This article was published in September 2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

Date:   Thursday , September 05, 2013

This month’s article focuses on another breed of entrepreneur known as intrapreneur. An intrapreneur is a person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product or service through proactive risk-taking and innovation.

In this article, I provide the insights and wisdom from Abnesh Raina, Founder and CEO of PlumSlice Inc., a highly successful intrapreneur and a well-respected IT industry executive. Abnesh Raina has 20 years of IT executive experience building effective global teams and multi-channel commerce solutions. An award-winning CIO in 2009, he earned CIO Magazine’s CIO 100 Award for enabling business growth using technology innovation. His new company PlumSlice is a product management system that unites all players in the product development cycle as a single collaborative team on the cloud. The PlumSlice services and software make collaboration easy at all stages of the lifecycle: product design, development, product selection, vendor selection, product information, customer engagement and delivery. Knowing how the cloud works, PlumSlice supports the way people work and communicate today on mobile devices, socially, and globally. Prior to founding PlumSlice, Abnesh held CIO/VP level positions with Restoration Hardware, B/E Aerospace, and AMS (acquired by Baker & Taylor). He began his career as a software developer working for Williams Sonoma and Manhattan Associates. With special gratitude to him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points from his unique intrapreneurial experiences based on my discussions with him recently.


1. Alignment with Corporation – While there are similar characteristics in both an entrepreneur and intrapreneur, one key factor that helps an intrapreneur is having alignment with corporate goals. Many times, you as an intrapreneur may demonstrate your prototype first, then ask for permission. You, however, still need to do it within the confinement of the corporate culture. The benefits for an intrapreneur is having access to free resources, funding and infrastructure and the ability to play within a large sandbox. For instance, I felt, in a multi-billion dollar global commerce company, that driving ecommerce and mobile strategy would help it leapfrog its competitors. It will not only help position the company as the leading innovator in its market but also, may bring incremental revenue. However, at that time, company was facing operational challenges related to the supply chain. So we aligned with company’s immediate goals and demonstrated measurable success within eighteen months. By exhibiting results, I was given the approval for ecommerce and mobile project.


2. Support of the Organization – Once you are aligned with the corporate strategy, you need to have relationship, support and confidence in your competency from your organization for delivering the proposed results. You have to balance your risk taking attitude since rewards for success as an intrapreneur are not as high as an entrepreneur. The cost of failure is very high as you may get fired and hence the reason for having the support of organization, not just your higher-ups but also your colleagues at the similar level or below is a must. You can navigate the risk in a measurable way and the organization may accept some risk or small failures in a calculated way.


3. Return on Investment – In intrapreneurship, there is a saying, “making moles out of mountains”. By showing success in small steps, you can garner support for your project proposals. For example, in a large multi-billion dollar retail company, we were able to drive almost 10 percent increase in on-time delivery to customers by taking on an unpopular project. We were able to secure support as other departments saw small successes and impact to the topline and bottom-line for the company. You must exhibit success in short time increments of three to six months. The organization will usually not support a two year project.


4. Measurable Metrics – As we all know, there is so muchpositioning, team dynamics and politics that on in large organizations, it becomes imperative that you have a well-defined and measurable metrics before you embark on your project. Have alignment and buy-in from the related departments on these metrics. Everyone agrees that these metrics constitute the criteria for project’s success. Make sure that participating departments are recognized as contributing to its success and are an integral part of it. Cross the finish line with the whole team. It takes much longer to be successful as an intrapreneur than an entrepreneur due to getting pertinent buy-ins, approvals, right timing and support from the various teams. Be patient and do not give up. Maintain a positive attitude. Many organizations these days realize the significance of supporting the environment for intrapreneurship.


This helps them in keeping smart, talented and entrepreneurial employees from leaving the company. For instance, in my CIO role in a multi-channel retail company with hundreds of stores across North America, we had various challenges. The business processes, organizational structure, and tools were isolated for each channel. There were seventeen spreadsheets being used to manage the product information before being uploaded into ecommerce and ERP system. A numbers of mistakes were being made, e.g., one item worth $1700 was listed for $1 before it was caught due to disparate and manual process. The wrong color items were being shipped to the customers. We decided to take an Omni-channel approach so there was a single version of truth for the final product information across all channels. Initially there was resistance since organization structure was set up by channels. While this was one of the foundational initiatives, the company was turned around and became profitable after several years of being in loss.

As a result of this project, I recognized the market opportunity that several large retailers had the same pain point. To address this, I founded PlumSlice to help the multi-channel retailors to not only bring quality products to market faster using cloud based software tools including product information management, product research, product development and product selection modules. All this is provided with no upfront cost and only at a fraction of current implementation cost and time while helping them generate additional revenue at a much lower cost.

In summary, the four key take away points for being a successful intrapreneur are having alignment with the corporation, having support of the organization, demonstrable return on investment and measurable metrics.


Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE), based in Silicon Valley, California.

This article was published in August 2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

Date:   Tuesday , July 30, 2013

Since launching this column in late 2011, I have tried to ensure that I can present you insightful articles around entrepreneurship from my own lessons of successes and failures as well as from other highly successful entrepreneurs. These unique, priceless lessons and wisdom emanating from the roller coaster adventures of these entrepreneurs can hopefully serve as guidelines in your own entrepreneurial journey. Following on the similar lines, this month's article features wisdom from Rajan Raghavan, a highly successful serial entrepreneur who has always been at the forefront of new markets and technology trends. He has an uncanny knack for being able to envision and focus on emerging technology and market trends. Rajan has, most recently, started his 6th company, The Fabric, which co-creates next generation networking companies with other entrepreneurs. Previously, he was also the founder of Mediaway, Virtual Chips, RealChip Communication, Xambala, and Ankeena (sold to Juniper). In addition, he has been involved with three other startups: Avasem (later ICS), Cirrus Logic, C&T and has served as adviser to multiple startups in the software, semiconductor, and systems space. He is best known for his early role with Phoenix Technologies. With special gratitude to him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points from his amazing and unique entrepreneurial journey based on my discussions with him recently.

1. Strong Desire

A lot of early magic comes from the founder’s passion and strong desire. An entrepreneur must have a burning desire to start a company and make a difference. Without a strong desire, it is going to be a big challenge since your heart and soul would not be in it fully. In order to weather the ups and down of building a technology company, you must be persistent, focused and determined that you really want to do it. Once you know that this is what you want to do, create a plan to take baby steps towards your end goal of starting a company. For instance, right after my graduate degree, I chose to work at startups rather than working for a large company. And when the opportunity came knocking on my door to be part of the founding team of a startup, I quit and joined the team leaving a nice paying job behind despite the responsibility of taking care of my young family with a wife and a young kid. This strong desire is also attributed to the inspiration from my father, who had risen to become the youngest Chairman of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd., a large public sector enterprise in India, having come from a small rural town. A role model who can inspire you, if combined with a strong desire and passion can take you a long way towards making your dreams a reality.

2. Know Yourself

This is another key characteristic of successful entrepreneurs. Knowing yourself really well is a must. More importantly knowing what you are really good at and what you are not. It is essentially doing your SWOT analysis in marketing terminology, that is, identify and understand clearly your Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat (SWOT). For instance, I learnt early on that I was good at articulating in simple, clear terms the value that I could bring. This helped me in becoming an effective technology evangelist and sales person. For instance, when I applied for research assistantship at Clarkson University to pursue graduate degree in Electrical Engineering after finishing my MBA, I was competing with a candidate with better credentials and more accomplished academic qualifications but I was able to convince my Professor why I would be a better choice and would bring more value to the project. I was awarded the research assistantship. Similarly, I convinced my manager at Cirrus Logic to give me an opportunity in software engineering without having any background in programming and chip design. Additionally, it is vital that you know your end goals and follow a clear path to build your skillsets that can help you become successful and achieve your goals. This may also entail finding right mentors; taking on right job responsibilities to provide you the rich experience that, when added together, would eventually assist you in your entrepreneurial pursuits.

3. Next Big Market

Always identify the next big opportunity and make a bet on this market. First company, Mediaway that I founded was focused on object oriented databases for rich media. This was one of the hottest emerging trends at that time. This was followed by Virtual IP, which was defining the new wave by focusing on semiconductor intellectual property market. It was at the same time when leading semiconductor IP company Rambus was founded. My subsequent focus was on Voice over IP space with Real Chips during the telecom boom and bust time of early 2000. Xambala was my next company that developed ultra-fast and high performance real time technology based on XML (extensible markup language) technology. The lesson I learnt was that just technology is not going to cut it if there is no market. Most recently, realizing that video delivery was becoming an issue with rapid consumption and huge appetite of video clips by consumers, Ankeena was founded to focus on video delivery market. Currently with my new company, the Farbric, the focus is on co-creating companies under the umbrella of Fabric focusing on infrastructure space.

4. Team

This element is perhaps the universally well-known to any aspiring entrepreneur that a company is built with smart, talented and hardworking people. Having the right team with right skillsets, right chemistry and trust are key ingredients to your success. Hire people you enjoy spending time with as you will end up spending most of your time every day with the team. You want to make sure that you respect professionally the strengths each team member brings. Make sure to celebrate successes and celebrate achievements, no matter how small or big they are, in meaningful ways that are unique to your company. In my last company Ankeena, the team had all the elements of great chemistry, complementary skillsets and above all, it jelled harmoniously like an orchestra.


In summary, the four key take away points for entrepreneurs are having a strong desire, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, identifying next big market and betting on it and having the best team.


Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE) and member of TiE Angels Steering Committee, based in Silicon Valley, California.

This article was published in July 2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

Date:   Monday , July 01, 2013

This month’s article features wisdom from a successful entrepreneur from the services industry. Raju Reddy, Founder & CEO of Sierra Atlantic, grew his company to be a best-in-class global services company over a period of 17 years. Under his leadership, Sierra Atlantic grew from a startup to over 2400 employees with operations in several countries and was consistently ranked amongst the best managed companies including the top 75 most admired companies in Silicon Valley, Top 25 great places to work in India and Top 10 best employers in South China. Sierra Atlantic was acquired by Hitachi Consulting in December 2010 and it is the largest ever acquisition by Hitachi Consulting to date. He is an advisor, seed investor and Board Member to many startups and continues to actively help entrepreneurs. With special gratitude to him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points from his amazing and exciting entrepreneurial journey based on my discussions with him recently.


1.Company Culture

Creating an admirable company culture is a key element in building a world-class company and it often reflects the core values of its founders and leaders at the top. This helps in attracting and retaining employees, customers, and shareholders. You need to do it because it is good for business. However, the core values of your culture need not be there from day one. We implemented it after we reached about fifty employees. Once you have defined your company’s culture and core value system, everyone must adhere to it religiously. In case of Sierra Atlantic, the five core values comprised of trust, results, empowerment, learning and family. The first core value is about creating a trust relationship with all stakeholders including employees, investors, vendors and partners. All stakeholders reward you for being pro-active. The second core value is about end results. The efforts are good but ultimately, the results are what matter. Everyone including the CEO is accountable for delivering results on well defined targets. The third value is about creating an environment for employees to feel empowered and make decisions themselves. The fourth value is about the notion of building an adaptive learning engine, so an ongoing learning cycle persists at all levels that can adapt to ever changing market needs. As a CEO, you can be the biggest asset or liability. For example, when Sierra Atlantic purchased a company in China, it was for serving the customers close to where they were locating geographically and we had to adapt to a changing market need. The final core value was creating a family environment and getting involved with the local community. Finally, create a reward system for all employees using core values as guidelines. The reward system validates that leaders walk the talk and are absolutely committed to the core values. All actions such as hiring, firing, promoting, and interacting with your customers must take the core values into account. The byproduct of these core set of values is that employees come up with numerous ideas for improvement. For instance, at our India Operation, one of the employees created a program called “Bring Your Parents to Work”. In India, the extended family culture and close ties are significant. The parents are involved in their children’s decision making about the companies that they like to work for. This program created a stronger bond for employees and their families with the company in a high attrition environment and hence, achieve high retention rate.


2.Scaling the Business
This includes focusing on two areas. The first one is recruiting and developing the talent pool by using new college graduates. Some of the best people at leadership level at Sierra Atlantic now were hired right out of school. With about six months’ training, these new recruits start coming up with new improvement ideas across the company. They develop a stronger bond with the company, are committed and can become leaders of tomorrow. The second core element in scaling the business is by doing acquisitions to fill holes in various verticals and expanding the geographical reach. Sometimes as a first time CEO, there is a mental block to doing acquisitions. You are worried that it may disrupt the awesome culture that you have helped create. However, both customers and employees view acquisitions in positive light. It further helps create the perception of company investing in growth and committed to it. After all, growth is the oxygen for any company. One another point is to ensure that the company is being built and managed as a high quality public company at all times and the right exit will happen as a result.


3.Dancing with the Elephants
In your market space, identify market leaders such as Oracle, SAP, Google, Cisco and others, then build something that could be strategic to them so they help you market it within their eco-system of partners and customers. For instance, Sierra Atlantic built migration and integration tools for enterprise to seamlessly move from a non-Oracle to an Oracle environment and hence, it turned out to be a win-win for both Oracle and Sierra Atlantic. The eco-system partners end up licensing these tools validating the high and unique value of the services being provided by your company. This also results in large company sales team being more open and favorable in inviting you to participate in sales cycle from early on. Such relationships are hard to develop and there are significant benefits if you get it right. As the smaller partner however, you can also get easily trampled upon if you don’t play it right, hence the notion of “dancing with the elephants”.

4.Lonely at the Top
As a CEO, it’s extremely important to have few unbiased advisors and mentors to help you sort through myriad of choices and key decisions. For instance, I was fortunate to have Kanwal Rekhi, a successful entrepreneur and investor as our independent Board Member since inception of the company. Similarly, within your company, you must have a trusted executive team, who can challenge your assumptions and help you implement your decisions flawlessly. Bob Hersh, our CFO at Sierra Atlantic was one such outstanding executive for me among others. At least in services industry, CEOs of other companies are very open to sharing ideas and giving advice, so make sure to take advantage of it fully by networking with them. It’s amazing not only what you can learn but also validate your ideas and assumptions about the market trends and directions.


In summary, the four key take away points are about creating an outstanding company culture, scaling the business, leveraging the market leader’s eco-system, and dealing with the reality of lonely at the top.

Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE), based in Silicon Valley, California.

This article was published in June 2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

Date:   Sunday , June 02, 2013 

This month's article features an amazing human being and entrepreneur with a down to earth common sense approach to managing business and successfully growing it. As TiECon 2013 Content Chair – the largest conference for entrepreneurs held this year on May 17-18, 2013 at Santa Clara Convention Center, I had the distinct honor of inviting him for a grand closing keynote for the conference. I have distilled the wisdom from Manoj Bhargava, Founder and CEO of 5 hour Energy, a philanthropist, and a hugely successful entrepreneur, who has already pledged giving away 90 percent of his wealth to charitable causes to benefit the disadvantaged and poor in rural areas in India. Manoj is also currently involved with few projects, if successful, could be world-changing and help the society at large. One of the largest projects involves development of technology that will clean ocean water, 80 percent cheaper than current techniques for agriculture. Similarly, another company is working on fuel technology, which reduces diesel consumption by 20 percent and another one on the technology for coal, which will take 98 percent of mercury out of coal and 6 percent of sulphur dioxide. These are really innovative and beneficial projects that would help everyone around the globe. With special gratitude to him for spending time with me for this article, here are four key take away (4KTA) points from his amazing and exciting entrepreneurial journey based on my discussions with him recently. 

1. Common sense

Business building is about using common sense. The schools really do not teach you what you require in real life. Do not let this get in the way of using common sense. According to him, "The problem with kids who come out of those fancy institutions is that they think they know everything." Education comes with experience. For instance, the difference between an experienced army sergeant and one who never has been to war. Working with the sergeant, who has dodged bullets before, is the safe bet. Further, a large part of success comes with understanding human nature, something that cannot be taught in a classroom. It can be learned partly through social interaction and life experience. So deep understanding of human nature helps you navigate your customers as well as competitors. Similarly, by reading a book, you think that you know everything. Not really! There is a favorite quote by Mark Twain that needs to be always kept in mind, "I have never let schooling get in the way of education". Use simple ideas such as buy low and sell high, whether it's products or services or whatever you are providing to your customer. The whole idea is to keep it as simple as possible.

2. Avoid Jargons

Jargons and buzz words like "strategic initiatives" have a tendency to blur common sense. Once you start using it, you stop using your brain. There is nothing new under the sun. Jargons destroy common sense. Your business philosophy needs to center around simplicity and clarity as a core principle and not hiding behind jargons. If you do not tell the truth, you have much higher risk than otherwise. The work environment needs to be harmonious. Stay away from micromanagement. Basically, just get the work done. It does not matter what else you do. Just get the work done. Do not depend on consultants and so called experts. The only things that these consultants and experts know is what was done before, not what is going to happen. It may be prudent to use consultants to learn more on the subject that you could have missed and they could point it out, so you do not have to spend time learning about it on your own. If you come across experts or scientists telling you that it cannot be done, that probably means that you can do it.

3. Godfather Offer

A Godfather offer is an offer that simply cannot be refused. You must have a product that others want to buy. Remember the customers are as smart as you. If you are not using what you are trying to sell to them, they are not going to use it. Going even further on it, if your family does not use it, then do not try to sell it. For instance, when someone at his company comes up with an idea, he asks, "Is it slam dunk?" If they cannot answer that question or are unsure about market acceptance, they should not be pursuing it. The job of an entrepreneur is to manage risk by reducing it as much as possible.

4. People

People should not be hired just on talent. Some of the things to watch out for; If they negotiate unreasonably and continue to negotiate, do not hire them. For example, once you have offered a job to someone, they let their guards down, and do dumb stuff such as start negotiating unreasonably. They do not realize that once you have made an offer of giving job to them, this is just the start of your hiring process. You should watch for all the signs of how they manage themselves during this process. Hunger makes you smarter. It's important to focus on the practical experience rather than just theoretical learning that MBAs receive at school. For instance, similar to example earlier about army sergeant, if you want to hire a plumber, you want someone who has actually fixed pipes, not someone who has read about plumbing, done research on plumbing and written papers on plumbing. Another most important aspect of building a nice company culture is to avoid aggravation. If anyone aggravates, you have got to let that person go. Same must apply to suppliers or even customers. If you create a harmonious culture, then people love to work for you and your company thus leading to little turn over.

In summary, the four key take away points in managing your business are using common sense, creating products and services like Godfather offer, having clarity in hiring people and creating a harmonious culture.

Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE) organization, based in Silicon Valley, California. 

Date:   Sunday , May 05, 2013 

During last seventeen months in my monthly column here, I have covered most of the important elements of a startup life cycle based on my experiences and observations.For next few articles, I felt that it would be great to present you the wisdom and insight from some of the highly successful entrepreneurs, who have navigated successfully through roller coaster life-cycle of startup adventures. In this article, I have distilled the wisdom from B.V. Jagadeesh, Co-Founder and CTO of Exodus Communications that pioneered the concept of Internet data centers in 1993 eventually going public successfully in 1998, President and CEO of Netscaler Inc. (acquired by Citrix Systems for $325 Million), and Chairman of NetMagic Solutions that pioneered the concept of Managed Data Centers in India and was successfully sold to NTT in 2012. He has been advisor, seed investor and Board Member to many startups and continues to actively help entrepreneurs. With special thanks to him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points from his amazing and exciting entrepreneurial journey based on my discussions with him recently. 

1. Customer Acquisition and Retention

Most of the early stage companies'focus on acquiring customers with little emphasis on retention. In reality, retention is equally or more important than customer acquisition. The reason being if the customers keep coming back and buying more of your product and services. It recognizes four key points – 1. Customer loves your product and hence, you have a loyal customer; 2. You are increasing Average Selling Price (ASP) per customer; 3. You have a happy customer reference; 4. You have a customer that could potentially be your sounding board for future products and customer advisory board. With a happy customer, you can not only get massive amount of mileage to grow your business by using this customer as a successful customer case study, customer advisory board member but also, inspire your internal teams by bringing him to talk about why he loves your product and working with your team. Make it a high priority to focus on customer retention. Use it as part of your matrix to measure what percent of my revenues is derived from existing customers. My rule of thumb is about 35-40 percent of your revenues from existing customers is a good number to keep in mind. Create incentives around customer retention including part of bonus and commission and implement these for customer support, engineering, and sales teams for accomplishing this objective and meeting your retention targets. A well thought out strategy and process with an incentive program for stakeholders to make customer retention as a high priority is a must. 

2. Company Building 

This is an iterative process for any early stage company. It focuses you to review at the granular level on how you fine tune the company in early stages of its development. Think of it like being in an orbit. After your product is initially developed, how do you go about fine tuning the product to what customer wants so you can elevate the company to the next orbit. The next orbit being building sales, marketing, and customer support organization. This is followed by moving it to next orbit that is not just scaling the sales but also reviewing, refining and doing further product innovations and keeping up the cycle of ongoing innovation. The key is to emphasize the right aspect at the right time. For instance, Novell did an amazing job of going from one orbit to next orbit of scaling sales and its channels worldwide rapidly but missed out on the next orbit of keeping up with the pace of innovation that was occurring in the market place. So at any time, you need to be totally alert and be on your feet prioritizing the next requirement for taking your company to the next orbit. Here is how you can think about these orbits – Initial orbit is about getting beta customers, next orbit is getting sales, marketing and customer support organization in place and scaling the sales, and then next orbit, is reverting to reviewing, refining and continuing further product innovation to stay ahead in the market. For instance, initially Netscaler's whole concept was based on server optimization. The company built an excellent product but market collapsed in 2001. At this stage, the company could have been shut down by returning the money to investors. However, the company and the board decided to bring in new functionality such as security, bandwidth optimization, server optimization and application speed. So 1st orbit consisted of initial product, 2nd orbit consisted of traction and hiring talented VP of Sales and VP of Marketing, that helped the company grow from few millions to tens of millions in sales rapidly and then, the next orbit was transitioning the company products to cloud at a competitive price range. 

3. People

Ultimately, it all comes down to people, people, and people. Take the time in bringing right kind of people at the right time. For instance, for your sales team, take time in bringing qualified sales people otherwise you may see its impact not only on top line numbers but also on your bottom line. Once you have made a hire, it may take you six months before you figure out that this hire is not working out or not producing what you had expected and hence, your business plan is missing its revenue objectives. Not only you start missing your revenue numbers but also, getting hit on your bottom line due to increased expenses being incurred due to wrong sales people in your team. The second key point about people is that no matter how careful you are, you will make mistakes in hiring. Correct your mistakes promptly before it becomes a huge problem. Be ruthless in hiring and firing aspects. However, the firing should not become a habit as you can drain the morale, finances and productivity in your company.

4. Hard Work

No Matter how smart you are, nothing substitutes hard work. Smartness gives you an advantage but hard work is a must. There is a great quote by Thomas Edison,"The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense."

In summary, the four key take away points are Customer Acquisition and Retention, Company Building, People and Hard work. 

Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE) and member of TiE Angels Steering Committee, based in Silicon Valley, California. 

This article was published in April 2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

Date:   Monday , April 01, 2013 

Navigating through the sale process of your start up is a combination of art, process and focus. It needs to be handled strategically, thoughtfully and with a clear focus. Recently, one of the companies that I have advised for last couple of years was acquired by a strategic large player in the industry. Without naming the company due to the confidentiality reasons and also, having gone through this process myself in the past, I would like to outline four key take away (4KTA) points for this process.

1.Readiness:
I believe that after working long hours for couple of years and delivering first release of the product, there comes a point of realization for entrepreneurs that they have arrived at the last mile in their journey. It is crystal clear that they need to find an exit option for the company. They need to become mentally and psychologically ready for it otherwise any attempts to sell the company will fail. How does an entrepreneur arrive at this conclusion? The reasons could be numerous including not having enough capital to continue, not getting enough traction in the market with the product, customer love the breakthrough technology but not willing to adopt right away, it's looking harder to get the next round of funding or key employees have started quitting or there could be some other reasons. Any or a combination of these must create urgency in entrepreneur to act upon available options for this company. 

2. Process
Once you have identified the strategic buyers with a shared vision and strategy and have ensured that it is the best fit for your company, you need to now become clear in terms of the process that will help you complete the sale. The strategic acquirer could consume the deal in these forms - either licenses your technology or product; does distribution deal as part of their solution; or does a white level deal in which they sell it under their brand or outright acquire both team and technology also known as acquiring for talent and technology. How do you take it to the next step? Depending upon the nature of the deal or option you take, you need to come up with a timeline of action items that you can execute rapidly with a laser focus. I will focus upon the acquisition scenario here. The key steps are valuation and price that you both agree upon; incentive and retention plan for the key employees; responsibility of the current team and future organizational structure; and budget and resources. Many companies these days acquire just for the talent. Once they acquire, they will kill the product developed by the team and integrate the team into an existing product line and use the talent to enhance the capabilities of their product. Make sure to understand that there is clarity why acquirer is doing the deal. Listening intently is essential and critical during the steps which will lead to the final price. Typically, your team will be interacting with three groups – product, technology, corporate development and finance group. It's important to involve respective team members knowledgeable, who can discuss intelligently with the counterparts in the acquiring company. You as the CEO are the main negotiator leading through this process listening to the other side, handling objections, responding to them with urgency and keeping it moving forward to next step from articulating a crisp value proposition and deal's value to the product group, seamless integration of your technology into their architecture and key price point with the corporate development team. Always remember to write down tricky questions. Stay away from the urge to answer right away. Suggest politely that you would get back to them after discussing with your board and team. Make them feel that you are on their side and are excited to work with them to make the deal happen. Use your Board and team as your final decision makers in the eye of the other company so you can stay unemotional, objective and focused.

3. Documents:
While the process of initial due diligence and negotiations are going on, you must review all company documents and have them ready in neatly kept binders in chronological order. These will include your articles of incorporation, board and shareholder meeting minutes, investor documents, shareholder documents, capitalization table, employee, customer and vendor contracts and agreements. Create separate binders consisting of all intellectual property documents including patents, patent filings, trademarks, service marks, your solutions and unique technological invention and innovation, tax returns, financial documents and bank statements. Any awards, marketing documents, white papers, customer use cases and applications should be provided as well. These accomplish two things: Firstly, you do not have to scramble at the last minute to get all these documents in place and secondly, prospective acquirer is impressed with the fact that you keep your books in order. It exhibits that you manage your operational functions cleanly and efficiently despite being a small company. 

4. Closing:
Ensure that you and your acquirer have agreed to a timeline for completing the transaction and action items. Make sure that your legal counsel is available and responsive during this time period. Similarly, ensure that the other company's legal counsel and corporate development contact person working with you are committed to meeting the deadline. One of the points that may come up is the escrow amount and timeframe. This is to cover any undiscovered liabilities that may have got overlooked during the due diligence process. As a rule of thumb, the escrow amounts are about 10-15 percent and for 12-18 month in duration. Your goal is to get the minimal amount set aside for minimum period of time. These are essentially some of the important points to be kept in mind. Now, go ahead and close your deal successfully!

In summary, the four key take away points are getting mentally ready, understanding the process, keeping your company documents in order and executing it systematically to close the sale. 

Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE), based in Silicon Valley, California. 

This article was published in March  2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

Date:   Tuesday , March 05, 2013 

How do you make an awesome pitch to investors and mesmerize them with your story? You may have already heard it many times that your slide deck should not consist more than 10-12 slides. This deck must have key elements of your business plan such as market opportunity, team, innovative technology solution, unique selling point, your creative go-to-market strategy and plan, business model to make money, and funding requirements. Essentially, to win over the hearts and minds of investors, your pitch has to be able to narrate a clear, exciting and impactful story to awe your investors so you can walk away with a term sheet for investment in your company. The story must have the following four key take away (4KTA) points in an awesome pitch.


1.Team –

Many entrepreneurs talk about team in one of the last slides. My suggestion is to talk about it right in the beginning because for an early stage company, the team is a major factor that investors are betting on. Make it crisp, relevant and focus on one or two related accomplishments of each team member showing that you have a winning team. Don’t waste time in sharing everyone’s life story. You have to be able to convince them that you have a team which can execute on exploiting this market opportunity. The investors must believe that you have assembled a core group of brilliant and world-class talent that can execute the next set of milestones. You must also be able to convey this team can attract next set of A+ talent with complementary skills and domain expertise and help you fill any gaps that exist in the current team. 


2.Market –

In my view, market opportunity is another significant element. It better be a huge market opportunity so you can excite the investors. Explain how it can help the investors make tons of money and create a hugely successful company. Create your story so exciting, compelling, and captivating that investors are glued listening to you intently while you are pitching to them. Combine it with facts and figures while exhibiting your in-depth knowledge. Articulate boldly that there is gigantic problem already there now or it is emerging due to arrival of various factors globally or technologically or whatever it may be. You are absolutely passionate about solving it since it represents a massive and once in a life time market opportunity. Explain clearly that you understand the market nuances and dynamics surrounding it precisely. Elaborate on how this problem has become suddenly so gigantic and why it is the right time and further, it can be solved. You and your team are capable of exploiting its full potential and turning it into a hugely successful company. Large and disruptive markets are extremely appealing to the venture capitalist (VC) community since these can help them create sustainable and large companies and make home runs for their investment. 

Make sure to collect market opportunity data from ground up validating your comprehensive understanding and knowledge about the customer prospects. Avoid your analysis merely from the analyst reports. Showing a pipeline of customers and strategic partners interested in your solution can make your story even more compelling. Focus on disruptive elements of your go-to-market strategy. Any unfair advantages that you already have such as a large leading vendor interested in making strategic investment and being a distributor of your product would be a real plus.


3.Technology

– This section consists of solution and unique technological invention and innovation that your startup has created. I believe that a startup cannot survive unless it has some unique and unfair technological advantage. The simple reason being unless you have some innovative technical advantage, it will be hard for you to get early adopter customers and investors to bet on your opportunity. Make sure to clearly articulate how your technology solves customer’s problem. What are the secret ingredients of your solution that the other companies can’t copy in a reasonable amount of time? Articulate any unique combination of proprietary technology, your brilliant team with domain expertise, and any unique partnerships that you may have. 

How do you intend to stay ahead in the market once you launch your product? How do you keep your innovation machine running so you end up being the leader holding maximum market share? Believe me there will be competitors who will show up as soon as you announce your product. One way to talk about your solution is to talk about existing solutions and your differentiators. Explain how you are disruptive and fit nicely in the value chain that currently exits. It’s easier to sell a solution that fits into existing value chain and at the same time, provides a roadmap for the future. Narrate clearly and quantify key benefits, especially how a customer gains more revenue or reduces cost. It must be 10X or better. The best way to convince an investor about technology benefits is to have referenceable customers who can rave about your innovative technology and solution.


4.Financials 

– This section of the pitch must cover everything related to financials including your revenue strategy, go-to-market plan and business model. How much capital would you require to get to next milestone? You need to outline your roadmap for funding requirements and milestones associated with each stage of funding. Explain these milestones clearly and crisply tied to your financial projections. Finally, present a summary slide outlining the core value proposition that an investor can remember and is unique to your company. This is a good place to reinforce your tagline or one line phrase that captures the essence of your value proposition to your investors. Always remember this whole pitch is about selling your investment proposition. 


In summary, you must focus on what investors are usually concerned about. These are essentially the four key take away points - your team, market opportunity, technology including solution, competitive landscape with the potential for you to be a winner and financials including capital requirements to get to the winning stage. Finally, remember the quote, “Practice makes a man perfect.” Therefore, practice, practice, practice and dress professionally. Good Luck!

Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE) and member of TiE Angels Steering Committee, based in Silicon Valley, California. 

This article was published in February 2013 issue of SiliconIndia.

I must admit that this is the most challenging part of an entrepreneur's daily life. How does an entrepreneur prioritize and manage his time? What is the most valuable use of his time right now? All techniques and methods of time management are aimed at helping you to precisely answer this question. There are many books and articles written by successful coaches, motivational speakers and leaders on this subject. You can search this on internet and figure out what may work for you. Here is how I would like to distill the four key take away (4KTA) points on this important topic that I try to use. 

1.Clarity – The clarity of having a clear purpose is the starting point. Once your purpose is defined, then prioritize around it with a laser focus and use your time around those priorities on a yearly, monthly, weekly and daily schedule. As an entrepreneur, you must figure out as to what you want for you and for your company. Once you know it, you begin to have clarity of your purpose. Define your priorities and goals effectively now. Once this step is done, you tend to make better choices as to where you put your time, energy and focus. Stay away from negative environment, negative energy, bad habits and bad food for they all drain your energy, focus and mental clarity. The healthier and more passionate you are about your company and its mission, the more effective you will be every hour of every day. Being passionate about your purpose is the ultimate fuel for success and hence, managing your time around it brings you the greatest elation. 

2.Priority - Now how do you prioritize around your purpose and live day after day with follow through on it and measure your mini-success leading towards your final goals. At any point during the stage of your company, focus needs to be on high value activities of immense importance. You need to ask yourself constantly whole day what my highest value activities are at this particular moment. Use 80/20 rule. Focus on 20 percent of the activities that provide you 80 percent of the results. Here is a simple example to emphasize this point. Suppose you are expecting an acquisition letter for your company. The prospective acquirers have been talking about various scenarios for the deal terms for some time. Your board is in sync with you to sell the company. This is your highest value activity. Manage your time around it. Make sure that you move this activity rapidly to the next step with your prospect. More often, first time entrepreneurs talk more and divulge all internal details during the discussion phase rather than listening. I advise entrepreneurs to break the process into a number of smaller chunks with measurable outcomes. You must lead your prospect into giving you a written draft of the terms and conditions. This accomplishes two things. It forces other party to put it in writing and present a formal term sheet to you. Secondly, it validates that they are serious about acquiring your company. The similar strategy can be applied for closing a complex product or solutions sale to a customer. 

3.Habit – We as human beings are creatures of our own habits. The good news is that time management is a skill and a discipline that can be learnt with practice. As they say, "If you always do what you have always done, you will always get the same outcome!" To obtain different outcome, we need to change our actions. In order for actions to become natural habits, we must be highly disciplined with a relentless will to follow through on your new actions daily for three weeks or longer as required. For instance, if you would like to start practicing healthy living, start going to gym and make sure that you do it every day for 3-4 weeks and experience the results. Before you know it, it has become a part of your daily lifestyle. Similarly, if you would like to be the best salesman, you need to take an action of making 10-15 cold calls every day to prospects, not just sit in your office wishing and dreaming. Entrepreneurs have to be the best salesmen for their company otherwise no one is going to buy into their vision or product or technology. They need to take actions to change their stale habits so they can manage their time better and be happier.

4.Focus – These days, we are so consumed and distracted all the time with our mobile phones that every few minutes we waste time checking our emails or reacting to notifications. This is not good for concentration and has a negative impact on decision making. Plan ahead every morning your daily priorities around your purpose. Make a list of your tasks using 80/20 rule. You can also use other techniques such as labeling your priorities as A, B, C and allocating time against it. Discipline yourself to focus single-mindedly on one activity until it is 100 percent complete. Set aside time for checking messages and replying only few times a day. As an entrepreneur, it is critical for you not only how to manage not just your own time, but all your employees’ time as well. The key is to inspire and energize everyone to stay focused. Finally, measure your results at the end of every day by analyzing how you fared against your priorities around your purpose and keep up the ongoing cycle of continuous improvement. Remember the quote, "Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends".

In summary, having clarity, priority around your purpose, an action plan to create good habits and having laser focus are four key ingredients for an entrepreneur to manage his time effectively.


Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE) and member of TiE Angels Steering Committee, based in Silicon Valley, California. 

This article was published in February 2014 issue of SiliconIndia. 

Date:   Wednesday , February 05, 2014

Have you ever wondered what makes Silicon Valley tick? So many countries around the world have tried to replicate it but there is no other place like Silicon Valley that has made such an enormous impact in the society and our day to day lives. Many books have been written about the entrepreneurial and innovative ecosystem that exists here between angel investors, venture capital, risk-taking entrepreneurs, law firms and immigrants who are hungry and ready to make a mark.

This month\'s article brings to you a highly generous entrepreneur who incorporates most of the pieces that make up the Silicon Valley puzzle. This is how Mike Cassidy characterized him in a San Jose Mercury News article last year. Vish Mishra is a technology entrepreneur-turned-executive and now a VC for past 12 years with Clearstone Venture Partners � a VC fund with nearly $700 Million in committed capital. Clearstone has been quite successful as an early stage investor in PayPal (eBay), Overture (Yahoo!), Kazeon (EMC), Integrien (VMware), Ankeena (Juniper), The Rubicon Project, BillDesk (India), United Online, and Vast. A Silicon Valley veteran, Vish has over thirty years of leadership and management experience including CEO and Director of several companies. He was co-founder of Excelan (1983) acquired by Novell for $225 million; a founder and board member of Telera, a voice web infrastructure company sold to Alcatel for $140 million. A past president of TiE Silicon Valley, he has actively dedicated himself to its growth since its inception. I have the distinct pleasure of knowing Vish for many years including during the time we served together on TiE Board. It is with special gratitude to him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points, which center around the concept of four dimensions of entrepreneurship, based on my discussions with him recently.

1. Know Thyself!

If you want to start a company, you must know what you are truly good at. You must feel comfortable under your skin. For instance, are you a technologist or are you a marketing expert? It helps others to collaborate and work with you. People do not change. Your personality is developed during your teenage years. The rest of your life goes towards learning survival mechanisms. I realized early on that I enjoyed helping others whether it was helping my classmates with their homework or whether giving my colleagues new contacts or advice. In my first job at Control Data, I started as a design engineer in the communications division for re-designing recently introduced product in the market, so I could extract efficiency and reduce cost further. The hardest problem in my job was to get a solid grasp of the customer�s reported problems. So, I started holding meetings with members from marketing, sales, and customer support and product groups to get to the heart of problems amidst hide-bound personalities. As a result of my collaborative and helping nature like a peacemaker, I was moved into management and leadership role early on in my career.

2. Know Your Market

Who is your customer? Is your customer going to buy your product? Do you understand your customer\'s problems well enough that you can build a solution around it? Can you bring the product to market in a timely manner and get instant customer feedback? Make sure you have the pertinent domain expertise in this area to build the best product. Just because social media is a hot trend does not mean you start a company in that area, when, in fact, your expertise is in semiconductors. For example, recently in Ankeena Networks - a portfolio company, two of the co-founders Rajan Raghavan and Prabakar Sundarrajan, came up with an innovative idea for video caching. Before they got started, they talked to over 30 customers to validate the idea and fine tune it to what the precise need was. The company was successfully acquired within 18 months by Juniper Networks. In a healthcare software startup, Quantros, the entrepreneur - a medical doctor wanted to take on the whole healthcare market of payers, providers and drug manufacturers. After entering all three markets, he decided to focus on providers only with a patient safety and risk management solution. With this focus the company became a market leader and was successfully acquired by a private equity firm.

3. Build The Right Product

Entrepreneurs should build a point product rather than a platform. It�s way hard for a startup to sell a platform solution. In the eco-system of your expertise, find one thing that is really broken and develop a solution to fix that. Make sure that it fits into the existing ecosystem and solves one particular customer pain point. For instance, Telera started with an idea to make 1-800 numbers appear as local numbers. It could potentially provide huge savings in long distance calling costs to businesses. Now, in order to make it a reality, we had to build a dedicated network operations center (NOC) to act as a neutral party among various carriers. To accomplish this, we ended up building whole voice over IP infrastructure management software, which became a valuable piece of intellectual property that led to company�s acquisition eventually by Alcatel.

4. Generate Profit

You must focus on generating profit as soon as possible otherwise stay away from becoming an entrepreneur. Every business has to make a profit in order to sustain itself. Profit orientation means recognizing that the business comes first. The cost of goods always needs to be less than the sale price. Hire the right people with the similar mindset. Act fast enough to replace the wrong people.

In summary, the four key take away points for entrepreneur\'s are knowing thyself, knowing your market, building the right product and generating profit.

Naveen Bisht is Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies, Inc, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair- Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur(TiE), based in Silicon Valley, California. Follow Naveen on twitter @Naveen_4KTA