Awesome. Challenging. Encouraging. Networking. Motivating. These are all words that can summarize my experience at the Rodinhoods open house last Friday in Mumbai.
Discussing your idea, why it failed, what others thought of your failure and how others failed all led to healthy discussions as to what traps startups should avoid. The idea behind this was – how do you avoid serial failures?!
It was the first time, I publicly celebrated a failure of mine. Normally people don’t talk about their failure for more than a sentence, but Alok had us presenting for 5 minutes; and it was a good feeling.
My Failed Startup:
My presentation (attached above) is related to my First Startup, Tickertape, which failed due to poor execution on my part. Churning an idea into a viable business is the challenge every entrepreneur faces and I witnessed it first hand in the last 9 months I spent building Tickertape.
If there are two important lessons I can impart knowledge on they are:
1. Build. Test. Learn. Reiterate: Startups, including mine, often spend days and months chasing a model which has shown signs of failure early on. Often we spend too much time focusing on the product and not on the market. If we can however build a model of Quickly Building our (minimum) product, testing it with people, learning from their feedback and reiterating this feedback loop, we can minimize the time it takes to realize failure.
An analogy is: you might as well die quickly than a slow, prolonged and painful death.
2. Never Lose Hope. Never Lose Confidence. You will have a story:
The best things about Startups in my opinion is that it defines the founder. It shouts out their passion, their vision, what makes them tick, and what motivates them. Often when you fail, it is normal to lose hope and confidence. However, if you look around you and see non-entrepreneurs, you will realize that even when you fail, you will have a very interesting story to tell.
TO THOSE WHO COULD NOT ATTEND THE EVENT, I WOULD LOVE TO DISCUSS WHETHER YOU THINK PERSONALIZING A WEBSITE FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL USER WOULD WORK?
Sneak Peek:
A sneak peek into what I am going to launch in Beta Soon. Email me at rahil@tickertape.in to test it out:
The idea is to help users discover, create looks and share products taped by them, by their friends and by a community of people with the intention to benefit all the members of the community discover the best Products across different categories.
Go to Rodinhoods:
If you have not gone to an Open House before, definitely go to one. It will give you the fuel to keep pursuing your dream (or sometimes giving up on your dream) but both opinions will help you grow as an Entrepreneur.
Muthukumar Gopalakrishnan
thanks for sharing. it is an interesting presentation and important lesson to learn.
asha chaudhry
yo rahil,
where have you been? and how are things at your end??!!