Annkur speaking at Google Business Group Mumbai in Jan 2015 on Angel Investment.

1. Angel Uncle Paise De Do
Fundraising, Angel Wala
- Annkur P Agarwal, PriceBaba.com

2. Starting Up In 2002
Startup What? Entrepreneur What?
Money. Matters. Most.
No Media. No Buzz.
Ecommerce Without Payment Gateway.

3. The Startup Boom
We are in a Startup Boom. It is not a 1 year phenomenon.
Yes … It’s a good thing
But there is bad too.
- More Opportunity, More Noise
- More Media, More Mediocrity
- More Events, Lesser Mentors Who Have Done It

4. Starting PriceBaba.com & Accidentally Fundraising
The Belief:
- Solve a (India) problem, choose a personal one
- Don’t Copy
- Capture a niche & then expand
- Play to your strength & Don’t Die
^ yes a bit Mahesh Murthy school of belief
Fundraising:
- Didn’t plan funds, started with personal money
- Started pitching to angels, tougher than I thought (at least in 2012)
- Used media to get early traction. Why not ride the boom J

5. Why We Raised Funds
Why PriceBaba.com Needed Funds
What Kind of Investors We Were Looking For
Why We Do What We Do

6. What We Knew, What We Learnt
Rules we knew:
Take an introduction
Have a product out there, no paper plans
Know what you are doing ++ experienced founder(s)
Solve a good problem
What we now know:
Have some traction
But also have a story
Confidence is key
Believers will believe, don’t try to convince hard!
Traction Rules.

7. HARD TRUTH
FUNDRAISING IS NOT EASY
DON’T GET FOOLED BY ALL THE FUNDING NEWS
DON’T GET FOOLED BY THE ACQUISITIONS
(MEANINGFUL) NETWORK / ACCESS MATTERS
TRACTION IS KING

8. IF FUNDRAISING
GET A LEAD, PEOPLE FIND IT SAFE TO FOLLOW
ALWAYS RAISE MORE!
- Ride The Boom
- Accelerators Are Good Idea
- Take small cheques to make big, pitch to 100 people, iterate every
pitch, sell concept if it sells, sell yourself, sell product, sell traction,
sell what sells, take the money. PS: BE AUTHENTIC
- Angel networks are good / bad / who cares / take where you get money from

9. Ecosystem Out There
Accelerators: 500 Startups, Morpheus (was), Tlabs, Microsoft (no
cash / equity)
Angel Groups: IAN, Mumbai Angels, Hyderabad Angels etc
Entrepreneurs: Plenty – any founder who is Series A or B or Best
Exited. Also some (ex)employees of successful ventures
Individuals & Funds: India Quotient (Anand Lunia), Mahesh Murthy,
Zishaan Hayath, Blume Ventures, 500 Startups …

10. PLEASE READ
Paul Graham’s Essays:
Do Things That Don’t Scale: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
How To Now Die: http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
Books:
The Hard Things About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
The High Performance Entrepreneur, Subroto Bagchi

11. PLEASE
DON’T BE A FOOL – Make a business
Know why you are doing what you are doing
Life is too short to do something you don’t love, but remember, startup
won’t be rosy
Don’t get swayed away by all the funding news. Stick to the basics. Your
life is more precious than the bubble
Don’t Copy. Solve Problems. Innovate Constantly.