Cactus Chords

We had everything in place, a Limited Liability Firm, the name we wanted – Spurr Wireless Solutions LLP. Spurr, a tweak to a word from the phrase “spur of the moment” as we worked on sheer spontaneity.

We had our company website – www.spurr.in

Two existing products – www.spurrsms.in and www.spurrring.in

Another major product in the making -  www.eduvis.in

Visiting cards, designations (one of the luxuries of being in a start-up, choose your own designation). From this point of the origin of the idea, till the shaping of the project, there was tremendous tension, haste and hurdles. Am skipping all those details as I shouldn’t bore you guys either, that is if you already aren’t

As our platform neared the launch date, I had my eyes glued every 12 hours on the famous blogs and business news to see whether someone was coming up with a similar idea. On the 31^st of August, I switch on my laptop and check my live feeds for the blogs and BANG…….right in my gut I feel a massive punch. I see a line that makes my stomach cringe and twirl into a tight knot, “……… plans to launch educational portal”. The 3 words I dreaded from the time I decided to go ahead with my dream, LAUNCH, EDUCATIONAL and PORTAL. I quickly clicked on the link and read the whole post and the related posts as well.

Someone was planning something similar if not exactly what I had in mind.I shared it with the team. According to the post, the portals were not to be launched for the next 2-3 weeks. That did not help one bit. If they wanted, they could easily release it within a matter of days. I was angry with myself for not doing this earlier, sad that there were others planning just when I was about to launch my product. But, then something dawned upon me that made me feel much better. “Why would this happen now? Either I could have decided to do this a month later or a month earlier? What a coincidence? How come none of them thought about it before me?” All these questions just led to one answer, “There is nothing you can do about it. Just do your part and cork your hole”.

It is not that, no one would think about this ever. Someone somewhere was bound to tap into this sector sometime or the other. One thought made me ecstatic. I was on the same wavelength as the guys at these big companies. They were partnering with god knows who all to make this work. I wanted to make this work with just the 5 of us. It was possible. It is possible. Nothing is impossible.

I took this as a catalyst to push me that extra mile and ensure that when our product launched, it had to reach the whole nation. How would I do that? How else, get my sorry butt everywhere myself and talk to each and every college and university, simple! I decided that I was not going to let money come in the way now since what I am aiming for was truly worth running for. Ecstatic would be an understatement to describe what I was going through.

So I decided to do a soft launch on the 5^th of September 2009 and see how the market would respond. I went to colleges and offered them the portal on a pilot phase. I was extremely nervous during the presentations and demo to see whether there was a positive or negative response. Eager to face the questions they had for me, hoping that those queries held the secret of bettering our platform. I conducted a rapid tour across India covering all the target colleges within a span of 2 weeks.

I had to let it ferment, let it sink in to the colleges, allow them to embrace it wholly, meddle with it, try and mess with it. I waited eagerly to hear what they had to say about our product. For that one week, I went through the worst time of my life, more sleepless nights, I was literally eating cigarettes. I had to wait it out. No other choice. I had no other option but to wait for Janta Ki Vote.

To be continued……..

image reference: http://thedoublethink.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/warning-challenges.jpg, http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/0286/4523f976-0975-471c-a102-10a38e018966.jpg, http://ttoes.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/salesman.jpg,