Preseed Intro: Our NAME, MISSION, & SERVICE; for startups and citizens of India.
We nurture dot makers. A photo blog
To know you won’t be mine is the key to avoid the unnantuaral, called marriage. It is a boundation, a facade to symbolise love. My quest is a life of no symbols, except the symbol of the mission. The last divisible. That is what the logo of Preseed means.
We love the fact that you are writing codes and designing upon your ideas right from your bedrooms and dormitories. We also love that not having money or other resources to build upon your dream doesn’t stop you from doing so. We love it all so much, that we decided to help you.
If we have given you the worthy start, we have done for you what we have started Preseed to do.
LET THIS ESSAY BE THE FIRST ESSAY YOU READ FROM US.
After I failed in building my first consumer web product in 2010 with a near $100,000 in investment. I decided to be that guy who the whimsical hackers and designers were willing to lend their ears and skills to, regardless of the compensation I was going to pay them, for now there was going to be no money, yet, the same journey filled with ideas, conviction, inspiration, courage and action.
For I always had ideas, conviction and inspiration (right from my college days) that if coupled with the skills of hackers and designers, I can translate myself into meaningful web product of great value to India and its citizens. Hence, the whole world.
To be that guy I had to be Preseed Web Lab, indicated at the bottom of nishchal.preseed.in, and for Preseed Web Lab to exist, there had to be Preseed . Because, my plan is to change India through the backing of Preseed, technology and education, Preseed Web Lab is dedicated to that goal.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops — at all -And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet — never — in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of me.
So after 1 year of starting Preseed in 2012. I reached a place —
- Where I had been able to attract a hand full of hand picked hackers, hustlers and designers I have now started to develop upon some ideas with at Preseed, which are of great importance for India.
- Where I have men who keep sharing with us the new age web tools, articles, products my team seeks to know about.
- Where I can continue to live liberally as an altruistic artist, and so can my team.
Our name and logo:
Logo
What are dots?
To convey a meaning when you write the first word, you put a dot first. Then you run your pen to grow that dot into a word that has some meaning. And all these different words together form a story. Every time an author nurtures that dot, he ends up with a story, that may sell. So, dot is the point of initiation from where — a word, a story, a line, or A STARTUP; everything originates from.
Pen Dot:Word :: Preseed Dot:Startup
Our Name
When a tree was a seed it looked like a dot! And before a seed, it was, a Preseed.
Who are dot makers?
Everyone is willing to put the dot forth. Everyone who has a ‘pure will’ to start. You may or may not have an idea to start with, but if you strongly believe you want to start someday, then you are the dot maker we are looking for.
Our Mission
To nurture dot makers, or simply put, to empower those who wish to ‘create’ rather than just follow.
I refined this line later to say ‘those who have the will to do something out of the ordinary’ and then yet again, ‘those who have the will to do something truthful’.
To nurture those who have the will to do something extraordinary, truthful and fruitful for humanity.
We are those who give you the fundamental idea, the product vision, and its path. At this point we could have easily called ourselves, Preseed Yoga
Yoga is the union with all. So, regardless of the struggles, YOU remain blissful.
What will we really do?
Services
Until our app is ready:
We have already covered you through the services of our upcoming fund, TSF — The Simple Fund. Although here is a brief of scope of Preseed for you:
We will personally inspire, co-build and educate you on business values we believe in. Most of it is counter-cultured. But that is what works in these extraordinary ‘internet’ times of FREE information and FREE tools’ that have led to more noise than information of value.
For an early-stage opportunity what we lay through our leadership and advise lays the foundation for a strong impact on the following fundamentals of your startup:
- Mentorship/Advise — Our advice will lead you to decipher the startup plan, its phases and over all strategies so crisp and simple that it actually STARTS lean, bootstrapped. So, it can conduct itself in smarter and contemporary ways. We continue to function as advisors throughout the course of the business so long as you feel our need.
Permanent Advisory
All of above/below and any meaningful advise we may have for you, will be conveyed, proactively, forever.
Ways of achieving milestones timely— So that you cut the crap and do what you would do with an uncluttered approach of the mind. Right Tasks and Milestones is what we mean when we say ‘Permanent advisory’ — If you are able to achieve these really fast then we can build the startup really fast. There are ways of procrastinating e.g.
a. Losing yourself to the information on the web.
b. Too much phone, thinking and communications.
c. Waiting for money — Remember that the first iteration of your idea that we will suggest in most cases would not need money but would need the real will to identify people who are willing to collaborate with you for they believe in you or the future profit deal you strike with them. Removing the need of money to do something worthwhile by building those bootstrapped models and effective connections. Inspire humans instead of buying them.
d. Bootstrapping — I live so seamlessly and minimaly, so can you and your startups..
e. Simplicity — Since we love it we don’t shy away in conveying its value in the context of the business so that it is modeled in the simplest ways for the purpose of scalability.f. Questions
Who are your customers, and what problem are you solving for them?
What is unique about your solution? What is your unique insight?
Business model
Unit economics
Go to market strategy
What are your customer acquisition and distribution channels
What is your founder/market fit?
So much more, that we felt the need to write a whole essay for you. Read on.
Profound Questions
The kind of questions, the answers to which can deliver catharsis. So long as you and us dialogue, this service will get established, seamlessly. From day 1.
The idea — What we tell you ensures that you work on ideas that are doing something of value to a large set of people whether for entertainment reasons or social upliftment reasons or solving a big / small problem in the consumer web space or just improving the experience of another kind of a solution. We make you think the right idea.
Marketable Answers
Answers won’t just be for talk sake, but for the sake of the market you want to solve a problem for.
Sales Pitch
You are looking at the product inside out. We look at it, outside in. From that place, your story needs to be told. It should be ‘seductive’. There is too much noise. If you don’t sell crisp and sharp with right articluations on the right channel, your sales pitch is not done.
Consumer Web Perspective — Since we are mostly on the consumer web side of things in the way we think just naturally, we end up weaving that perspective into everything we do making it very scalable.
Branding (also Designing and Content)
What is the instant experience your audience will have when they think of you? The bottom line is, something that is first, clearly understood in the minds of that audience, and established in the solution realm of their problem. Extraordinary Visual Communication when it becomes imperative.
Legal & Due Diligence
Founders, so you focus on your product, we take care of protecting you and your company as a legal entity which is in an arrangement with you/your team/product from day 1, until the day you are funded.
We understand that the Preseed stage of any startup is made up of its early team over dialogues made up of roles, responsibilities, goals, key milestones and associated rewards. We take this among you all into contracts, so all of you are bounded with each other over clarity. Legal also includes Incorporation, IP and legal/statutory audits.
2. Scale up Connections — These connections are thoughtfully created potential tie ups that make the process of building a great company faster, more efficient, more cost effective and more scalable. We create a structure around you that leaves you more time to focus on what is most critical to your business so that you do what is most important and others do everything else. These tie ups could be infrastructural tie ups, operational tie ups, process tie ups, technology tieups, human resource tie ups or any other tie up that can help grow the startup.
3. Vendors- We connect you to the vendors for various executions. These vendors are those vendors we have identified as most cost effective vendors over our experience of the last 5 years.
4. Investments — We put you through the right potential investors for your startup and in exceptionally good cases we will get you the investments too.
5. We work with you on anything that we think requires our attention towards chasing a common goal with you. We hope you understand that most ideas that people write to us about are redefined by us, and sometimes even completely changed. (Obviously in the interest of the business).
“Shaking Preseed’s hand was going to be the next most important decision you were going to make towards ensuring that you are headed for the most optimized idea and strategy, within the realms of the abstract goals or startup you may have, in context to the time and resources in your hand,”, I said this to Syed Shahzar a student of Mathematics in 2016.
As a result in 2022
“Preseed & Nishchal, have been more important to our respective Math startup dreams than us. This publication Preseed Essays was the love letters we read and felt in person. Every founder whether from ed k12 industry or not, must read these”, Naim & Shahzar, co-founders & mathematicians at Preseed Ed K12 Pvt. Ltd.
I am not done yet. So I have to spend the least amount of time in explaining our services, I am deciding to write more:
Are you here to have us flow your startup deal in among our network of investors?
We hustle with you all the way to facilitate investments for your startup. But, that is the last and least of what we will do. That is merely a by product of what needs to be done on you, for you, that you get investment itself in the first place.
This program is not about floating some deal to an investor like a broker. It is about being able to tell your story better than you can.
We will not wait for you to bring your number projections before we say yes to you. And, if we say yes, it is a life long one. We like to bet our time on you before you can show the numbers. We bet purely based on our own insights and interests. We are about empowering entrepreneurs that have an incredible ‘idea’, a highly capable founder and an iron will to execute. This is about very early-stage startups. If we find you good enough to stimulate our minds, we would have views for you that could help you make further progress, from where you found yourself stuck and struggling. But these views are not mere theoretical views, these are strategies that need to be executed beyond the current capabilities of the startup team. When you sign a deal with us, be ready to be fluid to accept the NEW.
I say everything below in humility, but affirmation. I hope you will dig this, mostly in the depth of your silence. Dig us really deep, if you have a consumer web product that is just ready to have its first set of users, regardless of how ugly it looks. However, you are welcome even if you are pre-product/prototype and alone.
The first quote below capture where you may be, and the second captures, what could be done on you, by us. There is mostly always room for greater clarity of thought. If you are absolutely clear on your words, direction, plan so simply that those you identify as collaborators understand at once and participates in what you are doing, consistently — then you don’t need us. If not, then you need us.
“IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY, THEN YOU DON’T KNOW IT WELL ENOUGH.” — ALBERT EINSTEIN.
I am Nishchal, and I want to train you in simplicity.
What is a “questionologist?” (And why should you care?).
This link will give you some perspective on the importance of questioning. However, if you know the importance of being questioned for your own good, proceed to read below..
“To me, any question that causes people to shift their thinking is a beautiful one.” — Warren Berger
What do we do for you? We open doors of expansive perception.
Questioning is the most important thing we do for you. Leading to a renewed vision articulated in such a way, that it inspires team for they understand the vision for its simplicity and practicality. Generally this step is to do with trimming down of your feature rich plan to making it about ‘One Key Thing’, your USP, and mind you, USP is one first, not two; followed by all articulations centred around it. The right words, spoken and written with impact, by us, will hold values across pitching your startup to an investor; to a customer; to a partner; to your teams; but most importantly, to you, yourself. We do these right words over over days and nights of profound thoughts and research.
We also help you tweak designs on papers and content for your product’s identity website. What we will talk to you about across the next few months through our whys, whats and hows will aim to help you achieve — a more conscious, iterative and scalable vision; and in the process:
- Brand positioning — We give you something we call the first page of your words to your audience. This is a defining one. This sets the tone for what you will be known to have done, at first, and completely. Here we take care of the words that reveal your brand and identity — The identity of your business in the mind of people who want to know you. This and this alone will determine, what kind of handshakes you do, simply, just by communicating on the website about you. This is the first thing we like to dabble with you over. Having the right identity means, saving energy from having to explain, yet ambiguously, about who you are and why you deserve the handshake. Whether you are aligned with your brand, it reflects on your slide deck — that your business plan is in harmony with the brand possibility you are after in its position in the market. (I have a great understanding of Prelaunch Marketing. I found out that in best cases of software dev. — prelaunch marketing precedes coding. I would like to open it up to any tech startup to start learning from. Strong Prelaunch marketing should tell if the product is worth coding or not. It’s better than any other kind of validation.
The first thing you have to get right according to us is the vision as an iterative plan, where the first iteration really truly is the MVP with a globally scalable possibility in shortest amount of time. We craft with you visions of that magnitude. This renewed vision and advisory alongside is more than double your business potential — for there must be some extreme value in the lessons I will be sharing with you. If we shake a hand, it must be on the grounds of that possibility.
- Clarity over MVP — This can make or break your budget. One simply definable idea — I often notice how the exercise towards this is underplayed. Ugly MVP — Minimum Viable Products should remain ill designed till not customer validated, and that is alright, but not after. I help such MVPs be used by more customers by guiding the improvement of their current UI by far — In fact, I believe that you must create demand by being use-able at the level of your MVP all the way to it being beautiful, and not by being too many things and then annoying them with pushing banner ads about your product, meaning, by pushing your promotion with too many words, for too many things take too many words. One thing can be spoken about well, in one line. Be so good at doing one thing, that they talk about you with each other, let alone use you. I will help you with this one thing. I will also give you broad MVP wire frame, functionally, fairly differentiated with a similar product out there on the web anywhere in the world. (A design that works).
- Clarity over the next sets of product iterations/versions
When the above three fall in line — you are ready to move forward. This is a philosophical process which gives birth to the RIGHT DIRECTION.
- Vendor/Candidate Intros — I may be introducing you to relevant vendors, however, I myself may not be a part of anything more than the introduction. My commitment to you so far is, the time I will spend with the founder on matters of great intellectual challenges all the way to final strategies. I would expect the founders to be able to execute these strategies with their teams and vendors I will introduce them to.
Leading right handshakes not just recommending them — Support from the right set of investors and handshakes. Without the right kind of connections and deals, your business being game-changing will only be a concept in theory. Here we take care of the words that reveal your brand and identity — The identity of your business in the mind of people who want to know you. Having the right identity means, saving energy from having to explain, yet ambiguously, about who you are and why you deserve the handshake.
- Connections — We open some possibilities for your startup’s growth almost immediately. It may lead to some solid connections for your idea/startup. Many talented people from our extraordinary network get led to developing relationship with our startups.
E.g. Preseed connected Jitendra Sharma of Taxipixi with Pritesh Agarwal who was the VP at Ola at that time. This connection leads them to become cofounders in a spin-off using their collective lessons to create something new as co-founders. They ended up starting up Zipgo.
- Right slide deck — It is not just for the investors. It is for you to see for yourself, and to show your company to anyone, in 12 slides. Being able to put that one line on the very first slide for the investor has got more to do than to just put that one line. It forces you to be able to speak to everyone in that one line in a manner that convinces them about the novelty of your business. The drive to achieve the manifestation of that one line helps you simplify your idea, and to build the first marketable iteration in that exact direction, hence, a more likely and clear product market fit, the new found simpler product vision. It is this slide deck you pitch to most suitable investors.
- Meetings — Having us on your side of the table will mean, you will mostly have a proxy leader in the meetings in our voice and orchestration. We help you make the deals and train your team that define your business direction of the future.
- We will give you legal advisory, contractual/negotiation points and appear for meetings, that serve as the long term foundation of of your handshakes with others, going forward.
As soon as we are on the same page about this through a written contract with you, we will further our engagement. But by this time, you may have felt the potential impact of our thought on your venture.
Don’t read any further if you are not ready to share 5% of your company just to continue to have conversations with me over the next few months towards nailing all of the above.
Your Total Cost:
Your cost — Upto 70% equity in your business for a few hours with us every day over our lifetime. This, because our presence will grow your business by at least 10x purely out of strategies we do for you and the presence we make in our business’s meetings.
Terms and conditions:
1. We charge at least 5% equity upfront + Rs. 50 Lakhs for those . We will give you a credit period of 1 year to pay the cash fee by allowing you to pay in equal monthly instalments. We will give you a discount of 25% it is paid in advance i.e. within 3 days of our contract’s effective date.
We take an upfront equity of 5% on day 1 itself for lending you our mind, remotely, such that you have clarity over ‘focus on one thing’ and ‘lean’. This is the first step of our involvement with you through phone calls and whatsapp voice notes. 3 months of access to me will be established at this stage.
Please don’t expect us to do anything for you before 100% of the compensation mentioned above is moved in our favour. Apart from of course, what we may have already done for you in the first set of meetings itself.
One day, at a cost of Rs. 50 Lakhs, and 5 % equity of your business, you would have begun to find the answers to the questions that will enable you to be a multi billion dollar business, someday, in 10 years.
Note : 5% is not enough for what we deliver, and so we attach ourselves to a milestone to make that further gain of rest of the 45%+ equity. We will discuss this on case to case basis. Our motivation to participate as a business with you is in this step. Because it is a direct worthy, boundless reward for how we raise the bar for you, with the resources it takes.
A guiding mind — it is this, you hire us for. Know this with clarity. Only this.
Towards the end of 2 years journey with us, you and most you will touch will evangelise your mission, not just your idea. For achieving natural evangelism of your company, 2 years is not a long period of time if this could be achieved. When your team believes in you for it understands your thought through the right set of words from either you or us or both of us, it is likely that you will be able to hire them at lower costs; because they are inspired now. It is the expression of your thoughts that will move your culture to be from that of employees to that of co-owners. It will keep the zeal within the company and outside, of the company, progressive.
You may write to us at startups@preseed.in with your Slide Deck and how you found us i.e. reference. Write anything and in as many words as you like, but do attach a thoughtful slide deck. Remember, we may share this deck with our trusted network. Make it count. You never know which one among them may turn out to be a yet another handshake of significant importance to your startup, if they like it too. Our extended network has fair knowledge and credentials to know about what is going on in the world of contemporary web, and businesses and what from there can we leverage, including connections for you. The things we do in a day with our network, enable us to stumble upon many teams with a strong will to build further upon their startups, with supporting skills, a market-ready product, logistical and back end capabilities. We notice yet many of them fail. A lot of that reason is — that there is no one giving them outside-in perspective as we can. The adding of this colourful perspective means, they will always be thinking beyond norms.
If you are sending the slide deck to an investor then your slide deck should be in sync with this :
If you don’t have a slide deck, make one. We won’t be able to serve you to the floor of our depth, without one. I have written a lot about what a slide deck should be about, here. Read it, it is a work of genuine research and experience.
Make use of this free gyaan about making of a slide deck. It is not the deck, but the process to making your deck, that satisfies us. That will be the key. This matters in how you and I learn or relearn to look at your business.
It will aid you in your presentation the day you sit with me to vet your presentations before they reach the investor.
It has a list of questions, the answers to which must be prepared while pitching your startup before an investor.
“The busiest of investors give high regard to an introducer who they trust with his business acumen and past credibility. So it would be in the interest of your goals with this investor to find yourself a well-regarded individual from the industry to introduce you to the investor. We will look after this step too.
I hope you READ WELL as I attempted to express myself, as your potential mentor.
Expect the Preseed touch on your founders:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BQo8xs2DNkl/?utm_medium=copy_link
Open the above link to read 10 points as a summary of words of this essay so far.
WE WILL TEACH YOU TIMELESSNESS. WITH THAT, WE WILL TEACH YOU HARMONY. Watch closely the rise in upliftment of the sense of your possibilities and capabilities, clearly out of just one right step forward — Preseed Yoga. To know possibilities conversations with me can lead you to, you need to think intuitively after researching me abstractly over my writings here on Medium, online social media presence and my website www.preseed.in, so as to imagine — what could the mostly silent founder of Preseed know and do for you. For many, perhaps nothing. For you, something — because what you are building, I would have wanted to build anyway, someday, for the good it stands for.
Note — It is also necessary that when you will raise further funds in future then you may have to issue fresh shares to external investors and this may result in “dilution” of x% stake of Preseed in the then equity share capital of your company. This issue needs to be addressed with clarity and detail by the CA who is advising you. Please also ask your CA/lawyers/advisors to create a Legal Agreement [Shareholders’ Agreement] that ensures 15% of equity of your company in favour of Preseed and what services will be sought by you from Preseed (which should be from within the scope of what is written here). Preseed will also like to know who are the other Shareholders in your company as those shareholders will have to sign the referred Shareholders’ Agreement along with a “Deed of Adherence” which shall also be signed by all future subsequent shareholders of your company ensuing seamless x% stake to Preseed in equity share capital/ownership of your company in future too.
What happens if I don’t perform for you? The same, that would happen if any decision of yours fail — you will lose money on that decision. That is the risk you have to be willing to take.
And now, YOGA.
You must know, that if you want my presence hands-on, more or less, then it can’t come without the language of yoga and philosophy. Because it is important to me that my people understand the fundamentals of life itself.
In fact in my quest to bring about the change through gyan Yog from my own neighbourhood first,
PY Ch 5 — Where are we located?
On the internet.
We deliver the knowledge of Preseed Yoga, from time to time, to you, dear Preseed Ed K12 startups, through phone calls/chats or from a place of your choice so long as you can organize our travel, simple home food and comfortable stays at your own costs.
