Only a handful of years ago, I was a toiling away in a cubicle at Bose Corporation. I didn’t know much about startups, raising capital, or how to run a company. I didn’t have a network of people who I could turn to in the startup world, and I struggled with some of the basics of starting a company.
While I now know that there are a few really good startup blogs out there, I don’t think that any of them are brutally honest about how to start a company. I haven’t found one that talks very personally about how to deal with key startup issues: setting up the company, finding a lawyer, how to hire people, how to raise capital, and how to launch a company. I haven’t found one that truly captures the raw emotion of what it takes in the trenches.
I created the Startup Swami to address these issues. So what kind of things are you going to see on the Startup Swami?
- Very personal, raw thoughts and experiences as I continue to navigate the startup world
- In-depth and specific stories from my startup experience
- Advice, tips, and “how to guides” about launching a startup, from the very beginning through every step
- Answers to specific questions from the community
With some of the articles on the Startup Swami, I’ll try to supplement with a video. I’ll experiment with how this works as the blog develops.
Thanks for reading and welcome to the Startup Swami.
SWAMI SAYS: Tell me what you want to know about what it’s really like to launch a startup. I’d love to hear from you.
Startup Swami 
Swami,Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. While not as successful as you have been to date we started documenting the building of our startup on our company blog. Partly because we have a product in the strategic planning space so we wanted to show that we were eating our own dog food and partly to help others understand in greater detail what goes on in the decision process of a startup company.Check out these initial posts to get a flavor as to how we did it.http://www.rapidinfluence.com/blog-0/bid/9631/It-s-strategic-planning-dogfood-time-Part-1http://www.rapidinfluence.com/blog-0/bid/9964/It-s-strategic-planning-dog-food-time-Part-2Thanks,Ed Loessihttp://twitter.com/edloessi
I know that I'm late to the party but I'm really glad that this is out there!!!! I look forward to catching up to where you are to date and asking several questions.Thanks again,-A
I'd love to hear about * monetizing decisions in a B2C market* deciding how to raise money: private, loan, venture, angel* early marketing * making relationships with investors* partnerships with other companies
Swami,While I was exploring the event management segment powered by technology, I started with set of features that I found out (as my market research advanced), are being offered by one or the other platform. Some of the features have an edge but while they are being offered by relatively newer players even then they still haven't been able to get the user out of evite mode, which boasts of over 25 mn loyal user base. Now after further refinement, I have carved out some more niche features that can be leveraged by newer players to attract a user base from evite-fb linkage. Question: Shall i re-invent the wheel to have a basic platform in place and then deploy these features or have someone look at these offerings and have those embedded in their platform?Why do i refer to it as re-inventing the wheel: During market study i came across 15-18 prominent platforms and roughly there are over 100 in the pipeline per angel.co. Then there are the ones with likes of cocodot that dissolved. So even if i bootstrap to come up with a viable product for customer feedback, it will still need a basic engine to run on, which in itself is re-invention of the wheel and is therefore a reason for my dilemma