Aishwarya kicked of the morning summarizing his thoughts on finding startup success. Among many vocal discussions, few salient draws from them were to
- Validate your idea early and identify ways to thrive for the long run.
- Determine defensibility of an idea but not to obsess about it. It is important to understand the startup's core offering and continuously improve on that offering.
- Remember that raising capital is one of the many inputs to achieving growth. Raising capital without clear strategy on Product Design may lead to risk ignorance and complacency.
Rama shared his insight of UX design process at ThinkDesign and how he engages with his customers. Rama identified key steps in product design that aid in validating ideas by building low fidelity prototypes to full fledged UX models that assist in building successful products. He shared his experience on the desire for companies to invest in design initially but lose sight of it when schedule and scope pressures creep in. His advise to avoid the same mistake was valuable.
Sundar while explaining how DimDim (now Sales Force) came into existence highlighted the importance of not only identifying the pain points but also understanding which among those will the customer actually pay for. This exercise to identify features that a customer is willing to pay is very critical for startups to optimally utilize their limited resources.
The panel discussion highlighted the need to draw the right learning from failures. Many obstacles while starting up may occur but identifying them early on and adopting necessary course corrections are essential traits of a successful startup. To enable early identification, devising right metrics can help solve problems through data than gut.
The deep dive into Niranjan's venture, Playsportz was quite valuable both for him and the class. After the deep dive, one of the biggest takeaways for Niranjan was the importance to keep an open mind to entertain alternative execution strategies. After receiving couple of valuable options that he did not think while working on his business, he realized that stepping back and considering alternative strategies is as important as the initial business plan.
Thanks to Aishwarya for his efforts to bring the panel and class together.
