How to startup in silicon valley ( EdWave's story)

[edwave]

What is this blog about?

I am Bharadwaj -cofounder of a company named EdWave, an internet company based in the silicon valley. I started this company in June 2013 along with my business partner and cousin Karthik. 

In this blog I shall take you through our journey of starting up a company in the Silicon valley, what we decided to do, how we do it, and what tools we are using for this etc. Of course as the disclaimer standard goes, I would state not to take my word as an instruction to success. This is probably not the best way to approach a startup, the aim of my blog not to tell you the ideal way to do things in the valley. We will probably give you just one of hundreds of ways to approach a startup, where we ignore factors like luck and circumstance, which are pretty huge factors in determining the success or failure of any business. 

As all new businesses go, my partner and I had a common idea that we were passionate about. We had empty wallets and large dreams. The aim of this blog is to discuss what we are going through in the process of setting up a company in the silicon valley. Note that this is our first startup here, we have absolutely no clue where we are headed as yet and we hope to find out.

I will not discuss generic motivational content or how to be successful- there are thousands of books for this. I am not going to discuss some of the obvious facts like 'pick an area of intersection between your passion, your skill and market demand'- these are intuitive, most books and courses will tell you this, you should have thought of this at the idea stage. 

We will look to approach how we decided how we answered some of the most pertinent questions that come to mind when starting a company(in random order). We are looking to answer a lot of these questions ourselves right now. As and when we do have an update, we will jot it down on the blog- and as it progresses, I will let you know if it was a success or a failure. 

- How do I register my company?

- How do I get legal representation?

- What are the typical first steps in starting an internet based company?

- How do I validate my idea?

- What are my funding options?

- Do I need a business plan? If yes, what should it have?

- Do I need an office space? How do I set it up?

- How do I develop my product? Do I need to build the product myself?

- Do I outsource? How should I outsource?

- How do I go about hiring? How do I attract talent?

- How do I attract investors? 

- Where should i be networking? Who should be my target? 

- What about immigration(for foreigners)? What should I keep in mind?

- How do I setup a subsidiary in another location?

- What are the cycles of development I should be targeting ? When should I seek funding?

- Who should be on my advisory team? How do i get advisors?

- What are the tools online that will help me in my company's administration?

- How do I come up with a product roadmap?

- What are my different avenues of free or cheap marketing?

- How should I be setting up my social media sites? What social media should I be targeting? 

There are a lot more; I will post these as and when I am focusing on that question. For now, this is all I got. I will try my best to keep my blog short going forward. Even though this blog so far might not reflect it, I am a fan of bullets.