Weekend @ Proto.in & Medianama launch & Mixer

Its good to be back in Bombay away from the sweltering heat of Delhi. I spent the weekend in Delhi attending Proto.in - the start up event and the Medianama launch and mixer - and it was quiet an experience.

I was attending Proto.in for the first time so I didn't really know what to expect but it turned out to be a good event with some very innovative start ups and VCs attending the event. I met some really enthusiastic start ups at Proto.in

I am capturing some pointers from the few sessions I managed to attend:

Mahesh Murthy:

• If you are not in the top two or three in a particular niche drop the idea - no point in trying to give a regional flavor especially if you are a platform -
  
• Quote of the day-'Youtube of India is youtube', 'Facebook of India is facebook' .....
• Don't follow trends - if you are reading about a particular trend in press - you can safely assume that the trend is dead - you wont get anywhere following the trend...
• Dont really look at advertising your products - advertising will not help - you dont need money to advertise - if you are not growing - then look at your product - invest in making it better
• He gave a pointer or two on how to get media attention for the startups
  

Kiruba Shankar:

Kiruba sessions are always interesting and fun - he spoke about the importance of blogging and sited examples of how a doctor friend of his used his blog to expand his business - it was simple typical kiruba session with a lot of interaction from the audience


Amit Ranjan - made an interesting presentation on Virality and how can one go about checking whether their products have the viral elements in it...(interestingly - this topic was also covered by someone at work when he returned after attending Graphing Social Patterns conference in US - nevertheless it was quiet informative and would definitely help a lot of start ups to really think through their product developments - he did mention that he will share his presentation on slideshare - but I havent seen till now (will plug it as soon as i find it online)

Medianama:

Is the new blog started by Nikhil Pahwa (earlier editor of content sutra) - its about news and analysis of digital media - it was an interesting event which started with a panel discussion on 'Surviving a Downturn' - the panelist expressed some great views - you can read all about it on the medianama itself...

AT the mixer I met Rajesh Lalwani from blogworks - who has started this really innovative pitch exchange kind of application called www.pitchh.com ...he said the basic idea is to make it like an exchange where marketers and agencies co-exists...so if you are a marketers - you can put up pitch brief and agencies can pitch for the business. Interesting concept indeed but i am not too sure if the big companies will be willing to give it a try.

This format used to work particularly well for project work in the IT services domain...where small companies used to list projects and indian start ups and SME IT companies used to pitch for it online, it worked really well for them but will it work in the media space.....well lets wait and watch..

Some things were amiss at proto.in - Mashable - one of the online media partners which was mentioned on the proto site - were missing and I didn't see any reportage of the event on mashable...

But all in all it was a weekend well-spent and even though I was there on work - I did manage to have a great time...