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Technology Commercialization Talk - Notes

Speaker - Sudha Jamthe (bio) (blog)

  1. Start with idea
  2. Go to VC (feel chicken-egg of can’t build without money, and can’t get money without elements below)
  3. Ask for valuation
  1. Market size
  2. What is the team
  3. Who is the customer
  4. Prototype / does this raelly work
  • Next she went to her customer (she went to comdex to find her customers for coola)
  • Next get advisors
    1. She got “brand name” people, but liked other people too
    2. Good to get people who have done it before, sold their company, working in a big company now, but who do not want to (or cannot) do it again (at least full time) Clever
  • The number one lie of VCs: ???
  • Go meet investors, and ask for advice
  • 40 days from first converdation to first check in the bank - though it was 1999
  • Went to get lawyer (at Bingham) - had her lawyer draw up a “fair” (her words) timesheet
  • She trusted no-one, including her lawyer.
  • Well connected groups:
    1. Common Angels
    2. Walnut

    Not totally coherent notes in retrospect - her thoughts were more so.

    Update: Here is an email she sent to Harvard Startups discussing her experience:

    I am a serial enterpreneur and
    raised my 1st million in 1999 in 40 days. I had lot of help from
    great advisors and write a blog about starting a tech startup. I’ve
    moderared/spoken in recent conferences in the enterpreneurship panel

    I don’t mean to sell myself here, but feel very very strongly about
    the fact that lot of networking events I used to attend, which did
    and even do today - mislead the enterpreneuer startuping up,
    especially a technologist with a great idea because:
    - people want to be politically correct or
    people care about their future in the ecosystem of VCs and their
    reputation as serial enterpreneur and
    - the real answers vary from different point of view

    Some topics that are not efficiently answered in
    books/articles/panels which are crucial to the enterpreneur staring
    up are:
    - What is the logical set of steps to follow from when you have an
    idea to actually making it a business. The general answer is to raise
    money and enterpreneurs spin around chasing VCs or trying to fill all
    the variables the investors give as reasons for not investing in them.
    I had great VCs and respect the fact that they are looking to
    mitigate their risk.
    - What can an entepreneur do to analyse (logically) to arrive at a
    working b-model for his/her business?
    - How can one market validate the idea?
    - Advisors - how to get them, should we pay, how much? This one
    question on the net or asking around and will get different reasons
    based on the attitude of the people who answer it from whether they
    are advisors or advisor-wannabes etc.
    - Most important - Someone has to tell enterpreneuers its a big
    ecosystem out there - VCs, enterpreneurs, influencial people for each
    market who are on diff boards/advisory etc. How to understand what is
    the ecosystem for your new idea and insert your business into it in a
    fast and sustainable fashion?

    This entry was posted on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Technology Business, Barcamp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Reddit This

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