On Startups | The Real Startup Culture vs Food Delivery Startups

I wrote this as an email to my father right after winter break (Dec '15) started. I started receiving a lot of emails from several startups during that period, many of which were listed on angel.co, willing to hire me as an Android intern. I have to say this, I love startups, and am sure to work for one after graduating. But there is a difference between the ones I have worked for so far, and those that I chose not to work with. And that is what this article is about. 

I hold no grudges against app-only startups, but my interest lies in making something tangible.

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Isn't it just so cool to designate yourself as the Founder of Banana Corp?

To send out professional emails, signing interns for your startup?

Telling your friends you're busy meeting investors. That you're flying down to Bangalore on business trips.

Hunting for incubators to give you a place to work out of.

Startups. Ha. The ideology with which most people startup is bull. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a startup now, and they talk as if they're running this profitable money making business that is/has impacted the world. They're all making small off-shoots of Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, trying to build bridges where they feel these giants failed. But no one is making things they would love to use. No real tangible gizmos. Everything we're building is for the alternate world; the virtual world. Also, if you're a pure software startup, you have to know about Y Combinator, TechCrunch, and simply have to read about other startups. 

I think everyone has got the idea behind a startup all wrong.

According to me, a startup is a side project you're working, because you are really interested in that field, or because there's a hole you take responsibility to plug to make everyone's lives easier, while continuing on with your monotonous life (the off-topic projects they give you at college, or the 9-5 job you do at work). 

Now this side project slowly generates revenue, gains attention of the masses, where news about your product is all over the media, social connects, professional circles. Chinese whispers, rumours about how amazing your product is the real way of gaining popularity in large numbers. Its then that you take forward this idea and evolve into a startup. (Take for example Dubsmash, Hike, TrueCaller - All of these were just ideas, just apps that have now become startups.)

But everyone is taking the opposite route.

Whats happening now is people bored of their current life declare themselves as founders of a startup. 

When did it start? -Oh just yesterday. 

What are you doing? -Oh it's still a secret. 

Do you guys have a website? -Were still on it. 

What's your client market like? -Oh its the entire world *smiles*. 

How many in your team? -4 in total. One's in America doing blah blah, and the three of us are here. We plan to expand with interns this summer though. *smirks*. 

Do you have any design team? -Design? We're making a website man! 

And PR, marketing team? -Oh right now it's just the four of us. Techies. *gleams*

*sigh*

That is not the way to go! If you're starting up, you have to have a website, you need to know who you're selling to, what exactly you are doing! A simple idea, with a website and an app on all three platforms is not a startup! Firstly, if there's no internet existence, there is no existence. You need to talk to people about your idea. People need to know you exist. You can't stay in stealth mode. When you go and talk to people about your startup, most will reject your idea, make fun of it, and that is the sad truth. But the few people that'll give you advices are the ones that'll count. The rejection that most face 6 months down their startup timeline is when they have a few investors on board, and are reaching out to the public, to their consumer market. Its then that all these startups experience the period they call the rough patch, the hard times, the Great Depression. And funny thing is, investors knew this day would come all along.

Those that declare themselves unfit for the regular 9-5 job set out on a journey to explore the world by starting up. Instead of first creating a brilliant product, they go to investors asking for money, which acc to me is a lot like 5th standard students asking their teachers if they can go to the washroom. You don't need lakhs to startup. You simply don't need that money. The initial prototypes, the gamma versions can all be made with no money whatsoever. Once you grow, once you've made something so good people can't resist offering you money, your inbox will be filled with mails of investors. Instead of making actual valuable products, they're starting up just for the heck of it. They're using media, Facebook, LinkedIn, to create products they think they'll like, because they don't like their current job.

Investors are another funny lot of people. Too much money that they feel they must give away. The so called 'startups' they invest in are nothing more than shares in a market. A few will be borderline profitable investments, most will fail and break out eventually, and with some luck, the odds that one will make it large are thin.

Alright. I love music. And this analogy might help you understand what I'm trying to say. A group of students who happen to be good friends and are brilliant instrumentalists cannot just declare themselves to be a band one sunny Sunday morning. Practicing together, days and nights and nights and days of jamming, individual recordings, self judging, self evaluation, listening to your own music, re-recording, listening again, and slowly performing songs together in university events, restaurants and bars, putting up your music on Youtube and iTunes is what makes you a band. You evolve into a band. You don't declare yourself a band.

Enough said, I'm not completely against startups. Startups are the place to learn. Without startups, most Indian engg students would be jobless! But the core of a startup is innovation. A project. A cool thing you want to make. Something that inspires you. What you feel you really need. What you feel people like you really need. Just Start. If it's good Up jhak marke hoyega.