madhouse musings!

PuneStartups,

The Pune Open Coffee Club (POCC) in collaboration with Morpheus Venture Partners (MVP) brings a new initiative “Startup Roadies”.

About MVP

MVP runs a business advisory and mentoring program for startups. MVP currently has portfolio of more than 10 companies. Some of the companies are: Instablogs, Commonfloor, Lifemojo, Fachak, Crederity, Deskaway, Sutra.

Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hirianniah are the founding partners @ MVP. Both of them are serial entrepenuers and started their first venture Madhouse Media in 2004. Madhouse was one of the first organized movie rentals players. They successfully exited the venture with the acquisition by Seventymm in July 2007. More Info

About POCC

The Pune OpenCoffee Club is an informal group of startup-minded folks and entrepreneurs in Pune. It has the distinction of being the largest Open Coffee Club in India. The club has  550+ members and meets once a month. There is also an active mailing list where members discuss issues and seek feedback from peer startups.

The Startup Roadies Program

We absolutely love to meet passionate entrepreneurs whose ventures are in idea stage (not started, but want to really start) or 1-12 months into the operation. The interaction will be completely informal. Formal dresses are not a must, we want to see you as your natural self, no need to bring any presentations or any financial projections. Just come have a chat with us. Get a demo if possible, get all members of your founding team. Just ensure that you arrive on time as per the allocated slot

The goal of the exercise is to together explore solutions to some of the “tough business problems” you are dealing with. We could do that by offering advice and potential solutions based on our experience. We would also love to introduce you to relevant folks in our network who can add value – potential partners, experienced people in similar domain, potential investors etc.

At our end we are just excited to get an opportunity to meet you and learn from your experience and ideas. Each session will be conducted in the below mentioned structure

• Team introduction
• Understanding your idea, market size, the problem your solving, how is your product/service different that current available solutions
• Figure out the current status of the venture – in development, alpha, beta, launched
• How much money is available to the team

• Discuss, debate and get clarity on the goals & milestones for
  • Short term: 3 months
  • Medium term: 1 year
  • Long term: 3-5 years

• Given the current status and various goals, what is the best strategy to get there
• How to proceed with execution
• Best way to raise funding
• Who are the folks to partner with
• Make a list of action items out of the interaction

Details:

• Date: Saturday, 21 Feb 08
• Venue: SICSR, Model Colony, Pune (Awaiting confirmation on the room number)
• Time: 10am to 7pm (Each startup gets a separate time slot)
• How to participate: Send an e-mail to nandini AT morpheusventure DOT com with a short (less than 300 words) intro of your startup. Please mention your preferred time slot.

Limited slots. Book now!

Okay, the title is pretty oxymoronish, but that’s what DevD is all about! Except for the remote references by way of names and the somewhat suggestive plot – i don’t see any reason to compare DevD with all those umpteen versions of Devdas.

So, what’s DevD all about. It’s about intense feelings, deprived securities during growing up years, about helplessness, anger, disgust and want of comfort & love. The story is dark, mind in void, psychedelic & indulgent. It’s what people do when they cannot emote anymore – go numb, wander helplessly, try and reach out to their comfort zone, retract, get into a shell and look for reasons to escape from realities.

It’s for me a near perfect piece of art – movie making at its best! The story could not have been more real, the characters could not have done more justice to their roles, the music couldn’t have been better, the colors were perfect, the cinematography was just enough to set the mood – i can go on and on!

A movie that begins with the lush fields and blue skies in Punjab traverses through time to fit itself amidst surreal ambiance within four walls – brash colors yet claustrophobic. A direct parallel to Dev’s psyche.

There is everything i love about this movie, the bitch @ bombaybitch said Luck By Chance was her back2back movie. I’d say, babe – you must watch Dev D – this one is my back2back movie for many years to come!

However, the one thing i love above all in this flick (i think its blasphemous to cal it a flick) Dev D (i can see it become a cult!) is that its Real from start to finish. Every character is real, events are real, emotions – real. “Dilli mein billi le lo, maar lo, paalo mat” – the matter of fact moments in the film is what kept my interest.

All through Dev D i hated him, cried for him, cried with him, felt sorry for him, laughed at him and at the end related with him and his emotions – coz that’s what life’s all about, some of us accept it and move on, some of us get stuck and take longer to move on…

Abhay Deol is a rock star! He has surpassed his own expectations again. Kalki Koechlin is amazing for a debutant.  I am all praise of Anurag Kashyap as a director and writer, am glad that i got more than my money on Dev D!

This one for me is 10 / 10. All thumbs up!

As entrepreneurs, businesses  -  we constantly stive to achieving user acceptance, customer acknowledgement. But, the reality is many happy customers spread the word of mouth, and many unhappy customers are vocal about their unhappiness.

But there are rare moments of reassurance & pride when customers, happy customers write back to you with good words or acknowledge your efforts to making thier lives better.

Here are two such instances (a proud moment for me) where customers of Deskaway & Commonfloor – MVPs portfolio companies have shared their experiences and candid feelings about their services.