better tie Israeli entrepreneurs to global markets, marketing experience, education, and culture.
Mark reports that the Israeli startup community is passing through painful times as it shifts from an approach of early financing and early exits to one of lengthy bootstrapping and getting into markets early. Through education, the 1M/1M initiative aims to help entrepreneurs in Israel and elsewhere use this approach. It can help young businesses to plan future market success from the very beginning by giving early views of targeted markets; choosing the right segment, product positioning, and business model; and providing the necessary business ties.
Entrepreneurship in South Florida
Marcos Menendez reports that his mobile marketing company Momares has taken part in various entrepreneurship competitions and been in touch with startups throughout South Florida. “As a member of the local community, we’re happy to report that entrepreneurship is alive and very well in this region. Although small, the startup community has grown radically in the last few years and is fueled by various startup groups, as well as the creativity of local and international entrepreneurs,” Marcos says.
A core of tech entrepreneurs has created organizations to help foster growth and funding of startups. These groups include thelaunchpad.org at the University of Miami, refreshmiami.com, mobilemonday.net, edc-tech.org, incubatemiami.com, miamiinnovationfund.com and others. They have led to a growing number of mobile app developers, software firms, and SaaS companies.
“While we have turned our focus to sales and business development, most startups in this area are on a quest for investor funding. For this, they are turning to local angel investors and successful entrepreneurs who, if they’re not able to invest, are still generous with advice through local startup groups,” Marcos adds.
One aspect that may also be fueling growth in this region involves collaboration with international talent. There are many talented programmers, developers, engineers, and others in Latin America who have ties to local businesses. It’s not uncommon for these businesses to work closely with partners or colleagues who may have previously lived in Miami but now contribute from other countries. This has allowed local startups to draw from a deeper pool of talent. It has also kept them in touch with potential consumer markets and consumer behavior in other countries.
Entrepreneurship in Pune, India
Shirish Deodhar runs InnovizeTech in Pune, which ranks among India’s top three to four entrepreneurship centers. The company’s product Sapience helps outsourcing firms that have large headcounts track and optimize the productivity of their employees.
Indian IT services companies range in size from several hundred to more than 100,000 employees. The larger companies hire more than 10,000 employees each year. With global IT spending slowing and competition from other countries increasing, these companies’ growth rates have slowed from 40 to 50 percent a few years ago to just 10 to 12 percent today. Profitability is under pressure because of fixed billing rates and increasing salaries. Outsourcing contracts are shifting from monthly billing (time & material) to fixed-price, service level agreement (SLA) and output-based pricing. These trends have put the spotlight firmly on “employee productivity.” Yet, when people spend time on computers to deliver the services, it is hard to track effort, Shirish says.
There are employee monitoring tools available, but they don’t work in an enterprise setting because they have a negative impact on culture and morale, and no manager has time to look at a lot of low-level employee time data. U.S. startups do not see this space as an opportunity because few companies are growing in headcount as they are in India.
Shirish says, “I believe that our product, Sapience, could only have originated in India because of the huge headcount-driven growth of IT services companies here, and recent pressures on growth and profitability. However, our product will have global applicability as we move deeper into big data analytics of ‘enterprise work patterns.’”
Since the early 1990s, Indian software entrepreneurs have largely built outsourcing services firms. The trend is slowly changing, with more product startups emerging in the past three to four years. Many of them are leveraging the rapid proliferation of
