The previous deck [http://www.slideshare.net/suhasd/30-things-that-i-lear] was about the startup basic process. The questions that will be answered are: What do you do after you have the basic idea? What kind of company should one open up? What are the office basics? What do we need to plan for? The structure of the entire set of slides is as below: Introduction (deck 1) Idea (deck 2) Starting ( deck 3) | Executing (deck 4) Funding (deck 5) | Marketing | Selling (deck 6) People | Emotions | Learning (deck 7) Results

1. PART 3 – The Start
things that
I learned
from my
startup
experience
Suhas Dutta

2. “
“
Conan O’Brian at Harvard

3. So far…
• We went through the basic dos and don’ts in the ideation
stage of your startup.
Idea
Starting
Executing
Funding
Marketing
Selling
People
Emotions
Learning
Results
• Lets get into the starting / planning stage.

4. Planning is good…
• Good to put things down on
paper so that you can refer
to your notes often and let
epiphanies happen.
• But don’t overdo
planning right away.
your
• People will keep asking you
to create your business
plans. Those are important
things to have, but right now
is not the time. Do not
waste time creating those
elaborate documents and
100 slide decks.

5. Planning is good…
• But it is useful to have a 5-7
slider deck ready to show to
people with somewhat more
than back of the envelope
calculations.
• Same
for
cash
flow
projections. Have you tried
out the product or service in
the market? Have you
priced it right yet? If not, the
cash flow projections have
no meaning.

6. Planning to evolve…
• So what would you plan for?
• If it is a product, plan for the evolution
– Think about the feature set for the next one or two years.
– It is good to have a blue sky vision from the beginning.
– But beware of not adding too many features into your product or service
right in the beginning. Get the most important ones in first.

7. Planning to succeed…
• If you are creating a service, then
– Think about how the service gets delivered
– Start working your numbers for cost of creating /manufacturing
the product or delivering the service.
– And again what other features could you possibly add

8. Planning to measure…
• This is also great time to
plan for performance
measurement
of
the
product or service.
• If your product or service
gets touched by the
customers on the web,
start at least with Google
Analytics. But this isn’t
and can’t be all.

9. SMART

10. Planning to listen…
• Listen to your customer, constantly.
• If you are a retailer (for instance)
you must try to understand /figure
customer behavior vis-à-vis the
basic assortment and visual
merchandising. You must figure
what SKU sells in what kind of
demographic at what time and
through what channels.
• Start building these analytics right
up-front and learn not to have your
eyes glaze over when you see the
numbers and tables. Learn to be
able to recognize patterns.

11. • I have deliberately not talked about the
founding team, your co-founder etc yet, but
will cover those in the deck about people.
• Go on to Part 4 where we shall go through
some elements that I learnt about execution.

12. • Have questions or feedback? write to me.
• If you need a bit of help in terms of mentoring, reviewing
material, vetting a plan or the like…I would be happy to help a
fellow entrepreneur start her/his journey. It will cost you just a
cup of coffee.
• If you have already started and could do with some strategic
advice, helping create your business plans or your investment
pitch, marketing strategy, fulfill your company’s training
needs, need advice on the pitch etc, please feel free to reach
me.
• My coordinates are:
– reach@delhigate.com
– linkedin.com/in/suhasdutta/

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