Life of the Indian Entrepreneur sucks, We gotta take charge!

As a KickStart.in initiative, I wrote this relatively long mail to get people to work towards empowering the entrepreneurship ecosystem of our cities. It really inspired a few people and we are making significant progress. We really need to network. The same mistakes are being repeated over and over again. I gotta work on completing my “Startup Pains” research soon to learn more on the mindset of the Indian Entrepreneur. We can’t keep waiting for things to happen. We gotta make things happen. Stuff like StartupSaturday.in and Headstart.in are small things that we are doing to make things happen.

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Dear All,

Thanks for your support and encouragement.

This mail is to invite you to a breakfast meeting this Sunday, to discuss how we can transform the startup ecosystem of Bangalore.

We all have one thing in common.
Each one of us has a flare for entrepreneurship and has something to contribute to the Startup Ecosystem of our country.

Right now the life of the Indian Entrepreneur is not easy. There are several hurdles that he/she faces. More than 40% of the startups don’t survive the first year. Over 80% of them get bankrupt before their 5th B’day.

You know, things don’t have to be this way. We have innovation, drive, ambition, persistence and all the qualities necessary to succeed.

But still a majority of us fail.

Why?

Because most of us repeat the same fatal mistakes made by other entrepreneurs before us. And we don’t get to learn from their experience because we never really knew they existed.

Whats missing in our ecosystem is – Networking. We can all learn from each other and support each other in our tough times. We float our ideas to a few friends and if we get a good response, we start building our product. We build it up and look forward to conquering the market. But then people don’t seem to be so excited about our offering. Then we wonder what went wrong! If we knew 5 friends who were entrepreneurs and would have floated the idea to them, they would have definitely asked us to do some market research before building the full blown prototype in the first place. An environment like this is missing, we don’t know the right people to discuss our ideas with.

Startups are looked down upon as “small companies, where you work only because you didn’t get a job anywhere else” etc etc. It is partially true but far from the reality of what startups actually represent. Startups stand for ‘freedom’, for ‘creativity’, for ‘determination’, for ‘dreams’ for ‘belief’. You know, its awesome cool to start your own company. But, very few of the bright people realize it.

Whats missing in our ecosystem is Awareness. The media doesn’t like to talk about startups. Even people who have already taken the entrepreneurial plunge don’t know how to register their startups as private ltd companies.

To whom should the Indian Entrepreneur go if he/she needs legal advice? Google (Search), thats all that the Indian Entrepreneur is left with.

To whom should he/she consult to undertake un-inspiring but essential tasks like Policy Making, Organizing Processes, Financial Planning, Containing Attrition?

To whom should an entrepreneur go to get seed funding? There just aren’t enough angels in our ecosystem. Of course the scene is improving in this direction. But a lot is left to be desired.

Things are different in the Silicon Valley. There startups are regarded as “COOL”. Every smart college student wants to start his/her own company. They have mentors who support them technically and in other areas. People there are not security centric they are freedom-centric.

Infrastructure is so cheap in India that its India that should be the Innovation hot-bed of the world. KickStart was founded with the vision of making this happen. Its a long journey and we have made significant progress. Thanks to the efforts of NEN, TiE, OCC, TKF, Proto.in, Bootstrappers’ Network and other organizations, entrepreneurship is getting a major boost in India.

We are all primarily from Bangalore, and there is a lot that we can do to foster entrepreneurship in our city itself. I have had the pleasure of speaking to many of you personally and you had expressed your interest in contributing to the cause in a multitude of ways. Lets meet up and discuss, what each of us are inspired to follow in this direction. And what structures can we put in place to ensure that this activity lasts and doesn’t fizzle out.

Venue: Indian Coffee House – MG Road
Date: June 1st (Sunday)
Time: 9 AM

And we will be meeting every Sunday at 9AM from now on at the same place, to discuss how things are shaping up.

Among all of us we have a lot of entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, bloggers, journalists, hi-tech specialists, HR professionals, senior executives and other ecosystem enablers. There is a lot that we all can do together. Lets join hands and make Bangalore a heaven for startups. By working towards this cause, you will learn a lot about entrepreneurship. You will meet a lot of people and expand your network of contacts. Some day when you startup, you will have a lot of entrepreneur friends who can guide you in your startup. And more than everything else, you’d have a satisfaction of being someone who is making a difference to the society.

All these meetings are a lot of fun once we start gelling. I am looking forward to meeting you all.

Please spread the word and get anybody who feels inspired by the cause and is willing to work, to come along.

Thanks and Regards,
–
Amit Singh
98863 14456
www.kickstart.in