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Pack Your Bag Before Sailing
Checklist of things to do before graduating if you are Student Entrepreneur
For: Campus EntrepreneursBy: Utkarsh Shukla
On: 08-12-2013At: Google Hangout
About Me
• Started as Student Entrepreneur while in 3rd year (2009) in Gaming Sector in India• Comes from a Job and Service Family, worked with first startup in First year.• Started up, Co-founded, Mentored, Consulted, Worked with nearly a two
dozen startups across multiple domains from Gaming, Music, E-Commerce, Travel, Arts, Medical, Religion, Politics, Software to Agriculture.• Worked with a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds with a lot
of different kinds of perspectives• Still to make a 100 Million Dollar Company.
Some Advice
• Before Starting up, see all ends from Job, R&D, Startup and then decide. Startup is hard and you need to be clear with no chance of regret or doubt. Once you are clear, burn all the other bridges. • Get hold of Business Models as soon as possible. You should be able
to look through any Business Models and instantly identify gaps, risks, possibilities, feasibility, potential customers, possible pivots, possible revenue models, flaws, issues, cash balance and many other things.• Understand Failure and be friends with it. Great Advocate of Fail
Fast. Plan the End before starting. Set up short Empirical Milestones. Pivot if needed, or realize failure and act upon it.
Before Starting Anything
• Clarity of what you are doing. Be clear what a startup is. Clarity of your plan, who your customer is, how will you make money everything is important. Mission and Vision are important things.• Plan the End before the Start. Before starting anything, plan how will
it end. Example: If you are getting a business partner, plan that in case one wants to leave what will happen.• Self-Realization and Self-Awareness. Spend a lot of time thinking,
reading philosophy, answering abstract questions like why you are born, what is god, how religion works, what is belief system, how can you tinker with belief system. These almost change your perspective.
Things to do while in Campus
• Build a Great Team. Campus is the best time for you to understand people. You will find people who share your passion, but they must be as committed. These are people who can change the world. Also it’s a great idea to get people from other domain. An great 5 people team is a Tech Guy, Design Guy, Operations Guy, Marketing Guy and Fundraising Guy.• Build a Great Mentor Board. Build a great Mentor board. These are the
people that can mentor you guide you. Again a rounded board of Industry leaders and people who can regularly mentor you.• Finalize the Idea. The Idea/Business Plan must be Crystal clear and can be
made to understand to everyone. Example: Disney is in the business of “Making people happy” and they do it by “Movies, and many other things”
Things to do while in Campus
• Complete the POC/MVP/Initial Customer Stage. Complete the Proof of Concept, Minimum Viable Product and Initial Customer Stage as soon as possible. Fail, Iterate and re-Iterate until you are sure of the viability of concept.• Get in an Accelerator/Incubator. While in College, try to get into an
accelerator/incubator so that instead of renting a garage, you have somewhere to go, especially in Indian Context where social matters, plus motivationally it will help you and your team.• Get to the point of Raising Capital. Try to raise capital as soon as
possible, especially before/just after you leave college. The exact amount does not matters. It proves the idea is fundable and exciting for the team.
Pitfalls to be Avoided
• Avoid Last Semester Entrepreneurs. In the Last semester, the number of “Budding Entrepreneurs” rises dramatically. These are set of confused people who have a job in hand, and want to do a startup as it sounds cool. These are the exact same people who will leave for Job the moment they get their joining date. Avoid them.• Avoid Running behind Investors or Excess Going to Conferences. It’s
a good reason to go to a conference to network with people, but be sure if it makes sense. Target the Customers First, Start the Business, get Traction and Revenue, everything else including Investors will automatically follow you.
Some Advice
• Learn to Understand People. Business especially startups is all about People. Great People can make great things. People are shaped by their aspirations, situations, conditions, capabilities, nature, virtues and many other things. Try to be a great judge of People.• Manage your PR effectively. Startups is more about the founder and
the founding team. Be sure that you realize what your impression is going to people. People love clarity. If you are clear what you are doing and communicate effectively, you get a good network effect.
