We asked Team Mirraw, Graduates of the TSC Resident Programme what they thought about it, and their takeaways (and a word to those who are to follow) as they graduate. Here's reposting it, so that others might get a perspective, if they are looking for one.
When you are out to climb Everest, they say you should get in touch with a Sherpa. TSC has a horde of such metaphorical sherpas, lighting fires and melting ice for you as you trek onwards. Getting down to brass tacks, there are 4 main things that we derived from our stay at TSC.
Mentorship. You meet some serious people here, people who have built a company from scratch and have gone through the whole process themselves to be able to understand your point of view. Granted, that you know your product best, but there are enough generalizations in the industry that these stalwarts have accumulated over years of grilling it in the industry. Ideas were thrown at us that we hadn’t even thought of ever before, some questioning the very fundamentals of our solution, whereas others optimizing our UX. What I have been grateful for is the interest they took and the time they spent ideating with us. Ask for advice and thou shalt receive plenty
Connections. Apart from the TSC itself being a watering hole for entrepreneurs and hackers in Chennai, there are all these “I know a guy” scenarios which just make you jump for joy when you don’t have to dig every trench yourself. The Startup Centre is itself young and is growing the ecosystem of companies that can help each other out. Meets like OCC Chennai, jelly, In50 hours introduce you to fellow entrepreneurs, hackers. Fun events like Roof Top Film Festival and Urban Architecture Meetups introduce you to people from different walks of life, which I believe is essential to expand your social horizons and the occasional dose of sanity. Oh and you get to meet people with money too in case you are in need of some.
Fellowship. During my resident program, there were 3 other startups that I worked with and several other entrepreneurs whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Other than the fact that I made lifetime friends in a strange city, brainstorming with them on a day to day basis on every aspect of the business has been tremendously helpful. Feature decisions, designing a UX, SEO, Marketing tips/tricks and other such shareable knowledge was shared and built upon. Pitching for each other startups at the NASSCOM stall was the ultimate show of camaraderie I experienced from this group. New teams have been formed by the people who met here and worked together.
Space. Last but not the least. Vijay has been kind enough to let me live up to the full extent of a “resident” program J . The office is just fab. Enough space to think, bean bag, guitar to play with, conference rooms and good location. Helps you put your head down and get a singular focus on your startup.
To wrap it up, TSC has been a great experience and while we may be just 2 people in our business, we have the support of a lot more minds.
The TSC Perspective [ By Vijay Anand ]
1. One of our Mentors (VC Karthic) has met this team way early in a different event. Hint: Most of our mentors are all over the place travelling. Meet them before you apply at all. Gives a lot of clarity on what to expect.
2. Their initial focus was to do garments. We suggested that Designer garments might require a tad bit of customization (the fit), which might be hard to achieve. Mass personalization is still a myth, and Jewellery might be a good option to start with.
3. The team was solid on the tech perspective. Founders with solid experience coming from Microsoft and VMware, they are off to a great start with the shopping cart system on their own.
4. We kicked off on the marketing and launch sequence for them within days as they came into the programme. The first step we realized was to acquire customers without shelling hard cash for it. If people aren't coming in for the value provided, then we have a problem. Social media is an easy way to measure that. First week when they launched, they had about 85 likes, most of which were friends and emotional "likes" :) As of writing this post, they have over 5900 fans on Facebook - and growing, very very fast.
5. The other mandate was to get sales on a consistent manner going. Its not okay to have one sale on day one and sale 15 on day two and then back to day 3 - especially if we have no idea why that is happening. Sanjeev Gadre one of our mentors, spent a lot of time with the team on getting this done.
6. One of the help they required was also to validate the value proposition from a designers' perspective - If they cared for a platform at all. It was back to shuffling rolodexes and finding someone who worked with designers, to strengthen that value proposition.
7. eCommerce is not a bubble, as long as building ecommerce companies are still difficult. The web bit is the easy one, but procurement of goods, sales, logistics, and customer support are still very hard problems in a country like India. We've helped the team in getting some of that initial pain points solved.
8. NASSCOM Product Conclave and the TiECon in Chennai were definite highlights for this team. Interacting with the audience, and potential investors and polishing their pitches, helps them realize where they are, and where they need to be heading towards.
9. The Cherry on the cake was the TSC Resident Grant by Lightspeed. If its a matter of putting in a little more capital to prove a few assumptions, before going head on to raise capital, this grant is going to come quite in handy for this team.
There is still a journey ahead, but knowing the team and their strengths, they have a real chance in solving the problem that they are out to solve. Wishing them the very best.