The startup journey

Breaking free of parentheses

Each one of us, if rightly probed, is sitting with an idea in his head. 

An idea that is grappling to come to life, to see the light of the day. At times, the idea comes to life, struggles a bit and moves on, fidgeting, wobbling and then moving on with steady steps before morphing into a startup that is cool and makes it to the headlines. A startup that means new guys coming in and ruling the roost. These new guys are volatile, non linear and disruptive. They contribute to the world’s GDP in an immense way.

We all wish to be there- amongst these high speed guys, these cool businesses and this new breed of entrepreneurs. It seems easy and cool. However, a closer look reveals that every stage is punctuated  with a new set of challenges. 

The common denominator in all these, however, is technology and digitization. 

For the sake of ease, let us divide the journey of a start up into 2  stages.

The Pre Minimum Viable Product(MVP) stage 

Well, in this stage, you just have a frizzy idea, nothing else. You have to create something out of it, breathe new life into it.

Metaphorically, since we talk of punctuations here- you are like a semicolon

(;)

There is something in you that feels it might be the end. Period. Well, you talk this with your family and friends and you feel that there is a comma. Yes, it can be turned into a product or  a service.

Everytime you think of it, your mind conjures up some eerie and romantic images- garages, hoodies, cans of coke and cups of coffee. There is no budget, no org chart, no fancy slide deck. You use funds from your savings, swipe your credit card, and borrow from family and friends. But you wish to make it happen. When you talk to Venture Capitalists, they seem to be interested but after a few meetings there is either a deafening  silence or a glaring darkness in their conversations with you. They do not wish to invest in you till you yourself have gone ahead with the idea to a certain extent. They would like to see something like an MVP- a Minimum Viable Product- a tech piece that conveys what you wish to convey. You have two bottlenecks here. One- a team that is able to pull it off, and two- the tech expertise.

Saguna gives you this twin benefit. 

Saguna becomes hyphenated partner between you and the VC.

(-)

Being a team of thought leaders that predates the company, we bring a quintessential outlook towards various industries and an unparalleled insight that cuts across sectors such as Healthcare, Fintech, Real Estate and the like.

We understand the bottlenecks of starting a new idea whether it is putting together a pitch, or making the venture capitalists overcome the hitch by actually presenting a tech piece before them- an MVP that leaves very little to imagination. 

This would help the venture capitalist believe that the idea is feasible and viable.

Our research team is nimble to work on any platform and flexible to switch gears between applications and platforms with minimum turnaround time. Having deep dived in startup markets and companies, we bring in ‘a blue hat strategy’ with us that gives you a global outlook and can weight lift your idea from any stage you are in and let it run smoothly within the venture capitalist funnel. 

 The post MVP stage

So, you made it to the knot hole. Welcome to another dizzying round where you would develop the product, recruit new people, raise  funds and market. This is the stage which would require a lot of churning. Since you have come this far, people start believing in you. You have to do a lot to sustain that trust. 

You are no more an idea, you are to build a real company- with a potent product, passionate people and proven processes. 

First, the MVP you had come up with needs to be a fully grown application that overcomes the challenges of various platforms, data security issues and performance conundrums. Second, the infrastructure (technical) and UI/UX/features (product) corners that were cut in the pre MVP phase  must be fixed to scale.

Here it becomes imperative to take  a look at some numbers.

Today, startups are a rage. As many as 1 billion startups are born every month but very few actually cross the mortality cusp. They cross the idea stage and dwindle afterwards.

The reason- this stage needs a complete change of mindset on the part of the entrepreneur. There would be a set of people who like the ideation stage. Ideation people may be just good at ideation.

(Period)

You might need a totally new team, build up new processes and build budgets. You cannot rest on your laurels, or choose to ignore what actually brought you to the idea- technology that makes the application, the website that works well. Now,you have got one round of funding, you would need the next sequential round of capital. At times, you may be able to raise some seed capital but fail to raise the next series. There are other times you may cross series A, come up with a beta launch and then fail to raise stage C funding. Remember, whatever stage you are in, you would need a k+1 round of funding. This primarily means, as you go from one stage to another and reach the G stage, it  makes sense to exit or be acquired rather than asking for more investment.

Remember, technology is dynamic and ever changing. With each passing stage, you may feel the need to migrate to a newer, leaner and lightweight technology, clear the technical debt piled up in the previous stage and make the system scalable and seamless.

We partner with you with regard to technology whether it is migration from one technology to another, stringing together stand alone systems and processes or cutting across hybrid platforms. We understand the stage you are in, deep dive into your start up, and help you get the investment you need- all in return for an equity share.

When you sit across the table and talk to a potential investor, your rating in his eyes improves when he knows there is another organization that believes in you. It is a cluster of beliefs, ideas and technology- all rolled in one.

This helps you multi pronged:

• Reduced time to market.
• Minimum cash holes
• Improves your Investor Cluster Score*
• Strategic Competitive Advantage

Well, are you quite there? Yes.

Have you overcome all the challenges of  a startup? 

You might have not, but you have galloped faster and farther from where you began. 

So, break free of the parentheses, put a comma and continue.

, …