Jagdish Chandra Belwal, International CIO of GE Digital and Transportation, investor and member at CIO Angel Network addressing entrepreneurs at this morning’s ‘Connecting Ideas With Money’ session.
The session saw 8 startups pitch – three from outside Bangalore [Agra, Suratkal, Hyderabad] and 5 from Bangalore.
At the end of the session, Jagdish shared some of his notes with the room:
1. Do not forget to get into the shoes of the customer? It is important to understand the relevance of your product in the lives of your target customer. Whether it would require the customer to use additional hardware for example. What devices do they already use and how can your product seamlessly integrate into their lives.
2. Do you understand enough about the user context? Social context?
Have you spent enough time understanding and observing the life of your user. Do you understand their needs, pain? What apps, devices, do they already use for example?
3. Have you considered the downside? Risk factors?
Have you assessed the capability of your competition? Are you watching the competition closely enough?
4. Entrepreneurs tend to use large numbers when it comes to market size. There are no mega markets, only micro markets. Identify one as clearly as you can and build a sharp value proposition to address it.
5. Scale & Value: Reuse do not reinvent. Build on top of what already exists.
6. Question if there is an opportunity to create a network effect. Leverage existing platforms with a large user-base eg. Amazon, Facebook
7. Collaborate if you can with other entrepreneurs and jointly increase the value of your proposition
