Lessons in Starting Up

The startup fever has reached tinseltown across the globe. Over the last several years a growing number of celebrities have been getting into the startup game. With their dynamic PR, rigorous marketing, and wide-spread network, celebs make for very powerful angel investors. From Ashton Kutcher to Salman Khan, many stars have made successful individual angel investments in deals like Facebook, Skype, Foursquare, Airbnb, Dropbox and others. Here’s a list of some of the most successful startup investments made by celebrities in recent years – 1.  Jared Leto & ‘Nest’   Little known to the world that Jared Leto, actor/singer and academy award winner (For his performance in Dallas Buyer’s Club), is involved in several technological companies &  start-ups, his favourite being reportedly, Nest- a connected device company that Google bought for a whopping $3.2 billion, in January, 2014.The company was founded by Tony Fadell & Matt Rogers,  both fond remembered as pioneering engineers at Apple Inc., in the iPod & iPhone teams respectively. The two, joined Google after the acquisition. 2. Salman Khan & ‘Yatra.com’ Indian Travel & ticketing portal Yatra.com, started seven years ago with a mammoth investment from American Venture Capitalists Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital. Bollywood superstar was then roped-in to endorse the brand in an ad-for-equity deal, where he was handed a 5% stake in the company for promoting and marketing the brand Learn Best MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. 3. Jessica Alba & Honest Co. Hollywood heartthrob Jessica Alba was announced co-founder & president of an e-commerce #StartUp that manufactures & sells eco-friendly personal care products by the name of ‘Honest Co.’ . The company was valued at $1 billion towards the end of 2014. 4. Will Ferrell & ‘Funny Or Die’ Not necessarily hailed as an enormously profit-making venture, but certainly successful in terms of popularity, FunnyOrDie.com is a comedy video content portal that hosts both exclusive & UGC content, and runs on an algorithm supported by user ratings. American comedian Will Ferrell is considered one of the key masterminds behind this venture,  that survives on funding from sources such as HBO. Featured program for you: Doctor of Business Administration from SSBM 5. Ashton Kutcher & ‘Airbnb’ The on-screen Steve Jobs & former Calvin Klein model is both astoundingly humble & wise when asked about his investment strategy, and is quoted saying “…become an apprentice…” to those with expertise in the area. His few shares in travel portal ‘Airbnb’ have more than just ‘multiplied’ today. While the star is said to be investing in several other such ‘Techventures’ If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps, and more.

Admitted ‘StartUp with UpGrad’ candidates come from all areas and backgrounds, ages and locations across India. We have carefully selected individuals who have shown us a strong passion to become an Entrepreneur and a strong history of leadership. Two months into the application process and one month before the commencement of the first batch of ‘StartUp with UpGrad’, we are excited to share with you the first statistics on the class profile. Featured Program for you: Doctor of Business Administration from SSBM For Mayank Kumar, co-founder and MD of UpGrad, a highlight of these statistics was the prospect of how it could help our academics develop customized content for the courses. “Understanding the diverse backgrounds of our prospective students will help our team develop relevant, high-quality course content that will easily resonate with the experiences of individuals,” he said. Regardless of age, professional or educational backgrounds, our students have one thing in common: the desire to start-up and create something meaningful. If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

Today marks the first day of our first course StartUp With UpGrad. We’ve spent months preparing and perfecting the course for you and we hope you’re as excited as we are for your first week. The first section of the course is about Idea Validation and in this post, we’ll be talking about the questions you need to ask during the process of validating your business ideas. While launching a startup, entrepreneurs set off on one of the most challenging journeys of their life. Although there are many visible & invisible factors that go into the process of entrepreneurship, there are some basic essentials that would help you make calculated judgments in the course of your journey. What skills do venture capitalists look for in early-stage entrepreneurs? Here’s an insight into some of those essential question that entrepreneurs need to ask themselves while seeking validation for their business idea. 1. Does the market need my product? also known as Identifying Need-Gap Faith and conviction with regard to your product idea are essential. In the real world, however, you need a little more than just that. You need to understand or at the very least, make a calculated assumption as to whether or not your target market needs your product. This may not be something that the market can tell you upfront, but well-conducted research could help you gauge the feasibility of your product. Learn Online MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. 2. Where do I see my product going in the next 10 years? Longevity is something you need to ascertain before you get your idea on the road. If you’re looking to create a product that will only satisfy a short-term need, you may find yourself hitting a wall very soon. A seasonal need, however, can be a whole different ball-game. You could either adapt your product to serve a long-term need or form the right judgment that will help you plan whether or not your product has what it takes to survive. 3. Can this model generate revenue? The most important part of your journey & probably one of the biggest reasons why you’re there in the first place. Not every model, however, is a great revenue generator. This is something you need to calculate very carefully before you launch your product. An idea may seem great when conceived but is it something others would pay to have? 13 Traits of Highly Effective Startup Entrepreneurs 4. Who is my competition & where do I stand? Making a thorough analysis of your direct or indirect competition could be one of the most powerful parts of framing your model. You may not always have a direct competitor, but there could be another, more prominent player market, with the resources to quickly absorb the good qualities of your product into his own. This could help frame the very foundation of your survival and growth strategy. Featured Program for you: MBA from Golden Gate University USA 5. How do I craft my idea into what the customer needs? As an entrepreneur, if you aren’t prepared to lend a listening ear to what your customer is looking for, you could have a very hard time surviving in the market. This doesn’t mean listening to just anybody, just the direct consumers of your product. Customers too, may not always be prepared to give you direct feedback, deriving a mechanism where you are constantly interacting with your customer & understanding their needs is a system you must be prepared to install in your organization. If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

Entrepreneurship is counterintuitive. Some of the most celebrated business school learnings may not hold water when it comes to starting up. I have tried to share some of my learnings which I have gained through experience which I feel might be of value to many aspiring entrepreneurs out there. You never start up to get funded! I think in today’s day and age, funding is over-rated. Most of the entrepreneurs start with asking the question – ‘will I get funded?’ and post a round of funding, they feel that they have achieved their goal. But little do they realise that this is just a means to an end. I think celebrating funding is like congratulating an athlete for buying new running shoes before the race has started. An entrepreneur generally starts their journey to solve a pain point that they are really passionate about eradicating. So, they must continue to focus on their primary objective and let funding simply nudge them further on their journey ahead. Know your customer well If you have noticed, I have written ‘customer’ and not ‘customers’. This is very crucial when you are starting up to have the ‘one customer’ in your mind and know them really well. By really well, I mean – you should know their name, where they live or work, what they do every day etc. Live and breathe their life. Learn Online MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Your product/solution may solve the pain point of various customer segments. But it is important for you to have the razor sharp focus on one customer. This has multiple benefits – from designing your product really well to chalking out an impeccable marketing campaign to communicate to your very customer. In the initial stages of a start-up, there is always this urge to expand the definition of your customer segment so that you can reach out to a much larger customer base. But it requires a lot of discipline to stay focused. When we designed the program to target working professionals, we got a lot of interest from colleges and corporates to offer the same program to students and employees. But we stuck to catering to the working professionals – with a single agenda to wow them. Go all out to wow your first set of customers When you are starting up, you are low on resources with a limited marketing budget. Your best source of getting a good word out for your venture and the product is your ‘satisfied customers’. Therefore in early days, it is important for entrepreneurs to focus on ensuring that your customers are happy using your product and are willing to recommend the same to their peers. In the process of doing this, you will end up doing things that may be difficult to scale up. However, your focus should be on getting and giving the best experience to your consumer. Try to get continuous feedback from those who have tried and used your products and keep improvising accordingly. At the end of the day, a start-up is a continuous learning process. These are just a few lessons out of the countless ones I come across on a daily basis. So if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, all I would say is don’t run after funding, let it run after you; believe in your product and listen to your customers even when they are just whispering and everything else will fall into place. If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

Try this, you will love it. If you are an entrepreneur or an aspiring one at that, this statement can be a dream come true when your customer recommends your product to someone who is yet to discover it in this manner. But mind you, this domino effect always starts with one customer. That particular one who made you realise that there is a problem and your product/service can solve it. The one who you intended to cater to, right from day one. Hold on to that customer, hypothetically or otherwise and they will lead you to your holy grail eventually. And if you are chasing a group of customers, now could be a good time to pick one of them, understand them and see where it leads you. This might sound ironic but we often tend to visualize our target group in terms of age, occupation, location and many more inhuman parameters, when what matters the most is to know how they would feel, think and react to your product/service when it is out and about. The best way to do this is to choose only one customer and get to know them thoroughly. Learn Online MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. You don’t have to know them personally but if you do, nothing like it. Apart from the usual details like name, occupation and location, figure out their likes and dislikes. Find out the little nuances that define who they are. While you are at it, keep your eyes open to find out where does your product/service fit into their life seamlessly and what can you do to get it there. Resist the temptation to stretch your target group till you have achieved your first few milestones. Being a leader, your entire focus will usually be on building your company and taking it to the next level. But in the process, don’t lose sight of your ideal customer. Take them to the next level too. Befriend them, talk to them like you would talk to your best buddies and get to know them up, close and personally. They will have more to say about you, not just about your products but also about who you are as a start-up or an entrepreneur. This will help you to broaden your horizon even more efficiently. Keep your ears open to what your customers are saying even when they say nothing at all. No, you don’t need any telepathic skills to do this. While the surveys and lead generation campaigns you conduct will get your customer to speak to you directly, there are many things they might say about your product/service on other portals. Lap it up instantly and see how you can improvise. This does not mean you need to extend your customer segment. It just means that you hear them even when they are not talking to you and give them a product/service they only wished for. No matter how far you go with your start-up, make it a habit to come back to your ideal customer every now and then. They will help you put things in perspective and stay focussed on your primary objective that had turned you into a leader. If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

Early-stage challenges When you are starting up, you are low on resources. Getting your first set of customers becomes very crucial. A lot of us, when we take the entrepreneurial plunge, have a fair idea of how the product will look and evolve – and this is something that lies in our hands. But reaching out to your customers is a complete unknown. You always ask yourself these questions – Will customers try my product? How much do I need to spend on getting customers? Learn Best MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Getting your first 100 customers is always one of the toughest, but the most fun part of the entrepreneurial journey. We recently launched our online program – Leadership & Management – for leaders. We knew that there is a need for the program in the market, but were unsure if: We will get customers to take up an online program We will get customers to actually pay for an online program As a new venture, we were facing two uphill battles – one of convincing our customers to adopt online education and secondly, to pay for it. Therefore, it became important for us to be smart about our marketing. We tried different techniques- some worked and some didn’t. As an early-stage digital startup, it is very easy to start focusing on getting customers from across India for your product. Yes, it allows you to aim for a larger target group, but you end up spending a huge amount without commensurate conversions. It is important to know your ‘one customer’ and plan to target them accordingly. In the case of UpGrad, we went ahead with focusing on three Tier 1 cities for our digital marketing initiative with a small marketing budget. We got a very strong response to our marketing campaign. We deployed a small number of sites (Yourstory, NextBigWhat, etc.) that folks interested in entrepreneurship frequent. With that limited marketing budget, we were able to reach out to our narrow target segment multiple times. It is important for an early-stage startup to know the right marketing channel and focus on it rather than going after multiple channels. For a lot of entrepreneurs, digital marketing is always the first thing that comes to mind. However, for the first 100 customers, it is important to leverage offline marketing significantly. When we were launching Startup with UpGrad, we participated in a number of events across our selected three cities. The reception that we got in these offline events helped us create a strong positioning for the brand UpGrad in terms of credibility. In these events, we got a chance to talk to potential customers that helped shape our product and fine-tune our positioning. In the early stage, as a founder, it is important to go out and meet potential customers and get first-hand feedback on their expectations, and offline events are great avenues for that. When we were conceptualizing Startup with UpGrad, we wanted to create a strong positioning for our program. The idea came up in one of our weekly meetings, when a team member asked, “Why don’t we interview India’s leading entrepreneurs and get them to share their experiences for our program participants?” Initially, the idea was laughed away, but we all realised that it did sound like an interesting proposition. We decided we will go ahead with this approach and reached out to 30-plus first-generation tech-entrepreneurs — from Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal to Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip, Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola and VSS Mani of JustDial. Most of them responded enthusiastically and we interviewed them for their insights. These interviews and experiences that we offered as a part of the program helped us create a strong positioning for the brand — and that became a strong marketing message for the program. So when you are starting up, any crazy idea could lead you to a successful launch and thus do not shy away from thinking bold. If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

Going back to the ‘School-mode’ is never an easy decision for a modern professional, in a hectic, competitive world. At the same time, there may be instances where one feels the need to catch-up with the latest skills being taught in his/her area of interest. With the ever-changing rules and practices in every field these days, on-the-job learning may hit a wall at some point. So how does one keep up with the changing times? Does one need to take a break from work to pursue full-time degrees every few years? Clearly, this is never the answer. Learn Best MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. We are privileged to be living in an age when one has the option to pursue an education, without having to let go of a career. Of the many benefits of opting for an online course, here are the top 3 reasons that the students of StartUp with UpGrad had told us about: Perhaps the greatest advantage of online education is the convenience it provides to the student. All that time that a post-graduate student would otherwise spend on a traditional form of education, can be invested in more productive forms of learning and on-the-job application of the modalities studied in the course. This is especially useful for budding entrepreneurs, who would need all the real-time experience, they can get. Traditional modalities require you to spend plenty of dedicated time in the classroom, with very limited scope for practical application of your learnings. While most executive programs are designed to provide you with the maximum & the best exposure possible, it cannot provide you with the exact, practical experience that real life can. A working professional, who continues to hold on to his job while pursuing a rigorous course in a certain field of study, is far more likely to have a more realistic perspective of his/her course learnings. This, our students say, is one of the greatest advantages that edtech can provide. Algorithms in online education modules are designed to provide the student-user with a customized learning experience that allows them to grasp course content at their own pace. This is one of the greatest advantages of the online learning mechanism that places it miles ahead of traditional methods of learning and especially suited for working professionals pursuing part-time education. If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

As entrepreneurs, we often sweat about what the first version of our product should look like. We all want it to be so beautiful and highly functional that users fall in love with it instantly. However, many founders have fallen into the trap of building and iterating until no end in search of that elusive perfect product state before ever releasing it to actual users. The core philosophy behind the quote by Reid Hoffman is that the sooner we can validate our assumptions and gain more understanding about how our users react to our product, the better. It reflects the “Release Often and Iterate Fast” mantra increasingly followed by many in the entrepreneurial community. There is immense risk in spending time and money in building product features that don’t solve the core problem that you are you trying to solve for your users, or worse end up turning away your users because you released a bloated product. If a startup is successful, no one will remember how your product looked the day you launched. And if it doesn’t become successful, well then it doesn’t really matter. Think about this, how many launches of successful startups do you remember? Three key things Venture Capitalists look for in Entrepreneurs Below are examples of two of the most successful consumer internet startups in the world – Twitter and LinkedIn, and how their product looked when they launched. Their product design did not really set the house on fire but what it did do was allow them to launch early, gain valuable feedback from their early users and accordingly iterate into hugely successful products. It is very important to remember that releasing early does not automatically mean releasing a buggy product. The reason to launch early is for you to validate your core assumptions with your users and basis that take the decision whether to continue down the same path or take a slightly different one. For this to be true, it is very important that your users are able to understand your core value proposition and derive value from the product you have released. Remember you are launching a “Minimum Viable Product” and not just a minimum product. Learn Best MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Entrepreneur’s guide to pitching to investors For us at UpGrad, it was important to test how students interact with the platform, how effective is the learning experience, what should be the process of content development, how do we structure our support team. We very quickly realized that it would take us a long time to build our student platform from scratch which supports the learning experience we were designing (engaging content, peer collaboration, active and regular interaction of students with the platform, etc.). So rather than wait to build the entire platform in-house, we decided to launch our first program early using a third-party platform, while regularly building and plugging elements that we assumed would drive engagement. Sure the user experience on the third party platform was nowhere close to perfect, but it has given us valuable learning as to what drives and does not drive students to engage with our product, and we will be using all this learning while building our own platform for the next set of programs. Idea Validation with Startup With UpGrad It is easy to say but it is a lot harder to actually put this into practice – to release a product that may be in your eyes raw or ugly. When you have a big vision and it has only been partially translated into a product, you would inherently be afraid to show it to users. But by waiting to have a better product before you show it to anyone, you can seriously compromise the intelligence you can gain and the early traction you can build. You will be surprised how often users don’t mind a minimum viable version of your product and look beyond the initial flaws and understand the broader problem your product is trying to solve. If you like to have one-to-one meetings with industry experts, networking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and bag a seed funding to start your idea, check Leadership & Management program If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

At upGrad we have been fortunate to have excellent students from a diverse range of backgrounds join our Entrepreneurship course; lawyers, managers, StartUp founders, and Small and Medium Business owners. What each of these entrepreneurial minds has in common is how much of an influence Startup with upGrad has had on not only improving their skills but actually changing the way they think about business. Those who came from traditional business backgrounds found they had to unlearn much of what they knew, before taking their first steps. Best Career Options After Graduation Approaching the last modules of the program, their thought processes and approaches have changed – “The course has taught me to look at problems in the most pragmatic way – I’m always trying to think like an Entrepreneur”, says Amit from Hyderabad. “I have more clarity on my venture than ever before.” We at upGrad are thrilled at the response from our students towards the flexible structure of the program and the value our participants found in being in a group with like-minded individuals. We are excited to see the longterm partnerships and networks that our alumni will grow into. Learn Best MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. How do our students describe upGrad? “A bible for any start-up.” “A blessing” “the best thing to happen to my business” “Impactful” “Life changing” What the founder of ThinQbate learned from StartUp with UpGrad? And how do we at upGrad describe our students? Well without hardworking, motivated, engaged students, our collective learning experience wouldn’t be half as excellent as it has been. For our batch of 2015, we are extremely excited to see their future avenues and their growth to the next generation of leading entrepreneurs in the country. And to our new students – Are you ready to take the first steps in upGrading your lives? If you like to have one-to-one with industry experts, networking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and bag a seed funding to start your idea, check Leadership & Management program If you want to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship, Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Master of Business Administration (MBA) Liverpool Business School which helps you to transform your career. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.