Being in Delhi is a bliss as you get to attend lots of meet ups, events, seminars and what not. Recently attended HeadStart’s Startup Saturday at 91SpringBoard in Delhi and the topic was ‘Building Customers in the early stages of the Startup’. So here are a few learnings from this event.
- Most important learning: If you really want to get the max from an event, reach the venue 15 minutes in advance. It gives you time to mix with other attendees and you can grab the front row to make the most out of it. I reached 15 minutes late and could manage to get only the last row.
- Instead of looking for viral campaign for your product or service, look out for ways to induce virality in your product or service itself. This lets your product do the talking than you talking about your product.
- In the initial stage of your startup, when money is a matter of grave concern, go for collaborations. Seek out collaboration with the brands which best compliments your product/service to get the most needed head-start for your brand.
- Instead of going for celebrity brand ambassadors go for niche brand ambassadors like college students, gym members, etc. who could be the influencers to your TG group.
- Instead of yourself generating content for your brand, make your customers write for you. Though this could be a task in itself, the results are very productive.
- In the early stage, interact directly with all your customers to get the feedback and improvise your product/service accordingly. Even when you grow, occasionally try to contact your customers directly. You could save a lot of bucks from steering in the wrong direction.
- Don’t wait for perfection for too long. Perfection is a process. Launch it now and explore the world!
While sitting in the last row I hardly got 20% of the points made by the presenters. So that’s all for now.
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I can be found sitting in the first row of twitter at @jangidtarun
asha chaudhry
tarun,
i loved the fact that you actually shared your learnings with all of us! very nice of you! most people shy away from penning down their learnings.
did they give any examples for point #2 – i think that is a very interesting point for all of us!!
#5 is SUPER TOUGH. i know sushrut of hammer & mop gets a lot of testimonials – we should ask him how 🙂 i get lots of emails and when i meet rodinhooders at events they tell me how trhs has helped them. but it’s very very difficult to get people to share one on the site. many rodinhooders meet alok; but again, very few share their experience… so yes, getting people to write is very very challenging!!
#7 is something we all need to frame and look at it at all times!!
just do it!
awesome tarun. keep sharing….
Tarun
Thanks for appreciating 🙂
Actually I also postponed it for couple of days before finally pushing myself hard to write about it.
following are a few examples which i can recall.
#2: RailYaatri founder, Manish Rathi shared some point which I couldn’t get clearly (you know last row…). But for suggestion, I think there can be one feature where if a user share his travel plan (e.g. travelling to Mumbai with RailYatri) on social media then he get some discount on ordering the food on platform by using RailYatri app. To get discounted food users may spread the name of RailYatri on social media.
#5: I agree, it’s very difficult to make people write. But if there are incentives then there are higher chances of consumers writing about a brand. This can be in any form e.g. discounts, making consumers famous by flashing their name on brand’s products or website, giving social points which they can flaunt among their peers, etc.
#7: this is a very subjective thing. One has to trust gut feelings to plunge and then keep looking for improvement. Just one personal example, I am not a good speaker or presenter, but in my school days whenever there was any debate or extempore competition I always registered my name for the activity. The fear of facing the audience was always terrible but I knew if once I had registered my name, I had to push myself. If I hadn’t pushed myself and waited for perfection I couldn’t have improved on my public skills.