on life, business, technology & all that

This is a take on business plan competitions from my experience at Eureka a bsuinesspkan competition conducted by IIT Bombay.

1. Dnt hope to get any venture funding even if you are the finalists

2. Expect Majority of the finalist to be from IIT’s itself for no real rhyme or reason

3. Irrespective if you win loose network with anyone from industry to participants to helpers take their email ids and keep in contact

4. The more practical a business idea the better

5. Dnt Promise low risk and high returns. You get found out there

6. When they ask what’s the barrier to entry, create one by including some secret algorithm behind your processes success even if there is none and give it a scary technical name, or just say the only real barrier to entry is constant innovation and we have a team that can deliver and then promise some mind blowing list of features. like if you were sergey brin you would say we would integrate our search engine with human thoughts and transmit the results just by thinking using xyz technology you get the point right? . But be sure they are definitely looking fo a barrier to entry even if half of them dnt knw what it means.

7. Team - find all senior position guys you know(ur dads frend who works in the bank, ur ex boss and put them in advisors list, if possible take a letter of intent to join you soon(tey dnt have to join really, its jst the game)

8.Find one Guy who has proved himself in marketing and make a proper marketing plan. If you market well sucky ideas make you money.

9. Get figures, get wrong figures but get figures, they love figures. Also No one gets right figures. The absurdest figure i have heard is “the market size is potentially 50 crores and since there is no competition we can potentially capture the whole market but if we can even get 10% of the market we are breakeven in 6 months.

When was the last time you did anything to your potential?

10. Show them you already got the company going(its okay to work frm your garage), they are not looking for ideas, they are looking for companies.
Show them you beleive in your idea and have already invested time, money, effort

11. Create a buzz before your final presentation.

The fact is the judges doubt their own abaility to select the winners so they go by what others are talking about

talk about your ideas, do a lot o self publicity, tell people prof shirodhkar of xyz university has asked you to submit technical paper in ieee on your project, and xyz venure capitalist has urged you to patent your idea, pass of papers, take email ids of people send them ppts, get feedback from iit profs The more poeple are talking about you the more your chances of winning

Last nugget, apply for a patent of your idea, no one cares if you will be awarded the patent, but there are companies who capture markets by saying we have “petent pending technology” people assume it must be nasa grade technology since noone knows nything about patenting