We started with a Data Replication and Disaster Recovery product for Asia Pacific SME market. Had a good start, built a solid team … and then got beaten down by Angels/VCs & some market “veterans”. Thanks to a lot of guys (specially some on venturewoods) who advised, We decided to go ahead and pooled in $85K of “friends and family” money.
So like to share some thoughts, a news and need some advise.
thoughts,
My last post did help me know a lot of things about VC/Angels. We also did some introspection of our work and how we can present it.
But still, It makes me think — Is market for seed/angel investment in India mature enough for startups or its just me who got beaten down ?
We met all kinds of VCs – some showed interest and helped, some showed no interest but still helped and some cowards who fixed meetings and never came for them 🙂
News,
Someone in (i think) Virtualization conference 2007 asked amazon ppl about rumors of completion from google on S3 and EC2.
That guy answered saying, “we would love someone spend their millions educate ppl about benefits of virtualization. We don’t mind sharing the market”.
Something similar happened to us, while we were sure of market in aisa pacific . News of Reliance and Bharti opening Disaster Recovery data centers in Indian backed our strategy. We got some inbounds and gained some traction.
Now we just released product final beta on July 4th, and some good names signed in as beta customers.
I would love to demo the product over a webcast or send across an evaluation copy. Please let me know, if anyone is interested.
More about product: http://www.slideshare.net/jaspreetis/druvaa-product-overview-and-advantage
Need advice,
1. We “can” sustain couple of more months and start supporting and selling. Is it still worth trying for angel money ?
2. Any good ideas on how to conduct online product demos . I am using gotomeeting right now coupled with skypecasts.
3. Any idea on how to build product documentation and knowledge-base.
cheers,
J
- India’s Hottest Startups - September 7, 2008
- The case of SonimTech – And lessons we can learn - August 23, 2008
- The Druvaa Story – III - July 14, 2008
sorry I missed you in BOM. Now just focus on the feedback, and if the feedback is positive, if it = proof of concept then investors will bite. Save your money, don’t do more demos, you may need the cash to tweak the product based on feedback.
BTW question for you: why do I need a replicator if I can backup everything on S3 directly? Does your market get limited to SMEs backing up data inhouse?
James,
thanks. Please let me know if i can do anything to help you/others explain the reason for our existence. It would be very happy.
@bb,
thanks. I guess you are right about both the points. We are 3 core members and have 5 beta customers to satisfy. That would keep our hands full. So, i guess once we have some feedback, thats the time we should get back to VCs
Yup, money for startup is like oxygen for a mountaineer. The closer you get to peek, the lesses it gets. I was tempted to spend some on customer visits, now let me see how can i club them.
J
Hi alok, abu,
thanx for comments.
gotomeeting shares the desktop and creates video. vactor.tv sounds interesting.
But last few days i have releases that meeting customers face to face makes it much better, even if it costs few airtickets. Its difficult to get to that “important” person again and again.
So, i guess better to understand their pain points in person.
regards
jaspreet
Jaspreet
to answer u r ? on angel money, I would like to know how many of you are there in the team. do you have resources (only in terms of time) to make parallel pitches to both angels and customers? if yes.. then let one person keep trying the angel route.
else, keep pursuing the customers very very actively and try to get atleast 1 or 2 Letter of Intents from them. once u have this, i’m sure it would become much easier to get funding. From u r earlier posts, i gather u’ve already spoken to quite a few angels. so unless u get customers, there is no point speaking to them again.
also, be very very frugal. It is tempting to spend money when u have it in the bank…… assume u have not receive this 85K, which were the ABSOLUTELY necessary payments? continue making those payments. If other expenses can be pushed, push them. e.g dont buy a printer now if u need one, u r neighbourhood internet parlor will print on a per page basis. Try to find similar alternatives for every requirement before u take the chequebook out.
This way, u can buy more time before 85k gets exhausted and during this extended time, hopefully you should have been able to get either some funding or some customers.
All the best.
Hi Jaspreet,
Looked at your slides on slideshare. Will be interested in talking to you. Pls. write to me at sandeep[dot]goel[at]india[dot]com, couldn’t locate to email id else I would ve written in little detail.
Regards
SG