How do you defend your company against Google?
January 25th, 2008 by 
Chris Harris
Picture yourself walking into work and getting the worst email imaginable: Google announces they’re coming after your target market!
You want to be sure this doesn’t happen to your company and seventeen years of experience with entrepreneurs has taught us how. The secret is to already have your product, customers, and strategy sewn up before they even think about it!
What were you doing in 1999?
Imagine yourself there. Microsoft is still the top dog, everyone and their cousin is starting a company, and pitching VCs for money is as common as a job interview.
A good friend of mine joins a two person team and they’re sitting with one of the heavy-hitters at Sequoia. Their idea is great - they’re going into a space that is a clear home run and very likely a perfect acquisition target for Microsoft.
Are you beginning to see yourself in his shoes? You know what comes next - during the pitch that’s been rehearsed almost a hundred times they get to the “Why us?” slide. The founder, who is a really smart engineer with a touch of naivete proudly proclaims, “I’ve been working on this for quite a while now, and we have a three man-year lead on any other competitors!”
Now I would like you to experience the feeling of looking into the VC partner’s squinted eyes as he says, “A three man-year lead? That’s a Microsoft minute!”
I’m sure you are wondering whether they got the term sheet - but that’s not the moral of the story.
The point is: you don’t have time.
Little by little you’re building your team, find an office that’s not too big but not too small, put up your website, and inch your product along all the while. Have you noticed that even as you accomplish these things (which is no small effort!) you’re starting to feel even more vulnerable to competition than when you first started? The reason is because the reality is starting to sink in - the pace of building a company is not as fast as you need it to be.
If someone, anyone really, with a decent engineering team heard about your idea and decided they wanted to - you’ve got a minute, maybe two - before you need a new idea.
That’s why we started Inventure Global. You see, time-to-market isn’t just a VC catchphrase. It’s reality. It’s important. It’s the only thing that can really put distance between you and your competitors. As you already know, the sooner you get to market, the sooner you capture the mindshare of your customers, partners, and build real barriers to entry that can help you withstand a late entry from an existing team.
Our firm specializes in getting you from prototype to product as quickly as possible. We already have the team you need. You can build your own team alongside ours, use us to augment your current team, or use us until it makes sense to build your own team.
Why not start moving today? You already know waiting isn’t the answer.
Contact us and see how we can get your company to market faster - today.
In case you’re wondering - my friend’s company didn’t get the term sheet!
Posted in Entrepreneurial, Outsourcing, Start-up, Venture Capital | 
March 7th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Hi,
I was reading this interesting news in the media. I thought of sharing it with you.
Evalueserve Appoints Nand Gangwani as its CFO
Evalueserve, a leading Global Research & Analytics firm, has appointed Mr. Nand Gangwani as the new Chief Financial Officer, beginning January 2008.
“We are delighted to have Nand Gangwani join our senior management team. Nand is an accomplished finance executive with a demonstrated track record of raising capital from public markets, strategic planning, restructuring as well as growing companies with the help of acquisitions and partnerships. Nand brings more than 15 years of experience of adding value to both private and public businesses. He has a proven track record of implementing financial strategies, systems and infrastructure to improve the financial performance and operations of large multi-national organizations,” said Alok Aggarwal, Co-founder and Chairman of Evalueserve.
Prior to joining Evalueserve, Nand served as the Chief Financial Officer for Napster and Roxio.
As the CFO of Roxio, Nand led the successful restructuring of its software business and assisted in the transition of Napster to becoming a leading music subscription service.
Previously, Nand was the Vice President of Corporate and Business Development at Evolve Inc., a software company, where he led the reshaping of the company from a professional services automation company to a resource management company. Nand has also held various business and financial management roles at Intuit, Emery Worldwide, and DHL Airways.
Nand holds a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, and an MBA in Finance from Bentley College (Boston).
Thanks and regards,
Ashwani