If you’re even remotely connected to the tech world, you must’ve heard about StartupDash. Just to give you a quick recap, StartupDash is India’s first highly curated event for early stage startups (MVP Stage). We’ve teamed up TLabs and Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups to take it to the next level and will be held across India over the next few weeks in Delhi, Pune & Bangalore.
In a mere one week of announcing StartupDash, we received an overwhelming response from the startup community, and are receiving extremely high number of quality applications for the event on a daily basis.
For those still in a dilemma on whether to attend this or not, here are 6 reasons on why you should attend StartupDash.
#1 Dude! It’s based on the Lean Startup Principle
It’s a well-accepted fact that most of the startup ideas need a bit of polish, as maximum startup fail because of lack of proper feedback and correct guidance.
There are a number of startups who start with an idea for a product which they believe that people want! After spending days, months and even years in creating and after finally launching a product, they find that the product had failed in customers accepting it, as they never thought to spoke to prospective customers and tried finding out whether or not the product was interesting or needed. Thus when the customers finally communicate, that they don’t care about the idea, the startup fails.
This is the very reason why we crafted this event based on the Lean Startup model. Startups get to build their teams, measure the response of the audience and experts to their product/idea and learn from it. They can use the live feedback they get to iterate on their product before going to market.
“I think the biggest advantage for a startup from an initiative like StartupDash is “validation of their product idea“. Since the startups are in the MVP stage, there is that big question floating in the minds of the founders “Is this really going to work? Is there market for what we are building? Will we ever make money with this? Where do we go from here?” When startups are in the early stages perhaps the only access to validation that they have is their close friends/connections. I think with an initiative like StartupDash it will significantly raise the exposure levels, rather than just listening to “gyan” here is an opportunity for them to get candid feedback on their products from expert mentors, each of whom have “been there, done that”,” says Rohan Dighe of ViralMint.
Related: When Is The Right Time To Let Go Of The Lean Startup
#2 Get to Meet 100+ Aspiring Entrepreneurs & Industry Professionals
In each city StartupDash will be hosting over 50 startup folks with 50+ industry professionals’ – designers, developers, business guys, product managers, entrepreneurs, etc. who will be there during this journey of three days of building the startup.
If nothing else, you get to network and hang around with some of the brightest folks in the industry.
#3 Live Feedback & Guidance from some awesome Mentors
To provide startups with an excellent guidance there will be mentors who will be sharing their expertise with these startups to help them execute their idea perfectly. Adding on there will be a number of workshops which will be conducted in parallel to help startups understand more about different domains as well as to understand the ecosystem directly.
Related:Seven Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Need Mentors
Sairam Krishnan, Manager – Product Marketing at Freshdesk, says “StartupDash sound like something I’d want to be part of if I had a beta version of my product ready. Because the timeframe the event is aimed at is where the real heavy lifting starts – when the MVP is ready, and you know you have a usable product and you have to get ready with a go-to-market plan. The marketing has to now feed into the product and vice versa. And then your product itself may be one of two things: it may be something that has the potential to make money quickly or it might be something that will become a rolling snowball over time. To crack these questions, you need time, experience, perseverance and belief. But if people who have been through all this before can help you, you can learn from their experiences, and bypass the mistakes they made. This is why such events are so important.”
#4 You Could Meet Your Future Cofounder or Teammates
The presence of number of industry professionals and domain experts during the event who are willing to join or work for startups, provides participant startups with an opportunity to build great teams and even find people as co-founders.
Rohan of ViralMint says, “I believe Team Building is among the key challenges especially in the early stages, since this initiative also plans to invite people who are looking to work with startups, here is an important opportunity to attract like minded people,”
The individual participants present during the event can join a particular team and if his/her efforts and opinions match with that of a startup, he/she can join the startup even after the weekend.
#5 Some Really Cool Prizes for Everyone
Obviously, every game has a winner rewarded with some exciting prizes, the winners at the StartupDash will also get prizes and rewards by our partners in each city. These include:
- Top 3 teams of each city get Pre-acceleration, co-working space & hands-on mentorship at TLabs for a month .
- 4th & 5th place get free co-working space at Investopad, Gurgaon for one month.
- 91Sprinboard will be providing free co-working space to two startups from each city in their Delhi or Gurgaon facility for a month.
- Startup kit by Nasscom 10,000 Startups
- Not to mention all the gyan, feedback and exposure…
#6 The Best Part? There are no Losers!
Even though there will be a few winners in every city, but the real takeaway here is the amazing learning experience and the fact that startups will walk out with a validated idea, go-to market strategy, amazing connections and possibly even a cofounder or new teammates.
Apart from this, startups will also take home a Startup kit by Nasscom 10,000 Startups, $1000’s worth goodies, the lean canvas and most importantly a validated idea.
“I think StartupDash would help startups validate their ideas and also learn about the lean startup methodologies,” Amit Singh Founder at Wow Labz, Headstart Co-Founder.
More about StartupDash
Inc42 Magazine has teamed up with TLabs, India’s leading startup accelerator, and Nasscom 10,000 Startups for StartupDash with the mission of acting as a catalyst for startups in MVP stage. The event will be held in three startups focussed cities across India:
Delhi: 20th — 22nd June
Pune: 27th — 29th June
Bangalore: 4th — 6th July
For More details about the application process click here.
“I’m confident that the event will be beneficial to everyone involved,” says Sairam Krishnan.
So what are you waiting for?
If haven’t registered yet, visit the StartupDash website and register for the event.
