Cultural Differences between Indian & Silicon Valley Startups
[Guest article by Vishal Gondal, founder of Indiagames. If you are a startup or part of the ecosystem, this article is for you.]
Having spent a lot of my time with startups, entrepreneur teams, investors both in India and Silicon Valley. I thought to put together a comprehensive list of the key differences I noticed between the culture of these startups. For clarity sake by Startups I am referring to pre VC funded early stage companies..
Startup ecosystem in the Silicon Valley has evolved over the last 25 years and today the ecosystem is very evolved with colleges, angels, VC investors, entrepreneurs, employees etc all working in harmony no wonder startups like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo etc have born and nurtured from there.
The Indian Startup Ecosystem is still in its nascent stage. At this stage I am not commenting on business models, ideas and execution but more the Cultural aspects.
Here are 4 key points of cultural differentiation.
Open v/s Closed
Silicon valley Entrepreneurs are generally very open in most cases – a lot of information about the Entrepreneurs and their products is available on their websites, blogs. Having been involved in a much more matured startup ecosystem they understand that while Ideas may be many they key is the team and execution. The only way they can recruit great talent, get top investors, create buzz around their company is to be OPEN. Everyone in the key management team is clear about the product, strategy and what they are trying to do.
Indian Startup Entrepreneurs are generally very Closed very little information is available about the startup and in most cases the ‘About Us’ section of the company has no or little information. Except for the CEO most other team members have little idea about the company and its vision. Generally very secretive about what they are trying to do.. and are very protective about their ‘Ideas’
Outgoing v/s Timid
Silicon Valley Startups are very aggressive. Regular press releases, company and founders blog, update emails, Invitation to Close Beta and many other activities to actively engage customers, investors and employees are very common. Most of their entrepreneurs are active in all major industry events not just startup and investor events. Their are a lot more articulate in their presentation and overall packaging of the company and themselves. Their plans are deep,detailed and well researched. At the same time you experience a very ‘Cowboy’ like attitude entrepreneurs
Indian entrepreneurs are generally very shy not very good with media and public interactions. They are all present at investor and startup show but rare to attend relevant industry events. During your talks with them unless you are a VC or investor information from them is hard to come by. Very few of them involve external group of people to interact with their product in form of private beta. Quality of presentation and overall packaging is much toned down with a lot more emphasis on numbers and excel sheets. Most plans are superficial and lack attentional to detail. You normally get a conservative and guarded feeling once you meet these entrepreneurs.
Logical v/s Emotional
Silicon Valley Startup entrepreneurs are more logical than Emotional about the company, the idea and the overall approach. When confronted with alternate ideas, theories, suggestions they reaction is more positive as they don’t tend to take suggestions or advice ‘personally’. While negotiating with clients, VC’s, investors they tend to take more rational decisions.
Indian Startup Entrepreneurs are very Emotional about everything. In most cases you have to given them any advice or suggestions at your own risk as they tent to take these things personally. Its very difficult for them to accept criticism about their company/idea as they get emotionally attached to their ideas. Also they are a nightmare to negotiate with investors as their emotional side always tends to be in conflict with the realities of the market.
Social/Lonely
Silicon Valley Startup entrepreneurs are generally ’social’ its not uncommon to see competitors CEO hanging out together. A lot these Entrepreneurs bat for each other, share booth space in events, keeping their homes open to other startups, share office space, lobby together for common causes, have co-sponsored parties and events. They are active in openly supporting other startup companies and entrepreneurs
Indian Startup Entrepreneurs are a lonely bunch living in their own little worlds. In most cases Each one is to its own 
very little co-operation among non-competing startups.
A lot of the above differences are also partly due to the early stage of the evolution of the startup ecosystem in India. I am sure 20 years back Silicon Valley would have been similar. But with every year and with organizations like TiE, Angels, incubators and startups events like startup proto.in headstart etc. I see our young entrepreneurs learning very fast. And I think eventually the ecosystem in India will be a hybrid system a mix of western and Indian values! The success of Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley is probably a good indication of this trend.
What’s your take?
–Note from Ashish—
Bangalore startups – keep yourself free this saturday. We are announcing something, something that is focused on the last point mentioned by VIshal, i.e. social vs. lonely, and beyond.
—
img credit: lucky8prods.com
[Reproduced from Visha's blog]
One more difference
Many Tech Blogs vs Few Tech Blogs
While I liked the points projected by author especially the first one, I feel there too much of generalization when it comes to discussions on Indian startups ecosystem:).
Like somebody said, you cannot deliver a baby in a month with 9 women, the ecosystem does need time to get to mature (I mean to collaborative, co-operative and collective state ), it just cannot happen in a year or two or five.
In India we do have startups that use PR firms based out of U.S, do interviews with journalists, analysts and prominent bloggers, hang-out at tech gatherings but the question regarding outgoing & social is more related to the availability and reach of ecosystem rather than personal or cultural attitudes of people.
Thanks to folks like Barcamps,HeadStart Network, NEN, Proto.in, Startup City, TIE for working towards building an ecosystem while Pluggd.in, SiliconIndia, WATblog, YourStory.in etc trying to build information base on Startups in India.
Vishal,
I appreciate your writing in general on pluggd.in .. but this just did not sound very positive ..
What you are stereotyping, is what Ashish usually calls as ‘psuedo entrepreneurs’ .. random young people who are just “exploring” rather than “in it”. They are very inexperienced “businessmen” and hence tend to be confused about their roles .. sometimes not enjoying it either.
But majority of us who are actually committed to our respective start-up businesses we are in, cannot afford to be as stupid as you paint us to be .. May be you never met enough of us cause we are too busy running our businesses (leading to your stereotypical assumptions) but we exist and in majority .. so do look out for us in future !
I will wish you luck with your biased (and may be even racist) stereotypes .. but it’s not right misleading readers of Pluggd.in in general.
One thing I really like abt all your articles including this one is your strong position … It makes people take stand like “you are with us or against” something all startup entrepreneurs should learn . we cannot run businesses with consensus .. lovely !
I totally agree with you Vishal.
I wonder how the readers of this blog put up with text that is so full of grammatical errors ? Really puts one off.. even if the topics are good.
Being a tech entrepreneur myself and from the Indian Silicon valley I started reading this post with great interest. But when i read this line
“Except for the CEO most other team members have little idea about the company and its vision. ”
I realized that while the author may be an authority on start ups in Silicon valley, he has absolutely no clue about how Indian start ups work. This one statement is sooo wrong… that i felt there was no point in reading further.
In this day and age of 6,7 and even sometimes 8 figure salaries, why will a person come and join a startup if he/she was not completely sold on the idea of the company?
This may be true in a services startup company. But it is not at all the case in a products company.
For professional and cheap website contact webinfinity team @ info@webinfinity.in
We also do all kind of advertisements!! so everything @ one place…
thanks for your responses friends…
@mesJ Grammar/Spellings
so please accept my apologies in advance for this..
since school i have been very bad at both…so a good way to find If i wrote the piece and not got it ghost written by a ‘pro’ is when it has this unique signature
@vijay @rajat thanks for the agreement
@bajirao I was just trying to talk about the ‘majority’ and 100% agree that there is a ’small’ segment of entrepreneurs who don’t fit this category
@kc it will be great if you can list 10 startups (pre funding) which have a team of people who left their 8 figure salaries to join the startup… ?? I may have completely missed them
Webinfinity spammer! you suck!
Good listing of all the differences. Most of these are cultural diferences and can be found in most of the Indians not necesarily be entrepreneurs. As we grew up in pretty much unsafe environment we tend to be very possesive about our belonging. We do not believe too much on copy right protection so try to be more closed about our ideas.
EXCELLENT ARITCLE… Does that imply we also need an Indian/Asian TechCrunch competitor per se?
Cheers,
Marvin
Cultural Differences? sounds odd..when it comes to the welfare of the people of the country they must be emotional..