The Fellowship of Starting Up

Can Art that depicts life, be larger than life itself?. A brilliantly executed movie on a ‘real life story’ may at times move more people than the actual living person (character) in ‘real life’. And most probably, those who want to monetize on that ‘real life story’ will rapidly do so. No offences meant, no judgement passed!

Past (how did they do it) re-told for learning, motivation and amusement. But we believe it in being, LIVE. At the Core of OCC Bangalore, lies OCC Generic Meets which one has to participate, to experience; we are sorry, we are poor at articulating them but love being a distant watcher or an enthusiastic participant in the early to mid stages of an Entrepreneur Life Cycle.

Lot has been written and spoken on the start of the start and many are the platforms who help you with the building blocks (apologies for treating all pieces as blocks): Mentoring, Funding, Legal Registrations, Finance & Accounting Services, SEO (huh) and so on; but what about the butterflies in the stomach, what about the helping hand when you are fire-fighting, what about the candle when you are in dark and not ripe for others to pick you up quickly in their portfolio…..and that is the magic that we do, naturally and surprisingly repeatably as well.

Are you not an Entrepreneur?

Are Entrepreneurs made or born? And you have heard the same debate for Leaders and Outstanding Business Managers. One can just throw in some empirical studies, some organization / behavioral scientists / psychologists, add one or two more parties and maybe the debate will never end. And you will hear us say this often: Screw it, Just do it.

But then, this is your life, which is full of choices and mistakes, like ours :) . We respect your choices but OCC Bangalore is a place to validate them. Family and friends always come first and they should, but so do their biases. At OCC Bangalore you strike the balance of accessibility and assess-ibility. You meet strangers, but thankfully they are  inquisitive, good listeners and vocal without hurting or comforting. They are just the right treatment that you need.

For example, if you were to write a book, will all your friends buy it, or expect a free copy, most probably the general public may want to buy provided they see the value in it, but is it easy to talk to anyone on the road, ahh we know you will turn to social media, sure do so and also walk into an OCC meet for that human touch.

Over the years we have all kinds of examples, people coming to our meets just for any damn reason such as nothing to do over a weekend to just accompanying a friend to just being curious and GLOW, they had a rub-off effect, they got a bug, they got infected, never to look back for a cure. Similarly there are others who want to cross the chasm but somehow need that push, somehow something holds them back and the community drives them, drives them just enough to hit the water and then the waves do the rest.

It would be unfair, not to speak about those entrepreneurs who tried it out but then went back to corporate, back to primarily life, some wanting to come back, some maybe never will do. At each OCC meet you are surfing in water which has all these different waves. How do you want to get wet / drowned?

As our name shouts (not suggests) we are ‘Open’ – to all, open not only to entrepreneurs or sincerely aspiring entrepreneurs, but to students who are as curious as excited about entrepreneurship, to practitioners (lawyers, doctors) who want to migrate from traditional practitioners to building retail chain of their branded stores or on-line businesses, we are open to house-wives who want to start again at their original expertise and set up boutique consulting shops. We are not only open to the brightest and the smartest, but equally open to who are the furthest from entrepreneurship. Helping them walk and more ever seeing them first walk and then run gives us some un-parallel view of their lives and a bonding that lasts lifetime.

Do we need to be Different?

Are we differentiated? Before we answer this, we seem to be doing same things for almost last four years and it does add immense value to aspiring and early stage entrepreneurs. Surprisingly we have never felt threatened? Firstly we are good at what we do and secondly yes we are chilled out. Equally interesting is that in-spite of so much action happening in the start-up support and development ecosystem no body wants to chase our sweet spot. Why, maybe our spot is not that glamorous or commercial? Aren’t the both connected in today’s world? Well, competition is as much welcome as collaboration.

But then ‘being static’ is no journey and we have been evolving too; our unique initiatives such as ‘OCC Bangalore Mobile App Incubation Program’ – we were probably the first one in India to come out with such a program and hopefully you will some such more as we go along. It will sound like a cliche but then no one does it the way we do it and we just do those things that no one else is doing it; astoundingly, not for just the sake of it but it is a gap that we will fill and the proof lies it being well received always.