Startup India, Standup India - seems like India is now promoting both startups and standup comedy in a big way! What if it really did? Firstly, to make a joint pitch for the two - sort of bundling products - there has to be some logical connection. For one, startup founders would make good standup comedians in my view - they all talk a lot, they all take pride in thinking crazy, and most of them are extroverts. And if they are guaranteed good money, they'd definitely jump in. The second connection that might be looked at, is some crazy babu going by this line of thinking - if the government were to act like a VC, and had to entertain these startups for funding or whatever, then it has to be entertained in return. So these entrepreneurs have to perform some standup comedy. It may seem weird the first time you think about it, but it would soon start making sense. Anyone who has seen the program Shark Tank on TV - where entrepreneurs stand in front of investors and make their pitch - would know that the imagery is not very different, although the content and nature of discourse is. But as we can imagine, government officials don't think and act like conventional investors. They'd any day enjoy some standup comedy more than boring and unintelligible discussions on top-lines, bottom-lines, equity and shit like that. And once the comedy session is done, they can discuss some other
lines over chai-samosa.
The vision of the government is amazingly supportive of entrepreneurship, and like never before. And, as one of my friends said soon after Modiji announced the incentives for startups, if we are not starting up even now, we probably never will. Although the incentives may not be practically of the kind and scale that would make it a cakewalk for millions of Indians, the positivity of outlook and supportive policies can make all the difference.
I am reading
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Have finished only 43.9% of it so far in 3 weeks - quite slow by any standards. I don't know how, I've lost my habit of reading. Just like I got it 2004 from nowhere. May be it'll come back. Anyway... The book is about the right approach for building startups - the lean way - avoiding wastage of time, money and other resources. It talks about quickly building MVPs (minimum viable products) out of ideas, testing them out on samples of the target audience, testing alternatives, comparing, trashing, improving, developing, launching, testing more, improving more, and going on like that iteratively. It says - don't just go on to develop the full product thinking you know the customers want it; rather develop pieces of it to try out the concept and get feedback... and do that continuously to reach higher levels of learning and product maturity. This makes a lot of sense in theory. But execution in this manner requires tremendous alignment of thought process with the theory. I have to know more to see if it works. May be I should test this approach and see where it takes me. But there's higher risk the approach would fail for me if I don't "believe" in it at the outset. It's like trying to reach god while being an agnostic deep down. The lack of belief in the goal or the path to it will always prevent you from applying 100% of yourself behind the goal. Anyhow, I have not taken
thheka to prove Eric Ries right or wrong. If his method doesn't work for me, I'll figure out what works for me and proceed. More important is that I have to get my startup moving and scaling up.
First things first... I will start practicing standup comedy from today. Wish me luck...
See you soon!
