Proto.in from the eyes of a presenter
Nithya and I attended proto.in, the startup event on 18th and 19th July. It was a very interesting experience. A lot of things I loved .. a lot of things that I found very wierd :)
However before I begin, I would like to mention that the organizing team works very hard at making this event a success. A great thing I noticed was that the organizing team was trying to help every presenting company and I could never see/hear them talk about any startup with any bias (good or bad). I think thats a really difficult but great thing to do.
Day 1
Proto is a two day event. Day 1 is different for presenting startups. After the keynote you spend most of the day in rehearsals fine tuning your presentation with feedback from the panel. This is fun and useful but the downside is that you miss most of the other talks going on in parallel. However as proto allocates 6 mins for presentation, its good to generally get a feel of timing on stage. The stage is pretty massive and can overwhelm noobies (I swear) so its good to go through the rehearsals. We got some feedback on our presentation but mostly it went fine. Unlike some of the other startups, we had a walk through and no ppt. I think eventually turned out to be good as the response to the demo was very encouraging.
There was an alumni dinner at the end of day one in Gourmet Gallery (hosted by proto) where we got to catch up with some of the earlier presenters. In particular it was greating chatting with Ankit and Nandini of instablogs. They have built an awesome community of citizen journalists from across the world and they told us about their experiences and challenges. Incidentally, they happen to be a couple as well.
Day 2
The second day of proto is the more exciting one. The day started with an introduction to proto and a video on where the companies that presented in previous proto editions stand. I liked the fact that proto mentioned that 3 companies have shut shop. I think its great to see that failure is no longer considered a bad thing. There was also a Proto for Dummies video which was pretty well done. I think the videos will be up on youtube pretty soon.
After the videos, the presentations started. We were the 6th company to present and the presentation was pretty well received in general. I think we were the only company that finished before time, a fact that WatBlog mentioned on their blog in our company profile! After the presentations the companies were given a stall where they could interact with interested customers/investors or press. I think this is where most of the business cards were swapped. At the end of the day there was an invite only networking dinner at Radisson. However I did not find many VCs there and so ended up hanging out other friends. I think a few people were sort of disappointed by the lack of VCs. I could spot the CEO of Indiatimes there but by the time I could get to him, he disappered. I think it was disappointing to see that most of the high profile people were hanging out amongst themselves and it was sort of difficult to approach them. The mindshare that we thought would happen, did not really happen.
General Observations
I did however talk to a couple of investors during the course of the 2nd day and to quite a few entrepreneurs/ CEOs. It was in fact pretty good talking to the investors. I had always heard that talking to investors gives you a good perspective and I think its true. I had also heard that there are quite a few senior startuppy people who give a lot of gyaan and try to pull you down and I think that is true too. In general its not very hard to find a few people in proto who look like they have come down there just to feel important by giving gyaan to clueless entrepreneurs like me. A lot of times having been in the US helps all the more in exuding superiority. There are also people like BharatMatrimony founder who talk quite modestly and sound very encouraging.
Blogosphere is buzzing with blogs about the companies that presented so I would not write about them. The companies I found most impressive were Lipikaar, Blink, PicPorta and Eko. I would add LifeBlob to the list but then I did not discover them in proto.
In general I think proto is a great place to be. You can meet a lot of interesting people/companies and have a great time besides getting some people excited about your product.
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Comments
Yep, Seriously. Take Rakesh’s advice :)
It was great to finally meet you in person Prateek. You are quite as awesome as you sound over the web - in our past interactions :)
Hey Prateek,
Great to have met up with you in Proto.in. Hope to hear a lot more from you now that we’ve met! You should seriously try submitting Muziboo to Stumbleupon!
Cheers,
Santosh
Congrats Prateek for the great show. Looking forward for more such treats !!!