Alaina Robertson

As we come up on our November 23^rd Investor Demo Day  in Bangalore (edupreneursdd.eventbrite.com) and all our Edupreneurs are working on their final pitches, I’ve also been thinking about effective messaging.  When you get down to it, pitching a business is all about effective communication.  In my career as a student, my time in the Silicon Valley Export Assistance Center, and now as a market scout, I’ve seen my fair share of pitches, presentations and demos.  A few tips to make sure your message gets across in a way that’s friendly to the listener. 

#1 Slides are for visuals, not text

As a presenter, you are supposed to give the listener the information they need- in words from your mouth.  Technology is for visuals: photos, graphs, charts, and timelines only.  For examples of great presentation style with proper use of visual aids, watch a TED talk.  They have it down to a science, plus you’ll learn something cool.

If you’re going to read your slides, what’s the point of presenting?  Any slide deck with all the presentation content on it is ONLY for the purpose of email correspondence (though I’d personally prefer an interesting 3 minute video to a slide deck- but that’s personal preference, not industry standard).  Please do not use the email slide deck for live presentations. 

This leads me to #2… Know your stuff and be confident

A simple concept, but many people overlook the importance of practice.  Practice the presentation and know the answers to FAQs about your product.  If you can rattle stats off the top of your head without looking at the slides, even better. 

#3 Brevity

The point of the pitch is to make investors curious enough to have a follow-up conversation.  Hit all the important parts of your business in a pitch and make sure you’ve put the time in to understand what’s critical and what’s not.  A great mind once said, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” So true.  Put the time in. 

We’ve been running the PALF – VilCap Edupreneurs Accelerator now for a month.  The first workshop was in Hyderabad and it feels like no time at all, but I already find myself in Delhi for the second workshop, so I wanted to reflect a bit on first impressions of the Village Capital Peer-Review Model.

How did it play out so far?

The short answer: wonderfully.

All the entrepreneurs were so excited to provide peer feedback that we had to cut most conversations short to stay on schedule.  The curriculum challenged the cohort to think critically about their business models and the peer review sessions helped them come up with solutions.  By the end of our first four day workshop, people were happy to share their contacts and networks and went home with plenty to think about and work with before the Delhi session.

We’ve challenged our entrepreneurs to create milestones documents and we are holding them accountable to those goals they’ve set for themselves.  Much of the real value of this curriculum comes during the interim time when everyone is back home and can re-work the exercises we put them through, test new hypotheses, iterate their product and take more time to think critically about building their business.

On Day 1 in Delhi, each team gave updates and all of them had found peer feedback to be helpful in re-working or re-communicating their business model.  Other investors have come to me asking for first impressions to see who to keep an eye on, but after seeing how much can change in a month of our accelerator, it’s anyone’s guess who will be the most investable companies in another month.  With the final rank coming up fast, the lower ranked companies have significant incentive to improve and communicate the improvement.

In Delhi, where we’ve done more nitty-gritty financial work and gone deeper into education-specific issues like pedagogy and measuring learning outcomes.  Since Delhi is much bigger than Hyderabad, we were able to pull in many more helpful experts and mentors than in Hyderabad.  Delhi’s schedule has been packed and feedback swift.  Now that everyone understands the peer review framework, suggestions are targeted.  I think we’ve managed to hit the right cohort culture with a general understanding of true vs. useful feedback, and what makes an investable company.  If I had a start-up, I would be thrilled to have this much technical help and expert feedback in one room at one time.

The November 23^rd Demo Day in Bangalore will showcase all of our companies at their best.  Get in touch if you’d like to attend.

Pictured above and described below are the14 fabulous Education Start-ups of the 2013 PALF-VilCap Edupreneurs Accelerator.  We kicked off in Hyderabad for four days of workshops in September and are about to have our second workshop in Delhi.  Reflections on Hyderabad to follow.

Join the fourth GIST TechConnect webchat to discuss how to raise capital for your startup!

Log on to https://conx.state.gov/entrepreneurship on Wednesday, September 18 at 17:30 IST/12:00 UTC.

A panel of guest speakers will answer your questions and share their stories of working with multiple companies to raise capital:
• Brad Feld, venture capitalist and Managing Director at the Foundry Group;
• Shari Loessberg, thought leader, practitioner, and Advisory Board member at Accion USA;
• Hooman Radfar, investor and serial entrepreneur, Founder & Chairman of AddThis;
• Amir Hasson, accomplished entrepreneur and Founder of United Villages;
• GIST Tech Connect moderator Ovidiu Bujorean, Senior Manager at the GIST Initiative at CRDF Global.

Whether you are ready to seek venture capital funding or are just looking to advance your entrepreneurial venture to the next stage of development, this event is for you!

The whole reason I am in India is to assist with recruitment and operations of a business accelerator, “Edupreneurs” for education entrepreneurs whose target market is low income students in India.  To understand the accelerator a bit more, take a look at this video:

The lion’s share of this post will be interesting to entrepreneurs and people working in social enterprise and impact investing.  For those of you interested in the companies we’ve selected, stay tuned for upcoming blog posts.

It turned out to be a very selective program.  We received over 120 applications from quality education startups, but could only select fifteen for our program.  The selection committee incorporated a number of different perspectives and backgrounds- important so we don’t miss anything, but difficult because in the end, we all needed to agree or compromise.  There was often tension between an entrepreneur having a great education solution, and that solution being investable.  After all, we do need to see a return on our investment in a “patient capital” timeline.

How Did We Select our Fifteen Companies?

We considered each company against a set of six criteria that Village Capital identifies as critical to success.  Village Capital has run over fifteen of these accelerators, developing their selection process, curriculum and expertise over four years.  Since the $75,000 seed stage investments are pre-committed, we had to make sure that we would be happy investing in any of the companies we selected to participate.

The Six Criteria:

1.  Customer Discovery/ Development

Who are the customers? How does the company know that the customer wants the product?  It is one thing to provide a solution, but if no one wants that solution, or if the company is marketing to the wrong customers, then they are less competitive.  We want to see that a company has done sufficient research and pilots to verify or discover their target market.  This even applies to companies with founders who have substantial experience in the sector.  “Knowing” the target market isn’t enough, we want proof to back up sound logic.

2.  Team

How strong is the management team?  Are there any knowledge or experience gaps in the team?  What is the plan to fill the gaps?  With early stage investing, it is often said that you are investing in the entrepreneur, not the company.  This is because there isn’t much due diligence to be done when a company hasn’t been around long enough to generate data and expose weaknesses.  We want to see founders and executives with substantial sectorial and target market experience, combined someone who knows how to get things done.  We want to see companies that recognize gaps and have plans to fill them.  Don’t tell me that you are ready to scale when your company is a group of silent-warrior tech dudes- who is going to get out there and build the relationships critical to growth?

3.  Product Refinement

How was the product developed?  How many versions were tested with customers?  We want to see a stellar product that was tested extensively with target-market customers, incorporating their feedback into new versions.  We want to see that the company focused on what they do best in order to go to market.

4.  Financials

This is where things are tricky because in early stage enterprises, most of the numbers are theoretical.  Entrepreneurs will predictably inflate their projections- it’s great that you think you’ll have a million customers after just one year of operation…but you probably won’t.  We want to know what the cost of production is, what the price point is, where the breakeven is,  and how much funding is needed to sustain and grow the company.  It is also important for us to know how you arrived at the price point.  A business can’t say something is ten dollars because that’s what is needed to recoup costs plus profits.  It needs to be ten dollars because a market study said that’s what customers will pay.  All the other projections must be based on realistic logic and as much data as possible.  We love data.

5.  Scaling and Impact

What is the plan for scaling and what are the targets?  What positive social impact will the enterprise have? How will that impact be measured?  Is the impact built into the business model?  We want to see that the business can scale.  A model that depends heavily upon specific individuals, or too much skilled labor may not be scalable fast enough or large enough even for patient capital.

Scale doesn’t stand alone for impact investors- as the name indicates, we need to see measured impact.  This is often overlooked, especially in the education sector.  We want to see a product that has built in, measureable impact, preferably with back-end analytics.  For example, in a low cost private school, are the students regularly tested, if so, against what standards?  How do these measurement results affect change in teaching methods?  It is also important to consider how the impact is built into the business model.  Is the customer the beneficiary?  If not, is the business structured in a way that mission drift won’t become a problem?  Cross- subsidization models are often difficult because it is so easy to concentrate on the higher-end market at the expense of the lower-end market where the impact actually happens.

6.  Exit Strategy

How will an investor get their money back?  Early stage companies often haven’t thought much about this, but we want to know the options or the vision.  Don’t tell me you’re going to have a successful IPO, because you probably won’t.  If a company doesn’t know, we just want a walkthrough of what’s been considered or ruled out and why.

Regardless of the marathon of training that Frontier Market Scouts receive, we are still essentially thrust into the world and told to “find entrepreneurs.”  In theory, this is easy, especially coming from Silicon Valley, where random people in line at Starbucks will pitch to anyone within earshot.  In the rest of the world, people do not wear a, “Hello, I’m an entrepreneur” sign on their backs- so you have to go hunt for them.

One of the first places I checked out in Bombay were the co-working spaces.  These are all relatively new, but are taking off fast.  Here’s why I think they’re an extra-good idea here:

1. That little yellow triangle with an exclamation point

It is nearly impossible to find good coffee shops with reliable, fast, free wifi- eliminating one of the staple working spaces of entrepreneurs.

Note: If you do want a map of free wifi (may or may not work reliably) in the city, go here http://mumbaiboss.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WifiMapFINAL.pdf

2.  Yes mom, I do mind if you watch Judge Judy right now

Working from home is kind of a drag.  Most entrepreneurs are young and unmarried (who has time to meet a spouse when you spend all day with your business plan?)  In India, this probably means you are living with your parents, and in Bombay, space is at such a premium that there isn’t much room to work without interruption. Getting out of the house is pretty nice.

3.       Cash money

The most expensive space runs at about 430 USD a month, and others are available for as low as 50 USD a month.  Most offer some kind of tiered pricing option if you only need the space for part of the month. At a minimum, spaces have internet, coffee and desk space without mom.  Winning.

So far, I’ve visited three of the co-working spaces in the city:

The Playce

Though not convenient for where I live, it is a nice space with a very colourful, youthful, Silicon Valley startup vibe to it.  Something about the desk arrangement, the whiteboard greeting wall, and the friendly atmosphere make it feel fun, collaborative and very entrepreneurial.  The presence of over twenty people working on a Saturday also let me know that it’s still a serious place to work.  Work hard, play hard.

Our First Office

This new space already has three locations in city hotspots, Churchgate, Lower Parel and Nariman Point.  Their vibe is professional chic, and the founder, Milind Doshi, seems to be connected to all the entrepreneurs in the city.  More NYC than Silicon Valley, this is the type of place that makes you want to dress up, sit down, and get it done.

Bombay Connect

A co-working space that caters mostly to social enterprises, the vibe here is akin to a newsroom, cramped, energetic, and informal.  The building interior is very “old Bombay”, with lots of wood, wrought iron and Indian décor.  Of all the co-working spaces, this one is the most “Bombay” of them all (you leave your shoes at the door), and even the founders sit at the various little shared desks scattered around the room.

Today marks the end of my registration paperwork for setting up my phone and my apartment. It’s been a long journey. First I’ll complain a little, then I’ll tell you why it’s relevant to the greater discussion. Feel free to skip ahead.

Steps for Getting an Indian SIM Card

Option 1: Following the Rules

1. Go to a shop that sells pre-paid SIM cards (You can’t do any of this online)
2. Make sure you’ve brought your:
   • Original passport
   • Photocopy of your front page and visa page (make sure they are crystal clear)
   • Proof of address
   • One passport photo
3. The shop will fill out the paperwork for the SIM card and give it to the distributor.
4. Nothing happens
5. Call the shop where you bought the SIM card
6. Realize they don’t speak English
7. Have your Indian roommate and two different Hindi/Marathi speaking friends call to figure out what’s up
8. Get deflected to the distributor, who has realized that you are foreign, and holds your SIM card until you call him to inquire about why it has been five days and it’s not activated yet. When you call, he says that it “costs extra” for him to process a foreigner’s application for a SIM card. This fee needs to be paid in cash to him
9. Threaten the distributor that you will report him to the police. It is imperative that you don’t actually do this or you will have invited another pile of paperwork and/or another bribe to pay.
10. What should have taken 24 hours took almost a week, but at least it’s done

But wait, there’s more…

Adding value to your SIM card online is impossible without an Indian bank account. I’ve witnessed my roommate’s dealings with establishing and using her Indian bank account, so I know not to go there.  So I need to find a store that can add value to my phone, but not many stores in my area do this. I walked around for a quick 45 minutes and the 8th time was a charm. Now I have an Indian phone number that works.

Option 2: The Better Option/ the “Borrowed” SIM

1. Complain to your friend that getting a SIM card is driving you crazy
2. He calls his guy
3. Guy delivers SIM card to house that same day
4. SIM card works the next day

Lessons Learned

• You gotta know a guy. Nothing in this town happens without a guy.
• While buying local is usually the preferred option, sometimes the big box stores are a better option.
• The law of unintended consequences is always at work.

1. 

   The type of standard local shop that I bought my SIM card from. Great for consumable goods, not so great for services.

Relevant Discussion: The Law of Unintended Consequences

India developed all of these extra steps because it has increasingly been a hotspot for terrorism. Starting with the partition of India and Pakistan and the border war that followed, there has been a long history of violence, and not just from Muslim extremists like the Indian Mujahideen. You could make a laundry list of different violent religious and political groups in India. More recent events like the 2002 Gujarat Riots, the 2003 Gateway of India Bombings, the 2006 Mumbai Train bombings, the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, the 2010 German Bakery Bomb, the 13/7 Mumbai Bombings in 2011 and the 2013 Hyderabad Blasts make clear the need for anti-terrorism measures to be taken, but it is unclear what measures will be effective. Since most of the attacks were coordinated with prepaid phones, the extra steps are supposed to be a measure that prevents prepaid phones to get into the hands of terrorists.

There are many problems with this:

1. Anyone determined to kill people as a political statement is not going to be deterred by the process of getting a SIM card.
2. Rules only work when they can be enforced AND when there are no loopholes.
3. People who would otherwise try to follow rules will become frustrated with Option 1 and seek Option 2 out of convenience, reinforcing a lack of respect for rules and regulations. This logic applies widely.
4. These types of rules make it harder to do business, which hurts the economy.

India Ease of Doing Business, World Bank (Click on Image for Clarity)

End Relevance

Before the SIM Card There Was the Apartment

Before I could experience all of this SIM card fun, I had to get an apartment for proof of address. In order to rent an apartment here, you must find a broker, who will charge a month’s rent to find you an apartment. Finding a good broker is a bit of a pain, and recommendations from friends come in handy. Things like Craigslist are mostly used by brokers, so there aren’t too many direct deals between landlords and tenants. This is probably due to the amount of paperwork/appointments needed to rent a place. I’m okay not knowing how hard things would have been without the broker.

In order to rent a place on a formal lease (this is the last time I will ever put my name on paper for this here), you must negotiate the lease terms in a thirty page document. Once the terms are agreed upon, you submit copies of passports, visas, photos, proof of employment, contact info for proof of employment, fingerprints, proof of previous addresses and post-dated checks for rent. If you are single women trying to rent a place, there needs to be some kind of appropriate parental presence to validate that you aren’t prostitutes (seriously, this is the assumption of many people- in this case, my roommate’s dad came to meet our landlords). Paperwork gets submitted to the police on behalf of the landlords, and a separate police check is necessary for the housing society (similar to an HOA). Later, all the renting parties and all of the owning parties need to show up together at the police station to have a photo and fingerprint taken. This whole process takes forever and requires much negotiation, time, and paperwork. Fortunately, in the end, you have a place to live that’s a ten minute walk from the sea, and has a coffee shop on the corner.

Relevant Discussion, or “How to Feel Guilty for Complaining”

I’m actually blessed to have paperwork. I was able to furnish countless passport photocopies and verification to these businesses, middlemen, and government entities that demanded them. Between my files and the internet, I can trace most of my life in a big paper trail that most of us take for granted. Many people do not have this luxury. According to Unicef, only 58 percent of children born in India are registered at birth, and of those registered, not all have birth certificates, meaning that millions of people don’t have access to the cycle of documentation.

For example, you need a birth certificate to get a ration card and you need a ration card to get a driver’s license. Many of the papers that people have in rural areas are invalid when they move to a city- a big problem in an age of increasing urbanization. This means that before people can even think about waiting in the registration office to validate a lease, they must somehow acquire new identification. Judging by how difficult all the rest of registrations are, I’m certain that the process of acquiring new ID is near impossible or requires lots of “fees”. I can’t imagine the frustration. If you want to know more, see this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-18141584. End Relevance

A defining factor in the boundaries of an affordable private school’s market

I challenge you to cross this

Remember Frogger?

I was reminded today that one of the craziest things about India is that there aren’t any crosswalks/ zebra crossings and cars don’t stop for pedestrians.

So how do you cross the street? Check out this video:http://www.snotr.com/video/404/Crossing_the_street_in_India

It takes “go with the flow” to a whole new level. So if I ever feel there isn’t enough “excitement” in my life, I’ll go out and cross the nearest street.

In all seriousness, this is a pretty big issue with infrastructure here. There are always throngs of people out walking and there are neither sidewalks nor crosswalks to assist them with safe travel. Crossing in groups is always a little easier, but for small children it can be a big problem. Drivers simply aren’t looking for tiny humans on the road, so many parents forbid their children to cross alone. According to Grey Matters Capital’s 2012 Affordable Private Schools Sector Analysis Report, one of the factors parents consider in choosing a school is if there are any large street crossings. So when we do a market analysis and consider direct regional competitors, the one across the street may not be a problem due to the boundaries created by dangerous busy streets.

First Impressions

I’ve returned to India exactly ten years since coming here the first time and the changes are striking. From a western perspective, India has become much more liveable, with consumer options multiplying like rabbits.

The day I arrived, one of the girls I was staying with needed to go shopping in anticipation of a move back to the US. We went to three malls over the course of the day and each time, I was shocked with the new options. Instead of gaudy and often laughable takes on western fashion (garish appliques, ruffles, and bows in all the wrong places), I found a variety of European and American stores in enormous, clean, bright shopping centres.

Then and Now: How India Has Changed

No surprises here

Definitely fun, but it’s more like treasure hunting than shopping

In 2003, Mango was the only store where you could get current fashion at western middle class(ish) prices. There wasn’t much between the bazaar and the high-end. Now you can find stores like Marks and Spencer, Sunglass Hut, Bath and Body Works, Levis, Wrangler, Puma and Reebok. There are even real supermarkets. I used to have to tip a Dubai importer to get cheddar cheese and tortillas, go to the street market for fruits and veggies, and settle on the limited choices at one small import grocer. Now everything can be found in one store. As far as restaurants go, the choices are endless, and the quality is high. Today we had an Italian lunch and dinner at Chili’s. It used to just be McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Though various state governments make it pretty difficult to run a bar or lounge, the few that I’ve seen had a decent gender balance and look like places I would want to hang out.

Convenient and Fast

Very cool, but tiring to bargain every time you need something

Retail Options ≠ Development, but consider this…

Before you take a critical eye to my superficial observations about retail options, know that I understand that the existence of a few nice shops is a short-sighted way to judge India’s progress. However, it does make a difference for many of the educated people that typically innovate and drive growth. Although India’s huge economy makes it an attractive emerging market, the business climate in here is pretty difficult. If it’s hard to do business and it’s hard to live, there isn’t a lot of incentive to be in India if you have more comfortable options elsewhere.

More simply, these difficult conditions lead to brain drain. I’ve just come from Silicon Valley and Seattle and the huge numbers of Indians in both places lead me to believe that the trend is a definite outflow of educated people from India. A study published by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics found that only 5 percent of Indians who got a Doctorate in the US actually returned to India. I bet more people will take their human capital back to India after graduating if this progress in “liveability” continues.

India and Development

While I’m impressed and excited about all the positive changes here, it’s important to remember that there is still a very long way to go, especially for people trapped at the bottom of the pyramid. According to the World Bank, in 2005, 76 percent of the Indian population lived on less than $2 a day, and in 2010, that number was still high, at 69 percent. I’m aware of the controversy surrounding the “under $2 a day” measure: many point out that in India, $2 is more than sufficient to fulfill basic needs in rural areas, and sufficient in urban areas. In fact, the Indian Government Planning Commission’s report on poverty uses a significantly lower poverty line (about 37 cents a day for rural people, 48 cents a day for urban dwellers) and estimates that in 2010, the poverty rate was 30 percent, declining at the same rate as World Bank estimates. Regardless of which measure you use, that’s a lot of poor people.

Using the more conservative estimates, it’s still 360 million people living under the poverty line. To put that number in perspective, it’s equivalent to the entire population of the United States living destitute poor. Using the US as an example of the best-case scenario of economic productivity, that’s $14 trillion a year of untapped economic potential. Whoa.

Okay, but what are you actually doing in India?

One of the keys to poverty alleviation is education- investing in human capital, that’s why I’ve come to India. For the next six months, I’ll be working as an investment scout for the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF) and Village Capital sourcing companies for a business incubator and developing pipeline for the fund’s ongoing activities. PALF was started a year ago as the impact investing arm of Pearson Learning. They make minority equity investments in startup companies that create affordable learning solutions. Village Capital runs a unique peer-evaluation business incubator where fifteen companies go through training and mentorship, then vote on each other’s business models, with the two highest ranked receiving $50-$75K pre-committed seed capital.