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
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