I walk a different path
Captain Nemo
‘Venture Capitalism is a uniquely American phenomenon,’ I heard Prof. Scott Galloway mention that over his podcast. I totally agree with him on that. The can-do spirit and the insane ability to take risks is what sets them and their success apart from other nation-states.
My personal journey of fundraising seems to be more about learning the process and not actually fundraising itself. The time and effort that does not go into product building and goes into my fundraising activity has been spent on understanding the nature of venture capitalism itself.
I also have industry experience, business experience and to some extent life experience. A few years ago, I was probably not suited to raise funds, even though I had better return on my business, that funds Machine Dalal. Today, it is different, that the first thing I would do after is hire a business head and relegate myself to stay the product guy.
Machine Dalal is unique when it comes to investor-market fit. My personal challenge has been to try drill in the size of the market to the investor, not so much to the user, as grew organically.
Earlier we were working with zero advertising budget for obvious reasons.
Now, we have a process that is moving like a machine and the results are encouraging enough that the less efforts I was making towards fundraising might become lessor still.
But that is not the challenge I face while talking to potential investors or those who pretend to be. The industry – Print, Packaging and Converting; is unique, humungous, distributed, and fragmented. Whenever I have discussions with a potential investor, I expect him to do the diligence. After all, we both would profit from it. He more than I.
They are not doing this with goodness of their heart. They stand to profit, and to be honest, we answer to higher people – the user.
I would rather spend three hours brining a delightful experience to my user, than one chasing money. After all, there are only so many hours in a day and a good deal with always wait.
We actively chase users. We evangelize about our product. We answer questions. We give trials. We let them use it for free. It doesn’t cost much to use Machine Dalal, but free is free. And we have results to show for.
When you grow fast, the moments when you don’t will dim your enthusiasm. But nothing puts a wider smile on my face than a user going online, using your product, and making a payment.
How is that for a product-market fit?