, I meet amazing people almost every day. They need not come from rich families. They don’t have to be from the PhD programs of top universities. They don’t need to have corporate credentials. In fact some of them are iconoclastic — and might not fit into traditional, large organizations’. I am not suggesting that having a PhD or having worked in a large organisation  precludes success. Some of the brightest people start their career in large organisations before entrepreneurial bug bites them. The larger point is this: when it comes to getting amazing ideas, how much of your background really matters?.

If all these don’t matter, what does? Here are a few attributes that I would place a premium on.

Ability to re imagine. Amazing people have this rare ability to look beyond what they see in front of their eyes. They look at the possibilities. They have the ability to look at one thing, go up the ladder of abstraction, derive an insight, and apply that to a completely new area. Thus, Captain Gopinath noticed the growing number of shining satellite TV receivers, and from that could imagine the demand for cheaper airlines and airports in smaller towns. From that vision, he created virtually a new industry — economy airlines in the country. For entrepreneurs, it’s as if the world is made of Lego blocks. They can dismantle what they see before them, and create something new out of the pieces.
Patience and perseverance: The moment of epiphany — sudden light — is a myth when it comes to amazing ideas. Amazing ideas take a long time to develop with a range of different, and often unconnected experiences. The lessons and insights from these various experiences mix with each other leading to something new. And then, there are iterations and pivots. All these need patience. Getting an amazing idea is just one part of the game. The other is execution. An idea without execution is merely an illusion. And success needs perseverance, the ability to go on, even if it’s boring and soul sapping.
Leadership: “You can invent the world’s greatest things, but if you just invent them it doesn’t accomplish that much. I found it very sad. You can imagine if he were slightly more skilled in business, or with people, he would have gotten a lot more done,” Thus spoke Larry Page of Google about his hero Nikola Tesla (Googled by Ken Auletta). To make an amazing idea commercially valuable demands leadership skills — the ability to see how that idea will change the world, the ability to convince others of that vision, the ability to work with a variety of people to convert that vision into reality, the ability to make different parts — finance, marketing, operations — work together to ensure that it’s sustained over a period of time.

Right now, India is at a stage where more and more people want to be entrepreneurs. As a venture capitalist, I see a number of entrepreneurs and ideas in the course of my work. Ideas are not often spontaneous and you can’t make them happen. However you can create the right environment that fosters ideation. For long plane rides, I take a list of topics to think about. I do my best thinking when there are long periods of silence and no distractions. I don’t trust my memory, so I jot down key thoughts in Evernote. I believe in writing down everything. I explore my hunches, I often reorganize them and expand on the details. I keep on refining them till I can explain my idea to someone else cogently. I urge everyone to find the right environment that nurtures your creativity.

Someone Stole My Startup Idea: Are Those My Initials?

Worries from the garage
One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. What if, gasp, someone steals my idea? Then all my hard work will be for nothing.

This actually happened to me twice in my career.

The first time was at Rocket Science Games. I was positioning the company as thesecond coming of the video games businesses at the intersection of “Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley.” This was a great positioning, it helped us raise lots of money and get tons of press. I had a wonderful set of slides that illustrated (to me) this inevitable trend. At the end of the presentation was one “uber” chart I had labored over for months which laid out all the converging trends in the industry. I used it in all presentations and gave it at industry conferences.

Are those my initials on the slide?
Fast forward nine months. My co-founder, head of business development and I were in Japan raising money. We were sitting in the conference room of a large well-respected media firm when their CEO breezed in to give us an overview of who they were and how forward thinking their firm was. I thought highly of this firm and was in awe of their content and films so I was a bit blown away when the CEO got to the finale of their presentation. It was, as he explained, the sum of their strategy and strategic thinking for online media. And the slide was…

My slide.
Not a summary of my slide, or a Japanese copy of my slide, but my actual slide. I stood up from my seat, and walked around the boardroom table to get closer to the screen just to be sure. The CEO was beaming at my interest in the details of the slide. Examining the slide, I pointed to the bottom right and said to our translator, “Tell him my initials are still on the bottom.” The interpreter’s face went white, and after a lot of “I can’t tell him that,” he did.

We weren’t sure if we should feel insulted or complimented, but after a few deep breaths (and a lot of kicking under the table by my head of business development) my smart VP of business development used it as an opportunity to point out how honored we were that there was an obvious strategic alignment between the two companies. (I sat there smiling tightly.) Given the potential for a cross-cultural meltdown all parties behaved politely. The CEO turned out to be a very nice guy and rented a big bus to take his staff and all of us sightseeing, dinner and drinking around Tokyo. (I’m sure when he got back to the office he was handing out apersonalized knife to the executive on his staff who had borrowed my slide.)

In the end, the CEO couldn’t get his board to give us the cash in exchange for the Japanese distribution rights and some equity. We ended up raising money from Sega.
I heard later that the slide disappeared from his presentation.

Lessons Learned

• If you present slides publicly, assume everyone including your competitors will have them
• If you present slides privately, assume a high probability that your competitors will acquire them
• Do not put your trade secrets, proprietary algorithms, patentable technology, secret sauce, etc. on presentation slides – ever
• That still leaves you tons to talk about in a first and even second meeting.
• For slides that contain diagrams or drawings that you created, make sure your initials and date are on them

One Of The Best Startup Opportunities In The Next Decade

The real promise of the Internet of Things isn’t simply linking millions of devices together, just like the real innovation of the web wasn’t networking a bunch of computers. Instead, the true and still unrealized potential of IoT is to transform business models; it’s enabling companies to sell products in entirely new and better ways that benefit both the company and the customer.
Around the turn of the millennium, startups began using the web browser to deliver their products to consumers and companies. Soon afterwards, instead of paying a one-time fixed price to use the software, customers subscribed to access the software. You can’t buy Quicken or Quickbooks on a CD for one fixed payment anymore. Now it’s a subscription.


Though the difference may seem slight, this evolution of business model has several immense and crucial advantages that apply both to Internet businesses and the Internet of Things. First, companies can forecast their revenues much better because customers commit to paying for a specified period of time. Second, management teams can plan with greater precision, hence they are emboldened to sustain higher growth rates, increasing the value of their business. Third, subscription companies often require less capital to grow because many customers pay up-front for 12 months’ worth of service, which provides the company negative working capital. Effectively, the company borrows money from its customers at less than zero interest to finance its growth. In short, subscription business models empower tremendous growth with terrific capital efficiency.

Similar to the Internet, IoT enables offline companies to evolve their business models from transactional revenue to subscription revenue. That’s why it’s such a big deal. The Internet of Things has the potential to alter the way companies spend trillions of dollars.
GE, which has positioned itself as a leader in this transition, aims to convert its airplane turbine business from selling aircraft engines at a fixed cost with maintenance fees, to selling hours of flight time. In other words, instead of buying one engine and a service contract, a major airline would buy 100,000 flight hours from GE with a guaranteed level of engine uptime. GE benefits for the three reasons outlined above. Airlines benefit by winning greater predictability, fewer delays, and consequently greater profitability.

To enable this transformation, GE must instrument their turbines with sensors, relay the data from the sensors to GE data centers, process this data, predict when engines will fail and service them before-hand. They call this new business model the Industrial Internet. Clearly, the Industrial Internet concept applies to almost every part of the offline world, from copy machines to MRI scanners, from gas pipelines to off-shore drilling rigs.

Like the potential of the internet, the promise of the Internet of Things will take a while to become reality. To ask a huge multinational to transform their business model on-the-fly isn’t easy. And it goes without saying, startups pursuing opportunities in the Industrial Internet will accelerate this pace of change.
IoT isn’t a buzzword. It’s not a passing trend, a fad, or a transient meme. IoT is a fundamental reinvention of the way the largest industries do business which makes it one of the best business opportunities of the next decade

Fundable Startup Ideas That Matter

 

Fundable Startup Ideas That Matter

If there is any mystery in what kind of startup ideas are fundable, the good news is there are quite a few ideas that clearly are. Why don’t people jump on them right away? As you will see these ideas are just as useful as they are challenging. But not impossible.

A list of such ideas was compiled by Y Combinator. They come in large categories:

1. Energy – low-cost energy directly increases the quality of life.

Generally speaking, anything you can create to make energy from current energy sources cheaper will be revolutionary. Same goes for extracting energy out of new sources. The newer sources of energy are solar, wind, ethanol biofuels, biofuels from other sources, like Jatropha, geothermal, hydrogen, thorium, etc.

2. Artificial intelligence

This is just as revolutionary as it is overhyped. For all the talk, there has not been a practical breakthrough. Perhaps, it helps to point out there won’t be a single artificial intelligence machine. Rather products that will apply A.I. to create artificial creativity, artificial reasoning, etc. will be useful.

3. Robots

Robots are already here in manufacturing and military uses. There are few consumer robots yet. As with Garmin GPS, the breakthrough could come by adopting military technology for consumer needs rather than developing robotic hardware and software from scratch.

4. Biotech

The ultimate promise of biotech to make us disease free and forever young, seems to be almost within reach now. The Human Genome project is finished. Now it’s a matter of figuring out how to tweak the genes. There are moral considerations in this, too. A startup that addresses either side of this story would be revolutionary.

5. Healthcare

In the United States health care is far too expensive. And not as effective as it could be. A startup that would make medical insurance less costly, or better yet create a preventative healthcare system is worth funding.

6. Pharmaceuticals

Drugs should be developed faster, and less expensively. Preventative drugs, and drugs that enhance not patch up human health after the fact would be worth funding.

7. Food and Water

Between 1940s and 1960s Norman Borlaug led the Green Revolution that saved 1 billion people from starvation, especially after World War II. New uses of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers as well as new genetically engineered breeds of high yield crops were employed to greatly increase global food production. The new water and food crisis is inevitable as global population is rising. A startup that discovers new food sources, or optimizes the current ones, would save millions of lives. Same goes for water. Desalination of sea water that is commercially feasible will be a breakthrough.

8. Education

Connecting students to the right disciplines and the right teachers would make the world population smarter. Although you can’t scale good teachers physically, you can scale their reach through the internet, even in one-on-one teaching. Education being the key to when all the things on this list happen, this may be a starting point for those reading this who are not sure what to do.

9. Internet Infrastructure

Internet is still vulnerable to governments, natural disasters, hacking, and it’s own size. Products that will keep the servers safe, boost security, and invent better ways to store vast amounts of information are worth funding.

10. Government

Government is a very large client. Its software is routinely outdated or just plain bad. It can be done better with the efficiency of a startup.

11. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

It seems like it’s here but it’s not. VR and AR is still scary enough to not be a daily product most people use. A startup that makes it practical enough to “de-scarify” it is worth funding.

12. Science

Only universities and large companies can afford large-scale scientific research today.  They are not always efficient. Why couldn’t there be independent research labs? Perhaps, crowd-funded ones?

13. Transportation

No one likes to commute. Yet, the real estate market shows that commuting won’t go anywhere for the next while. What we can do is make commuting more convenient. Small personal vehicles running on clean energy would be the key.

14. One Million Jobs

Many jobs will inevitably default to robots and computers over the next years. That does not means humans will be out of work. People will fill new professions altogether. But someone needs to educate and train for those professions of the future. Someone needs to build the robots.

15. Programming

Even given how in demand programming is, there is still a high barrier to entry. Not much has changed since 20 years ago. Programmers are still educated in the same way and work with similar technical issues. New programming tool and education can change that.

16. Hollywood 2.0

New talent is no longer scouted out by agents. The audience of YouTube can directly select who they like. And those celebrities can directly interact with their fans. A startup can help people discover talent on YouTube.

17. Diversity

Some demographics have historically enjoyed less social and financial success. Does it have to be so? The education system and the work environment can be changed to make any ethnicity, race, and gender to perform at their top level.

18. Developing Countries

Many services and products are not available in the developing world simply due to poor logistics, not because of lack of demand. A startup that optimizes international delivering, imports, etc. is worth funding.

19. Enterprise Software

Software used by large companies has lagged behind the consumer market for a while. It’s time to change that. There is not reason you should even have to mail letters or fax receipts to get your refunds from large retailers, for example.

20. Financial Services

Unless you are particularly wealthy, financial services that help you grow whatever money you do have are almost non-existent. A startup that finds new ways to invest money for not-so-high-net-worth individuals is worth funding.

21. Telecommunications

Other than Skype and Whatsapp, there has not really been a breakthrough in how we talk to each other at a distance. Communicating could be faster and simple with more effective usage of broadband. Also, fewer ads.

The Hottest Startup Sectors In 2016

Which of the 16 major start of categories in information technology will reap disproportionate share of investment dollars in 2016? And which sectors are closely guarded secrets shielded by seed investors, that may have their breakout year this year?

Series A sector latency trends 2015. Source- Crunchbase

Using Crunchbase data, I analyzed share of dollars commanded by each of these 16 categories over the last five years to understand the trends in both the seed and series A fundraising markets. The chart above contrasts the pace of investment across the two markets by sector measured by % of total dollars invested anually. Seed investment is marked blue, and series A investment is marked red.
Advertising has seen its share of both series A and seed dollars fall from 15% to 5% in just five years, and indication of how out-of-favor this category of business has become amongst investors, because of the dominant network effects of Facebook and Google.
Analytics remains an important category for both markets. Startups building analytics products command roughly 10% of both seed and series A dollars.

Big Data, a term popularized in 2012 that has reached its apogee in 2015 according to Google trends increased from 2.5% of the market in 2010 to more than 7.5% of the series A market in 2015. Seed investors’ interest in Big Data has remained constant over the last four years while series A investors’ appetite continues to grow.
Cloud computing, which encompasses the infrastructure products used by developers to build services, has remained flat at 4% over the past five years despite some recent declines in 2013 and 2014.

Amongst investors, Digital Media is witnessing a renaissance growing from 2% share to 4% share in three years. Series A investors, though, have not shown has keen of an interest, or at least not yet. This may be a breakout category in 2016 for Series A investments. The challenge for digital media companies in the past has been the valuations at exit. Media companies trade at lower multiples than traditional software companies, but the impressive growth of new entrants like Upworthy may entice investors to reconsider.
A perennially important category, e-commerce is constant in the series A market at 15%, but declining in the seed market, falling from 15% below 10% in 2015. E-commerce companies require more capital in order to grow, in part because the margin structure is lower than software companies, and these businesses require a fair amount of working capital. The decline in seed interest may indicate seed investors expect an increase in cost of capital in the next few years, and consequently the follow-on dollars to finance e-commerce startups may not be available at the attractive terms they once were.


Since 2010, education startups have been on a tear in the seed market growing from 6% to now 10% in 2015. During the period, we two salient education companys have gone public: 2U, a SaaS online college company worth $1.3B and Instructure, a learning management system business worth $550M. Disclosure: Redpoint are investors in 2U.
Seed investors continue to invest roughly 4% of their dollars, but series A investors have not followed over the past five years.
FinTech, which includes startups in the Bitcoin ecosystem, have seen good and bad years, with a whipsaw decline in 2014, in which the early winners of the movement benefited from a massive increase in follow-on rounds, but new companies were starved for capital, followed by a banner year in 2015.
Games continues to suffer a steady decline from 7% of dollars to fewer than 2% of dollars. Exits in this category have been harder to come by than expected, with the exception of King.com. Meanwhile, high-flyers such as Angry Birds’ parent company Rovio haven’t been acquired or gone public, while facing increasing competition in the ecosystem and pressure to diversify their offerings.
Hardware/software combinations, category that includes connected devices like Fitbit, crested in 2014 had more than 5% of series A dollars, before falling to under 4%. Despite embracing combination hardware software companies at IPO, the public markets have not sustained high multiples for these businesses. GoPro lost 73% of its market cap in 2015 and FitBit is down 44% from its August 2015 high.
Health and wellness companies continue to receive increasing amounts of early-stage capital through 2014 before suffering a mild decline in 2015. The interest spiked around the ratification of Obamacare.

Marketplaces have rocketed from a 2.5% share of seed dollars to now 10%, buoyed by the massive successes of Uber and AirBnB. Uber is the largest taxi company in the world by market cap, but doesn’t own any taxis and AirBnB is the largest hotelier in the world by market cap, but owns no real estate. The astronomical growth rate and size of these businesses have seen investors pursuing new and novel categories, meanwhile’s series A investors have remained steady at 5% of dollars. Given the amount of seed investor interest, I expect many of these marketplaces to raise series A dollars in 2016.
SaaS companies following a similar trajectory to marketplaces, where seed investors are outpacing series A investment, but both are increasing their allocations from 5% to 15% and 10% respectively. The opportunity here, as readers of this blog will know, is still quite large, with less than 2% of traditional software market capitalizations having transitioned to SaaS, including the private company cohorts.
Security is the one category where series A investors invest substantially more than their seed counterparts. Series A investors allocate roughly 4 to 6% of their dollars each year to security companies, while Seed investors spend less than 1% in this category. If the persistent drumbeat of breaches and data leaks are any indication, we should expect more investment in security.
Precipitated by Facebook’s dominance in the category, setting aside a few outliers including Snapchat, social media investment has fallen from 15% to 5% across early-stage investors. This drop is highly correlated to the advertising implosion. Both businesses are intricately intertwined; social media businesses generate proprietary data assets that are used to create unassailable advertising platforms. Because of the increasing network effects Facebook imposes on both ecosystems, investors historically have perceived less and less opportunity in both of these categories.
In conclusion, big data, education, marketplaces, and SaaS should see strong investment activity in 2016. Advertising, games, and social media will likely see similar years to 2015 unless there is a discontinuity in those markets.
Perhaps digital media and fashion companies will break out from the seed investment market into the series A market. And it remains to be seen whether or not seed investors will follow their series A counterparts into security investments.

10 Rules for a great new business idea

What we have found is that if an early-stage founder can check off the ten items below, they have a solid foundation by which to start a company. You are absolutely not assured success if you can check off these items (nor are you assured failure if you can’t), but your chances of success are much, much higher if you can.
See the infographic below, and scroll down further for a full explanation:

1. You are a Passionate About It

Money is no substitute for passion, so every entrepreneurial journey should start with a passion. In fact, every aspiring founder who comes into the Founder Institute with a goal to “flip” their company is advised to drop out during the first week for a full refund.
There are two reasons for this;

1. In order to power through the hard times of being an entrepreneur, founders need to be working on ideas that they can see themselves still working on in 5, 10, or even 20 years. As Elon Musk famously said, “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” If you don’t have the requisite passion, your chances of seeing a project through are minimal.
2. Other people will easily be able to see through your lack of passion, like customers, investors, and press. For example, investors are typically concerned more about the “why you”, then they are about the “why” of your idea.

2. It’s Simple

“Think big” is a common mantra for entrepreneurs. And it is true – every entrepreneur should think big, because in most cases, starting a company with small ambitions can be just as much work as one with big ambitions. However, most people confuse the “think big” mentality into meaning they have to try and “boil the ocean” from the outset.
Big ideas are raised, not born, and they are most often raised by simple pain points. For example, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t wake up one morning and say, “I’m am going to create the social graph.” Instead, he set out to build a simple utility for Harvard students to see who was in their classes.
All the great businesses of our time have started with an incredibly simple idea, and then expanded upon that. If you can start by solving one problem, with one product, for one customer, you will be sufficiently focused and can have a great foundation for success.

3. One Revenue Stream

For some reason, the majority of early-stage entrepreneurs think that the more revenue streams their idea can support, the better. In the early stage, you need to be laser-focused on one revenue stream, and your idea needs to have a clear, singular revenue stream that can conceivably be large enough to support the entire business. If not, then its time to go back to the drawing board.
Also, it’s a common misconception that companies who focused on early user growth (ex. Google) didn’t have a revenue model in mind when they started. In reality, these businesses saw incredible early traction, and then the founders made a tactical decision to shift their focus to growth.
Can someone build a great company with a zero revenue mentality from the outset?  Sure. But building a business with no revenue stream in the hopes of becoming the next Instagram is like buying a lottery ticket – except that lottery ticket costs a lot more time and effort than $3.

4. Few Steps to Revenue

The more steps there are to revenue, the more complex an idea is to build out and execute.
This is a very important step during the ideation process: what are the things that need to happen before you make a dollar?  If you have to provide a service in order to collect data that will then be sold to advertisers, for example, you have a very complex business. That would be 5+ steps to revenue.  Try to limit the number of steps to revenue to around three from the beginning.

5. You Know the Customer

You need to understand very clearly who you are helping, what exactly they need, why they need it, how they would be willing to solve their problem, what they spend their money on, what goals they have in life… in other words, you need to have a very specific archetype.
A common mistake we encounter is that people don’t go nearly deep enough in their customer definition, or customer development. For example, many people will stop at “I am helping large companies hire.” In reality, they need to be able to say something like; “I am helping senior hiring managers at enterprise software companies in the United States with 400-800 employees. They are typically female, age 29-34, making an average of $58,000 per year. They report to the company HR lead, and their KPIs are X, Y, and Z, measured quarterly. They spend the majority of their day doing A, B, and C, and the biggest impediments to them hitting their KPIs include X, Y, and Z. Currently they are using products from companies A, B, and C, but those products don’t allow them to do these three critical things…”
Also, there’s nobody you know more intimately than yourself. That is why so many great businesses have been formed from personal need.

6. You know the market

In almost all cases, there are several people already devoting their lives to your idea. In order to win, you need to engulf yourself into your market in order to have the requisite insight and vision needed to win. Chris Dixon (Andreessen Horowitz) has said that you need to devote at least 10,000 hours on your market to get this insight – whether by working in the market, living the problem (ex. being a social media addict who then starts a social media company), and/or devoting that time towards research.
If you are not an expert on your market, then it’s time to get to work. There are no shortcuts here.

7. Sufficiently large market

Large and fast growing markets have the power to pull mediocre companies into greatness, and conversely, dying markets can pull otherwise solid companies into the ground. If you are going to devote your life to an idea, the market where you operate better be big enough (or growing at such a fast rate) to support a meaningful and enduring company.
Any market with less than 10 million people or multiple billions in annual revenue that is not growing at a very fast rate will be very hard to address, and is probably not worth your time. For example, even if you were lucky enough to be moderately successful in a $500 million market, you would likely still only have around a $50 million business.
You will die winning a small market, so be smart and don’t start your company in a graveyard.

8. Original secret sauce

Every great business has a secret sauce. Given, not every company starts out with that secret sauce, but building a company without a plan for how you will differentiate and win from the outset is simply foolish.
Also, your secret sauce needs to be original. If it’s obvious, that is almost always a bad sign. The best ideas have a secret sauce that is transformational, not incremental.
What secret do you know that will help you win?  For example, Tony Hsieh started Zappos with a very distinct insight and secret sauce – customer service. His transformational insight was that buying shoes online was really a customer service problem, and not a retail problem.

9. You have tried to kill your idea

It is very easy to fall in love with your idea – after all, it’s your baby, and almost nobody will tell you your baby is ugly. Positive reinforcements are very easy to find.
Your job in the idea stage is to find the things that make your idea bad. Try to kill your idea, and then, one-by-one, iterate and eliminate the negative aspects of the idea. The result will be a much more defensible foundation by which to start.

10. You are sharing your idea!

Nobody is going to steal your idea. Think about it – do you really think your idea is so great, so original, that somebody who hears it is going to go home, quit their job, and devote their entire lives to it?  And be successful?  The chances are near zero.
You need to be pitching your idea all day long to anybody who will listen, and incorporating all the feedback you receive into improving the idea. Feedback is an entrepreneur’s best friend, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs understand this better than anybody else. For example, on any given night, you can find 20 different events in Silicon Valley where people are openly sharing their ideas, and it is this collaborative, teamwork-oriented culture that leads to innovation.

6 Foolproof real estate startup ideas for the entrepreneur in you

Real estate is one of the few sectors that can singlehandedly change the state of a country’s economy. Take for instance the case of Indian real estate industry, property sales hit an all-time low over the last 2-3 years, due to which the country’s economy too seems to have experienced a downturn. But that hasn’t stopped the many builders from coming up with more and more new projects.
In this passing phase, we bring to you some of the best real estate-based startup ideas to help you truly take advantage of the gradually growing state of real estate affairs.

So, what are these ideas we are talking about? Read on to find out.

1. A Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform

How does this work? Well, imagine a property management startup that can find beaten and broken down heritage or old-time properties. Now, this company mobilizes funds through a crowdfunding campaign where people invest their money. This money could be utilized to refurbish the property to its old glory and then sold through an auction or with the help of a trustee. Once the property is sold the profit can be shared between all the investors.

2. A Company That Doesn’t Charge Commission

You might have seen a number of real estate based websites that let you lease flats, get property on rent, or buy new property. Usually, you’re required to pay a certain amount as commission if you want the said service to seal the deal. Instead, imagine a place where you don’t need to pay anyone anything. The whole idea is to get an entire platform where you can buy, sell, or rent properties without having to pay a hefty sum for the company providing the service. This will also get you access to the opposing party without any hidden agenda.

3. An Aggregator

You might have used Zomato, the famous food aggregator app, to find restaurants and nightlife destinations near you. Much the same, you can have an aggregator business specifically for real estate also, wherein you can search for specific terms, say for instance- 1 BHK apartment in Bangalore. You shall get the result with all the listings offered by all the top real estate listing and classified websites. This will make your house hunting experience less time consuming and ultimately easier.

4. A Tripadvisor for Tenants

Tripadvisor is one of the most popular sites amongst travellers because they offer reviews of almost every tourist destination and hotels a tourist can stay in. So, imagine a TripAdvisor-like app, which allows tenants to review the place they have stayed in. Such a site could not only help improve the house-hunting experience for others, but it can also help straighten out stubborn landlords who disregard the concerns of their tenants.

5. Rental Bidding Service

Imagine a scenario where a landlord lists a property with all the details of their property including description and pictures. Prospective tenants can bid for rent payment based on their choice and the highest bid wins the apartment and signs the contract. This service can also include the user’s profile, using which a pre-screening can be done to filter the landlord’s needs.

6. A LinkedIn for Real Estate

Don’t you think LinkedIn is one of the most efficient sites to find information about companies and individuals alike while still building a network? Why can’t that be done with real estate? The analogies would change slightly though.
In this case:
Company = Apartment
Boss = Landlord
Employee = Tenant
Colleagues = Neighbours
Groups= Housing community
Job History = Rental history
Recommendation = Rating
This idea can help breed a sense of togetherness and can improve the relations between a landlord and a tenant.

6 Simple ways to increase the traffic to your website

Ask a marketer or business owner what they’d like most in the world, and they’ll probably tell you “more customers.” What often comes after customers on a business’ wish list? More traffic to their site. There are many ways you can increase traffic on your website.

Here are few easy ways that can help you increase the customer traffic to your website.

1. Make it easy to find

User-friendliness should be at the top of your priority list . If customers get frustrated, the resource will be useless. Offer access to your knowledge base through a “Help” button available on every page of your site.Some businesses set up a search box for customers to enter their issue, leading them to relevant knowledge base articles. If they can’t find the appropriate answer, they can then see the option to contact your help desk directly.

2. Advertise

This one is so obvious, we’re going to look at it first. Paid search, social media advertising and display advertising are all excellent ways of attracting visitors, building your brand and getting your site in front of people. Adjust your paid strategies to suit your goals – do you just want more traffic, or are you looking to increase conversions, too? Each paid channel has its pros and cons, so think carefully about your objectives before you reach for your credit card.
If you’re hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, you’ll need to target high commercial intent keywords as part of your paid search strategies.

3. Be social

There are not just 1 but n number of ways you can take help of social media to increase your customer .Some of it can be

• Create a Facebook page for your blog. Use it to communicate with your readers and post a notification every time you publish a new blog article.
• Tweet all your posts when you publish them.
• Link to your posts on your Google+ page when you publish them.
• Use social media scheduling software like Buffer to post automatically on social media at the best times of the day.
• Link to your old posts periodically from your social media accounts.
• Join a collaborative Pinterest board and tap into the audiences of all the other bloggers pinning to that board.
• Regularly pin images from other sites. The more you pin, the more followers you’ll attract on Pinterest. Make sure your blog address is in your profile!

4. Blog regularly

Blogging is not about churning out a lot of words. Blogging is about providing helpful content that attracts the right audience. If you know what your audience cares about, what pain they are in or what challenge they need help with, offer a solution through your blog.
Don’t underestimate the power of blogging. It is a lot of work, but the value it provides to showcase your expertise and increase website traffic is worth the effort.

5. Write irresistible headlines

Headlines are one of the most important parts of your content. Without a compelling headline, even the most comprehensive blog post will go unread. Master the art of headline writing. For example, the writers at BuzzFeed and Upworthy often write upward of twenty different headlines before finally settling on the one that will drive the most traffic, so think carefully about your headline before you hit “publish.”

6. Offer to guest post

There are a lot of benefits of guest blogging in addition to helping you increase website traffic. You can gain more visibility with your audience, establish credibility and get more backlinks to your website from reputable sources. Invite people in your niche to blog on your own site. They’re likely to share and link to their guest article, which could bring new readers to your site. Just be sure that you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links, because Google is cracking way down on low-quality guest blogging.

10 Success lessons from Henry Ford

10 Success lessons from Henry Ford – “Rags to Riches” for entrepreneurs

Henry Ford is one of the most famous businessmen of all time. American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company, his foresight revolutionized the transportation industry and enabled many people to purchase their first car. Ford was very interested in mechanics from a young age, when he dismantled and reassembled a pocket watch at the age of 15 his father had given him.

Ford started his personal experiments on gasoline engines which was the beginning of his vast Ford empire. And his net worth, as per Forbes in 2008, is a cool $188.1 billion. From enduring the Great Depression to dealing with a high turnover rate at his factory, Henry Ford had to experience several failures that all added up to his incredible, historic successes. The best part is that if you need help overcoming an obstacle today, many of his life lessons are still applicable to the 21st century.

Here are the 10 Success lessons from Henry Ford – “Rags to Riches” for entrepreneurs,

1. Seek advice from others

One of the biggest mistakes that Henry Ford made was not listening to some of his most trusted advisers. Many people, his son included, warned him about the rising popularity of other cars, yet Henry Ford did not adapt well to these changes.
By the end of his life, although he was a wealthy man, Ford Motor Company was third and not first in the automobile industry. His company certainly did not lose any of the prestige it had in its earlier days, but had Mr. Ford kept up with innovations, he could have been more of a leader in the industry.

2. Anyone who stops learning is old

The mind is a terrible thing to waste. During our developmental years we must concentrate on learning — which leads us to thinking. And once we have learned to think we must never lose that ability.
Continuous lifelong learning, from both successes and defeats, not only encourages success but keeps us young. Today, we can dramatically increase the knowledge base from which we draw learning — from countless friends and followers who have shared similar experiences. It is an education without cost but brimming with value.

3. Create for everyone

Many successful business people have made their fortune catering to the rich, but Henry Ford created products that appealed to everyone. He even raised the salary of his factory workers to the point where they could actually afford the cars they were making. This led to reducing the turnover rate that plagued the Ford Motor Company in the early years.

4. “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.”

It has long been believed that all successes actually begin in the mind. In fact, it is generally accepted that both success and failure occur first in our minds before they present themselves in reality. Henry Ford believed strongly in this principle and lived by it during his daily business life. Most great men and women understand that whatever view you have of yourself in your mind will manifest itself in reality.
So the first objective in any successful venture is to commit mentally to that success — charting a course in your mind that will virtually guarantee positive empirical results.

5. Invest in what works

What makes Henry Ford so successful is that he took his business idea and made it bigger. Had he stayed with his original small factory, he wouldn’t be the business icon that we know today. Every time he wanted to improve his company, he invested in a much larger factory to produce more products.
He even diversified and started offering more services than just automobiles. Even though all of these changes were cost intensive, Henry Ford was willing to take the risk and invest in what worked.

6. “Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

The best thing about failure is that it is definite. Failure is an absolute. Once it occurs we are free to let it be and to set out once again with a fresh outlook. Social media provides accountable “partners” who will encourage us to dust ourselves off when failure occurs and to march forward with the lessons we have learned.

7. Have passion for what you do

If you don’t have enthusiasm for your work, then it’s time to find a new job! While you won’t have a perfect work day every day, having a passion for what you do will make everything more worthwhile. It might take some time to find this passion, but Henry Ford’s life lessons show us that they are worth fighting for.

8. Anything is possible

Henry Ford showed the world that anything is possible. He built an iconic company from the ground up, running it himself, buying out investors, and making it bigger and better every year. He did his research, learned from great business owners who were using assembly lines, and adapted it to fit his product.
He was an innovator and someone who championed personal growth. He treated his employees well and raised their wages. He encouraged others to do the same. Like any person, he was not perfect, but his story offers some great life lessons that can still be used to this day.

9. Always produce high quality work

Henry Ford once said, “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking,” and that is absolutely true. We should all be at our best at all times, not only when our boss is watching or our parents are watching.
Creating good habits and developing into good people is much more important than getting ahead through unethical methods.

10. “Don’t find fault; find a remedy.”

It’s so easy to place blame on other people or to point the finger at someone else for your mistakes. However, one of the most integral skills you can learn in life is taking responsibility for your actions.
Even better, take it one step further and find a solution to the problem. This will guarantee you much success in life