A friend of mine and I, had this elaborate discussion on some of the advantages of actually being in the valley. Well, Thomas Fieldman is proving himself to be right with the globe turning more and more flat as the years pass by and I am quite positively sure that position holds not that much of a relevance and trumph card anymore.
As it is, I understand that most startup projects that are happening in the valley are being outsourced to companies here in India to be developed. The reason being cost and the availability of talent.
The fact that the dollar is dropping, added to the fact that the ruppee is appreciated is really not helping the case. In most cases, apart from the added headache of managing your team remotely, your cost also ends up being the same. What is even more empathetic is that most of these silicon valley companies end up handing their product developments to companies that probably aren’t the best of the breed when it comes to development – the biggest issue when it comes to outsourcing.
I am all for outsourcing service-related work. Management of networks, servers and mindless crunching of data and numbers seems to be a valid point, but would a startup want to outsource its most crucial asset – the product itself? Hmm… I am not sure if thats the right way to go.
So, what does a startup need anyways?
Access to the market, capital, human resources and the depth in a market to build a product that actually makes sense. An entrepreneur from the valley will always have his roots there, and does have the liberty to fly to and forth, along with taking advantage of the evolving business models of the east.
Being a global entrepreneur, might be the trend of the future to match up with the world becoming flat.
I question, Why don’t most of these silicon valley entrepreneurs move to India anyways? It might not be the way to go as the business scales up, but for being on bootstrapping mode and to get a product and team together, I strongly believe that India is the way to go. If you are the next Mark Zuckerburg trying to build the next big thing, India is very much the place to be.
An elaborate post on this, is soon to follow.
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“..If you are the next Mark Zuckerburg trying to build the next big thing, India is very much the place to be.”
Mine is a dot-com startup so i would talk from that perspective only… I have observed a trend among Indian dot-com startups that ‘number of registered users’ are considered as a benchmark of popularity/success and some investors also seem to endorse that.
With weak value propositions, it is clearly a penny-wise approach to harness the huge Indian market. And ‘harness’ not through revenues but by selling your company to a more ambitious company.
Well we are a maverick by that standard. One of our core values states – “Activeness of participation by users as the benchmark of popularity, not number of registered users or page impressions or clicks.” We know what it takes to DO things taught in entrepreneurship workshops.
“I’d probably bet on a set of Brazilian bootstrappers targeting the US market compared to an Indian one.”
So are you saying, kill the issue of timezone and everything becomes easier?
I wonder if someone could come up with a solution for dealing with timezone, just like place-shifting technology. If the advancement of technology and a country is hindered because of that, it would indeed quality for disruptive technology. hmm.
Deepak, great points and things that i validly and willingly agree. But..
I have a reason why I am mulling over these thoughts and I hope to be more vivid in words in the upcoming post on the same, but what I am essentially wondering on are these:
1. Given that we do not have the ecosystem to come up with advanced computing services (not that much infrastructure available for rough prototyping) – I still know of a company that is waiting for their prototype silicon to arrive, after six months from taiwan.
2. There are a lot of VC firms which are saying, “dont build anything that relies on cutting edge technology but focus on re-usable technology.” Does that mean, we are going to be churning out solutions, rather than products for the next couple of decades?
3. If that is the case, we end up becoming more of a consumer market for commodity technology from across the globe, till we get our manufacturing plants in place, which still doesnt help the issue of strengthening our economy.
4. Most importantly, does that mean it will be a few years before start churning out Intellectual property?
5. Would an alternate be that linking up with a person who frequents the US, or set of agencies, so to speak can liaison between companies and markets – just like the role that trade links did in the days of caravan travels and such?
Is the solution for today hidden in the wisdom and traditions of the past, I wonder.
Vijay, Here’s my thought. If you were bootstrapping a high end technology product you cannot afford to have your people not talking face to face with your alpha users. I mean building relationships from the very five individuals out to the people that are spending their time using your product and giving feedback.
One more problem with not-being-there is potential customer sensitivity to either fears of privacy or legal issues not being quite the same in India vs. the west.
Bootstrapping with five people in far-away-land and having one person fly out once in a while is possible but it drastically reduces the chances of actually making it – think time zones, body language, communication and turnaround times, factors tough enough in a controlled environment of captive across-the-world development centers. Startups have too small a chance, and yet once in a while one guy will make it. And we think about him as a hero, and ignore those that made it the other way – the build the team close to the users way, the google, youtube, yahoo, microsoft way.
Note: I’m as guilty as anyone else so I’m not preaching from a higher pedestal.
Also think of motivation. How do you keep a group of founders motivated if they aren’t together, or aren’t in the same (or close) time zone as their customers? I’d probably bet on a set of Brazilian bootstrappers targeting the US market compared to an Indian one.
A real Internet company doesnt need to be physically anywhere, leave
alone close to customers. It can be anywhere in cyberspace. I grant
the fact that one needs to get info about customers and one way of
doing that is to be physically close to customers, but that isnt
necessary. After all, customers dont have to see your face; what
they are interested in is the service offered. As they say, it doesnt
matter on the internet, if you are a dog.
On the same lines, I found this very interesting.
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9831133-56.html
“Warning sounded over ‘flirting’ robots’.
regards,
Samir