Spark of InspirationAlumni-Start-ups: Show inspirations of start-ups

Oct 27, 2014

Hey Studentpreneurs!

I’m

2011 BE CSE passout

Mohankumar Swaminathan

CEO & Co-founder, DoPartTime.com

A product of Tinywall Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (TTPL)

How I met your mother

• Fully Residential college (just hostel & college)

• More than 5K+ students

• Free Wifi across campus

• No access to Social Networking Websites

• so, obviously had lot of time

my Co-founder

Developing Tinywall

• Classmates notes sharing web app

• Joined hands and decided to make together

• Naming Tinywall (Guess why!)

• Students Social Networking Engine v1.0

Team building

• Passion

• Fire in the belly

• Thirst for knowledge

• Wave length match

• Encouragement

• Sharing

• Trust

• Lean team is much better

• Open up

• Discussion is always better than argument. Because argument is to find out who is right ! Discussion is to find out what is right.

Team work

• Ran around most of the national level symposiums

• Organized seminars and workshops in colleges/universities

• Worked on lots of freelancing works

• Started a blog Tinywall.info

• Created Identity

Making our first $$$$$

• A Norwegian had came to know about us via Twitter.

• Connected with us via Facebook

• Discussed in Skype

• Sent our first payment using PayPal

• Purchased Android mobiles

Career path

Start-up Company

• Joined Globals Inc.

• Solutions Consultant

• LAMP Stack

• Customer focus

MNC Company

• Joined TechMahindra

• S/w developer

• Java

• Product focus

Team Timeline

2010

• Developed Tinywall v1

2011

• Partnership with Norway

• Career path

2012

• Brainstorming ideas

• Understanding MNC and start-up

2013

• Market research

• Developed MVP

2014

• Incubated in StartTank

• Won TiECON 2014 CBE

• Beta release of DoPartTime.com

2009

Started Class portal

Business vs Startup

MNC

• Bench - project

• On-site

• Green card

• NRI

• Retirement

Start-up

• Just You + Your Idea

• Scaling – User base - Transaction

• Fund raising – Acquisition – Exit

• Make in India

• Entrepreneur journey

Wanna be Entrepreneur?

Be ready to face,

• First your girlfriend will leave you (If you have one)

• Mom will have hypertension and will tell you that you are going nuts.

• Father will ask you to grow up.

For the first generation entrepreneurs

• Stop worrying someone will steal your idea. Worry about how to get customers, a team & funding.

• If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way!

• There is no shortage of money on this planet, only a shortage of people thinking big enough.

• Entrepreneurs are rock stars. Entrepreneurship is ‘the’ most courageous thing to do. It takes a lot of courage to startup.

• Flat, marriage and family – 3 reasons why young Indians don’t turn entrepreneurs! via @AbhinavSahai

Best time to be an entrepreneur

My Learnings

• If you have work-life balance, you are not serious enough about your start-up.

• Anything that you would be doing as a start-up entrepreneur is selling, a lot of selling.

• Do Shameless networking, follow up desperately. Even a simple chit-chat would help you connect dots.

• You may even hire who is lazy; but for sure not an irresponsible idiot

• Study empathy for your audience

• Success will come slowly, and cash will burn fast. Be smart – plan from day one.

• Lack of innovation is death for the company.

• Don't improve by adding features, improve by solving problems

• According to our own experience, an excellent programmer can do in half the time and with better quality what an average programmer does.

• A Good User Interface has high conversion rates and is easy to use.

• Automate

My Mind voice• The only comfortable place was next to my few entrepreneur friends. It was true, only an entrepreneur

could understand an entrepreneur.

• Either you sell the client something or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is going to close?

• Security doesn’t have to last forever; just longer than everything else that might notice it’s gone.

• Entrepreneurship is all about customers, revenues and profits, and funding is optional

• Stop being so perfect I have parents to answer

• A person never gets tired working for himself.

• Valuation is not a science; it's an art.

• You only have to be right once!

• Fail Fast, Succeed Faster

• Been there, done that.

• Best Motivational Video For Startups And Entrepreneurs -YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NxDO6fA5rU

Building while at Karunya?

• It’s easy to find a girl friend; but not a co-founder – start working now

• Awesome climate; free users; cool infrastructure – don’t miss it

• Stop Counter stick game (may be some new one now) – save time & energy

• Learn to Unlearn

What are we building now?

www.DoPartTime.com

an online portal that facilitates hiring and finding of part-time work in India

• Ideal for students, house wife, freelancers & retired professionals

• Search based on time, day

• Search based on vicinity (location)@doparttime

fb.com/doparttime

Thank youLife is short; just startup!

Contact me:

@smartmohi

mohankumar.s@doparttime.com

http://blog.smartmohi.com