Angel Uncle Paise De Do Fundraising, Angel Wala - Annkur P Agarwal, PriceBaba.com

Starting Up In 2002

Startup What? Entrepreneur What? Money. Matters. Most. No Media. No Buzz. Ecommerce Without Payment Gateway.

The Startup Boom

We are in a Startup Boom. It is not a 1 year phenomenon. Yes … It’s a good thing But there is bad too. -  More Opportunity, More Noise -  More Media, More Mediocrity -  More Events, Lesser Mentors Who Have Done It

Starting PriceBaba.com & Accidentally Fundraising

The Belief: -  Solve a (India) problem, choose a personal one -  Don’t Copy -  Capture a niche & then expand -  Play to your strength & Don’t Die

^ yes a bit Mahesh Murthy school of belief Fundraising: -  Didn’t plan funds, started with personal money -  Started pitching to angels, tougher than I thought (at least in 2012) -  Used media to get early traction. Why not ride the boom J

Why We Raised Funds

Why PriceBaba.com Needed Funds What Kind of Investors We Were Looking For Why We Do What We Do

What We Knew, What We Learnt

Rules we knew: Take an introduction Have a product out there, no paper plans Know what you are doing ++ experienced founder(s) Solve a good problem What we now know: Have some traction But also have a story Confidence is key Believers will believe, don’t try to convince hard! Traction Rules.

HARD TRUTH

FUNDRAISING IS NOT EASY DON’T GET FOOLED BY ALL THE FUNDING NEWS DON’T GET FOOLED BY THE ACQUISITIONS (MEANINGFUL) NETWORK / ACCESS MATTERS TRACTION IS KING

IF FUNDRAISING

GET A LEAD, PEOPLE FIND IT SAFE TO FOLLOW ALWAYS RAISE MORE! - Ride The Boom - Accelerators Are Good Idea -  Take small cheques to make big, pitch to 100 people, iterate every

pitch, sell concept if it sells, sell yourself, sell product, sell traction, sell what sells, take the money. PS: BE AUTHENTIC

-  Angel networks are good / bad / who cares / take where you get money from

Ecosystem Out There

Accelerators: 500 Startups, Morpheus (was), Tlabs, Microsoft (no cash / equity)

Angel Groups: IAN, Mumbai Angels, Hyderabad Angels etc Entrepreneurs: Plenty – any founder who is Series A or B or Best

Exited. Also some (ex)employees of successful ventures Individuals & Funds: India Quotient (Anand Lunia), Mahesh Murthy,

Zishaan Hayath, Blume Ventures, 500 Startups …

PLEASE READ

Paul Graham’s Essays: Do Things That Don’t Scale: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html How To Now Die: http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html Books: The Hard Things About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz The High Performance Entrepreneur, Subroto Bagchi

PLEASE

DON’T BE A FOOL – Make a business Know why you are doing what you are doing Life is too short to do something you don’t love, but remember, startup

won’t be rosy Don’t get swayed away by all the funding news. Stick to the basics. Your

life is more precious than the bubble Don’t Copy. Solve Problems. Innovate Constantly.