As product managers, we often discuss startups that come up almost every other day. One fine day, we had an interesting conversation going, as to what does it take to create a start-up, and whether it is all driven by need? Our conversation led to this fun experiment, which we now call Antya.

To create Antya, we have followed the startup rulebook to the hilt. Here's how:

A disruptive idea: If you have this, you're ready to take off. Unfortunately, we didn't. We studied the current startups and their models. Bharani came across this interesting article on different approaches to take to start an entrepreneurial venture. We decided not to ape any existing website. We just sat down, and came down to the basic question – what is that need that I crave for on the word wide web?

Two Founders: Right from David Filo & Jerry Yang, and Larry Page & Sergey Brin, any team on the entrepreneurial mode looks to have two partners, to the extent that today it is more of a fashion, than an actual need ;) Or maybe, we are wrong on that count. Two people complement each other. Three is noise. Thankfully, the conversation was between two people, so no turf battles on this front.

A 5-letter domain name: This is the difficult one. However, if you dig hard on ancient Indian texts, you may still get lucky.

Web 2.0 - Simple UI: Read a few blogs on web 2.0, and we were done.

Great Marketing Strategy: Let's say we got the right start. Our first marketing campaign is on Google.com, using a dollar-a-day account that Google provides to all Google employees, and in Sunny's case, to ex-employees as well. Our first marketing budget is, believe it or not, $1 a day, i.e., Rs. 45 per day.

VC Funding: We had a tight budget. Stuck to that!

Patents in Place: We didn't create too many new things. There is just one unique idea on the UI – where we have all the results above the fold that we are looking to patent.
 
Crisp timeline, no opportunity cost: We set a two month's deadline from inception to taking the product live. This wasn't easy. Only once the product went into the testing stage that we could breathe a little.

Legal Formalities: We are in touch with our legal team on that aspect. Will update you more on that very soon.

Great Technology: Technologically, we are no Engineers, though Bharani has achieved a great deal and is the architect of the whole project. It's amazing how much can be accomplished through the Internet.