Entrepreneurship
Start a Startup
Muhammad Fahad http://muhammadfahad.blogspot.com
www.folio3.com
Introduction • Engineering Director at Folio3. • Member of the Visiting Faculty at Sir Syed University. • Member of the IEEE Computer Society. • Member of the ACM.
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Folio3 • • • • 80+ employees. Own structure at Shahra-e-Faisal. Exciting opportunities for Learning and Growth. Fun-loving environment.
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Lets Get Busy…
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Some Examples • Fahad – 5+ yrs
– Techlabs (www.techlabs.us)
• Ahmed – 1 yr
– Tech Weavers (http://www.techweavers.com.pk/)
• Ayaz Baig – 2 yrs
– Fission Soft (http://www.fission-soft.com/)
• Waqar Rehman - 1 yr
– 4 Ace Technologies (http://www.4acetech.com/)
• Farhan - 2 yrs
– Apace Solutions (http://www.apacesolutions.com/)
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Entrepreneurship
• Wikipedia says,
“Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities.”
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Rules of Thumb • The Idea • People • Customer’s Needs
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The Idea • • • • Innovation is required but not mandatory. Offer people better technology. Look what people require. Present in a way that it doesn’t suck.
“Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people. ”
• Take an example,
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Google • Google had 3 ideas,
– – – Index more of the Web Use links to rank search results Have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads
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I Came Up With An Idea • Educational Networking!!
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People
• Is the person genuinely smart? • Can he actually get things done? • Can we stand to have them around?*
• Some Suggestions,
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People (Cont.)
• Ideally you want between two and four founders.
• Founders should include technical people.
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I Selected A Team
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What Customers Want? • In nearly every failed startup, the real problem was that customers didn't want the product. • It's worth trying very, very hard to make technology easy to use. • If you're developing technology for money, you're probably not going to be developing it for people like you.
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What Customers Want? (Cont.) • Start by writing software for smaller companies, because it's easier to sell to them. • The products that start as cheap, simple options, tend to gradually grow more powerful. • It's very dangerous to let anyone fly under you. If you have the cheapest, easiest product, you'll own the low end.
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I Targeted My Users • Followed Trends in US. • Adopted localization strategy.
– apnakarachi.com – jang.com.pk
• Early Launch • Marketing!!
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Who Should Start? • Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38. • Someone who wants to solve the money problem in one shot instead of getting paid gradually over a conventional working life. • Consulting or Product?*
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Q&A
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