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The Panel discussion hosted by Aspire Systems on “Bootstrapping a Technology start-up” evoked a very good response from software startups across the globe and a few consultants/ecosystem partners as well. We had 3 eminent panelists participating (Prakash Narayan, co-founder and CTO of MiCello; Ted Finch, Owner and CEO of Chanimal and R S Ramkumar, Managing Director and founder of MangoDVM) and Bhoovarahan Thirumalai, Board member and co-founder of Aspire Systems, moderated the panel.

It was an interesting & lively session – we had four broad themes, around which each of the panelists shared their views.

Perfect Vs Quick and Dirty Product

The first theme was on the conundrum of getting a perfect product out Vs a quick and dirty product. One view was that if you’re an engineer, you want a perfect product but from a marketing perspective, you want to show something to your customers as soon as possible. As users are much more ready to give you feedback nowadays, you need to get your product to the market as soon as possible.

The importance of iterating early and iterating often was also stressed upon. Another good point brought up was the use of analytics – measuring how your customers are using your product, which part of your product they are using the most etc.

On the question of who is your first best customer – one of the panelists mentioned that if you are a startup, and if you have a customer, you should embrace that customer – whether it’s a marquee customer or someone (who may not be big) but believes in your product. The point was that when you do approach professional investors, they certainly want to know who believes in the product apart from you & it adds a lot of value to have a MoU with a company willing to use your product.

Another panelist was of the view that a customer who requests your product to be custom-built is your first best customer, as your product is paid for. While this product may not meet all the market needs, it could possibly meet 70% of the needs and can get you started.

Time, Budget and Scope

The question of where does one start when developing the product idea evoked different responses from each of the panelists. Prakash’s view was that it was a good thing to have some protection (read: patent) around your core idea and to use existing frameworks and tools to reduce the time-to-market. Making crucial decisions in terms of the trade-off between features and time/budget are also extremely important.

Read the full summary here or register to view the Recorded Version of the Panel Discussion

Entrepreneurs who bootstrap typically go through trying times. Yet, bootstrapping your software business – being frugal and resource-constrained – has its own advantages. It can help you focus and prioritize, and get your product validated by customers before you consider other funding options.

However, bootstrapping comes with its own set of challenges that need to be understood and addressed early in the business cycle. Come join a Panel of experts, including Vijay Anand (Serial entrepreneur, Founder of Proto.in and Incubation manager at RTBI), Ted Finch (Hi-tech marketing expert & Owner of Chanimal.com) and Prakash Narayanan (Co-founder and CTO of MiCello, a startup in the mobile content delivery space) for a discussion on what is takes to bootstrap. Some of the themes to be discussed include:

• The importance of getting a working product out quickly
• Are customer insights a part of the product development process?
• Identifying when you need to bring in professional investors
• Engaging with external consultants for business planning, market development and sales from an early stage

Bhoovarahan Thirumalai, co-founder and Board member of Aspire Systems, will be moderating the discussion.

Since it is a telephonic panel discussion, all you need to do is call in. To ask questions, you can login to the live online meeting, your questions will be taken up for discussion (time-permitting) during the event.

Date: September 30th, 2009; Time: 11 AM ET/8 AM PT/8.30 PM IST

Entrepreneurs bootstrapping or planning to bootstrap your software venture, do join us for a thought-provoking session!