Dot Dot Dot

Last Startup Saturday session (July 14, 2012) was all about the dots – both the speakers Mr. Pradipta Chatterjee from Icon Consultancy and Aji Issac Mathew from TechShu revealed many dots. It’s up to you which dots will you pick and how will you connect them to grow your business. Topic was "How to take your Business to the next level".

Before delving more in to the topic, I have to make an important announcement.

Startups from King's College London to pitch @Sramana on 19th, July. To attend or pitch, register here: http://bit.ly/S7jj5q

Let’s come back to the topic. Here are some random dots that I collected from both the speakers.

Random Dots from Mr. Pradipta Chatterjee

From: Icon Consultancy

• When 3 or 4 friends start a company, there is an undeclared and unwritten commitment among them – everybody follow the commitments and they know that others are loyal to the system. As the company grows and new members com in, incorporating the same level of commitment becomes a challenge.
• There are different forms of compensation – it’s not all about MONEY all the time.
• Geographic location plays an important role when it comes to recruitment.
• You cannot ignore local culture and mindset while creating HR policies.
• You have to understand the psychology of young people when you recruit fresh grads – generation gap plays an important role in organizations too.

Random Dots from Aji

From: TechShu

• Congratulate yourself if you have survived for 2 years
• Don’t run a business for livelihood – for that you could buy 10 cows and sell milk. Run a business to add value, to make it really big.
• Do whatever you can to sustain – don’t buy clothes, sell jewelries, take the pension fund from your dad, don’t have pizza, don’t watch movie (added by me), do consultancy for others – if you TRUST YOURSELF accumulate fund in whatever ways you can to support your startup.
• Understand yourself – know what you exactly want – working somewhere is not at all bad – all creative people are not entrepreneurs – they can work, take the company to the next level and get immensely rewarded.
• Make yourself attractive – why people would like to work for you – what extra are you offering? Think Think Think!
• Ask how much value you are adding to your customers, to your team members. 

And finally Aji said that it took 3 years to create such smiling faces which is no less than Brand Equity. Aji also created few amazing slides, will try to share them later.