Start-ups must speak the language of the investor
One of the main reasons why start-ups are unable to obtain the necessary investment is the inability to speak the language of the investor; a language that makes the investor motivated and energised to invest on a start-up to raise a million dollars.
A young boy who visited Disrupt Asia trying out his luck at a gaming console.
It’s not the language in which an idea is pitched, but the language of confidence and trust that is built in the mind of an investor, according to Keith Wallace, Chairman and Managing Partner at De Investeerders Club in Netherlands when he spoke at the Disrupt Asia Conference held at the Trace Expert City in Colombo last week.
During one of the panel discussions titled ‘Raising a Million Dollars,’ Mr. Wallace stated, “Anyone with a brilliant idea of a start-up who is looking for investments must speak the language of the investor if they want to raise a million dollars.”
This year the conference had simultaneous discussions under various topics by local and international speakers. Strategy and policy, disrupting creative industries, success in failure, myth busting social entrepreneurship, raising a million dollars, changing landscape of digital marketing, securing a connected society and artificial intelligence; and technology without an alternative were some of the topics discussed. There were also workshops on growing hacking tactics for start-ups, fostering open innovation with corporates, basics of monetizing on YouTube and building facebook chat bots.
XLr8 Andhra Pradesh Managing Director, Glenn Robinson in his opening remarks stressed that there must be collaboration between start-ups and big companies to reach success in all endeavours. He quoted Winston Churchill, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure without no loss of enthusiasm.”
Mr. Robinson elaborated on some of the factors that innovative economies around the world must focus in order to reach their goals. “Innovative economies must exploit the local advantage, develop and diffuse expertise, encourage self-determination, accelerate through collaboration and engage the virtuous cycle,” he added. He noted that gaps between organisations must be bridged towards achieving success.
During the panel discussion on strategy and policy, Advisor to the Ministry of Development Strategies and International Trade, Anushka Wijesinha mentioned that an innovation and entrepreneurship strategy has been crafted and is yet to be approved by the cabinet to make it public.
The innovation and entrepreneurship strategy is for any sector, not only the IT and start-up ecosystem. It includes the research and development institutions as well, he noted.
While every industry around the world is evolving and being disrupted drastically, so is the advertising industry. During a panel discussion on disrupting creative industries, the transformation of advertising from the traditional television and radio to digital was explained. “Today television or the radio is switched on while both eyes are on the mobile phone in the hand,” said Sugiban Sathiamoorthy, Managing Director and Head of Brands at Magic Mango.
Sri Lanka is witnessing a growing trend in the gaming space. There is a community that brings together gaming enthusiasts from around the country to one platform. Games such as Pokemon Go, Fortnite, Overwatch, League of Legends and Counter Strike and so on are some of the games trending that many young gaming buffs play. Many gaming start-ups exhibited their ideas as products at the Disrupt Asia Conference.
There was also a digital forest set up at the Trace Expert City premises that depicted the ambience of a natural forest in the middle of the night.