I was at Proto last weekend and it was interesting.. There were 27 company presentations…and Gokul had live blogged it.. I was there for a couple of presentations…and..mostly loitering in the corridor and meeting people… Its infact fun to know the kind of cool stuff people are doing…
One observation I had for the presenations I have seen was that they were mostly around product and not around business…That made me to think about the purpose of proto..is it for demoing your product or pitching your venture….few entrepreneurs really talked about their markets or business models or infact addressing problems…
One entrepreneur went deep into a feature in his product that has some multi threading ..encryption etc..I am sure he would have spent nights in building that “cool” feature.. Fantastic..but as an audience it didn’t make any sense to me…
Waiting for the next edition of Proto….
January 23, 2007 at 1:23 am |
Hi Shiv,
This is Himanshu here.Good to see your blog and lots of useful information.Good you have mentioned about Gokul since I was not able to blog the event live.Check ou my blog http://thoughtsprevail.blogspot.com as well.
Keep up the good work going.
Would catch you later in Bangalore for some discussion.
-Himanshu
January 23, 2007 at 10:02 am |
I believe the purpose was for demoing your product. Proto is designed along the lines of the DEMO conference.
Pitching the venture would quickly morph into a business plan competition. We have plenty of those organized by TiE, and others. Almost all the entrepreneurs on stage can easily pull together 5-6 slides with sales projects, and ROI estimates. Would anyone want to sit through 30 of those !!
March 25, 2007 at 10:59 am |
Vivek,
I am little late in the day to react. I’ve chanced upon this blog just now.
Then why were Venture Capitalists invited ? VCs don’t come to learn technology from entrepreneurs. Their job is to excite, not to educate.
By dwelling more on technology, they make it look more like a barcamp and not like a DEMO. You are here to `sell’, not `preach’ ! Who cares for what technology you use ? Users want experience and you want their money. Period.
By not trying to sell, you are leaving proof of value to be articulated by someone else. Is it because you can’t do it yourself ? Persuade your investors by telling them that the first beachhead is attainable and interesting. That’s what entrepreneurs should use such events for.