Special Startup Saturday 11th January 2014
A boost for 2014 you say? How about a Special Startup Saturday with all the ingredients to kickstart your entrepreneurial plan for the new year. Based on feedback received from Entrepreneurs about busting obstacles from SEO to marketing, to keeping fit and looking fab, we curated sessions ranging from 6 ways to make your product / service go viral to 5 easy tips for SEO, approach for B2B Sales, building a team and easy hack to a super fit body; it was a power packed afternoon.
The first session was building Virality into your Product / Service by Rohan Dighe, founder of ViralMint. One of the oldest and trusted forms of marketing is Word of Mouth. You heard about Whatsapp from a friend didn’t you. Then you shared it with another friend. And before you knew it, everyone is using Whatsapp. But it is not the app that is Viral. Stumped?
Thats how Rohan Dighe started his session. Remember the Cadbury’s Silk advertisement which celebrates the unabashed joy of eating a chocolate. How many of us were lured into eating Silk after that? Definitely, all of us. What do you think made the campaign go viral? What made everyone share the Google reunion video? Or start using DropBox?
According to Rohan, there is no such thing as a Viral Product. Virality is a capability that can be added. He shared qualities like Curiosity, Scarcity, Exclusivity, Delight, Ego, Anticipation that can be built into a product or service to make it viral.
The next session creator was Himanshu Chanda, founder of ProjectHeena and SEO consultant, who shared his insights on increasing virality on Google.
With a simple example of a website for Mathura ke Pedhe, Himanshu explained different concepts like page ranking, on page optimization, building authority in your niche, impact of Hummingbird and Penguin algorithms on SEO. Himanshu also shared that the concept of free search engine optimization is theoretical. The session was wrapped up with 5 simple SEO hacks by Annkur Agarwal, Co-founder of PriceBaba as follows:
1. Ask for Tweets
2. Give importance to citations
3. Share quality content with the user
4. Work on PR
5. Write articles which help you establish authority
After 2 intensive sessions, there was an Open House on Building a Team, Hiring Talent by Ankur Agarwal. An open house is a platform for dialogue and interaction between the audience and the moderator. Entrepreneurs in the group had questions on best sources for hiring technical and non-technical staff, should an employee accept equity as a mode of payment by a startup, life cycle of a new recruit among others.
Startup Saturday resumed the 2nd half of the event after a quick tea break.
With the attention of a rapt audience, Mr.Kanchan Kumar, Executive Director, TiE and serial entrepreneur spoke about B2B Sales. After a quick feedback from the audience about what stage of sales are they in, are they looking for their first customer, first 10 customers or sustaining momentum for over 100 clients. Based on the audience response, he shared the 4 Quadrant matrix and qualities relevant to each quadrant in order to close Corporate orders.
Reliability implies having a dedicated point of contact for an SME, whereas for an Enterprise reliability means the least possible dependence on the vendor. A Domestic SME will be very price conscious, whereas an Enterprise client must stay within the budget allocated. Purchase is a decision for an SME whereas it is a process for an Enterprise. Mr.Kanchan Kumar armed the audience a clear thought process with which they can approach B2B Sales.
Kanchan Kumar’s B2B Sales Quadrants
Wait, the event was not over yet! After the intellectual workout, the audience was energised even furthur with Nupur Shikhare’s session on Fitness for Entrepreneurs.
Having trained Aamir Khan for Dhoom 3, Nupur inspired everyone to get fit. A quick circuit workout demo with volunteers from the audience, he showcased a 15 minute workout that can be done anywhere, even in your office cubicle. All the jumping and pumping got the audience charged for a interactive networking session at the Bistro, which marked the end of the first Startup Saturday of 2014, only to come back with an even more interactive session in February.
Special Startup Saturday was widely discussed on twitter. You can check the SSMUM account @startmum or #SSMUM.
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