Om Shah

co-founder of The Rental Community

[Om Shah @omshahx]

people who are into cold calling, what are the ways to gamify the process of customer discovery calls and even cold outreach?

i have built a customized CRM for us to keep it fun, just looking for some ideas to gamify the process!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

let's get deeper into building communities!

claude recommended these books btw :)

[Om Shah @omshahx]

i have been learning music for 6 months now and i have observed many similarities with music industry and startups.

with ai, products are becoming a commodity and building moats is getting harder.

same with music, we now have more number of people trained in music than ever before. i personally know many great musicians, who have been into music for decades and yet, they aren't popular. so skill, talent and product are losing importace as there's now huge competition with these regards as everyone can do it.

distribution and marketing matters. there are mediocre artists topping the spotify charts and extremely well trained and high quality artist with no audience.

[Om Shah @omshahx]

Payments received after 9 months!

That is what I have seen many businesses and vendors whom I know personally, always have to go through.

Why haven't we built a system or a scoring model, which suggests if a B2B client will respect the credit cycle and pay on time? How do they even stop themselves from being exploited by the credit cycle?

That was what I asked in a room full of founders and CXOs brought together by @RazorpayRize and 411 Founders Club in the recent Pune meetup.

It is a huge problem and for decades now, big companies have been exploiting small vendors, freelancers and now, even content creators! There have been a few attempts to solve this problem, solutions have been built. But if the members of The Rental Community and many other freelancers and creators that I have had a word with, still face this problem, I don't think it is working. There is a huge problem, an adoption gap and definitely a huge opportunity for founders and builders!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

i logged in to my x account after a long time. initially, i was preety impressed to see people building amazing tools and products. but then, it started getting repetitive.

i saw 10 different people who have built the same thing. the old playbook of -
build in public → ship → get some traffic from X → maybe make money, seems to be fading away as it's become way easier for anyone to copy your idea and build a version for themselves. the shelf life of products are tools seem to be shrinking without a strong leverage of either distribution, early capital and depth of research.

exciting and hard times for builders altogether!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

it's all ai !
not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. but it's getting the job done and the problems solved :)

[Om Shah @omshahx]

looking at the popularity that @ycombinator has gained among indian builders and founders who are in college, i remember the time when yc startup school had organised an offline meetup in india!

that was 4 years back!

100 founders were selected. it was held at @ZeptoNow's office. it was when zepto was headquartered in mumbai! i randomly bumped into @rajshamani there, cool guy to chat with!

it's fascinating how these 4 years have changed yc, raj shamani and zepto in india!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

@thatbullettrain 🙂

[Om Shah @omshahx]

my respect for musicians has increased a lot in the past couple of months! i am 6 months into hindustani classical vocals and i realised the level of focus, practice and dedication it demand!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

every founders’ meetup i go, i see around 70-80% people building an agency. it's either a digital marketing, software development, social media management or an influencer management agency.

[Varun Mayya @waitin4agi_]

A lot of people have assumed India can’t do stuff because skill issue but actually it’s mostly taste issue

[Om Shah @omshahx]

That's when we decide to start an initiative to bring all Rental Businesses/Startups together in an exclusive, invite only community! To share industry insights, network, discuss, capture frauds and grow together the sharing economy of India.

[Om Shah @omshahx]

This was missing!⚠️

Rentals is one of the oldest businesses. Many new startups and businesses have been innovating in this sector for a while, and there was no single platform to bring them together!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

@FarzaTV even though @_buildspace has shut down, it was really special being a part of s5, thanks!

[Om Shah @omshahx]

@purneshtripathi @waitin4agi_ I disagree. Why are you thinking of selling in India? India is not a good market of B2B SaaS either. All those software companies, sell abroad. Simply, apply the same for AAA Games, that's what Wukong did, they sold globally. You don't make AAA titles to be just played by Indians

[Om Shah @omshahx]

Well, despite these challenges, he continues to serve and it's really great to have another addition in our partner base for gaming console rentals in Pune.✨

[Om Shah @omshahx]

I recently visited the oldest gaming consoles rental store in Pune. Babu Video Games has been serving for more than 35 years now. The shop is actually 70 years old and was a grocery store initially.

[Om Shah @omshahx]

They have been facing the same problems as everyone else, the fraudsters. The most recent case he told me about was at an Airbnb in Pune. One of the customers rented a console and, you guessed it, never returned.