They call themselves “almost part-time co-founders” for small start-ups. Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hirianniah, have started up Bangalore-based Morpheus Venture Partne-rs, a fund that will help rookie entrepreneurs tide over the period of business called the Valley of Death.
“The first 12 months are the most critical period in the life of a start-up, they are also known as the valley of death. People save money for a year, quit jobs and become entrepreneurs. If things don’t go well at first, they are forced to go back to jobs. It is during this period that they require non-monitory investment in terms of guidance in doing it right and doing it well. Morpheus will provide them with the required support to help them validate their idea and roll the venture out,” says co-founder Nandini Hirianniah.
Morpheus is open to all sectors. The investment plan of the company can be as less as Rs 1,00,000. Teams can be 0-12 months old or even at the idea stage.
“We are just looking at a great idea, and great method of execution. If it’s a good idea, the investment size doesn’t matter. We’re looking at people who are willing to stick it out through the lows and highs of a start up,” says Sameer Guglani.
They have already taken on three portfolio companies Gurgaon-based Foodathome, a dabbawalla system, Bangalore-based Commonfloor, which enables apartments to sort out their maintenance and infrastructure issues and Shimla-based online interface Instablogs, a social news aggregration company. In the past six months, Foodathome is already profitable, Instablogs is making revenues and Commonfloor is looking to raise funds.
In the past month, they have added five to seven other novel start-ups under their belt. For 4-6 months they help build the right product, getting the right team, getting initial customer traction and have something impressive ready which will allow them to raise professional funding. They also help make introductions to potential investors, partners, lawyers, accountants, domain experts among other aspects Morpheus will pick up 4-8 per cent equity, but charges no monitory fee.
The exit point will be four to seven years. “We work with start-ups on their ideas. We’re entrepreneurs ourselves, and we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to make things people want,” says Hirianniah. Guglani and Hirianniah were the team that built the movie rental company MadHouse.in.