SLS Mirror March - April 2017 a | Page 20

Visit of Mike Cassidy Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Mike Cassidy interacted with students and entrepreneurs at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University on "Entrepreneurship: Prospects and Challenges". He is currently the Vice President & Project Leader of Project Loon at Google, USA. Mike shared with the 800-strong audience that he is impressed with the new ideas coming out of the young entrepreneurs he met at PDPU. He suggested that to become successful in the startup arena, speed is the ultimate startup business strategy. Start with a basic product or service which can be launched within 3 months, and then take feedback from the users and continuously improve your product on a weekly basis. When raising capital from venture capitalists, he believes that one should pitch and raise funds on the same day, and he shared many interesting ideas on how to make this happen. He also said that close business deals within a week otherwise the opportunity is as good as lost. He responded enthusiastically to questions from the audience. When asked if one should serve a market need or follow one's passion, he suggested to nd a pain-point within a target audience and become passionate about delivering a solution to relieve people's pain. In response to a question on hiring good employees, he said that startups should focus on hiring team players who will stand up for the company and their teammates, and are dependable. He quoted an example of the military and said that people don't ght battles for salary, they ght because their team depends on them. When asked how to retain employees, he said that 18