Engaging Teams: In conversation with Praveen, Cofounder SocioHub

CIE brings to our Deeptech community,

Fire Up Founder Insights series 4th edition, hosted by our COO, Mr. Ramesh Loganathan. The series is brought to you as a part of Startup Gyan Blog series by CIE-IIITH  where we feature our founders and talk about their Startup status and the journey so far through conversation on specific topics useful for other Deeptech startups and the community at large.

In Conversation with Praveen, Cofounder StartupByte(Now SocioHub):

Here comes a story from a founder who picked a challenge from his surroundings and built a solution platform for it. While working with IIITH incubator, Praveen observed a gap of efficient engagement of stakeholders in the Startup ecosystem and came up with StartupByte and later pivoted to Sociohub, a B2C to B2B transition.

Pointing to some of the factors, Praveen mentioned that the pivot happened on account of under-evaluation of Market size, asking for feedback and no money from customers and dispersed team.

“Emotionally attaching to the product is fine as long as you blend it with realism and see how it is monetized”

Sociohub helps organisations run branded private social networks to manage, engage, grow and monetize their communities. The team built a SaaS Community Management Platform that will power communities like never before and make them sustainable and scalable. The Startup is currently working with T-Hub and Osmania University as its clients and will be expanding globally in Q4 this year.

Engaging Teams:

  • Make sure members love what you work on
  • Reaching out to people through e.g. AngelList and hire as per skills required
  • 1-week non-committal trial is crucial, to get to know people while giving them the time to know more about what you do
  • Instead of a permanent job role, a trainee model is more effective for startups
  • Hire candidates hungry to learn, and open to hand-holding, if needed
  • Recognise the bad fish, if any, and deal with it
  • Routinely plan meetings for updates, planning, progress and hindrances
  • Use Collaboration tools such as Slack and Asana for communication and task management respectively
  • Segregate ownership rather than micromanaging everything

The Growth Hack tip:

  • Avoid losing sight of short-term growth while planning for long-term goals. Set small achievable goals to continue incremental growth every day and month.
  • You might be overwhelming your team by sharing every plan related to your Startup. Share things which are relevant to their work and personal growth & motivation

Watch the complete interview for some cool anecdotes and fun facts!

Keep watching this space for more under Fire Up Series.
Stay safe and sound!

– Sunita Kumari, Team CIE