True Ventures TEC Program » Nikhil Sethi

Thank you True Ventures.

Nikhil Sethi — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:41:53 +0000

I just wanted to take this time to express my gratitude towards the people at True Ventures, for setting up this incredible opportunity to 8 extremely lucky students. Not only have I learned an immense about the venture capital and startup space, but True Ventures has opened my eyes the infinite possibility and seriously infected me with the startup bug. The people that helped make this happen have not only shown us the day to day happenings in the life of a VC, but the enormous blue skies of possibility, and have encouraged myself to the point where I don’t think I can go another day without being involved in some kind of venture aiming not only to disrupt several trending markets, but to make the world a better place. Thanks True Ventures!

How a soccer match parallels a winning startup.

Nikhil Sethi — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:40:53 +0000

I was lucky enough to get tickets to watch Club America duel it out with Intermilan at Stanford Stadium, and during the course of the extremely hot, intense match I learned that there are many parallels between playing and winning a soccer match to starting and managing a startup.
In soccer the primary goal is to get the soccer ball in the goal. But just like in the case of startups the ultimately goal never dictates any reason or path to get there. You cannot simply walk up to the goal and toss in the soccer ball.
There is an equal force facing the opposite direction. For startups this would be the several challenges in customer acquisition, technology implementation, marketing etc, whereas in soccer its simply to get past the opponent and gain a clear shot at a goal.
The trick is in being nimble, evolutionary, and persistent. As many of the startup founders we have spoken with, their initial plan evolved and reitereated many times before they arrived at a successful outcome. In the specific case of infectious, the original idea was to deliver car art. Over time the concept was iterated upon and tested in the market, and ultimately shaped the company into what it is today. In soccer if one player possesses the ball for too long, the chances it will get stolen are high. The players are constantly passing to and fro, sometimes moving slightly forward, sometimes moving backwords, all in an attempt to find an opportunity to break through. Only by being nimble in their passing, evolutionary in their progress, and persistant in their possession do the players stand a chance of moving forward and scoring a goal.
As True Ventures emphasizes time and time again, if the core team is solid in experience, and execution, the concept is of lesser importance, as the team will find the right solution as long as they maintain being nimble, evolutionary, and persistent.

Goal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cuF-HawJfY]

The Infectious Office

Nikhil Sethi — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:08:19 +0000

The great thing about working for an art related startup is that the office is awesome. From incredible sketches hanging on the wall, to infectious wall art, infectious car art on the everyone’s vehicles, to laptop and Iphone skins on everything on everyone’s desks, makes the office from a visual perspective an awesome place to be. Organizationally the environment is 100% open. There is only one rule, if someone has headphones on, send them an IM before running up to their desk and talking to them.

The open environment has a lot of influence on the culture created at Infectious. With no walls between desks, anyone at any level or any role within the company can speak their mind to anyone in a heartbeat. Emails are left for formal information, but vocally and visually the office is beaming with information, debates, thought processes, and new ideas.

The general layout of the office is pretty interesting too. From the garage door like entryway, into a two story loft like structure, again with no dividers. The bottom floor holds the designers and packaging equipment. As soon as you walk in you can see all the printed product ready to go out, and a giant table for cutting and packing all the material before it gets shipped out. AS you walk upstairs you have the remaining employees from community management to biz dev all facing a central large white board, used primarily to pick winners for each design challenge.

All in all, the Infectious office is visually vibrant, and utterly awesome. Can’t wait to start hanging skatedecks on the ceiling…

Here’s a quick stroll through the infectious office.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrhk311Rn_s]

Work for them, and then defeat them.

Nikhil Sethi — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:39:38 +0000

One of the really great parts of the TEC program is the ability to connect with great entrepreneurs and thinkers throughout the summer. Many have founded the next big thing or on their way to release their product in the near future, in a unique area where they have identified either a problem or created a totally new space to compete in. Rather than talking about their success in executing upon their vision, I want to take one step back and see how they were able to observe the problem and have enough requisite knowledge to work to solve the problems in their respective spaces. There seems to be two major paths by which an individual becomes in a situation allowing them to make these observations. Either they work directly in the field, first hand with the problems, or they have taken significant third party interest and done research, conducted interviews with industry leaders, and ultimately figured out an observation simply on their own ability to learn.

The first type will have gone to work for the large corporation, deep in the trenches. When large companies, which tend to digress from the individual opinions of their employees to what feels good, they may or may not give enough attention to each of their offerings essentially opening doors for other infinitely smaller companies to take that single vertical and innovate heavily. This strategy allows the small player to compete directly with the large corporation all on its ability to move quickly and innovate heavily on a very specific item. People who can quickly see and understand this observation have an obvious advantage.

The second type, filled with passion for a particular area or technology, who can learn about the space from third parties and see 4+ steps into the future have the other obvious advantage to innovate in their single vertical and solve a problem with a refined, compelling solution before any giant can begin to move.

The point is simply this, keeping your eyes open to what’s right in front of you, can lead to the next big thing.

If you build it, they will maybe come

Nikhil Sethi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:31:57 +0000

As part of our learning experience here at True Ventures, they were kind enough to give us some reading material to peruse and study from. The first being the story of Clif Bar, and the success and failures that went along with creating a multi-million dollar company and another entitled the Four Steps to Epiphany. Both are very interesting reads and provide a ton of thought provoking material and example upon example of the trials and hardships of starting a business. But rather than boring you with the content of the books, which I recommend everyone read, I would like to pose a question. What is the algorithm for a successful startup? Some will tell you to focus on execution and building the product, as innovation is the driving factor for success. Build something that truly solves a problem or provides a value added service and they will come. Other will tell you to focus on the customer. Use the same concept of test early and often with the consumer, and build your product around the customer needs, slowly build your customer acquisition strategy and they will come. And finally people may tell you it’s a combination of the two with a sprinkle of luck. Obviously there is no one right answer, some things work well for some companies whereas the customer development model works for others. So which one do you choose?

Your mother has probably told you on more than one occasion, do things in moderation. Don’t eat too many cookies or you’ll get a tummy ache. Take things slow and only a few at a time. However in business it seems like the opposite is true. One must have their heads in the clouds of vision, and their feet rooted firmly in the forests of execution. The dual extreme of vision and execution are the vital ingredients for a successful startup. The product is important but depends heavily on the consumers’ willingness to use or buy. Develop an amazing technology a few years too soon and you may find no adoption. The consumer is too important for a number of reasons, but what many people tend to overlook is that the consumer is quite uninvolved and perhaps misleading in many cases. At infectious.com, the aura has been around customer acquisition and the product should wrap around consumer, which makes sense but can only go so far. True innovation is required to go above and beyond where we are now, and ultimately a necessity in the creation of new fields and advancements.

At the Structure 09 conference, it was brutally clear that the majority of people are still quite befuddled by the meaning and purpose of “cloud computing”. What the hell is cloud computing? This brand new area of advancement is simply the result of heads filled with vision and feet ready to execute, powered by some perception of consumer need. This grand scheme of innovation will fuel new ideas, new industries, and many new ways of doing traditional things. Let vision and execution intermix, and they will come.

Raw Beginnings

Nikhil Sethi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:32:10 +0000

From the moment I accepted the opportunity with True Ventures to the end of my first week on the job, my view on entrepreneurship has been shaken twice. Before arriving I had a pretty good idea what being an entrepreneur was all about. I had personally gone through the idea generation phase, executing upon that idea, and building and rebuilding all the way along while working on blurtt.com, some of the main stages someone has to go through to create something new. But it wasn’t until I dived head first into the offices of Infectious.com did I really understand the day to day complexities of living in the entrepreneurial world. Within the excitement, the intrigue, the passion to build something that can affect millions of lives there is a strong and persistent pressure to succeed, to deliver, to overcome. There seems to be really only one solution to dissuading this pressure, and that as I have now seen is through pure dedication.

When I walked into infectious HQ, the aura of the surrounding San Francisco neighborhood was instantly altered. I could smell passion and love from the six members all of whom seemed so connected and in touch with the vision and purpose of their organization. The ambition reverberates with the underlying goal of infectious, “To spread art to every and any blank canvas”. From cars, to iphones, infectious provides original artwork created by its artist community and converts this artwork into vinyl skins for a variety of devices and applications. The environment was simple. No walls, all desks facing one another, in a free flowing open space with no ones backs facing each other, providing the ability to communication with any department, or anyone in the company instantly. No need for complex land line systems, or walking over to the business development group’s office and waiting for them to open the door. Have a question? Just shout it out. This flat organizational structure, emphasizes communication and truly opens up highly efficient structural possibilities. I was seated at my desk and given little instruction as to really what to do next. I had many ideas of possible ways to take the company from a short and long term strategic point of view and got to work on compiling these recommendations with the associated data. Self motivation and drive is essential.

The second earthquake in my vision was centered on True Ventures itself. Every Thursday we get together with True for either an interesting conversation or to attend some kind of entrepreneurial event. Our first meeting was at True’s SF office where we got a brief introduction of what True Ventures aims to be and how they conduct business. When I first applied to the TEC program, the word “True” in True Ventures really threw me off. Defining ones organization as True, especially in the investment world is a very packed statement and I wanted to see exactly how the members of True Ventures acted upon this ideal, and to my surprise I was blown away. The meaning of True in True Ventures has a very powerful connotation and one that I now believe is a very close to heart purpose of everyone in the True family. Being helpful, and being honest. True Ventures is focused on investing in people, not necessarily the next big thing, and it is this search filter that creates enormous value. All in all, I am very excited to be here, as I look forward to the weeks to come I am certain that this is not just a summer internship, but developing a lifelong relationship with the amazing people at Infectious and True Ventures.