TalentOnCampus's comments

Successful entrepreneurship is a lot about perseverance & passion is the only fuel for perseverance Ray Kroc of McDonalds a classic example of perseverance backed by passion

No passion equals low perseverance - dima chances of making it

Mostly a case scenario when development is completely outsourced , its suggested that the tech vendor drafts a technology plan inclusive of Design & Architecture . Get the technology plan vetted by experts , plenty of tech guys would be willing to help for free. A clever way to go about it is , post a specific tech challenge / query on LinkedIn , of those answering and willing to help request if they would vet ur technology plan & get this done by 3-4 good tech Samaritans Don’t go overboard – prepare for success not for failure , spending too much time on analyzing tech plans is preparing for failure. Focus on building the Biz & success. Once u have costumer traction all tech challenges can be solved . Heard of Twitter in the early days ?

The only way tech founders can appreciate the biz guy is by personally engaging in biz development

Going by trends & data I would say every startup founder / founding team must have basic business & sales acumen to succeed. Even if u have a great business guy , he / she would need a team to compliment the efforts and that would be the founders in the initial days. Lets take the most obvious examples to back up this theory Bill Gates – a technology god but also a very shrewd business guy , he actually bought the OS Larry Page & Sergey Brin – beating Yahoo out of AOL by diverting a Spain bound flight and meeting with AOL’s Rowley in London eventually clinching the deal – this was impossible if not for the biz acumen of Page & Brin Google & Microsoft clearly indicate founders need to be well rounded in Business & technology both Its disastrous for a startup founder to say hey I am the tech guy , for success u gotta be good at Biz Development. The good news is it’s a skill that can be acquired by meeting prospects

You gotta cook the beef & acquire the client so If ur in the restaurant biz it’s time flipping burgers and if ur in the product startup space it’s time on the phone [works way better than email] Everybody talks about innovative products. Innovative sales & marketing is ignored We have made inroads into accounts like Dell, Yahoo, Walmart & Google and it all started with tracking big guns at these organizations attending conferences, getting their phone numbers from conference organizers, calling up & requesting a meeting at venue – also to mention an innovative pitch. Definitely could not have been done by a sales ace to start with but definitely something we can teach a sales guy to replicate Bottom line – if the founding team does it themselves its easy to build a scalable process