“Founding” a company that succeeds (Part 1) —your 10-step filter to picking the right startup idea

What you can learn from Silicon Valley’s cherished Megapreneur-investor BV Jagadeesh(Part 1)

B. V. Jagadeesh at IIT (BHU) Varanasi addressing students at the Entrepreneurship Workshop

“I believe entrepreneurship is great because it creates jobs. That’s very important. This is obvious for industries (think of Tesla factory workers) and service startups (Amazon delivery boys) but this is equally true for other indirect modes of creating employment.” — B V Jagadeesh

Blog 1(this blog) in the blog series on founding and building successful startups, covers how to pick your startup idea and confirm you can proceed with founding your company. Blog series includes:

Part 1 (Current Blog): “Founding” a company that succeeds (Part 1) — Your 10-step filter to picking the right startup idea

Part 2 (Next Blog): “Building” a company that succeeds (Part 2) — basics of MVP, business plan/model, and more

Part 3 (Current blog): “Scaling” A Company that Succeeds (Part 3) — Basics on Hiring, Business Development, Sales, Marketing, Funding rounds, and more…

Part 4 (Subsequent blog): We cover the basics of raising funding for your startup, types of investors, types of shares, term sheets, exit, etc.

This blog series will give you pretty much all the important tried and tested approaches in Silicon Valley in the past three decades, to starting your company and getting it funded. If you are a student or in a day job and aspiring to be an entrepreneur, if you are already an entrepreneur, or just simply curious about startups, this blog is for you. Here I summarize the insights from an entrepreneurship boot camp hosted at IIT-Banaras Hindu University, one of the top schools in India, by B. V. Jagadeesh(BV), one of Silicon Valley’s most respected investor-serial entrepreneur-philanthropist-mentor with a proven track record of reading markets, spotting opportunities and converting them into profitable businesses, his past and present ventures include:

• Formerly, founder/CTO Exodus (pioneered Internet Datacenter): Bill Clinton (who was the then President of the United States) named Exodus as a national asset