For a startup, the most important thing is to find a pain-point. This pain-point refers to the real problems which people encounter in their daily life. Many a times, entrepreneurs mistake cool product or service for a serious startup. A startup can only be serious and successful when it solves a real problem.

But, isn’t finding a problem hard? The answer is no. I have compiled a list of resources and tips below to help you find real problems:

• Real-time Conversations.
  • Twistori: A twitter mashup which shows in real-time what people hate, wish and love. This can be an interesting way to listen to people and get ideas about their pains.
  • Summize: It lets you search twitter conversations in real-time and within a geographically defined area.
• Surveys.
  • Google Alerts: Setup an alert for the term ’survey’ or its variations. You may also want to setup alerts for combinations such as ‘india survey’, ‘hr survey’, etc. Surveys usually reveal people’s pains. So, make sure you get updated about them.
  • Search Google for terms such as ‘survey results‘ or variations of it.
• Reports.
  • Free-reports.com: Loaded with advertisements but worth a try.
  • AllAboutMarketResearch: Cluttered website but has some good pointers.
• Questions and Answers.
  • Yahoo Answers: If properly used, it can reveal a lot of problems people are facing. What more, looking at people’s answers, you can mostly

Any more ideas on how to find problems which startups could solve? How do you do your research on this topic?

In this post I give pointers to 10 (now 13) blogs which an Indian entrepreneur or anyone interested in setting up a startup in India must visit:

• Pluggd.in: Among other content, this blog has comprehensive posts on how to setup a business in India, legal issues surrounding this process and other considerations.
• VentureWoods: A community blog by the best of the best in Indian startup and venture capital circle.
• DesiStartups.in: A blog by my friend Prabhu.
• Startups.in: A (relatively) old and big blog.
• StartupDunia: Another good blog focusing on featuring Indian startups and startup related news
• IndianWeb2: As its name says, a blog on Indian Web2.0 startups.
• Proto.in Blog: The official blog of Proto.in.
• AlooTechie: Everything about technology and startups.
• WatBlog: This blog, written by my friend Rajiv, is mainly on news about startups and use of media by startups.
• Trak.in: Tracks Indian business and startup scene.

Have I missed any blogs? Please let me know.

By the way, if you want to avoid the hassle of individually visiting all the above mentioned blogs, have a look at StartupLogic India. It aggregates posts from all these blogs plus startup jobs, events, news, etc.

Update:
1. Vijay pointed to WebYantra (so called TechCrunch of India), Rajesh Jain’s Emergic (not updated as often but is extremely insightful).
2. Mahesh pointed out Wireless India blog which is more about Indian startups than wireless technology.

Recently, a Business Today article featured India’s Hottest Startups. The article lists startups from many different industries, from organic food to technology. Below are the following points I observed/calculated from the article:

• Average age of a founder is 37.
• Standard deviation in the age of founders is 8.
• Youngest entrepreneur is 26 and the oldest one is 58. Wow, what a difference!
• Average amount of funding: Rs. 25 crore. (USD 6.25 million)
• Range of funding: Rs 0 - Rs 72 crore. (USD 18 million)
• Average amount of revenues: 25.2 crore (USD 6.25 million). Surprise! Notice how much the average funding and average revenues match.
• Range of revenues: Rs 0 - Rs 110 crore. (USD 27.5 million)

Do you know any other statistics on Indian Startups or Entrepreneurs? I’m interested in taking a look at them.

A good initiative by Guruji. They claim to have all Indian songs since 1932. Check out the service here.

PS: The songs cannot be downloaded. They can only be played.

Today, I was wondering why people don’t go beyond initial 2-3 pages of their search. Maybe, it is the interface of the search engines which promotes such behavior or maybe people really don’t care to go beyond initial pages.

Whatever be the case. I decided to make a tool which will serve LAST page of Google’s search results. The idea was to grab the total number of search results from Google (for example, it is 91,300,000 for the term AJAX), divide the number by 10 and then modify the Google’s search URL accordingly (for example, for 2nd search page the URL is: http://www.google.com/search?q=ajax&start=10). So, my hypothesis was that the URL for last page for AJAX results would be http://www.google.com/search?q=ajax&start=9130000.

Well, try going to that URL. You will be in for a surprise. Google, in small-greyish-dull-looking-font, says “Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 9130000.)“.

Did I commit a crime for asking results starting from 9130000? If Google claims to have found so many results, why doesn’t it shows so many results? What is the use of saying “Results 1 - 10 of about 91,300,000 for ajax. (0.10 seconds)” if I can’t go beyond 1000 results?

Frustrating!

DesiWiki aims to become a comprehensive source of information for Indian Startups. It is started and maintained by Desistartups. Although still in very early stages, it nevertheless contains amazing amount of information on all aspects of starting up a business in India.

It hasn’t been officially launched yet. So, it is a sneak peek exclusively for this blog’s readers. Do check it out, and if possible, contribute to it as well.

Cool concept.

Hey Guys, I have switched this blog’s feed management to FeedBurner, so update your feed link to new link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/paraschopra

Check it out here.

Inspired by WhyDoesEverythingSuck.com and learning from Kroomsa.com, following is why I think most internet startups suck:

• They Give Away Things for Free
  When the business model depends on free, only a very few lucky companies can survive. Advertising, at best, should be a secondary source of income for a startup. How would startups keep on innovating their services when they are giving away stuff for free. Where is the motivation, dude? On the other hand, when you charge for what you are offering, there is a direct incentive to improve your services in order to attract higher prices or more customers, which directly translates into better earnings. Thus, charging for something you offer kick-starts a positive feedback loop which reinforces itself. And, that is good for a startup.
• They are VERY easy to start
  This directly translates into absence of vision and low barriers to entry. When you don’t have to invest time thinking about why you are doing something, you end up doing a quick but messy thing. This is especially true for startups. Today, starting an internet startup is so easy that anybody, really anybody, with a basic knowledge of web can start a so-called internet company. People find it cool to have a company these days. And, successful startups are seldom cool. So, in a nutshell, either try to do something not-so-cool and/or try to do something hard, which will force you to think about the reasons for your motivation.
• There are Gazzilions of Internet Startups
  While for the industry and consumers, it is good to have so much of choice, for entrepreneurs it not so good to have an idea and then discover that there are already tens of internet startups offering *exactly* the same service or product (and, chances are, for free). How is your new internet startup going to make money when some freaks are offering the same thing in a better package, at a better price and with a better marketing budget. So, get a little away from Internet and think if you can do something useful in traditional fields where there is a moderate amount of competition and where barriers to entry are higher.

So, now we agree that most startups suck, what should you do to prevent your next internet startup from suckage?

• Do away with relying on advertising solely.
• Don’t give away stuff for free.
• Repeat, Don’t give away stuff for free.
• Don’t jump at every idea you get. Give it the sweet time it deserves.
• Think about entering into an industry/category/idea where barrier to entry is low and there is not too much competition out there
• Know when an idea is a project and when it is a startup. Mostly, what you call a startup is actually a project. So, call it a project.
• Do something serious. Really. There are a lot of problems waiting to be solved: poverty, digital distribution, literacy, government accountability, etc.

Lastly, one suggestion: Do justice to your time. It is more important that you think.