The amazing story of how "Baby Einstein" was conceived and why it was sold!

And the projects that the founder is involved in now. 

A must watch / listen and amazingly charming Mixergy interview with Julie Clark, co-founder of The Baby Einstein Company, the pioneering creator of musical video DVDs for kids (which was sold to Disney after building it to a $20 million size in five years with just 5 employees.)

Highlights:

• Impact that passionate teachers tend to have on their students future careers and life
• The interview emphasizes - yet again - why some of the best businesses - which includes Google in the US and redBus in India - are launched by the founder(s) "scratching their own itch". As Julie puts it, both baby Einstein and her newer ventures were founded because she thought "someone ought to create a product for ---" and when she realized there was nothing like that out there, she went ahead and create it. She is clearly not someone who will only take the plunge after validating through the "focus group" kind of stuff.
• Benefits of participating in trade-shows
• How making the product remarkable helps in generating both PR (Julie talks about how she got featured on both CNN and the Oprah show) and word of mouth.
• Story of why Baby Einstein was sold to Disney. (The business, though scaling rapidly, was taking over the founders' lives and also the category that the company had created was attracting competition from the big media companies. Julie poignantly describes how she comes from a humble background and how she was proud to have found a home in Disner for "her baby". The viewer/listener is however left with a felling that Disney - credit it to its brand - got Baby Einstein quite cheap.)
• Julie also talks about her new ventures including Happy Appy - which serves up one Youtube video, as per their tagline is "Never Rude, Crude or Nude". A typically Julie app!

Related:

Lest the almost fairy tale like story of Julie Clark makes us think entrepreneurship for women in the US is a piece of cake, here are links to two other podcasts that focus more on the challenges and hardships involved. 

• EO Fire interview with "geeky woman" entrepreneur Katherine Matsudaira, founder of Popforms.
• Mixergy interview with New York-based I-banker turned Entrepreneur Yunha Kim, founder of Locket.
• Mixergy Interview with Spain-based Pilar Manchon founder of INDiSYS (acquired by Intel)
  

Enabling the Exit - Special Peer to Peer Discussion

The Venture Intelligence APEX'14 Private Equity Summit on March 6 at Mumbai saw an amazing coming together of Founders and executives as part of this special "peer to peer" track to share some amazing experiences and strategies to create exits in the Indian context - both via M&A and public markets.

The discussion started with Pangea3 Co-founder Sanjay Kamlani relating how the company's board decided to provide Thomson Reuters - a vendor to the company which had been tracking it closely since inception - a minimum valuation expected and a deadline, only after which it would start approaching other potential buyers. Sanjay also related why, despite going an existing partner - with whom all the stakeholders were very comfortable - Pangea3 still hired an investment bank to facilitate the transaction and, also brought in the good offices of its non-executive chairman, to sort out "hairy issues" that cropped up. Since the founders and other top executives would need to work closely with members of the buyer team post transaction, it is key to have such buffers during the deal negotiation. Other speakers in the insights filled track included:

• Sesh AV, MD, Basiz (Session Chair)
• Sandeep Parekh, Founder, Finsec Law Advisors & Formerly Executive Director at SEBI (who provided the legal and regulatory perspective)
• Raman Gopal , President & Head - Business Development, Hinduja Group
  (who provided the acquirer’s perspective)
• Pramod Maheshwari, CMD, Career Point
  (which provided a successful exit via an IPO in the Indian markets for its PE investor)
• Neeraj Bhargava, CEO, Zodius Capital & Former CEO of US-listed BPO firm WNS
• Ajay Bohora, Co-founder & CEO, Credila Financial (majority owned by HDFC) & formerly Co-founder of ClaimsBPO (acquired by WNS)
• Chandu Nair, Co-founder, Scope eKnowledge (acquired by Quatrro BPO) 

The session is a must view one for entrepreneurs - especially ones planning an IPO or M&A for their firms.

Entrevista with Raj Nair, Founder of Avalon Consulting

Interview with Raj Nair, Founder-Chairman of Avalon Consulting, the Mumbai-headquartered, international consulting firm and also research and analytics firm Ugam Solutions and artificial intelligence software firm . Interview begins with how Ugam Solutions' founding & funding - especially how the company "pivoted" to completely new business in 50 days flat! The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair. Chandu earlier founded, successfully raised venture capital for and exited from Scope eKnowledge, one of the earliest KPO firms in India.

The Audio (podcast) version can be downloaded from here 

Highlights:

• Striking balance between Flexibility & Measurement in the Early Years: In the initial years of starting up,  it’s important to have the flexibility to course correct and not put pressure on the business with a rigid business model, ambitious target, etc. “There is (however) a difference between chaos and experimentation. Every day, you need to check if things are ‘happening or not happening’. You cannot be like Christopher Columbus saying 'I somehow want to reach India' and set sail without doing any homework. For every Columbus who got lucky, there are probably thousands who just lost their way.”
• Pricing based on Value: How even with no relevant experience behind them, Raj and his team decided to price their market research services at double the prevalent rates and got away with it.
• Spotting Entrepreneurial Opportunities - in the Pre- Liberalization Days (Market Research) and in Today's Social Media Driven Days (Germinait which mines Social Media for market research using technology tools). Very interesting accounts of the work that Germinait did for measuring the impact of a well known teleco's ad campaign and how it's helping an leading kids TV channel measure social media conversations to decide which characters to promote.
• Experience brings Empathy: “When I started my journey, I used to view colleagues as fellow professionals and it was all about delivering results to clients. Today, I look at them as individual persons - someone whose wife had a migraine in the morning and he had to deal with it before coming; another whose child did not get admitted into a school or that he deserved to and so on. One understands how the environment affects an individual’s behavior, output and productivity at the workplace. In one word, Empathy. And that is something that can’t be taught in a business school.”
• Don't tell your children what (career) path to take. Only if they decide for themselves, will they will own up to the responsibility for what they do!
• Parting Wisdom: Make sure you are having fun! "When you are enjoying, a lot of the hardships don’t seem that big. When you are not enjoying what you are doing, even a small thing becoming a big issue. So make sure whatever you are going to do will give you tremendous satisfaction and happiness. Don't do get into some line of business just because 'the money is great' (and) unless you are going to enjoy the journey." 

Entrevista with Cosmic Circuits Founder Ganapathy Subramaniam

Interview with Ganapathy Subramaniam, Founding-CEO of Bangalore-based semiconductor tech company Cosmic Circuits. (Cosmic was acquired in early 2013 by Silicon Valley-based, Nasdaq-listed electronic design giant Cadence.) The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair.

The Podcast can be downloaded from here.
(Use Right Click > Save As to save the file to your desktop)

Highlights

Reading the Wind
How Ganapathy, as part of visiting customers in October 2012, realized that Cosmic Circuits could no longer remain an independent company. (Its customers and partners wanted a strong Number 2 player in the segment to provide a balance to the Number 1 player, Synopsis.) 

Making the company Due Diligence ready
How Cosmic's decisions to rope in a Big 4 audit firm (just five years into its existence) and go in for an ISO certification, stood it in good stead when it came to due diligence at the time of its acquisition. Ganapathy advises that, once the company grows to a certain size, even as the founders enjoy the fruits of that growth, they would do well to take the time and effort to streamline processes.

Valuing Customer Traction over Venture Capital
Why Cosmic Circuits passed on a term sheet from a Silicon Valley VC within days of starting up.

Importance of separating lines of businesses - even in a startup 
"Startups should live and die by its focus on one line of business," says Ganapathy. If one of the business lines is a cash cow, the "negativity" of the failing businesses does not reach the CEO. Specific to Cosmic, in hindsight, the company would have been better off it had separated the fabless semiconductor business from the IP business - something it did as part of the sale of the IP business to Cadence.

Focus on productivity versus putting in long hours
A firm follower of Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," Ganapathy believes leading a balanced life - whether it is ensuring time for family or playing badminton almost everyday - helped ensure his stress levels were in control. (This outlook ensured that Ganapathy's approach to work as the CEO of Cosmic wasn't too different from that at TI.) A 14 hour or more of work just ends up making the founder irritable and leads to costly friction with colleagues, he says.

Attraction of Texas Instruments as a workplace
Apart from the great pay check, the ethical culture, the opportunities to learn from the best in the field and also the freedom to operate independently encouraged Ganapathy to continue with TI - effectively his first and last job as an employee - for a straight 16 years. When he was deputed to work in TI USA, he decided - on his own - that he would be more productive working from home and proceeded to do so for three months. And his supervisor never asked him about his whereabouts!

Impressions Left by Early Education
How his early school education (in the small town of Sivakasi) instilled a spirit of Nationalism - the echoes of which were felt later in his career, including in creating a vision for Cosmic (to build a highly valuable company out of India in the semiconductor technology space).

Man on a Mission
Ganapathy would like to help develop at least ten $100-M+ Semiconductor IP companies out of India over the next 15 years, by working with entrepreneurs, VCs and the government. He is also also making personal investments in startup companies in the sector.

Entrevista with Palem Srikanth, Founder of logistics software maker Four Soft

In this audio interview ("podcast"), Palem Srikanth shares his amazing entrepreneurial journey - from a Stanford educated logistics executive with Hewlett Packard to returning to India and starting a Dosa restaurant chain to the tough lessons from making cross-border acquisitions to the recent sale of the logistics software business (to US Private Equity firm Francisco Partners-backed Kewill) for about Rs.275 crores. The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair.

The Podcast can be downloaded from here.
(Use Right Click > Save As to save the file to your desktop)

Highlights:

• Importance of Financial Strength in the Enterprise Software space
• How persistence and investing in technology (to ensure Four Soft's products were cutting edge)  provided the maximum return - much more than the expensive acquisitions the company made 
• Managing the confidentiality of the transaction involving a listed company - so that there is no misuse of insider information to trade in the stock 
• Tapping of Ex-Colleagues/Bosses for Angel Capital 
• Advantages of going public 
• Pitfalls in acquiring an overseas company - how buyers need think through not just "how to bite it, but  also to swallow it and digest it". For example, issues like whether the target company is entrepreneurial enough to meet aggressive growth expectations; the regulatory issues in laying off people; conflicts of interest involved in buying a company (from a financial investor) where the management team aspires to itself own the company, etc. 

As if creating an Enterprise Software Product out of India has not been challenging enough, Srikanth now has a parallel career in active politics - he is running for Parliament as part of the Telugu Desam Party. You can follow his political career into the 2014 elections and beyond on his web site at http://www.srikanthreddy.com.

Entrevista with Ratish Nair, Founding-CEO of Interactive Avenues

Interview with Ratish Nair, Founding-CEO of Interactive Avenues (IA), the Mumbai-headquartered, Sequoia Capital India-backed digital marketing agency which was acquired in March 2013 by US- and Europe-based ad agency Interpublic. Interview focuses on the company's founding (5 co-founders who earlier worked at another digital agency Mediaturf); Angel Funding (from Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com); VC Funding and relationship with Sequoia Capital; and, of course, the Exit (how IA ran the process, the role of the VC, the role of the intermediary, internal dynamics, etc.).

The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair. Chandu earlier founded, successfully raised venture capital for and exited from Scope eKnowledge, one of the earliest KPO firms in India.



The Audio (podcast) version can be downloaded from here 

Other Highlights

Synergistic Co-founding team

How, having worked together in the past (at Mediaturf which they left as a group to found IA), the co-founding team knew each other' strengths and weaknesses and were able to hence work in a synergistic manner.

Leveraging the Brand & Network of VC Investor

How IA tapped Sequoia Capital not just for the money, but also to add to the startup venture's credibility (when pitching for clients) and also for generating business from the investor's other portfolio companies.

Advertising as a way out of small town

Interesting vignettes about a small "mining town" upbringing and how advertising was seen as an escape to the exciting world of the "big city".

Also how the lectures by Prof. Subroto Sengupta at IIM-Calcutta served as an inspiration to join the world of advertising

Advise to other Entrepreneurs

"Never raise more money than what you need - else, you might relax and 'miss the bus'."

Most Entertaining Investor Interview Ever: Chris Sacca by Jason Calacanis

Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital is an investor in several well known US consumer web, mobile, and wireless technology startups like Twitter, Kickstarter, Uber, etc. A lawyer by education, he earlier worked at Google.
Highlights: 

Personal story

Amazing story of how he lost millions in leveraged trading and how he clawed his way back.

"Fake it till you make it": Highly entertaining story about how, when he was out of job, he created a fake management consulting company, The Salinger Group, and handed out its card at various networking forums (including TiE). He even offered to let his friends who were also out of jobs to use the company's name!

On Entrepreneurs 

Truly Disruptive Entrepreneurs: Failure is not part of the options for them. They never doubt the outcome. They just think "the world will be a better place if this product gets built".

If I'm the one asking the entrepreneur how can this be bigger, then I worry  

Merits of working in a small company

While whoever is nearest to the door becomes the receptionist, the learning curve is so steep that very quickly, you might even be standing in for the CFO.

Working at Google

At Google, you could show up in other people's meetings - if you are being useful, no one asks why you are here.

Interesting story of how he had to buy up data center capacity across the world without alerting competitors like Microsoft - so that they don't realize how quickly Google was growing.  

On Raising a fund

It's tougher than raising money for a company since in the case of a company, the investors are betting on a combination of the person, product and market. On the other hand, in the case of a fund (especially a solo fund - i.e., being managed by one person), they are betting just on the person.  

On Investing

Managing your own psychology is 100% of investing

 Dealflow for best performing deals: Being genuinely helpful is the best way to get the best dealflow. Spend more time networking ("breaking bread") with entrepreneurs, other investors and advisors than by speaking at major events like TechCrunch, etc.

Is increasingly excited to invest in companies that are at the intersection of content and technology. "The costs are decreasing and the audience is increasing." 


Misalignment of interest between early stage and later investors

"It's all fun and games until you get to Series B (second round of funding)."

When an investor comes in at Series B, he wants a binary outcome; ie he wants the company to "go for broke".

This creates political infighting: entrepreneur verses angels versus early VC investors ve later investors

 

On Exits 

The founders of Kickstarter make all investors commit to stay invested for 20 years. "No one is looking to exit"  

On Twitter

Facebook is who you used to know; Twitter is who you want to know

UI

Simple is hard to make & hard to charge for

"Avoid Mind Blocks & Artificial Boundaries" - K. Pandia Rajan & Latha Rajan of Ma Foi

Latha Rajan & K. Pandia Rajan of Ma Foi ( B i o s)

In conversation with K. Satyanarayan, Co-founder of regional language publishing firm New Horizon Media. (Recorded on August 15, 2012 in Chennai.)

Highlights:

Takeaways for Other Entrepreneurs: (Click on the links for the video segments)

• Don't add artificial constraints when it comes to entrepreneurship

KPR: Separating home and work, politics & business - we tend to have many boundaries where none need to exist. These are  Western notions and mind blocks that we can revisit.

Being a Husband-Wife Entrepreneur Combination was never a major hassle for us. In fact, as Latha says often, we would have probably fallen apart but for Ma Foi!

Latha Rajan: In the early days, he used to travel 25 days a month and I used to travel 10 days a month. But since I was there within the system, I could understand (the pressures and issues). Both of us knew what we were working towards.

Entrepreneurship has given me a lot of flexibility mentally. I used to take my daughter and son to office if it was required. In fact, the 30th day after my son was born, I was in the office and I took him along.

• Employees as Members: Everyone who joins Ma Foi is referred to as a "member" (as against an employee). 

Latha Rajan: "Employee sounds so transient".

Even if someone leaves the organization (as an employee), he/she still remains a Ma Foi member (and hence an ambassador for the firm).

• Innovation in funding: Converted the company into a public limited one very early and raised small amounts from over 275 well wishers, employees & ex-employees and clients. Made sure to pay the shareholders a decent dividend each year. (Ma Foi paid 20% "religiously".)

• Vision and Values; Transparent Measurement

Growth, Diversity, Transparency and Integrity
Everyone knew how much everyone else was producing

• Role of Scale, Scope & Depth

• Decision making structure

Management through "Operating Board, Management Council and Institutional Member" meetings

• Don't seek valuation ahead of value creation

Other Highlights (The Journey & Lighter Moments)

• The Early Days: "Our Aspirations always exceeded our resources"
  
• Ma Foi the name 
  
• Struggle for Early Stage & Bank Funding
  Banks would fund someone with 20 Buffaloes rather than a business like HR Services with 20 MBAs. "Buffaloes won't run away, but your people might. Then what happens to the collateral?" 

• Early Employees: They joined us to co-create Ma Foi; not to earn a living
• Defining the Roles: "I earned and she spent"
• VC Funding, online dreams & dotcom crash
• Sale to Vedior
• Vision for Ma Foi Strategy ("Ma Foi Version 6")
  Leveraging the Triad of Consulting, Research & Education to Create a "Big 5" League Consulting firm out of India
  

The Full Length Interview Video

Video Of The Q&A Session 

Click Here to Download The Full Interview Audio Podcast - 69 minutes, 32 MB
Use Right Click & Save As to download to your desktop

Click Here to Download the Audio of the Q&A session - 8.54 minutes, 4 MB
Use Right Click & Save As to download to your desktop

For more pictures from the recording event, Click Here

”Focus on your 3Cs: Credibility, Cash Flow and Crew”– Rajeev Mecheri of Mecheri Smart Capital

Lessons from the Startup to Scale-up to Successful Sale of iMetrex Technologies, a building technologies and security venture catering to the Indian enterprise market - The Venture Intelligence Team



Rajeev Mecheri, Managing Director, Mecheri Smart Capital (Bio & LinkedIn)
Interview by Hari Krishnan of Venture Intelligence, followed by interaction with students at the Department of Management Studies IIT-Madras on November 9, 2011.

Highlights:



Please click on the links below to view corresponding video snippets:

• Importance of Customer Touch Point


• “What works for the company, works for you (the founder)”


• Founders should separate their lifestyle needs from that of the business


• Invest Appropriately - in infrastructure, etc.


• Decision to exit and the "strength of a brand"

• Decision to integrate vertically (getting into manufacturing)


• Following the Customers


• Innovative holding structure for acquiring a product company

Click Here to Download the Audio of the Interview - mp3 format - 52 mins; 24 MBUse Right Click & Save As to download to your desktop
Click Here to Download the Audio of the Q&A session - 21 mins; 10 MBUse Right Click & Save As to download to your desktop

Hemu Ramaiah – Story of an Indian Retail Pioneer

The story of Hemu Ramaiah, founder of the Landmark bookstore chain (in which the Tatas acquired a majority stake in 2005), is confirmation that a customer facing role is the best start to an entrepreneurial career. As someone who started a modern, large format bookstore (in Chennai’s Nungambakkam area) in the pre-liberalization era, she exemplifies the word “visionary” and her journey showcases how entrepreneurs – as long as they have a clear understanding of customer needs – can make winning decisions by “trusting their gut”. - The Venture Intelligence Team

Hemu Ramaiah, MD, Shop 4 Solutions (Bio) in conversation with K. Satyanarayan, Co-founder of regional language publishing firm New Horizon Media. (Recorded on June 15, 2010)

The Main Podcast (mp3) - 77 Minutes, 35.4 MB

(Use Right Click > Save As to download to your desktop)

Highlights from the interview:

• “Make Your Own Mistakes”
  • Trust Your Gut (based on your understanding of customer needs)
  • “Don’t let Accountants take over your business”
  • Examples: Deciding to get software designed by a start-up firm (which made the effort to understand her requirements better), deciding not to charge extra for courier delivery for Internet orders, deciding to buy (rather than rent) space for the stores, etc.
• Importance of Growing the Market vs. worrying overly about competition
  • Amazing story of how she decides overnight to start supplying books to her competitors (in order to boost volumes for the import orders)

• On the choice between Private Equity and Strategic Investors

• Planning the Personal Exit
  • Because “business is a treadmill” and “life shouldn’t pass you by”
  • Basing the decision on an age cut-off (rather than some target corpus)
    
• Converting Problems into Opportunities
  • When she learns that her daughter’s schoolmate has never visited a bookshop, Hemu decides to turn the problem (of parents not exposing their children to books), by “taking the bookstore to the school”. You can download the audio (mp3) of Hemu’s recounting of this interesting episode – which is not a part of the main podcast – from here (Use Right Click > Save As to download to your desktop).