The Entrepreneurial Journey

1. The Entrepreneurial Journey Steps along the way, questions and suggested support at each step

2. 2 3 1 5 4 6 7 Re start

3. SEA guides Entrepreneur Journey • Using Steve Blanks “customer development” method (4 steps to the epiphany), but adding personal touch: engage with the founder as a passionate human being • 3 phases, total process 6 – 24 months: • One-on-one with entrepreneur (brooding, plunge, customer discovery steps) • Peer learning groups (customer discovery & customer validation ) • Together with VC (growth =customer creation & company building) • Start building community of practice, focus on learning about learning, grow based on evidence of success • Auroville campus as home ground. Wageningen University as agri chain centre of expertise • Pegasus, IIM-B, XLRI, UnLtd India, PresencingInstitute, Ashoka key partners

4. 1 Critical risk factor: not enough passion for the idea

5. 2 Critical risk factor: not enough support to pull off the change in life

6. 3 Critical risk factor: not enough patience for research –starting to sell too soon

7. 4 Critical risk factor: not enough demand for viable business & not enough cash

8. 5 Critical risk factor: founders not able to transition into execution/scaling mode

9. 6 Critical risk factor: management drift away from founders values

10. Assumptions to be tested • Is managing the critical risk factors in this process our value proposition? Are these risk factors correct? (Test by trying out each step of customer development) • Does applying customer development actually contribute to clarification of the entrepreneur’s endeavour? • Can we use customer development checklists to determine whether it makes sense to bring startup founders together at some point? (i.e. all “customer validators” meet) • Can we provide enough of an incentive to provide us with equity in return for moving down the development process? • Can return on seed funding work in the social enterprise segment ? How to valuate investment in these startups?

11. First steps into the SEA Start with validation of the brooding and discovery steps, then take a peace meal approach to the next steps. How? For sourcing entrepreneurs we could use: • Our network (South India: 10-15 ventures) • Conference venues for attracting entrepreneurs (SoCap, Sankalp, Unconvention) • Various media doing research into startups (P+, Intelecap, Aarthi) • Talk to existing companies about their existing business models We could attract them as earlyvangelists by presenting our methodology. Then we would set-up a kickstartertogether with them to crowdfund us through the discovery phase. After discovery we run the startups by a list of potential mentors/investors, who would be interested to take up the company.

12. Value of accelerator programs? • Convening power – accelerator programs perform a useful function in bringing together different stakeholders , building networks and catalysing them. How can that be measured – both for individual programs and for the approach more widely? • Creating an entrepreneurial culture – as accelerators create success stories, could they convince more people to start businesses and have an impact on the elusive ‘culture of entrepreneurship’ that investors and governments so covet in a region? • Mentoring – coaching and mentoring has long been regarded as an important means of supporting entrepreneurship, but little evidence is available on which scenarios are most effective. What do the mentors get out of participating in accelerators? What is the relative value of peer mentoring? Which kinds of mentoring have the greatest impact on company performance?

13. Madhukar’s model