I can honestly say that nothing in the past, compared with what I was about to experience.

London

Our first stop was London, one of the most influential and fast growing global startup hubs and home to wildly popular startups such as Spotify and Shazam. A late flight led me to miss the first morning meeting, but lunch was with Saul Klein, a prominent European VC with Index Ventures. Saul spoke about his experience at the executive team of Skype and later cofounding LoveFilm, which was UK’s Netflix. We discussed how London had evolved rapidly into a startup hub and Saul expressed his unbridled enthusiasm for India as the future of global product startups.

Next we headed over the London Business School for a short conference on the future of Indian entrepreneurship. A packed audience of LBS entrepreneurs and London based investors in the LBS auditorium listened in rapt attention to Rajesh and the panellists discuss the challenges and opportunities facing Indian entrepreneurs, after which all the GSF startups presented and fielded questions from the audience. Seedcamp, a GSF partner European incubator was also in attendance, and two Seedcamp startups also presented their businesses.

The evening ended with a mixer at LBS, where we got the opportunity to really mingle with the LBS entrepreneurs, understand their businesses and the challenges they faced. As fellow entrepreneurs we related to each other’s struggles and learnt from our shared experiences.

Berlin

Berlin is one of Europe’s lesser known startup hubs but one that has been recently gaining prominence. A lot of European entrepreneurs from London and Paris are starting up in Berlin. There is a local joke that if you pick any coffee shop in Berlin, you’ll find a struggling entrepreneur sitting inside working away. The city is also famous for its art, and every second person is a budding designer or artist. This incredible confluence of art and tech makes for an interesting startup ecosystem. What was most remarkable was that at an event in Berlin I bumped into a fellow Indian entrepreneur who turned out to be an alumnus of my B-school. Even he, with no previous experience in Europe, had recently moved to Berlin to startup.

At Berlin we visited startups such as EyeEM, a unique photo sharing based social network, as well as Founders Fund which was an incubator supporting several startups. The German startups were all incredibly enthusiastic about India as a potential market and were eager to launch in India as soon as possible. India’s sheer size, the fact that it was mobile-internet-first and would soon have hundreds of millions of users on smartphones browsing the internet really excited these product startups.

Next stop was USA.

New York & Boston

The GSF delegation spent a day each in New York City and Boston.

In NYC we got Hacker Earth, a fellow GSF startup featured on CNBC, visited startups like ShopKeep, had a few drinks with the awesome team at Saavn, learnt how General Assembly was promoting entrepreneurship, met with Indian bureaucrats and businessmen at the Indian Consulate, presented to another packed audience at Columbia Business School and I still managed to get a few hours to give some of my fellow GSF entrepreneurs a walking tour of Manhattan. Yup, all of that in just one day.

The next day we took an early morning train up to Boston and spent the morning understanding MIT’s entrepreneurship development program, engaged with several MIT startups and also spent a few hours exploring the fascinating MIT Media Labs. At the Media Labs we got demos from several teams working on amazing projects such as a camera that can take photos from around corners, or a spoon that tells you when to stop eating. Pretty cool, right?

The afternoon was spent in a conference at Harvard Business School, where again the GSF startups presented and we met some Boston based celeb entrepreneur such as Dharmesh Shah, cofounder of Hubspot. Dharmesh spoke about a lot of the silly things that entrepreneurs do such as ‘going stealth’ and gave some useful tips on how to fail fast and stay lean.

But before the feeling of being at HBS could sink in, it was time to fly out to global epicentre of entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley.

California

Despite having lived for several years on the US East Coast, this was my first visit to California and I was quite blown away by the thought of spending several days in the same place where most of the world’s most amazing companies were born.

Every city we had gone to, we had taken amazing weather with us, even in the otherwise cloudy and rainy London. The sun and clear skies were our constant companions and as I looked out of the hotel window at the Golden Gate Bridge I knew these would be a few very special days.

On the first day, we had breakfast with Whatsapp and lunch with Evernote. For me personally, I was blown away by our meeting with Jan Koum, a Yahoo veteran and Whatsapp cofounder. Whatsapp is this incredibly small and incredibly focussed startup with everyone working on engineering except for just one guy handling the business side of things for what is definitely a billion dollar startup. In fact the day we dropped by was the day after rumors were adrift of Google offering Whatsapp $1bn. Jan spoke about how Whatsapp was furiously focussed on their user base and wanted to keep their product as minimal as possible, unlike several of their feature-rich competition. They were driven by their passion to be the default common denominator when it came to communication and their product was evolving as the needs of their user base evolved. I was quite amazed by what I can only describe as their meditative focus on the pulse of their users. It was unlike something I had seen at any of the startups elsewhere.

The afternoon was spent with Evernote and the culture was a dramatic contrast to Whatsapp. Evernote embodied the bright, boisterous, open and colourful atmosphere that many of us have come to associate all silicon valley startups with. The guys at Evernote spoke about their passion for building nothing less than a great product, and how it was more important for them to get their users to stay rather than pay, and how their philosophy was to be long – term greedy. They shared some valuable insights on the freemium model and how even a company of their size still struggles with the balance. Their biggest lesson however was that there was no point optimizing and that the founding team just needed to pull things out of thin air if required and just move on. Metrics needed to be tracked obsessively ofcourse, but there was no point in wasting time over taking a decision.

The evening was spent at Stanford Business School and another great few session of mentor talks and GSF presentations.

The next day saw us visit Wheelz, which I thought was an awesomely cool startup which was a Zipcar for owned-cars. It allowed regular people to rent out their cars for a few hours and make some money while they weren’t using their cars. They had some really cool technology and it seemed to me like an awesome idea in a market like the US. We spent the afternoon at Zynga’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco and we behaved like kids let loose in a videogame arcade. Perhaps that’s because we were let loose in a massive videogame arcade. Zynga’s office is by far one of the coolest which can be imagined, with arcade games and game consoles all over the place. It’s not for the easily distracted.

Our visit to California ended that evening over drinks with the GSF team and several local entrepreneurs. As the night grew on and conversations carried through, we regretfully realized that an amazing and transformative experience had come to an end. It was an incredibly journey put together by the GSF team and the exposure to global entrepreneurship and the relationships forged will linger on for a long time. The GSF world expedition helped me grow as an entrepreneur and more importantly helped showcase India as an emerging entrepreneurial hub. I strongly believe that entrepreneurs the world over face similar problems and navigate equally difficult paths when they attempt to build companies, and being able to facilitate dialogues and build relationships with them was a tremendous learning experience for me. The GSF team has grown a lot closer as a result of this expedition. I definitely understand my fellow GSF entrepreneurs and their businesses a lot better and I think we will work a lot more closely together in the future. Such experiences serve to bring us all closer and motivate us all to work harder, face the fire and persevere to succeed in our goals of building scalable global businesses.

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He sat us down and excitedly drew the fundamentals of the GSF programme on his table.  The who’s who of mentors that you met five times a week, training on all aspects of running a business, a dedicated Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) to support your start-up, and finally pitching to 400 investors at the GSF conference.  He finished with:  “Basically, the idea is that in the next seven weeks we will change your life.”

Looking back six months on – GSF delivered. 

In all honesty – we went into the programme overly focused on raising funds.  We had little experience in the domain – and thought it was the perfect opportunity to find out more.  Having been consultants for the previous six years, having managed big teams, presented to CXOs at Fortune 500 companies and advised hundreds of them on how to run their business – we thought we knew how to build a strategy and run a business.

As my co-founder Saps wrote in week 2 of the programme – we quickly figured out how little we knew.  I’ll not go into detail on the fundamentals of what we learned:  Talent Is Key, Believe In Yourself But Listen To Others, Investors Follow People Not Plans, You Don’t Know Anything:  Accept It, Learn the Lingo.

Rather – I’ll focus on the tangential outcomes of the seven weeks.

• Build Relationships With the Best and Biggest Start-Up Network in India:  5 days a week, 3 mentors a day, 7 weeks. Do the Math!  At the end of the programme – we’d built relationships with experts in different fields (yes, and with VCs) who will now meet with us to brainstorm, help us recruit, introduce us to an investor, etc.   99% of people will now take our calls after we have the GSF label.  Those that won’t – well, they’re missing out on the ride to revolutionize the second hand product market in India.
• Understand How to Build A Scalable Business:  we’ve pivoted twice (once during the Accelerator, once after).  But the advice and mentoring we received was fundamental in helping us understand how to build a scalable business.  You can’t meet and discuss your business with over 100 experts in the field and not come out enriched by the experience – but more importantly, identify the flaws in your business and the strengths, and identify solutions to get around those.
• Sell Your Business:  presenting in front of 400 investors and working a room was a fun (if nerve-wrecking at the time) experience.  Now – we’ve got no fear when presenting and selling our business.  We can still improve of course but the fundamentals were put into place by constant practice and drilling with VCs, successful entrepreneurs, and EIRs.
• Learn How To Run Your Business:  getting the who’s who of experts to train you is bound to have an impact.  Not only do you get ex-entrepreneurs pushing your business along at the speed of light – and they’ve all been there, done that.  You also have the CMO of Google teaching you about Online Marketing, the CTO of Leading Tech Firms brainstorming your tech issues, Venture Capitalists reviewing your funding plan.  Need I say more?

If you’re looking to refine/validate your business model, learn how to pitch and close, expand your network in the start-up community, and learn how to run your business – then the GSF Accelerator is invaluable. If you’ve don’t need help on any of this – then you’re probably already a successful entrepreneur or you’re not an entrepreneur (yet?).

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Jason Richelson and David Olk of ShopKeep

Earlier in the day, we sat down with Jason Richelson, David Olk, and Sandhya Rao of ShopKeep POS.  Jason discussed his vision of an iPad point of sale system in the cloud.  What does this leverage?  And, really, what is ShopKeep doing differently from everyone else?  Let’s start with a story.  A true story.  Jason co-founded a grocery and wine store about eight years ago in Brooklyn, New York.  They had a point of sale system from a competitor (a large software company), and eventually started having technology problems.  He says, “It dawned on me that after fixing these things and fire fighting all these problems, it was like ‘You know what?  We have to switch to a cloud based point of sale.’  I did a little searching in 2008 for a cloud point of sale, and I didn’t find any.”  So Jason got started.  Unique to ShopKeep is their understanding of what goes on behind the counter.  Their system helps retailers make smarter business decisions by giving them the real numbers they want to see, where they want to see them, and how they want to see them.  There’s a lot of work to be done, but maximizing what can be done in the cloud is key.  General Assembly opened their doors to give us a glimpse of what goes on in the classroom of their enviable co-working space.  Thanks, NYC.  We’ll be back.  One day just isn’t enough.

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For entrepreneurs eager to land start-up capital from angel investors, there are three things that everyone seems to be saying/doing to different degrees of success: “innovation,” “almost unlimited market,” and getting carried away with the pitch. All start-ups strive to innovate by presenting a real solution to solve a real problem. It’s simple, and this is what good start-ups achieve. Yet, some entrepreneurs throw the word into every sentence, without ever explaining how their product innovates. Innovation is just a word. Show us how you innovate.

When people are looking for money, they tend to tell the one holding the purse strings what they think he or she wants to hear. If you have a product that you’re trying to sell, wouldn’t you say that there is an almost unlimited market for it? It is better to have a realistic understanding of your market. Sounding too grandiose is a surefire way for investors to lose interest fast.

Now, we get to the passion pitch.

Being upbeat is good, being a snot is not. Doing your homework before you speak is essential.

Passion is not a substitute for substance. It can’t beat knowing your product like a good parent knows his or her child. Knowing your product means knowing its strengths and weaknesses, and working to improve upon those weaknesses. There is such a thing as quiet passion: it means knowing that your product is great without being annoying. It means knowing what your product can do, what it has the potential to do, and what is unlikely. It means knowing the code, the product’s marketability, the unsexy details that are not exciting but essential to functionality, and, ultimately, the potential possibility. Dream big, and prove it.

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It is important to introspect and understand the reasons behind your failure. But how does one go about it, quietly in your thoughts or openly in discussion with others? Having gone through this cycle recently, I recount my experience, what worked and what didn’t. What options are available and how to align opportunities with one’s long-term goals. What did I do to move on while keeping the startup passion alive? I will share my thoughts and experiences as a recently failed entrepreneur.

[slideshare id=16715443&doc=brijfailconpdf-130223054759-phpapp02]

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I’ve seen him create something out of nothing in the last two years. To get the brightest minds to believe in an idea:some to fund it, some to fuel it takes a lot. 

The first GSF was an experiment. A man possessed of belief, inspired by an idea connected to people who had acted on their belief’s and profited from it. They became the angel investors. A year of searching found startups with notions, hypothesis and beliefs that were honed by the GSF team over a few months.

I remember the first GSF. Nervous presenters on stage. Some triumphed, some tanked. Seasoned VC’s watched and in breaks did the merry dance of courtship, hectic card n conversation exchanges took place. At the end some had succeeded and an idea had turned into a reality.

Year two and there was an Incubator programme, EIR’s, Accelerator programme and VC’s from across the world. A lot more happened. Networking evening, art auctions. Some beat their own drum others followed the beats of drum cafe!!

I am now at the EIR conference in Goa. Let me say that the idea of EIR’s has excited me from the beginning. Young talent willing to burn the midnight oil, looking for the next big business to participate or help build. Many of them have left consulting firms, startups to look towards India. There is a jingoism about the India story and I love that. Even those not born here believe in it. All search for the game changer. India offers a myriad of challenges and opportunities which they seem to embrace happily. Having interacted with a few during GSF I can tell you that their enthusiasm and energy, their willingness to participate and share made them stand out from the guarded conversations I have had in the business.

So what is the future for GSF and EIR’s? Having spent time with Rajesh I have now got used to his process. We were exploring an idea together recently. Over breakfast he would throw questions at me. They were prods n pushes. Often interrogative in style. Rajesh would by the end posit his hypothesis. It would be succinct, challenging and often throw up an idea which would be sexy and scary.

Sitting here as an observer I see the same done with a larger group. The questions are many. Are we looking to make money, or facilitate ideas. Are we inward looking at the India story or should we reach out. What does the process give to EIR’s? Would they do it for free, for equity or would they even pay for it? Somebody shares an observation. We were a startup for startups!! We were a belief in a world filled with cynical VC’s! Quick comes a reply, “But cynics make u question and are needed for a process too.”

Rajesh puts a question to everyone: What would you do if you ran GSF? The young EIR’s and a few of us throw in our two bits. Some are passionate, some pensive yet one heard some interesting ideas. Will we generate funds, build a billion dollar company, stay rooted in india or find new roots elsewhere. Focussed or widespread. Non tech or tech. World tour, white papers, HR practices for startups. Ideas and more ideas till the afternoon had overheated with the conversation or the Goan sun!

I see a mix of emotions on people’s faces as I depart early. Dreamcatchers often need to get into a trance before they get somewhere. Perhaps that’s the state here too! Maybe this will crystallize into something over the evening. I would love to know how this chapter in GSF history ends.

Like me many during the course of the day expressed their belief in Rajesh too, the question is what does he believe??

The post I believe appeared first on GSF India.

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn’t already know.

I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned round to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being.

She said, “Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?”

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze.

“Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked.

She jokingly replied, “I’m here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids…”

“No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

“I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake.We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months, we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this “time machine” as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I’ll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium.

As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, “I’m sorry I’m so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I’ll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know.”

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, “We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day.

You’ve got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.

We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it! There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up.

If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old.

If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets.

The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets.”

She concluded her speech by courageously singing “The Rose.”

She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.

At the year’s end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.

Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it’s never too late to be all you can possibly be. When you finish reading this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they’ll really enjoy it!

These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.

REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.

We make a Living by what we get, We make a Life by what we give.

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Himanshu Geed, Founder of Gingr, a startup at GSF Accelerator:

As much as I am fascinated by heights, they surely scare me to hell as well. This 2013, bungee jumping is on the very top of my list. I want to climb up there on the cliff, shout out loud and jump. I face my fear and get over with it. Period.

Fear could be of different types: it could be fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of losing something or someone, fear of getting caught, or fear of the unknown. Don’t worry, it’s alright to have it. I’ve had some too. And maybe that’s why I can tell from experience that fear is a shameless beast. You could try ignoring it, you could try burying it deep down or you could even deny its existence. Take it from me, I’ve tried it all – nothing works. The good news is, now I (sort of) know what does!

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.” – JRR Tolkein

Conquering fear is a 3 step process: 1) Understand your fear. Find out if it’s real/logical or irrational/stupid.  2) Accept your fear. You’ve got it because you deserve it. 3) Face it. Be brave and overcome it.

One of the big encounters with the fear monster happened when I left my college for my startup and joined GSF Accelerator. The fear of dropping out of the college and entering into the real world was immense. I spent sleepless nights pondering over some really bad imaginary scenarios that could possibly happen and make my life miserable. I was restless, tensed, unable to perform to the fullest. Fear had taken over me.

That was when I realized that interestingly, we’re not afraid of the fear but of the story behind it.  For instance in my case, when I say I’m afraid of heights, I’m more afraid of the story that I imagine of what would happen to me at a height – I could fall! Fear is imagination running wild in a negative direction. It’s like the pull of gravity – very destructive if not controlled properly.

At such juncture it’s quite important to let it out by talking about it with your friends, family or with your mentors. Take my word for it, you’re bound to get good help. For me, at GSF, it was Rajesh who helped me conquer my fears and get over it.

This 2013 find out what it is that you fear, and conquer it. In other words:

“Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.” ― Chuck Palahniuk

Rajesh Sawhney, Founder of GSF Accelerator:

Rohan is back home from the US for his winter break and I’ve finally had the opportunity to enjoy some “father-son” time with him after a long couple of months. We’ve been having discussions on a wide array of topics, ranging from the beauty of mathematics to the Freudian interpretation of dreams and myths, the wave particle duality of atomic physics, the science behind human consciousness, and even mathematics in music (while discovering great music on Spotify together…do listen to Imagine Dragons and Of Monsters and Men). Apart from delving into these mysteries of the world, both of us have also been reflecting on what we have learned about ourselves in the past few months. Just the other day I asked him what, if anything, he had learned from his mother. After a minute of introspection, he answered “calmness.” In a moment of self-indulgence I asked him if he had learned anything from me. He replied, rather spontaneously, that I had taught him “fearlessness.”

I remember having a similar conversation with Hima, one of the EiRs@GSF Accelerator, a couple of weeks into the GSF Accelerator programme. She too had mentioned that I was fearless. At that time, I thought she was being polite, and really thought I was reckless.

I wasn’t like this too long ago, and certainly not like Himanshu and his team of fearless founders @Gingr. All the three founders were final year students at IIT, Delhi (a dream institution for most young Indians) when they approached GSF. I asked them during one of the interview sessions how they would manage building a startup and deal with the pressures of studies at the same time. I was taken aback and I must say even a little afraid when this group of young students informed me of their decision to drop out of their final year at IIT Delhi and face the challenges and pressures of the real world at the GSF Accelerator instead. They had confronted their demons and chosen to follow their dreams.

That night I confronted my demons. That night, I thought about the choices I had in my life. I thought about the outcomes of those choices when I followed my mind and made rational decisions v/s when I followed my true passion. I thought about my regrets. And most importantlly, I thought about what really matters.

And then at the dawn of the day, almost magically, I lost my fear, and have since started to discover the courage of life. I remembered what Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces said, “Life is always on the edge of death… one should lack fear and have the courage of life.”

As James Joyce once said, “History has been a nightmare from which I am trying to wake”…. and I realised that he best way to awake from it is not to be afraid.

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The Problem (The Crocodile)

Once upon a time on the banks of river Narmada, there was a village named Vedeshari where everybody was unhappy. All villagers were unhappy because of a crocodile who lived in the river. Whenever women went to the river to fetch water or wash clothes, the crocodile would scare them away. Even children were not able to swim in the waters lest the crocodile attack them. The crocodile had mastered the art of taking villagers by surprise and attack them. The things were out of control.

One day all villagers gathered together and decided to present their problem to Vakil Saheb, the most respected person in the village. Long time back he used to be the Sarpanch of that village – the highest decision-making authority. He listened to villagers problem and promised them to come with some solution in few days. His granddaughter, a wise girl who was studying in Bombay and visiting him during her school holidays, overheard the problem of the villagers. She resolved to help her grandfather and the villagers.

The Solution (The Wise Girl)

The wise girl walked to the river and called out the crocodile. The crocodile had its moment of happiness when it saw its new prey and started swimming faster to attack the girl. But as soon as it opened the mouth to attack her, she put a stick straight inside its mouth and the stick got stuck in its mouth. The crocodile got helpless and started begging her to remove the stick. The wise girl said “I will remove the stick only if you promise that you will go far away from the bank and never trouble the villagers”. The crocodile agreed. She removed the stick and the crocodile swam away far away never to be seen. All villagers lived happily and thanked the wise girl.

The Startup

Startups start with problems. You find a problem in the world and you solve it. This is called problem-solution fit. The crocodile in the river was a real problem and villagers would have done anything to get rid of it. Check 1.

But to grow your startup you need to see if this problem is big enough that you can replicate this problem-solution fit to a bigger market. So you answer things like how many villages exist that are suffering from this crocodile problem or when will this crocodile you scared away will start haunting the villagers again. This is when you are trying to find a product-market fit. Check 2.

But how will the wise girl provide this crocodile scaring services to 5000 other villages. She will have to build team, hire people, train them to stick sticks inside crocodile’s mouth and do many more things. The work has just started and now its all about executing (she has also started calling herself a CEO). Check 3.

But there is no startup without hiccups. Some smart chaps in the nearby village poached her employees and started to learn this art of scaring crocodiles. And they started to create new startups competing against her’s. Even the bigger businessmen from nearby cities started getting into the market of scaring crocodiles. The wise girl started thinking about creating relationships with village heads, create better and cheaper methods to scare crocodiles, offer better service to villagers, getting exclusive rights from village Panchayats etc. She wanted to get unfair advantage over her competitors. Check 4.

It was no longer a startup now. It morphed into a sustainable business and fledgling organization. Check 5.

She started looking at other problems (new startup).

PS1: The idea about sticking the stick inside crocodile’s mouth has been stolen from a chacha chaudhary comic book I read many years back.

PS2: The answer did not turn out to be interesting enough to my daughter. I guess I will have to work harder. Suggestions?

–

Lalit writes about his learnings at http://lalitkeshre.com. Twitter: @lkeshre 

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Now this post is not about Rajesh Sawhney. This post is about our brave founders, who have been through what will they will always remember to be one of the most intensive periods of their startup journey. They have got conflicting opinions on target customers, on business model, on marketing mix, on technology platforms, on hiring strategies. They have been told that they are copycats, that the market they want to address doesn’t exist, that they don’t know what it’s like to execute in India. Heck some of them have even been told to shut down!  But, the important part here is that they are still here. (Entrepreneurship is about survival right?) Each and every company we selected is still here and our founders are fired up for the forum next week. A post by Mark Suster on what it’s really like to be an entrepreneur (Entrepreneurshit) encapsulates some of the experiences our founders have already had in the first 7 weeks of their journey.

Even though I ‘work’ for a startup, reading Mark’s blog and being an EIR @ GSF makes me wish I were back in the game. So here’s to our founders, who are in the game, and who have shown an unwavering sense of commitment and sincerity to their cause. May the force be with them on Monday when they stand up in front of 300 of the best minds in the country and the world, and share with them their dreams and visions for the venture they are building….

So, are we excited yet? I certainly am….

J

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