Introducing Inc42+ Guides: The Go-To Resources For Startups Straight From Industry Leaders

It is no longer a ‘fast-changing world’ today, but rather a VUCA — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous — world. The Indian startup ecosystem has proven that it can shine even in this new dynamic, but everyone needs a guide and a support system to navigate the ecosystem. We firmly believe that businesses and startups that do not adapt to this brave new world cannot sustain themselves and thrive in the long run.

As we have tracked the growth of the Indian startup ecosystem over the years, we have also learnt a thing or two about adapting to the VUCA world thanks to folks like you. We have interacted with the best of the best in the ecosystem and learnt from their wisdom. But we cannot just keep it to ourselves. So here we are sharing it with the world.

Presenting Inc42+ Guides — comprehensive handbooks for startups on everything from validating startup ideas, acquiring customers, securing funding, dealing with compliance, understanding the investment game and more.

Encapsulating the thoughts of industry experts, thought leaders, eminent investors and policymakers, Guides will give startups the insider advantage, going beyond data, with genuine experience-based insights, commentary and opinions from the best of the best.

From inception to execution, and from investments to exits — and everything in between. With experts from each field working together with the Inc42 editorial team, each guide will be as good as the gospel truth when it comes to startups. And this makes each guide unique in every aspect.

There is no dearth of how-tos with meaningless information and anecdotes that not only misguide novice startups and new entrepreneurs but also often mislead experienced founders. Today, startups and entrepreneurs need to understand the ground reality of the industry and set realistic expectations. Things change overnight and businesses get turned upside down. In such situations, access to relevant data, authentic information, practical insights and wisdom from the very leaders that have driven the tech industry in India can be the difference between survival and bust.

We launched Guides for one simple reason — enabling startups to understand every single step in the full journey.

Guides are an integral part of Inc42+, our membership programme launched two weeks ago. Within our bundle of offerings, members will get access to deeper stories with Playbooks, weekly insights and stories in The Outline, as well as exclusive member-only stories, podcasts and more.

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Decoding Term Sheets For Early Stage Startups

‘Decoding Termsheets for Early Stage Startups’ Guide will help seed and early-stage startups understand investment termsheets when raising seed or Pre-Series A funding and learn how to structure terms to meet the interests of both startups and investors. This guide will feature insights and thoughts from industry leaders.

In addition to the basics, the guide will touch upon various aspects such as non-negotiable clauses, convertible versus priced rounds, debt plus equity, information rights, party rounds, balancing dilution, valuation and cash, ESOPs and more. This guide will enable you to navigate through the complex problems around term sheets in a simplified and effortless manner which will be curated by industry experts such as Siddarth Pai, Founding Partner at 3one4 Capital; Roma Priya, Founder, Burgeon Law and Yagnesh Sanghrajka, cofounder and CFO, 100X.VC.

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Building & Scaling A Digital Brand For Retail SMBs

Our second guide will be ‘Building & Scaling A Digital Brand For Retail SMBs’. Covid-19 has brought the retail industry to its knees. Going Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) by leveraging the internet is rapidly becoming a popular route for retail brands and SMBs. This guide is an introduction for offline and traditional retail brands looking to establish and scale up their digital brand and leverage technology to go D2C.

What You’ll Learn?

• Building your retail brand online
• Using digital tools & analytics to accelerate your digital strategy
• Intro to managing your logistics for digital customers
• Customer acquisition & marketing strategies to scale up

Building Your Core Team: Zero To Fifty

Our third guide, “Building Your Core Team: Zero To Fifty”  —  the quintessential Guide for all startups in the scale-up or early stage. The guide will focus on helping startups build the core teams and operations, the dilemmas that come up in this stage, the solutions to common issues in hiring and more. It will include talking points such as the importance of managers, culture, and the different styles of operating a company. The guide will cover a wide array of areas such as generalists versus specialists, hiring strategies, the importance of feedback cycles, setting up a growth path for your team, flat structure versus hierarchies, employer branding and others.

What You’ll Learn?

• It will help you weigh in on the various leadership and operational styles
• The skillful application of feedback cycles, employer branding, ESOPs and more
• A deeper look at measuring the impact of various business decisions

Of course, this is just the start of something amazing — each month will bring with it a new Guide and more delightful content for  Inc42+ members. Stay tuned for more.

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Update | 19th June’2020, 8 PM: Guide themes updated.