Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

Getting funding is easy.

Recently, I had read Sujai Karampuri, founder of Sloka Telecom (henceforth, the Sloka guy) ranting about the fact that VCs were shying away from funding his company. I felt bad for for about half a second because it looks like a great idea, but then I moved on hoping that somebody on VentureWoods would give him some good insight. But it wasn’t until today that I found out the reason why this guy has this amazing idea and no funding.

It just so happened that as I was flushing posts from my Google Reader, I managed to read a few of them. And everywhere I went, I heard about the hot new deal in the Indian Web 2.0 scene. (I don’t what the scene is, we’re still on something like Web 0.5, just have a look at mbakarma). Anyways, so it was a hot new deal, and as you would expect this social networking site was sold for an undisclosed price.

The site in question was desimartini.com (deap ubhi, the burrp guy, is*coughing*). Sine the price was undisclosed, somebody talked to an HT Media exec (no one knows who), who said that they had been paid less than $10 million for the right. Oh yes, that’s right, less than $10 million. $9.9, $9.6, $5, $1, basically something less than 10.

According to watblog (I’m sorry, what blog? hah, just kidding),

Vivek Pahwa, a 26 year graduate from the Hyderabad based prestigious Indian Business School, had borrowed $76,000 to “do something” in the Internet space and thus setup Desimartini.com (Indian Martini) to make it look like Orkut.

which is interesting because if he was trying to make something like Orkut how did it become a facebook ripoff. Maybe they were aiming for the middle path, anyways that is not important. What is important is the watblog analysis which follows

Vivek had a target of registering 1 million subscribers which he missed, and therefore sold Desimartini.com to Hindustan Times Media for $10.00 Million (an estimated figure) on Nov 20 2007 even though Desimartini.com has only 2,50,000 subscribers and just 2.5 million monthly hits.

How convenient. I had though mbakarma would get more subscribers than Ten-A-Day in two months after launch. Now that I’ve missed my margin maybe I should sell it to somebody too. But oh, I didn’t borrow the $76,000. Don’t get me wrong, I love desimartini, it’s innovative, it’s well designed and works like a charm, (also shabby, half-ass, semi-defunct rip-off)but I’m a little sarcastic right now because the next line is an absolute bummer

Meanwhile, he has setup another website called SecondShaadi.com for re-marriages and is also funding (emphasis mine) Antya.com

Hmph..

I had a rant on Antya here which I have removed from the post because as I think I had gone a little overboard.

So it was not until today that I found out the real reason why Sujai (the Sloka guy) has this amazing idea and no funding. Its because of two things. One, he didn’t create a facebook ripoff. And Two, he did not have friends in the right places.

After all funding means that you are trying to sell equity to the VC. To sell it to her you need a product she likes, not something you believe would be valuable to your eventual customers. She wants a piece of what’s hot now.

So maybe the answer is that you need to go with the times. But that would mean that you cannot always be true to your idea. The answer then is wait for your time.

PS. If just found that Antya.com is the Gold Sponsor at the Content Sutra Mixer. And maybe I’m taking it a little too far, but Vivek Pahwa is funding Antya, and the guy who runs is ContenSutra is Nikhil Pahwa. Any idea if the two Pahwa’s are related?

UPDATE: It turns out I am right, they are cousins.