TL;DR:
Bolstart is a professional networking and a knowledge sharing platform for the startup industry. People such as Startups, Mentors, Investors, Freelancers, and startup enthusiasts (who someday would like to join a startup) can register on the platform. They can connect with each other, ask questions and get most convincing answers from people in the Bolstart community.
The name Bolstart came into being with the idea of Bolstering the startups.
Every good story starts by first telling the audience about the characters. You wouldn’t understand the Avengers story unless you first get to know the heroes- Ironman, Hulk, Black Widow, and the others. Likewise, let us first introduce you to the founding team of Bolstart- Rushabh Shah and Piyush Porwal.
Rushabh Shah- Founder & CEO of Bolstart
It all began in 2017 when Rushabh was a senior at VIT, Pune completing his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. He aspired to become a Nanotechnologist and thus, had applied to leading schools in the USA. In march of 2017, he received a welcoming email from the dean of University of California San Diego saying that he has been admitted to the MS in Nanotechnology program.
At UC San Diego, Rushabh worked as a research scientist all the while maintaining an outstanding academic record. Rushabh’s scientific knowledge caught the eye of a Startup in California who then hired him as their Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The startup was from the deep-tech industry working on high-tech, cutting-edge technologies. The startup developed nanotechnology based flexible batteries for wearable devices. Rushabh was responsible for product development, and R&D. He made executive decisions to direct the development and implementation of battery technologies.
Looking at the startup’s team, they were welcomed into the Techstars accelerator program at Indianapolis. At Techstars, Rushabh learned how to grow his ideas into world-changing business. Techstars’ Demo Day helped grow momentum but it was all lost when the Covid pandemic hit the US markets. Rushabh’s family was really concerned about his health and they asked him to return back to India.
Coming to India, Rushabh had to restart from scratch. Recruiters kept telling him that he was overqualified for the jobs in the market and that he‘d have to wait for the pandemic to subside in order to get the right jobs. And in order to stay relevant, Rushabh had to pivot; he had to find another way to grow his career. He glanced back through his memory lane and realized what a good time it was at Techstars. And this was because Techstars made things simpler for startups, they gave it a community feeling. Thus, with a strong sense of brotherhood and family Rushabh sought out to create a startup catering to other startups, a startup that Bolsters other startups — Bolstart.
Piyush Porwal- Cofounder & CTO of Bolstart
Piyush’s journey begins with his Masters in Computer Science from MIT, Pune. At MIT, Piyush built his dynamic & diverse IT experience working on innovative projects in Machine Learning, IoT, Cloud Computing, and Networking, among others. Engaged in IoT, Piyush and his team won the TechRadiance championship at IIT Bombay which improved his accolade among his peers.
Looking at his technical expertise, he was hired as a software engineer at Veritas where he was responsible for managing parts of servers and developing ML algorithms for a Chatbot. At Veritas, he started networking with people to improve his creative intellect, his own growth, gained more self confidence and started developing relationships with people. To explore, experience more and dive into the bigger picture he challenged himself to join a startup.
His first startup experience was as a Full stack developer working on almost all the popular web frameworks, languages, and architectures. Apart from his technical skills, he has always been there for his fellow batchmates and other friends to mentor and help them in their journey. That is how his altruistic nature developed; and that pegged his way into his own startup Bolstart.
Rushabh and Piyush met 10 years ago and have been best friends ever since. Instead of being a small part of a large machine they have always wanted to start something of our own. And after Rushabh returned back to India he shared his USA startup journey with Piyush and soon they began drafting our own start-up journey. With Piyush’s background in full stack architecture and technology knowhow he complimented Rushabh’s startup and execution experience. And thus, they decided to kickoff Bolstart, a professional networking and knowledge sharing platform for the startup community. Where the startups, mentors, investors, freelancers, and all the startup enthusiasts could connect with each other, ask and answer questions. Through the platform they want to help the startups become better.
Why bolstart?
During Rushabh’s time at Techstars, he had first-hand experience of dealing with the multitude of problems that every fledgling start-up has; gathering of funds, approaching potential customers and pitching them the startup’s ideas, cold-calling, legal matters, and paperwork. He endured and experienced the loneliness that every startup founder faces, and realized the importance of having partners or in other words co-founders, mentors and a startup community to share the journey with.
After returning back to India, he sat and pondered about how he could devise solutions for all these problems, an idea began to take shape in his mind. What if there was one platform where all these queries could be answered? An open, honest, and absolutely credible system of handing out information to young, ambitious, and hardworking people who dream of laying the foundation of their companies?
Instead of just singular requirements like fundraising or a simple database of start-ups organized categorically, Bolstart will be an umbrella under which experienced business people can nurture innovation and creativity, newcomers can seek advice without the fear of being misled, and become the holy grail of all aspiring start-up founders. This is a personal quest to bolster creative minds into hoping to one day own a business, transposed over a multi-faceted platform. Because as Martin Scorcese says, ‘The most personal is the most creative’, and that’s what we aim to do!
Vision Statement
To create an all-encompassing networking and knowledge sharing platform for the entire start-up ecosystem.
Mission Statement
We are dedicated to creating a collaborative platform that will increase the success ratio of the startup industry, aiding them in collating essential resources, getting their innovative ideas across, and have unbridled access to mentors, investors, freelancers, and potential cofounders in their respective fields.
Bolstart’s Features
- A Networking feature through which the start-up founder/other important members can communicate and network with other start-ups.
- A feed feature where startups can post their weekly updates and which will keep all the stakeholders (mentors, investors, team mates, and people interested in that startup) up to date with the company’s activities.
- Online Q&A forum where fledgling startup founders, mentors, investors, freelancers and aspiring start-up owners can pose questions about the mechanics of startups and any other related questions they might have. And get answers from credible & relevant people in the Bolstart community.
- Value-added perks to every startup which can include limited period free access to cloud servers, softwares, legal counsel, and many more features that are absolutely crucial to a startup.
- An exclusive VC database and a review system for the same.
- A database of mentors and freelancers.
Future Features
- Data Room: Data rooms for both customers and investors.
- Registered users can start a startup by using a feature that we will provide.
- Power-read: Startup world news delivered in short for quick information grasp.
- Talent solution: Startup ready talents who will join startups for a frugal pay or volunteer basis to ensure a bootstrapped startups success.
- Blogging section for startups, investors, incubators and accelerators.
- And many more tools.
Call to Action
If you are a startup, a mentor, an investor, a freelancer, or a startup enthusiast who would someday like to join a startup, Bolstart is for you!
Our platform goes live in a month, but you can Pre-register now. We are offering FREE Forever registration to the first 1,000 sign-ups! Hurry!
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Connect with us on LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/bolstart/
Read about us on Medium- https://medium.com/bolstart
