Business plan contest at 8th Mile, RVCE
I got an email couple of weeks back from NEN asking me if I would want to judge a business plan contest for RVCE Bangalore. I have been hitting the road with NEN for last couple of months, talking to students at various colleges in Bangalore about entrepreneurship and its quite a lot of fun. I agreed and yesterday I was there to judge the event with Harish and Nirmal. There were about 10 business plans (with very few on internet related ideas) and each team was given about 15 minutes for presentation and then we spent about 15 mins questioning the team about their research, assumptions etc. I would not really go into each business plan here for two reasons. One, it can be really boring and two, I am not sure if its a great idea to discuss the plans in public as serveral teams (student teams to be more precise) plan to implement their ideas once they graduate or even before that.
However there were a few things I realized during the presentation and also a couple of things I learned myself. I found a few common assumptions made by the teams that can be questioned very easily. Though I am quite sure that when these people graduate out of college and get some work experience, they would understand these issues better, I wanted to mention them here on the blog.
Focussing only on the technology and underestimating marketing
This was common in most of the startups. While talking about the team needed, expenses, the focus was on technology and marketing was either absent completely or given very little importance. I think in a real world product this is not true. Specially if your idea talks about technology adoption at banks or entertainment houses etc. You need to have a strong marketing team (and budget) to penetrate these markets. I would however like to know what other people feel about this
Over estimating word of mouth
This is something I run into time and again. Even though word of mouth is a very important factor in making your service successful, more often than not, its slower and smaller in magnitude than you may imagine. In case of Muziboo word of mouth did not take off untill we had reached a critical mass. I think the reason for that is that people don’t want to talk about a very new service. Its even worse if you are a bootstrapped venture. It takes time to achieve that critical mass and the level of confidence. Its worth the time and effort though . However if you expect a hot or not success, I doubt if most people would see it.
Spending capacity of urban couples, singles …
This came as a revelation to me. It may be a college effect or something like that (and I don’t mean that negatively) but most teams massively overestimated the amount of money people would be willing to pay for their services.
A good product will have adoption
In a way this is true but then not always and not as easily as some people may think. A good product may not sell only on its technical merits. Most often the teams quoted nike or ipod and other such stuff. The products no doubt are brilliant but there is a huge marketing budget for these companies and people tend to overlook that.
Mission Statement v/s Mantra
I am inspired by Guy Kawakasi and I think it shows in my every blog post. If you have watched the art of the start video you would know what a mantra is. Its the three or four word summary of why your companies exist. A mission statement on the other hand is a complex play of words that conveys nothing in the end but looks important (and cliched). Of the 10 presentations yesterday I think only two had a great mantra and almost everyone had a mission statement (I swear). Sitting through that I could not help but appreciate the genius that Guy Kawasaki is and how important it is to have a mantra to have a punch in your pitch.
Now coming to some of the things that I just loved about some of the teams (and some of the learnings for me)
Neat Presentations
Some of the teams had absolutely amazing presentation skills. This includes both their slides and delivery. Other teams had slides with a lot of text which they were reading out to the audience. Its a no brainer which one was better. When I say better I don’t mean the product but a clean presentation goes a long way in delivering your idea. I learnt that very well yesterday.
Energy
I just loved the energy and passion of some of the teams. I think even if they have some flaws in their plan, they can surely fix all that with their energy
Do it v/s plan it
The team that won the first place was Ashwa Racing. Their presentation was crisp, plan solid and they had a punch in the delivery. I was not surprised because they have been working on their projects for years now and for real. Checkout their website and checkout the photo of me in their car below. I went to their workshop with them after the event ended. I think it proves that nothing can bring in the clarity that some real work experience can bring to your plan.
All in all it was great fun and good learning. I have not even mentioned how much I learnt by interacting with Harish and Nirmal.
Tags: entrepreneurship, nen, muziboo, rvce, business plan
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Comments
Prateek:
Thank you very much for contributing your ideas on marketing and technology. While technology as we know it is in its infancy, where would we be without strategic marketing? We can have all the technology in the world and we must harness and focus this energy to experience an effective outcome.
Namaste
Sincerely,
Matt
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Interesting stuff Prateek. Definitely your blogpost speaks of value. Keep writing bud.
Cheers