I am writing this post hoping it can help other startups and wannabe entrepreneurs.

Here are our Mistakes which we did in building WorkMonk

Mistakes
1. Hired wrong guys – this was expected (and this happens with everyone) since I am somewhat new to all this, anyway we quickly figured out the mistakes and corrected it so not much damage done.
2. Took decisions too fast specially those which involved money (I don’t have any regrets though as at that time, they looked the right decisions)
3. Tying to build things in mid air with no base. Building and creating things is fun but we didn’t realized the valuable time and resource loss. A big part of our code is now useless but it is ok as this is how you learn things, also I learnt some new ways of building things.
4. Instead of growing vertically, we started growing horizontally and started focusing on multiple markets instead of focusing on different segments of same market (ideally initially you should only focus on one segment of core market)
5. Not understanding the bandwidth – Every startup has certain bandwidth depending on the number of founders, size of core team, available resources etc, we miscalculated this though we quickly figured out the available bandwidth so not much damage done.
6. Too much focus on money and earnings rather than on technology and building platform.

Learnings
1. If you want to get something done, do it by yourself.
2. Money leaks fast.
3. Technology > People
4. Everything will take 2x-3x more time then your estimation
5. Stick to your strengths, converting your weaknesses to strengths only sounds good on paper.
6. Don’t get stuck in operations, keep building vertically
7. Don’t spread yourself too thin, specially if you are a single founder

I am surprised why they are running the campaign when it is obvious it is having no effect and is turning people away.

I had made this list for our personal use, please feel free to add more names

Best Options –

1. hasgeek job board – easily the best job board for Indian startups, great interface, free and most important, people looking for startup jobs are using it.

2. yourstory job board – we had posted our ad few weeks back and I was surprised so many people tweeted it.

3 OCC Mailing List – worth sending to it (look for OCC group for your city)

4. Headstart Mailing List – worth sending to it

5. You can also post on Hacker Street India

Not Good Experience

1. Startuply – not suitable for Indian startups, Indians looking for startup jobs are certainly not using startuply

2. Linkedin Job Board – Costs money ($35 for one month), our experience has been mixed bag with it and startups are probably better of avoiding it unless you feels it is worth it. I felt, linkedin dilutes the stratup requirement and it very much like naukri/monster with lot of generic resumes floating.

If you know any more good places, please post it as comment and I will add it in the post.

For WorkMonk, we are always looking for sales people who had startup experience so we hired someone who was a sales guy when the platform was not there, now having a sales guy when you have nothing to show to the client or to sell is a very dangerous proposition as by trying to sell non functioning product/services, you can lose early adapters and by the time you will launch it, you may not have anyone to buy your product.

I realized this mistake after few weeks and we asked him to leave and we started focusing on the development and finished the platform in 3 months and now as we are ready, we are again finding more people to join our sales team.

you can look at WorkMonk Jobs page to get the details for our sales and dev openings.

Alright, so 2011 is also about to end in next 4 hours and as all the news channls and everyone else do, here is my last blog post of the year reviewing what happened in 2011 and what I will do in 2012.

If I look at the post that I made on 31st Dec 2010, I had ended it with this

I have no intention of putting any bucket list for 2011, no need for making any resolutions, I made my own “live, work, plan, enjoy, think for today and tomorrow only” formula, it has worked really well till now and I will keep on betting on it.

still here is a review of what happened in 2011

1. I Finally took the plunge and Started WorkMonk. Now I will work on it day and night to make a Billion dollar company in next 5 years.
2. Joining TheMorpheus was also a big thing as I have met some of the most amazing people with very different personalities and outlook towards things and life.
3. Financially I did alright, I have almost stopped thinking about personal wealth now.
4. In terms of health, I am doing alright too.

Overall a satisfactory year minus some personal/family problems.

The way 2011 has shaped up, 2012 will certainly be make it or break it year for me. My life is on an inflection point and if things go as per the plan, 31st 2012 will be an amazing day for me to write the review for the year.

You can know more about WorkMonk at OurStory page. You can also check the non-tech jobs at http://workmonk.in/jobs

If interested, please send a mail to “jobs at workmonk dot in”

If you are not a techie and still passionate about startups and want to join workmonk, go ahead and send us an email, we would love to talk to you.

I have added few remarks in front of them, but do your own research. Feel free to drop me an email though, if you have something specific to ask. Please do note that this list is not complete in anyway, this is something which I had created for my own reference.

Feel free to add in the below wiki excel along with your remarks, please avoid removing content unless it is verbose or wrong.

Wiki Style List of VC firms and Angel Investors in India (publicly editable) – Feel free to add names/remarks to it

Original list in case the above list is not accessible

You can also check Angellist India too which has lot of names of early stage investors.

1. Market is not there – before WorkMonk, I myself have built products/websites which never took off as there was no market for it, infact I think I built them without even checking if the market is there or not.

2. Not enough traction – you can’t run a startup for 3 years without making money specially if you don’t have any money, this is why getting traction is very important for startups specially for B2C

3. Being first time entrepreneurs – This happens a lot in India where the founders fundamentals are right as well as they are building a nice product but just because they are doing it for the first time, they make more mistakes which eventually leads to downfall.

4. Founder Quit/Team split – Happens way too often, specially in India, too much ego involved

5. Lack of adaptation – keep on doing same thing when all signals are saying that it won’t work and you should tweak/change it.

6. Wrong allocation of resources – premature scaling is one of the biggest reason for startups to getting failed. Spending too much on hardware

7. Running out of money/limited resources – normally this happens when “one or more” of the above applies which eventually leads to the closing of startup.

Shailendra, MD of Sequoia India is a good friend of TheMorpheus and ours as he has given us some good advices and he is one of the very few VCs who are very reachable and doesn’t have the cockiness which many other Indian VCs have.

So during one conversation, he said iYogi (Sequoia porfolio company which provides remote support, later on they raised money from Cannan Partners too, I am not sure if Sequoia has exited from iYogi or not) has spent 60M in customer acquisition and marketing which to me is a mind blowing number and made me think about the cost of educating the customer/end user about your product ? most of the startups will never think about this when they start their journey (people only think about how to build it, not how to sell it) and most don’t even think about it when they start spending in marketing (by then, it gets too late with no other option).

It is fairly obvious that the businesses which have no overhead of marketing budget of educating the customers will make more profit, will grow faster and are in better position. It is also very difficult to sell to US market from India, specially in B2C domain (I can’t find a single successful example which has become a market leader in US running from India).

So the bottom line is – “Your profits are inversely proportional to how much time/resources you need to spend to educate your customer about why they should buy/use your product“