Advice from an entrepreneur turned VC

On what, as a VC, he will look for in an entrepreneur

1. I will see if they have a fire in their belly because, at the end of the day, they are the ones going to make a venture a success. They must have passion and conviction.

2. They should be ready to play a long innings. I call it a marathon as well as a sprint. You have to be running fast despite it being a long race.

3. Ideas change, as do business models and markets, but they should understand that it is eventually all about people. If the team is strong, does the right things and learns from customers and the marketplace, it can always create value and get an exit. So, it is a team affair to begin with.

4. I will ask, are they clear about market opportunities for the ideas they are going after?

5. I will also ask them what is the implemented value they offer customers. I am not talking about the perceived value. A lot of them get confused about the stated value versus realised value. They can write anything on a piece of paper, but is that what customers are saying once they implement your services?

6. I will look at the barriers for entry. How much lead-time do they have compared to other players? How soon can they get in? Even gorillas can get in when the market becomes viable; can they compete with the big boys? Can they carve their own niche?

If an entrepreneur doesn't have answers to all the questions a VC asks, no one will invest money in his idea. It is true that he will not have all the clarity in the beginning, but he should be willing to refocus his business model when the need arises.

What entrepreneurs should keep in mind while meeting a VC

1. To begin with, he should do a lot of homework and find the right VC. He should find out what the VCs are interested in, what they are passionate about, etc.

2. Once you do the homework, select a set of VCs. If I were an entrepreneur, I wouldn't pitch to all of them on day one; I would pitch to two or three of them and get feedback.

3. Pitching should be more informal. You will know the VC's interests in the first meeting itself. VCs will put forward some common objections, but you put all objections in a bucket -- objections about the team, technology, size of the market place, competition, etc. Once you put them in a bucket, decide whether you can resolve them. Target 10-12 of the relevant ones before going to pitch.

4. At conferences like TiE-ISB, you get to meet busy VCs over a cup of tea or lunch, which you will otherwise be able to do.

5. A lot of entrepreneurs are worried about VCs stealing their ideas. My advice to them is, never worry. They should protect their intellectual property. VCs will never steal their ideas; they have very little time. So, they should shed that idea first. I must say this fear doesn't exist in Silicon Valley because so much has happened there. The level of professionalism there is higher. The fear occurs because entrepreneurship has been happening relatively recently in India. It will take some time to come out of it.

What one should do after becoming an entrepreneur

1. You have to dispel the notion that 'I want to own 90 per cent of what I build'. You have to look at making the pie bigger. It doesn't matter whether you own 90 per cent of a $10 million company or 20-30 per cent of a $300 million company. Your net worth is much higher. So, you have to create and share wealth.

2. You also have to bring in the right people to make the pie bigger.

3. When you scale a company, as an entrepreneur, you start with a lot of passion. After you build to a certain scale, you have to decide when to step aside and bring in a professional team to take the company to the next level. Entrepreneurs across the world have this possessiveness; they want to hold on to their company very closely.

4. Apart from your hard work, you have to be at the right place at the right time. Timing is everything. You have to time it right, which is where judgment comes into play. You may go up to 10-20 million in revenue but, when consolidation takes place in the marketplace, you will be nobody. You may never get an exit. Finally, remember that luck plays a major role.

Water Purification

http://www.about-water-purifiers.info/

Water Purifiers - How Safe is the Water You Drink?

Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water, but water in its raw state is not suitable for drinking. It contains numerous contaminants, which can be dangerous to human health.

But, thanks goes to Science that has invented devices to shield civilization against such aqua ailments. A water purifier is one of such devices that purify our drinking water. A water purifier is a wonderful device that converts raw water so that it tastes like nectar; therefore by this process it makes ordinary tap water perfectly suitable for drinking.

Health Benefits of a Water Purifier:

A water purifier is very beneficial for healthy living. Ordinary untreated water can contain numerous contaminants including bacteria, algae, viruses, fungi, minerals, and man-made chemical pollutants that cannot be seen with the naked eye. These contaminants are very pernicious for one’s health.

A water purifier kills these organisms and filtrates the contaminants to make the water perfectly fit for drinking. Thus water purifiers save us from numerous dangerous bacterial and viral diseases that easily spread when water becomes contaminated.

Water Purification Techniques:

Different water purifiers use different techniques of purification. The common techniques used to purify water include boiling, carbon filtering, distilling, reverse osmosis, ion exchange, electrode ionization, water conditioning and plumbo-solvency reduction.

Carbon filtering: This technique is commonly used in home water filters. Charcoal, a form of carbon with a high surface area due to its mode of preparation, adsorbs many compounds, including some toxic compounds. The water is passed through activated charcoal to remove such contaminants. Granular charcoal filtering and sub-micron solid block carbon filtering are the two types of carbon filtering systems.

Granular charcoal is not very effective for removing contaminants such as mercury, volatile organic chemicals, asbestos, pesticides, disinfections byproduct (trihalomethanes), mtbe, pcbs etc. The sub-micron solid block carbon filter is the better system that removes all of the contaminants.

Home water filters drinking water sometimes also contains silver. These small amounts of silver ions can have a bactericidal effect.

Reverse osmosis: The reverse osmosis water system is the technique in which mechanical pressure is applied to an impure solution to force pure water through a semi-permeable membrane. The process is called reverse osmosis, and is theoretically the most thorough method of large-scale water purification.

Ion exchange: Most common ion exchange systems use a zeolite resin bed and simply replace unwanted Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions with benign (soap friendly) Na+ or K+ ions. This is the common water softener. A more rigorous type of ion exchange swaps H+ ions for unwanted cations and hydroxide (OH-) ions for unwanted anions. The result is H+ + OH- → H2O. This system is recharged with hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, respectively. The result is essentially deionized water.

Electrodeionization: It includes passing the water through a positive electrode and a negative electrode. Ion selective membranes allow the positive ions to separate from the water toward the negative electrode and the negative ions toward the positive electrode. It results in high purity de-ionized water. The water is usually passed through a reverse osmosis unit first to remove nonionic organic contaminants.

Water conditioning: This is a method of reducing the effects of hard water. Hardness salts are deposited in water systems subject to heating because the decomposition of bicarbonate ions creates carbonate ions that crystallize out of the saturated solution of calcium or magnesium carbonate. Water with high concentrations of hardness salts can be treated with soda ash (Sodium carbonate) that precipitates out the excess salts, through the common ion effect, as calcium carbonate of very high purity. The precipitated calcium carbonate is traditionally sold to the manufacturers of toothpaste.

Plumbo-solvency reduction: In areas with naturally acidic waters of low conductivity (i.e. surface rainfall in upland mountains of igneous rocks), the water is capable of dissolving lead from any lead pipes that it is carried in. The addition of small quantities of phosphate ion and increasing the pH slightly both assist in greatly reducing plumbo-solvency by creating insoluble lead salts on the inner surfaces of the pipes.