Dharmesh Shah

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• When is the best time to ask for capital money from investors?

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    When you don’t desperately need it. When you can get multiple parties interested in investing. This usually means you have something going on that draws in potential investors.

• Hey Dharmesh, you're on record as being skeptical about VC, but you've raised gobs of it. How do you feel about it now?

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    I still feel great about it (and I’d tell you if I didn’t). This is the first startup I’ve raised money for. The reason I did it is that I’m looking for a very different kind of outcome this time.

    I’ve made some money in the past already. Building another “modestly successful” company was not going to change my life that much. This time, I’m looking to build something spectacular. That takes capital (at least for me).

• Why are the Silicon Valley investors not looking at African startups for possible investment?

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    Because most investors focus in their geographical areas. The likely cause is that they feel like they can more efficiently help the startup without taking lots of time — and because they understand the U.S. market and know the entrepreneurs. It takes deliberate effort for investors to invest in other countries. Most don’t do it, because it takes time and energy.

• How to determine how much money to raise, for how much equity and when?

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    Depends on the stage of the company and the market you’re in. Don’t overthink the amount to raise — just do something “reasonable” (within range of sanity). If at the end of a negotiation process, you get offered a bit more money than you had planned, my advice is to take it. :)

• How do you get Google to invest in your startup? Is this a good VC to go to for every startup?

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    We had an inside advantage at HubSpot. We knew folks over at Google Ventures.

    Google Ventures, nor any other VC is a great option for every startup. The best way to figure out whether a given VC might be a good fit is to go look at the deals they’ve done before. Do you seem like you fit? (Ex: If all of the deals they’ve done are in a 60 mile radius of where there office is, and you’re in a different country, it’s likely not a good fit).

• We are working full time here and supporting our company financially in India. making use of 24*7 clock :) Do you think hiring a CEO in India makes sense?

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    Why do you need a CEO? What do you expect the CEO to do? (Raise funding, hire management, something else)?

    If you have a product that people are buying, then concentrate on getting customers. If you don’t, then build something people want to buy. Unless you know folks that you think could meaningfully help you deliver on what you need to do, don’t do it.

• Can you please share a working strategy to identify mentor for our company?

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    I don’t have a lot of experience in this area. Universities often have mentorship programs (we do here at MIT and Harvard). Find people in your area that have been successful and want to engage with entrepreneurs. See if there’s someone in your network . Sorry, no brilliant insight.

• Can you outline some steps or share some techniques to inbound marketing on a shoe string. Thanks !

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    The great thing about inbound marketing is that it’s not about the size of your budge, but the size of your brain.

    My advice in two words: Create content.

    Produce things that are useful/interesting to your target audience. Write a blog. Don’t write about your product/service — write about your future customer’s problems. Don’t self-promote — educate. Go to Google and search on keywords you think are relevant. Look at the results — and create content that is better than those results.

• Where would be a good place to find potential skilled programmers to bring on board as founding members?

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    Your network: Friends, friends of friends. Go to tech meet-ups. Spend time in online communities. Try posting on Craigslist. It’s very hard to find great programmers. You need to get out there and hustle.

• Hi dharmesh,i am in the process of launching a online market place for local services which involves two sets of customers, the user who post local jobs that need doing and the local service professional who receives these jobs if he/she signs in.Now my biggest challenge is launching the marketplace, do you think i must launch a beta version and market the product to both sets of customers,or create a splash page and target local service professionals to build a sufficient database before launch

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    Here’s the deal with dual-sided markets (anytime you’re bringing together a buyer or seller):

    There will almost always be an asymmetry in the supply and demand. Figure out what the asymmetry is. Are more people on the “supply” side (want jobs) or on the demand side (looking for people)? Play into the asymmetry.

    There’s an optimal “ratio” for most of these dual-sided markets (in terms of number of buyers/sellers). In the early days, you’ll need to balance your efforts — but focus on the asymmetry and move over time towards what you figure out to be the optimal ratio.