Ideas worth Sharing Podcast- Your Weekly Startup Podcast

Often we as entrepreneurs try to pick domains that we are comfortable with and know the ins and outs of the industry. This is where we loose out on a lot of potential startup ideas for the reason that we aren't thinking of those ideas. Let me help you understand it in a better way. Tune in

We all get to hear so many startup funding news every single day. Funding is so much celebrated that people forget that funding is not a success but a milestone that will help you charge up for the journey ahead. Sharing my experience of things that I learnt out of Sahil's(Gumroad) Minimalist Entrepreneur mindset

Everyone of us need other inputs. Giving these inputs to folks in your network who are in need of them not only helps you learn about new things but also starts off a relationships with other folks leading to building a network around you.

We all who are some way or other might have always dreamt about going for an MBA to get the required skills and be a complete business person. I say otherwise. Tune in and learn more about what I mean

Did you know that even on this date Amazon eCommerce or even Flipkart is not profitable yet.  There are more things to eCommerce than we usually get to hear about 10's of thousands of crores of sales every festive season. Let's double down on what it is like to start an eCommerce startup. Why I think eCommerce is not a great startup pick. Even if you would want to what things you have to keep in mind before getting your belt on and start working on it.  Tune in lets discuss some interesting stuff  Join Ideas worth sharing Podcast community - https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE

Correlation doesn't imply causation If you are wondering what I am saying it's simple- “Many of the funded startups are from top institutes/colleges but not imply that - to get funded the startup must be from these top colleges/institutes” Let's see why this happens, then let's see the logic behind funding and finally what you can do if you are not from these top institutes. Why this happens: Culture - events, exposure causing activities Alums - network, startup opportunities, experience, mentorship Access to initial capital and resources Management and rules: If there's a final year credit given to you running your startup if you run one Great peer networks - you can find great people to work with Here’s what you can do if you are not from top institutes Establish connections with students at top institutes: LinkedIn & other social media, attending summits/conferences - create a personal connection - learn and engage with what they are doing (ex. How I do it) Learn from YC startup school, IIMA How to start a startup series on Youtube -  both of these are free resources and other online content taught at top institutes YC Startup school (Free curriculum): https://bit.ly/startupschool-balajirao How to start a startup by IIMA: https://bit.ly/iima-balajirao Work on your skills extensively, learn proper communication Create content to build your brand, your storefront, and visibility - (How I do it) The logic behind all of this Great investors invest in people, not the idea or market. The chances of a great team succeeding are much higher than an Idea succeeding in the market. Join the community at chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE

An average human has numerous ideas that come to his brain on a daily basis. These ideas may or may not be business-related but all I wanted to convey here is that the human brain is capable of producing good ideas.  I myself generate 5-10 startup ideas each day. But are all these ideas worth trying out? Or you might think how can I filter out? What should I be doing with these startup/business ideas? Just think and leave it?  Or should I do something that can help me build better and bigger with time. This is what we are going to discuss throughout this podcast episode so stay with me you will learn a ton by the end of the episode.  You can join our community - https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE

There are quite some reasons why you won't be able to do well in business with your friends after a certain time period. It's all about Ideas, Skills, and Values that matter the most to bring a team together and get the most out of the team. Picking cofounders for your startup idea is quite a challenging task which quite a lot of people leave it loose and take soft decisions which costs them a lot going forward. So in this unscripted episode, I will be sharing my experiences along with learnings from my mentors on why I think so, also of course there are exceptions which I will be sharing in a logical manner as well. You can join the Ideas worth sharing podcast Whatsapp community here- https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE You can ask me your question by sending a voice message (see below)

Let's get started Name the idea (prefer a generic name) Define the idea and what it is meant to solve (keep it a simple one-liner) Design a logo (bring in some visual identity) Book a domain (or you can get free domains from Netlify or Mailchimp landing pages) Build a simple landing page for your idea (give minimum effort keep it simple but attracts people who could be your potential customers) Start getting visitors to the landing page. Here's how you can do so 👇 But what I want to focus on in this episode is ways to get traffic for free. To help you make use of the resources that you own at the best. If you don't have enough money, you definitely have some online real estate. By online real estate I mean - Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, the Twitter account's with 'x' number of followers. Try to leverage these direct followers or connections of yours. Here are 19 other channels to make use of: From Vaibhav Nambur who is my mentor 1. Cold emailing - subject line (mails.wtf, Lemlist's Cold email subject line blog post with 56 cold email subject lines) and storytelling is much or else people won't read and take actions - you can use other systems like Hubspot to send personalized emails to people and try to create real value for them. - You can use SalesQl to find emails on Linkedin - Please don't spam your effort will go waste 2. Facebook groups. - Again don't spam - Firstly engage with the community - Build constructive content and help people - Remember Givers get back more - Educate them and whoever seems interested in your services introduce them to your services/products 3. Build in Public - avoid stealth mode What this means is : Twitter is a great place to build and so is LinkedIn. Some great examples are Domm Holland and Kunal Shah. The beauty of this is that you get to take your audience on a journey and also get immediate feedback on what you’re working on. Shortens the feedback cycle as your potential customers are building it for you 4. Hacker news 5. Product Hunt 6. Also launching in appropriate channels in Slack communities 7. Friends and family 8. SEO inbound to website 9. Beta email list generated using beta landing page earlier (email these people who supported you when you started- offer them special discounts or benefits) 10. Get yourself interviewed on Youtube channels, podcasts in your industry and share your story & how and what it took to build the product that you are working on 11. Use review sites and Directories 12. Whatsapp communities 13. Partner up with companies having a good follower base in your industry (provide affiliate commissions + extra offers when their offer coupon code is applied during checkout) 14. Reachout to relevant blogs to get yourself placed in the sponsored sections of their blogs or email newsletters 15. Create short-form video, text content and float it around on all social platforms 16. Use Viral marketing (referrals) 17. Use Quora to answer relevant questions and problems that your product solves and leave your link at the end of the answers. (Quora has a huge inflow of readers, find the right questions with a high volume of readers - check which questions get listed when the keyword is searched on google) 18. Reddit Subreddits (I haven't tried using this much but I heard it works well from a lot of people) 19. Offline meetups and events (share about your product, war branded merchandise, give talks, share goodies, etc)

Join the community- https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE Podcast script&notes: These seem like the classification of food items!! Nope nope this classification can be used for business/startup ideas as well Swagat hai aapka!- means  Let's begin this wonderful episode on Vitamin ideas vs Painkiller ideas. Before anything, I hope you have listened to the previous. The episode on turning idea -> business walkthrough I hope most of you might be listening to it for the first time So, take a quick guess which do you think are better than others Use your creative side of the brain !!! Okay let's get to know more about what the classification means Vitamins are "nice to have," but not "need to have." Oftentimes these are features or functionalities, and not major platforms. And just like in a drug store, preventive vitamins are optional. They are usually priced at a major discount, compared to the expensive painkilling prescriptions behind the counter. I hope you get the point Summarization: Painkillers are the need of the hour. Whereas Vitamins is an optional need or nice to have. The factors that decide whether the idea is a painkiller or vitamin is the time when you are going to the market with your product or service built on top of your idea. Say for example a Cab booking app- a cab comes to your home would have seemed to be impossible/magical 10 years back but now it's a necessity So in this span of 10 years, the need for online booking of cab ideas has turned to be a painkiller from vitamin which it used to be 10 years back. It's all about the time factor The right product idea at the right time makes all the difference So you must be very careful with your research to figure out if the market is ready to adopt your idea. To put it in another way - whether it's the right time to launch the idea & is there a real necessity/urge for people to pay for your product/service Hope you had great learning about different types of ideas and the thinking behind them. Important announcement: Community link in podcast description and show notes below (https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE) Hit that Subscribe button so that you stay connected with Ideas worth sharing.

We will talk about: When you should consider sharing? What you should share Understanding what an Idea is: type 1: for entertainment                                                                 Type 2: to make money Stages of ideation 1. Naive idea stage (with no proper research) 2. Idea with primary research done 3. Idea with secondary research done Who are the right people to get feedback from Asking the right questions for feedback on your idea 4. Preparing something tangible worth showing and collecting feedback Finding if people are ready to pay for your product: are you solving a problem Example of networking events to spread and collect feedback about your idea. Creation of a business around Ideas Unless and until its proprietary or something that's new and no one has access to Benefits of getting feedback from sharing a product video or just audio containing the explanation of your idea How I would go about creating something tangible to share and collect feedback Go ahead create a wireframe, or write a doc which specifies what your idea is Then record it in the form of an audio or a video. Share it with as many friends and communities to get more feedback. If you wanna go an extra step create a simple landing page with some copy stating what your product/services do and how it solves problems of your target customers. We will discuss more doing research and building an MVP in another episode. Try to get on-call with anyone who’s willing to give more detailed feedback, learn, and iterate. I will see you in the next one till then bye :) Cheers

This trailer focuses mainly on why this podcast exists in the universe. All about why you should consider sharing your ideas. Most of the first time entrepreneurs are reluctant to share their startup idea with others. People think that their business idea can be stolen and others can use it.  Also, this podcast is about learning to build an entrepreneurial mindset.  In this podcast I will be sharing my principles along with that will share some awesome ideas that are worth sharing.  Which you can think and try building upon them. This podcast is going to be an open repository of all business ideas that i come across  Cheers, this is Balaji Rao your host on Ideas worth sharing.  Don't forget to subscribe and  I will See you in the next episode.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ideasworthsharing/message