Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

Ever heard of a website with one million hits and a one million Alexa rank?

Prateek Dayal, is the founder of Muziboo which offers a stage for our musicians to come out and spread their music. He takes a dig at RadioVerve (Ashish too I think), another startup in the same space, and quite literally demolishes them. I don’t really know much about RadioVerve to comment on the folks but there are some very valid points Prateek talks about.

First and foremost, startup directors don’t have other jobs. If you don’t have enough to keep you busy the whole week then something is wrong. I know a great number of people who want to wait till the startup starts making them a million before they quit. For the record, it seems that the folks at RadioVerve are more interested in making their own music that with the site thing, so this would not really be true for them, but for software startups, you have to get over the bloody job security thing.

Secondly, there is no such thing as pre-revenue. It was invented by MBAs to gobble up more and more amounts of VC funding. You shouldn’t even be talking about your startup when you are in that stage. You can be pre-profit, but you just can’t be pre-revenue when you’re already giving out interviews.

Thirdly, passion in low doses is called a hobby. I won’t get my car fixed by somebody who is very passionate about cars, but only does it on weekends from 3-4 pm. Similarly, I will not buy CRM from a guy who only works on it on the weekend. This is again mostly a derivation of the first point, but I wanted to say this out loud.

Fourthly, startups need evangelists. You and only you are responsible to make sure you get all the attention you need. Techies get so lost in the code that they forget that there is a very important aspect called sales. If you can’t handle it yourself, you need to get somebody who can, even if this means giving away a big chunk of your equity.

Finally, the only opinion which matters to you is that of the users. Prateek has some reason to be angry, but still not being in a contest is not something you should be worried about. But the real bummer is that even though he says he has more traffic, he is upset about NEN not giving Muziboo more importance. It is an insult to say that you value NENs opinion much more than your own users.

On the whole, there is no right or wrong. But everybody has their won sets of what is right and wrong. The only thing that you should do, is stay true to your own ideals.