Living 25 hours per day

1. Spoke to a young woman entrepreneur in Mumbai who runs a social enterprise for social enterprises. She was skeptical of youth entrepreneurship (especially in the social domain) for she felt that that there are lots of them coming up new organizations and not enough folks ready to commit themselves full time to it. The main concern for her was the amount of resources going into it (in terms of funding/time spent) to promote these activities. She opined that there should perhaps be more of these young folks spending time at an already established startup, learn from there and then move on (instead of start directly from school). This would increase the likelihood of them actually coming up with a sustained startup, when they actually do have one of their own.

2. Spoke to another person, who had c0-founded a startup (they recently closed their Series A) in Bangalore, who says that events like 54 hour startups, or Startup Weekend are good for visibility, but not sure how much of an impact is it creating in India (in terms of getting new startups up and running).

The interesting common factor here is this: Growing number of young startup founders are opining that there seems to be a skew in the ratio of smart, committed people joining startups as compared to starting something on their own (be it part time or full time) and sustaining it.

Few Questions this brings about:

Is hiring that big an issue? Based on my 3 years in the ecosystem, I would say yes, definitely.

Should the smart folks who are going hanging out at Startup Weekend or the hazaar hackathons around the country, be looking at early stage startups, instead of startup ideas of their own? Well, an increasing number of entrepreneurs tend to echo: Yes.

Based on the Delhi EDU Startup Weekend I attended a couple of days back, here were some of my observations which are applicable to existing startups and how they could benefit from such an event:

• It is a great way to scout for existing talent.

• It is a great way to brainstorm on technological extensions to your product offering.

One example being Earth Labs Schools. They used this Startup Weekend to get Enviral out, an app which uses mobile gaming to spread their core message of  using schools as a laboratory for promoting sustainability. Now chances are that the team that made this product, might most not join Earth Labs. But Earth Labs now has a prototype out, which it can try to improve upon.

p.s: If young folks are going out and starting companies, it is a good thing and not a bad thing. My personal opinion is that it is responsibility of the startup hiring to have a compelling value proposition. If a young guy is starting something due to the owner angle, the recruiting startup should seehow they could bring that ownership angle to their startup environment (a new project? a new feature of an existing product?) If the young guy is starting something because he likes the fame (there are few who feel that way), perhaps the recruiting startup can see how to provide that gratification to the hire. But it is the responsibility of the startup, not the hire.

p.p.s: Loved how this Startup Weekend was organized at TLABS (and their emphasis on customer validation). Having such events organized at incubators is crucially important. Also, in terms of success, I’d say, if every such event can get even 1 startup up and running (for example how UberLabs got started in the last Startup Weekend at Delhi), I’d say the proof of concept is valid. There is then the spill over effect of getting teams together, and serendipity of stumbling upon possible new ideas.

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