Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Society | 15 August 2022 | No. 45
Hi there: I'm Ruhul. I convene Future Startup Weekly to help you understand entrepreneurship and the technology landscape in Bangladesh and beyond. If you enjoy this, feel free to share it with other good people.
I just returned from a short trip to India where I attended my first Emergent Ventures Unconference. I've been given an EV grant early this year to take FS to the next level. I guess I'm the first EV winner from Bangladesh. Attending EV Unconference was an excellent experience. One of the best ways to improve the world in my opinion is to put weird and ambitious people into a room and support them to make things happen. Emergent Ventures is so incredible, it is hard to describe in a few words. You can find more here. If you are building something to improve the condition of humanity, I highly recommend you apply.
Below is a photo of me with a few other EV winners at the unconference. (Photo: Onkar Singh Batra)
I. How to define your priorities after product/market fit
There are a lot of good discussions on the importance of and the path to product/market fit. What gets drowned amid all the focus on product/market fit is what happens once you achieve the coveted product/market fit. Because getting to product/market fit does not suspend all your challenges afterward. Rather it is just the beginning.
The real challenges of building a company begin after finding the product/market fit. Now you need to find a path to scale, get to more customers, build a distribution channel, and so on.
This is where many startups lose their way. Instead of defining their most important priorities, they get distracted. Read.
The country’s largest and leading online travel agency (OTA) ShareTrip has turned three this year. To celebrate its 3rd anniversary, the company organized a celebration event titled ShareTrip Night 2022 in the presence of its partners and stakeholders. The company made several important announcements at the event. Read.
In nature, things that stop growing, die. That’s true for startups as well. Startups are all about growth. As YC founder Paul Graham puts it: startup = growth. Companies that stop growing eventually die. Growth, however, is not easy. It takes hard work and focus to achieve consistent growth.
In this collection of lessons from founders, we asked 4 founders how they approach growth and what helped their companies to grow in the early days. The answers offer revealing insights into the intricacies of early-stage growth and actionable strategies for eager startups and founders to apply. Read.
IV. Where Good Ideas Come From
Where good ideas come from is a common question everywhere, be it in business or art. The right answer is you. Make what you need. Write the book that you want to read. Start the company that wants to buy from. That’s the silver bullet. Read.
V. 5 years of going limitless: 5 benefits GoZayaan has brought to the travelers
GoZayaan, the travel tech platform, completes 5 years of its journey today. Given the short amount of time the startup has been operating, it has seen extraordinary success and become a prominent name in the travel scene of Bangladesh. Read.
VI. Interview: Syed Javed Noor, Deputy Managing Director, IDLC Finance Limited
Syed Javed Noor is the Deputy Managing Director of IDLC Finance Limited, the largest NBFI in Bangladesh. As part of his job at IDLC, Mr. Noor looks after an expansive portfolio and teams comprising Wealth Management, Treasury, Strategy, Change Management, Corporate Advisory, and Venture Capital Initiative of IDLC. He is also a Director of two subsidiaries of IDLC Group: IDLC Securities Limited and IDLC Investments Limited. Mr. Noor has over 20 years of stellar experience in the Banking Sector and worked for some of the most prominent brands in the industry across operations. Read.
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Interview: Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian. Link
Annus mirabilis (miracle year). Link
Why Developers Are Building So Many Side Projects. Link
Book: Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen. Link
A case study in early-stage startup execution. Link
