The showcase event at Proto

Attending Proto event for the first time was more fun and learning than I had thought.

Here are some of the things I observed:

1. Indian startups are still not ready for a unified nurturing event like Proto. Many of the founders could not promote or just say, present what they had done and what they meant to achieve. That brought me to a thought of adding finishing to presentations at such platforms.

However, cost could be one of the factors too, as startups are financially more restrained.

It could be argued that a businessman need not be the best person to present or highlight one's own business but then there was a case of a startup bringing client to speak on the stage while one of them had got their marketing manager. You need not invest money to promote yourself smartly.

2. Personalities still sell the business in India: People introduced themselves before their ideas. Many of them took pride in letting people know their backgrounds.

3. Competition needs to be identified on priority when starting a business. You need not have a brand new idea.
If you cannot find a competitor then you're either selling something nobody wants to buy or you just have been too ignorant to see the competition.

4. Ganesh Natarajan spoke about Ecosystem. Acknowledging someone's superiority does not mean taking a step back or anything like that. Academic institutions, Larger organizations, technology and intelligence partners are to be utilized; better you utilize, better gets business.

5. Many of the people I met at the event wanted an entrepreneur to be abundant on knowledge, passion and self belief fronts. Contrary to general beliefs, you need not have a full fledged business model or sophisticated estimates ready. These days, There are groups and successful startups to help you out with that.

6. Smart use of media for startup promotion: am still not very good with this yet. There are ordinary cases where Media publicizes you for free, an entrepreneur can actually utilize this big way.