The stage is set. Rodinhoods are here. The event is brought to you LIVE, so I guess you won’t mind an innocent typo if it occurs.
But where are the samosas – did I miss them? Let me check.
Mic check, mic check…
Alok seems to be deeply absorbed in some discussion. No stones are left unturned. Even the seasoned players need to prepare and Alok is giving us this lesson even before starting. That’s the life of an entrepreneur – keep learning and keep inspiring. Isn’t it?
Few minutes to go…
And there’s always time for some smiles to catch. Think. Do. Smile in between. Way to go Rodinhoods!
And we begin…
Once upon a time…
How else would a story start?
Ashwin started his story with an example of a lawyer who after getting inspired of a case started his writing career. Ring a bell? Yes, you are right he was talking about John Grisham.
The advise that he got being from a business family – “Book keeping is more relevant than book reading. And if you must read – read a balance sheet.” But the question that was bugging the author in Ashwin was “Do you want to be a rat all your life?”
He took the great leap and decided to follow his heart. But was the journey easy? A little google search will reveal that even great classics like Gone with the Wind and popular authors like JK Rowling were rejected ruthlessly when they started. And Ashwin’s score of rejection?
Got rejected 47 times! And how did he feel?
Ashwin shared how proud he felt realising that he is even ahead of some great authors in terms of number of rejections. That’s’ some positive thinking there!
He went on to elaborate some more scary statistics:
- 2.2 million titles are added each year
- Almost 10 titles every hour and only 2% make to the bookshelves
- An average self published book sells only 57 copies in its lifetime. And that may be to relatives and friends.
There are even scarier statistics out there to knock an author out even before starting. But then, authorship is not for the fainthearted. In his captivating style Ashwin emphasises the role of marketing in the success of an author. His advise: Write, edit or both when drunk … but remember the hangover the next morning and that’s book marketing.
He then shared his list of activities/channels for marketing in the early stages of an authorprenuership.
Marketing for self-publihsed author:
- YouTube
- Contests
- Bloggers
- Extracts
- Discussion groups
- Website and search
- Adwords
- Retail site previews
- Media PR
- Cover Design
Some crazy stuff that he did to market his first book:
- Reached out to 5 bloggers everyday who would write about self-published books.
- Quoted himself as a good author to read on blogs.
- Asked people to write a review on amazon.
- Started with Self-publishing for dummies, went to Lulu, then crossword, and then a chain of people and places before finally getting published in 2008.
- He saw his first book dusting in a shady corner of a bookstore – what did he do – removed dust and left it in the bestseller shelf.
Result: Over a million books sold.
There’s no money in poetry but there’s no poetry in money either! Even an author selling 50k+ books may not make a decent cut and there could be as low as 20 such authors in the entire country. The picture is far from rosy. But if you persist, lot of other possibilities open up such as Print ads and other media channels.
Some astonishing examples of book marketing/delivery:
- Actresses were hired for $8 to laugh at the public reading of Sever year bitch and the stunt made the desired noise –mission accomplished.
- Tim Ferris – the 4 hour series guy started out as a self-published author and went on to become a best seller.
- In Japan, a cell phone novel Keitai Shousetsu was delivered using texting. New means and methods are used these days for distributing a book or a piece of writing.
Ashwin then went on to break popular Myths and demystifies the whole game of authorpreneurship:
Myths broken:
- Good books sell by themselves
- Critics reviews sell books
- Writing is about inspiration not perspiration
- Don’t judge a book by its cover
- The author’s job is to write and publisher’s is to sell
- You can make a living from being a successful author
- You cant make a living from being an author
- Genre of writing is unimportant. In India, campus romance do well and in the US, crime and mystery tops the charts.
- Pricing is unimportant.
- Good authors are not concerned about sales volumes.
- Bestsellers lists are unimportant.
- Bestseller lists are important – depends on which list is the case in point.
And it all ends in a patiala peg conversation that Ashwin had with a Punjabi friend of his father “99% is simply about good luck.” Ashwin asked what about the remaining 1%? That’s’s the bloody good luck – the uncle replied!
Ashwin wishes all the budding authorpreneurs a BLOODY GOOD LUCK!!
Go grab yours!
Alok and Ashwin go about chatting further on the whole authorpreneurship game (Alok can’t get enough of gaming I guess 
Gem of advise that emerged from the conversation:
- Don’t think about marketing while writing – go ahead express what is close to your heart and chase the dream you want to.
- But when you are done writing , don’t think about writing anymore -FOCUS ON MARKETING full throttle.
What does he do to keep his writing capitvating?
Maintains an excel sheet where he spells out incentive to turn a page. Can it get any methodical than that?!
Some questions that were left hanging in the air… in the stride of the moment I guess…
Why is Ashwin not collaborating with the most searched celebrity on google – Sunny Leone?
Ashwin may or may not but it is certain he is going to be a author I am going to celebrate for a while for his writing and more for his authenticity with which he bore his heart out!
Disclaimer: I was so spellbound that I might have missed some gems here and there but I’m sure the ones I’ve collected are priceless too! Won’t you agree?
Panel discussion with Arihant Patni, Rajan Mehra & Alok
Rajan Mehra (an investor in Housing.com) shares that Rahul is a great guy, almost a visionary who wants to achieve a lot. That should bring the point home …. Or should I say ‘house’. The point that he made which is sort of a take away is how humility plays a crucial role in the journey of an entrepreneur.
Question: Do you back the guy -the person or just the idea?
Rajan: It’s the guy but the catch here is – the person and the team needs to be best in class. They need to be a learning person. Third is do they have the energy. And the last is about the opportunity being large enough to scale. Ability to build a business that can withstand a cycle is extremely important.
Arihant: Belief to hit out of the box is a must and it also needs to be well articulated to have reached out as intended. Being a good listener to scale and grow (not just dabble in their own glory).
Question: How much a VC should/can get involved in the business? Can it be a transition from a boardroom VC to a bathroom VC – so to say?
Rajan: No VC can come and run your compnay. However, when the amount involved is too large – when the product ceases to be a diffrentiator and capital takes the role of a differentiator, then the game gets tricky.
Arihant: It’s about what the entrepreneurs want to create. If it is like the flipkart kind of business, the capital rules the game. But be clear what you want and where you want to go.
Rajan: Let’s look at a simple classification of companies to get the picture right.
- Consumer companies – built by the capital pumped in the business
- Consumer Infrastructure companies – built using capital efficiencies
- Enterprise companies – built for global markets
And there was some interesting query on cap table put up by Alok, which I will have to pass as I will have to go back and read the Rodinhood blog about it.
Question: How do you dimension ‘burn’ – what is legit and what is not?
Rajan: A burn is good if it builds product or an asset. You need to build your financial strucutre such as even if you don’t get the money the business can survive. It’s not that hard if you are disciplined. But if you are chasing a fast market, or consumer acquisition or something similar, then strategically you may do so and it gets trickeir there.
Arihant: Services business mantra – break even in one month.
Rajan on the Role of a VC: Our business is to understand if people can work with people – not to test their financial acumen.
Arihant’s take on a VC: Take this anology: You get married and you wife starts changing you a bit day by day. At the end of five years, she wonders “Who are you? You are not the same person I married!” A sensible VC wouldn’t do that to a founder.
Disclaimer: This is some heavy technical stuff I am trying to capture here. Plz correct me if gets derailed on the way. 🙂
P.S:
If you can’t find a co-founder (which your business desperately needs), there is a something fundamentally wrong in your approach. Time for some self-reflection I guess.
Ashwin Sanghi: Has the business scene changed since the dotcom bust of 90s?
Rajan: There’s an innovation revolution going on in our country. And the opportunity is humongous.
What is the best time to seek funding?
If the idea is really disruptive, you may go ahead early but then you will have to dilute a lot of equity. And if you are a first time entrepreneur, it may be good to boot strap a bit and then seek funding. Serial entrepreneurs may get it easy because of their track record but first timers need to build some substance before cracking it.
Let me try a mashup of what I just witnessed:
An ugly Indian wanted to have sex and the story that he picked was shared by a Hindu and after that it was all “Kaam Chaalu Muh Band”
Sounds bizarre…wait you will know by the end of this read.
Title: 3 reasons why startups should have sex
Yeah! You got it right. Tonmoy of Storypick promised to enthrall the room and did he do it? You bet he did more than he promised. He shared his secrets of making content sharable and interesting.
S – Support your competitors
You competitors can really add value to you and your clones can be your assets. They copy your idea –you copy their features (which are better than yours of course).
E – Emotions
Balance the famous triangle invented by Aristotle – Ethos, Pathos, Logos – Does it interests me? Can I trust you? Is it logical? How?
Four organs of communication: The Head, The Heart, The Gut (instinct, gut feeling), The Groin (no logic, pure passion, sex appeal –call what you may). How to use them?
Always bottom up – never top down. Arbnab Goswami probably got half the model correct appealing to only gut and groin at times. And that’s why we experience so much of premature <> in his talks (pun intended).
X – X is the shortest distance between A and B
Make it easy to share – how does Storypick do it? Using a scrolling share bar.
Entrepreneurship and New Media Panel Discussion: Arun Prabhudesai, Suresh Venkat & Alok
Q: What would you inspire entrepreneurs to do?
Suresh: Media is a Latin word which means to stand in the middle. Virtue lies in the middile. First rule, there’s no room for people who are in the middle. Nowadys there’s no middleman between you and your cab or a flight.
Arun: The viral sites are phenomenal and there are communities like Rodinhoods. And there are a lot of others who are somehwere in the middle ground. And on that middle ground Google plays a crucial role. New disruption is coming everyday and how you create content and how you market it needs to be seen in these new dynamics.
Q: Why should people remain in this treadmill business of creating content?
Arun: I do it for passion. Response from people keeps me driving on this highway.
Suresh: Nobility of purpose goes missing these days from discussions and conversations. Old giants didn’t build media businesses to make money. It is becoming impossible to define what is news today? It is becoming extremely personalized and contexualized.
Ramnath Goekna once commented (NOT verbatim though) “We are in the bsuiness of information arbitrage. There’s a world which people don’t have access to and we make best efforts to mirror that world complimenting with multiple opinions for you to choose from. “
Q: Are the puritans of content and media going to die because nobody wants purity anymore? Example: The Economist (pure, plain business news with lot of insights)
Arun: Content consumption is changing. Youngsters are on FB and Twitter. May be the format is not appealing enough to them.
Suresh: TV Shows like The House of Cards, The Wire and Game of Thrones are downloaded and watched by millions. And these are lengthy shows and young generation is still watching them? But not reading The Economist –why? Where’s the aberration? What is about modern TV that captivates millions? May be a well written content wins in the end.
Q: Who’s going to be the next big star, where, why and how?
Suresh: Who is a star? A star is a person who has disproportionate influence on people with your person. Touch. Move. Inspire. If you can do this, you are on a path to become a star.
Arun: Simply speaking, good content produced consistently wins the game.
Q: What to do to make money?
Suresh: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Approaching new media with old thinking cannot solve this issue. Whatsapp did it without adverstising. How? People tend to go for the lowest hanging fruits – reimagining new media with new ways to market and distribute it may solve the issue.
Arun: It’s difficult. It’s a grind. Display ads, native ads – you need to keep evolving. More than 50k blogs start everyday but not even 10% survive after a week.
Trivia: BBC is a government funded orgnaization but NOT government controlled. PBS Radio in the US is another good example – people pay if they like what they listen.
Insight: New media keeps giving the creators many chances. Citizen funded media is out there already – and Purity has not lost all the chances as it may seem.
Food for thought: Once upon a time, there was a Doordarshan and then came NDTV… eventually followed by an era of competitive news …. the race to the bottom in on… The real question may be “Do you want to be part of this rate to the bottom?”
P.S: There’s no shortcut. There has never been any.
Crowdfunding
Diabeto – h/w device, feature rich mobile app + APIs for integration
Went for crowdfunding and raised $17386 and the whole experience was sort of a market research for them. Max contribution during the campaign came from the US. India contributed only an odd $500. Indians made lots of queries but not much in actual contribution.
Spent 6 months in creating:
- Kickass video – went on to learn photography to get this done
- Product photography
- Evaluating costs – manufacturing, distribution, marketing etc
- Studying what worked for others
- Finding people who actually need the product
- Setting up the the campaign page on Indigogo
Five vital Q to ask
- Why crowd funding?
- Are you ready for launch?
- Is your product manufacturing ready?
- Which platform to choose for crowdfunding?
- What should be your target?
Advise:
- Use social currency – Thunderclap
- Find right places to advertise – for Diabeto Google, FB, Stumble upon stood out
Rishi from Bombay Cabs
Dearth of good music and a bad traffic situation in Mumbai led to the idea of Bombay Cabs.
Biggest challenge – the campaigns from India doesn’t do that well on platforms like Indigogo
Why? May be because we Indians are RoI Loyalists. And for an intangible stuff like in-cab music sessions, it is all the more difficult.
So Bombay Cabs designed a campaign around “What Not To Do” and cusomtized it for their audience and localized it to their flavour.
Though they didn’t meet their CF target, they caught the attention of OLA cabs who funded them fully because of their niche concept.
What didn’t work for them? The platform itself.
Lesson: It eventually works out –just get out and do it!
Disclaimer: Have you ever seen a grainy photo? The last update was somewhat like that as I was juggling lot of ideas, emotions, information etc. hope you would bear with me on that.
Rodinhoods Rocks!!
Finally, Samosas… here I come
Signing off! Catch me @unilogue
