workFront

the 360

2011-03-27T19:23:00.001+05:30

desirer. thinker. doer.

dreamer. wisher. trier. fighter.

builder. seller. doubter. surer.

finder. keeper. sharer.

seeker. giver.

hoper. no-hoper. prayer.

fixer. better. wonderer. wanderer.

entrepreneur.

Posted via email from workFront

The startup space needs some weight gain

2011-03-16T09:31:00.000+05:30

On a recent thread on India's startup ecosystem vis-a-vis the idea of the startup visa that's doing the rounds, someone mentioned that in the US they saw a lot of support for the underdog - which is what startups are. This support came in the form of users signing up, the biggies willing to work with startups and angels and VCs more readily putting their weight behind ideas.

In India, its a tougher battle, to put it mildly.

Most users are less than enthusiastic, and even nervous, about signing up for a startup's service. Unless it is purely (small) transactional with very low risk, or comes as a huge deal, or serves a so-far unserved, desperate need. Anything less than this, and we need the weight of a big brand.

Big enterprise doing business with small guys is the same story - except it needs a much lower risk or a much stronger need. Else, no go.

I almost don't blame the VCs for following this trend. Few buyers, few users - would you put your money into it ?

The startups that are working are doing it around transactions. Sell books, tickets. Anything that needs some longer "commitment" falters. It can happen as a grey/white label, or with some smart dealmaking, but else is very very tough.

How do we solve this, and do it right ?

Start with something transactional/low risk. Even if you intend to solve longer term problems, drive stickiness, etc. Tryouts are important.
Get a dealmaker or two on your side. Easier said than done, of course :)
Do NOT pay users to use stuff. It might give you a spike, but it isn't worth it. Avoid freebies, except for being thankful.
Persist :) The curve will take its time. Goes hand in hand with lean-burn too.

These are some things startups can do to work around the problem. The core of it - i.e. making startups feel a little more "secure" and "weighty" in the eyes of the user, investor, big-biz, is still an open problem.

Ideas ?

Irritation to Go-live in a few hours

2011-02-20T08:57:00.003+05:30

A couple of days ago, got yet-another-email in my inbox announcing deals. As is often the case, they were either uninteresting/of unclear value or felt like a trap with layers of well disguised fine print.

My first reaction was the usual irritation - the kind you have when a smrt-ass-wannabe tries to take you for a ride and you just manage to spot it in time. But, over lunch which I had in a few minutes later, it occurred to me that I might possibly not be alone in this sea of deal-noise. And that like me, folks naturally have a nose for good, genuine deals which actually made sense.

And as I thought more, it became obvious that the whole definition of a "deal" as a "discounted" offer was flawed. I'd just bought great tyres for my dad's car - even at no discount they were awesome deals compared to the other choices. And we humans, we just know these things, don't we ? Especially Indians - VFM is part of our DNA.

Of course, we find deals everywhere. And the really interesting ones are those that are around us - those in the neighbourhood mall, or with our usual grocer, or favourite diner. Offline, online. Sometimes just a friend selling something they don't need anymore.

So created the easiest thing I could - a Facebook page for dealrater. And followed up with a WordPress install with a plugin for voting deals up or down. And then added a Google spreadsheet form so folks could add stuff they found VFM, or a great deal they'd go for themselves.

The site is now up at http://dealrater.in. Its a simple blog with some features now, and will grow if my gut feel of folks being better at this, and interested in cutting down deal-noise is vindicated (them being able to find the site is of course part of the testing so help me please :))

// Pardon the crappy logo - its a 2 minute job to get started. Will get a fancier, designed one later.

All of this took sporadic effort over all of 48 hours. Including some data seeding.

Great vs Profitable Business

2011-02-09T20:01:00.000+05:30

Purely based on a few stray examples,

Is it that for building a really profitable business you usually have to build for common denominators and base desires? Great businesses aren't always immediately wildly profitable. The common denominators are easier to find.

Hot or Not or Whatever Happened to Joy ?

2011-02-06T09:11:00.000+05:30

There was a time we caught two movies a week, sometimes. We did not always need to know from the reviews beforehand if the movie was "worth watching" - it was more about deriving pleasure and a good time out of whatever we watched. Sometimes we suspended disbelief, sometimes we needed to carry empathy as we went in, sometimes we gave in to feeling spooked, and sometimes it was intensely and deeply intellectual.

It was not about 0 or 10 - all movies were certainly not reduced to a binary choice.

"We value our time more" - often heard argument in this context. Really? You'd just catch a movie in the time you spend reading the multitude of reviews and analyses of one. And if you value your time, you'll construct it in different entertaining surprising ways - not just in the mould of one dreary totally expected and conformist superlative.

The movie reviews (and of course those darned multiplex prices) have killed it. Bigtime.

I am in violation of Google's policies! {Shiver}

2011-01-22T10:09:00.001+05:30

This is what I saw in the mail this morning:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not

accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying

Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For

instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as

http://entrypreneur.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching-entrepreneurial-bug-side.ht...>

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may

exist on other pages of your website.

As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers may not display

Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. While we understand that

it may be challenging to monitor user-generated content, such as comments,

on your site, we require publishers to check that the webpages containing

their ad code complies with our program policies.

Please make any necessary changes to your webpages in the next 72 hours.

We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies

(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=asp...)

to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad

serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to

your account within the next three days, your account will remain active

but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note,

however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found

in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Issue ID# 166xxxxx

----------------

For more information regarding this warning email, please visit our Help

Center:

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113058&stc=as...

As far as I remembered, I have not cut-pasted or written or even pointed to any adult content on the web, tho yeah, there's lot which indicates maturity on both the readers' and authors part. Obviously, I was a little flabbergasted. On clicking the culprit link, I realized there were some eastern-script (Chinese?) comments that I could not make head or tail of, and had never noticed, or been notified about!

Especially given that this is on Google's own blogging platform, does this sound like its fair ? Not from where I stand. For one, the algos could, and should, easily isolate the offending comments, realize its not author-originated, and maybe hide those? At worst, maybe send me a friendlier note about "Hey we've found some shady material from your commenters, wanna take care of it? Its interfering with our Adsense policies."

But no sir, I have been found in violation for someone else's actions, inaction and clearly no "adult" intent on my part. And if "further violations are found in the future" I will lose the privilege of using Adsense! And the huge riches - all of $36 - that I could accumulate from the same. I am terror-stricken!

Honestly, Big-G, this is a very very lousy approach to managing consumers/customers. There's not even a way of getting back to someone in there and clarifying! You're losing the mojo a bit, and this needs to be part of the reforms if you want that back. If its a "just machines" approach, sure we understand, but first make those machines a little smarter before you send threatening notes to users.

Aside : For the longest time I'd cribbed that most folks had a "we-re wrong, Google's right" if something didn't quite work out with using a Google service. A set of results that left one unsatisfied just meant we'd not framed the query well. People started to, and continue to, rewrite sites for the express purpose of being in Googles good books and ranks. Isn't that a little screwed ? I do see cracks in that mindset, and one hears f the SEO problem etc more often.

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I am in violation of Google's laws!

2011-01-22T09:51:00.002+05:30

This is what I saw in the mail this morning:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not
accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying
Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For
instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as
http://entrypreneur.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching-entrepreneurial-bug-side.html.
Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may
exist on other pages of your website.

As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers may not display
Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. While we understand that
it may be challenging to monitor user-generated content, such as comments,
on your site, we require publishers to check that the webpages containing
their ad code complies with our program policies.

Please make any necessary changes to your webpages in the next 72 hours.
We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en)
to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad
serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to
your account within the next three days, your account will remain active
but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note,
however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found
in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Issue ID# 166xxxxx
----------------
For more information regarding this warning email, please visit our Help
Center:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113058&stc=aspe-ai4-en.

Thus Far

2011-01-17T10:00:00.001+05:30

I started writing code in grade 7, and in the 8th (in 1988!), had stitched up a desktop app (we called them "projects" back then) that presented visual + text questions - with some level of animated graphics painstakingly coded one motion at a time - to test people's knowledge of road rules and best practices. I saw a very similar - tho of course more advanced - piece of software when I took my driving license test at the DMV in Beaverton, OR.

College was one massive waste of time, except a couple of interesting "projects" we did - from a fundamental growth of knowledge point of view. Sure we picked up a lot of stuff, but didn't really connect to lots of it till much later, as we stumbled upon concept after beautiful concept.

My first job was in operating systems - initially in the command layer and later - nirvana - inside the kernel itself - of a very cutting edge OS for parallel architectures. I learnt new stuff every single day.

The next job came because of a huge jump in salary - and got boring as hell in a few weeks. We were porting massive amounts of code with very little clue to the underlying architectures, designs or even concepts. Personally, that turned out to be a good place because I couldn't bear to stay in front of the screen doing diffs on logs - so automated bits and pieces and improved my scripting skills a lot. Laziness, boredom are indeed drivers of innovation :)

An unexpected switch to an "R&D" group brought much needed activity to the brain - we were trying to solve the problem of base platform developers who needed to fix bugs reported on platforms that the code had been ported on to. Did my first major design work for this - and got to a stage where basic core dumps from one platform could be captured and migrated to the base platform, with context intact, for debugging. Filed a few patents, and this would've had a major impact if it were used for reduced triaging effort and manpower.

The next bit of "R&D" involved mapping pieces of database logic - across constructs and languages - to a common format, looking for opportunity for recommended practices, improvements and optimizations as documented in a huge number of "expert" level books and cross-compiling into an appropriate target language. Awesome work again, and we got to present this and interact with end users for whom this could be potentially very very useful. But, as is the fitrat of R&D projects, that, was that. Of course, with a coupld of more patent applications filed.

Yahoo was a huge opportunity and next step in "impact". I got into the fascinating realm of machine learning, information retrieval and text mining that I had no formal training in, yet took to - more pragmatically than most with formal training - instantly. We did a great job of our project - coming with lots of innovative ideas, techniques and solutions than solved more than just our immediate problem. It was a joyride and even had impact as it got rolled out as a new property for Yahoo India. Of course, where that went then became a question.

Another zoom-out followed as yet another R&D effort where we were trying to model visualize and deal with messages, chats, mails, blogs etc as one : conversations - with social authority and impact used for ranking. This was way before buzz/facebook etc had made an appearance. Good work again. R&D project again :)

Then Ziva happened. An amazing exciting journey that started with ideas, design, implementations, customer interfacing - but took me way beyond code. The scale of problems and impact assessment grew to envelope the software/development bit of it as one part of the solution, not the whole of it. Not that we succeeded in doing all we started to - but the neurons were pushed hard everyday, and the breadth of skills and ability to deal with fuzziness grew tremendously.

So much so that I became what I refer to as a "Product Manager". This is a much abused term and means a lot many things to a lot many people. To me its the guy who's got the 360 around a product in his head, and driving his life. Needs people to build, sell, hire etc etc - but the one who's marrying the strategic to the tactical, and keeping track of the story.

Linger is an effort at product management too. The code-writing is very different. But fundamentally, the ideas are the same. A product needs to be designed, created, tweaked continuously. The team has expanded, and the vision has grown.

What I've realized is that each plateau, there's been an urge to see if the problem solving effort made any real difference - and the next level was subconsciously desired, and found. Its not the coding, or the designs, or the rollouts that mattered. The question about what they became - or led to - eventually cropped up. Managing to score on somebody else's report card did not satisfy at all.

Is entrepreneurship the culmination of this ? Is this freedom to think, create, follow a path the ultimate path to satisfaction ? Dunno, but so far, its better, and I have found in me an urge to keep doing this despite its not insignificant costs. Amazingly, all the old rules of "hard work" (as measured), killer instinct, dog-eat-dog etc seem to not apply. Yes it still takes work and getting around a lot of procrastination - but those are by-products of a bigger desire, not drivers.

As always - "lets see how this goes".

Product Strategy & Management

2011-01-04T11:00:00.001+05:30

While I'm working more or less fulltime on Linger I do miss the excitement of product creation (i.e. in the software space - Linger's a product in its own right!) and do think I have enough to offer towards this.

Of course I'm not likely to take up a "fulltime job" so please do not offer me one. I'm not looking at being co-founder and what not - thats a step one can take only after a decently long engagement and if all the stars are aligned. But I like solving interesting problems, and I like the challenges that product roadmaps bring.

So if you think you're could do with some help/inputs on this front, ping me at get.sameer AHT gmail.com and let me know what you're doing.

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When Starting Out

2010-09-21T14:09:00.001+05:30

Do not burden yourself with Scale upfront.

It comes when it does, and will match the level of your ambition and effort. Do not make the success of your idea contingent on huge scale, and an eventual, delayed payout. Of course, some ideas will need that. But do not get discouraged if it appears that it'll never be a Google. Even old-world, seemingly unscalable brick and mortar ideas have been grown. They don't all have to grow the same way. Linear growth is just fine too. And paths, ideas and opportunities will emerge as you deep dive into something that you really care about.

Don't worry about having to share it.

Its cliched, but a small part of a large pie is better than all of nothing at all. Sharing is not just about "attracting talent" but about truly transferring ownership, authority and demonstrating trust. Its a tough one, but one very important if you want to be part of a team that can help create something much larger than what you might, individually.

Keep thinking of revenue.

This means a bunch of things. For one, you're not thinking of investors but of customers, and paying ones at that. No business is "too small right now" to be making revenues. Ever. Every Rs.10/- is validation. And it also keeps you alive to the business model, and tests the assumptions and hypotheses you started out with.

At the same time, don't obsess about revenue.

There is usually a larger picture and story than your current sales flow, or even product offering, might suggest. You might have thought of it upfront (but hopefully, aren't building/creating that all at one go), or it might present itself as you start assembling the idea and product and market together. So while revenue is important, its ok if its not as high as you expected. Do not let it take up ALL your time for sure. A CEO must do some amount of sales, but one who becomes focused only on that is very very dangerous in the not-short term.

Keep Values Intact, and commincate clearly.

Be it to partners, co-founders, vendors, employees. Its easy for motivations, aspirations and desires to diverge as business grows, and creates pushes and pulls in different directions. If its all built on the platform of some core values, which are then never compromised for immediate gains, then you stand a better chance of these pulls being reconciled into a single vision. Else you lose time, trust, people.

Network, connect, get out of the door

Yeah that website can be improved. And code optimized. Or delivery made more efficient. Or whatever. But as your business grows, your eyes and ears need to be out there. Personally, while you're small. You need to learn how to keep fishing for opportunity, great people, customers; you need to know what they think/feel; you need to know it way before the sh*t hits the fan.

Of course, be flexible

Its not like you might be wrong about many things. Its more like you surely will be! Its about persisting with the idea, moving from plan A to B, experiment X to Y and backing yourself to try things out even as you're unsure. Of course, you need a very decent eye on personal cash flows, expense patterns as you do this if you do not want to find yourself in a pressure cooker all of a sudden.

Go ahead, entrepreneurize!

Linger Leisure is live!

2010-09-19T08:11:00.000+05:30

What started as a one-off experiment last year is a bigger now.

Linger Leisure is live, with 2 locations, and the hope of many more to come. And Vijay is part of the Linger team now.

Its not just about adding places and rooms and accommodation, but experiences - as local and authentic as we find them. Its about exploring these ourselves. Its about learning, being surprised, the unfamiliar and unknown - these are what make travelling worth it.

We're looking out for more pretty places, different experiences, and even folks who're keen to do this sort of a thing.

Standing To Fly

2010-07-15T17:20:00.001+05:30

Almost exactly a year ago, I'd blogged about disruptive innovation using a possible example from the airline industry.

Well, if RyanAir has its way, this might become reality! Ryan's been disruptive in its operational models, and now is extending the same to questioning the basic design that runs the aviation industry itself. I'm impressed, and honestly had not imagined that the far-out thought I had last year would get a shot at being reality this early.

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Money, Governance, Entrepreneurship. What's Your Metric ?

2010-07-13T09:47:00.001+05:30

The Government is beginning to talk more and more in terms of user fees, revenue targets, cash positions, etc. Even the citizenry takes comfort and pride in the fact that, say, the BMTC runs at a profit. Its surely a good thing - fiscal responsibility is key to sustainable development.

Yet, these targets, numbers, metrics are not the end for governance - merely a means. Its critical to ensure those numbers are healthy, but its even more critical to measure the change that is sought to be made using the money. It has little merit, otherwise. The goal of a state is not to get rich directly, but indirectly. That it needs to be in very healthy financial situation is a side effect.

Is the same true for a lot of entrepreneurs ? Money is a good metric, but isn't what you started out to do more important as a goal ? As in, would you rather let the effort try hard and die or would you be ok completely changing the nature of the effort so cash flows look better ? Don't think of a state of crisis, but of a steady, decent revenue state doing what you started out trying to do versus a much better cash cow if you switched to something that was not really close to your heart or part of the vision.

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Focus, and the Doors You Have in Front

2010-07-05T15:55:00.001+05:30

Today, I understood first hand what focus implies. Its not necessarily about doing only one thing. But about doing whatever you are for the right reasons, with the right expectations, the opportunity costs understood and appreciated well, and the risks clearly known.

Opening certain doors, and shutting the others, then makes a lot more sense.

Can't say one does with 100% levels of certainty. But it does help one think hard about one's options and choices. It helps one become utterly honest and transparent. Its helps move, execute, and not get paralyzed.

Enough rambling. Now to get started on work.

[ Hope I did the right thing! ;) ]

Posted via email from workFront

New Idea : A Chicken and Tech Problem

2010-06-19T11:20:00.000+05:30

I have a new idea that I totally think has potential, is worth pursuing, and building technology around.

The urge, as an engineer, is to first build the site + functionality, and then "roll it out". But after years of being in tech, and having seen many never get out of their comfort zone and, as a result, having built too much in isolation, its an urge I need to resist.

So the first tasks ? Go sign up the stakeholders. Create enough functionality and documentation to sign them up. then go find other stakeholders as users - give them just enough so they can appreciate the core value of the offering.

Then think of the code.

Earning It

2010-06-19T11:18:00.001+05:30

Been about 4 months since Linger went operationally live - including some test runs.

Its been a major journey - entrepreneurship wise.

First up - its a very different feeling when you create something someone likes enough to pay for, and gives positive feedback later. I think this defines entrepreneurship, in a sense.
Next, an entrepreneur's main challenge is to live with, and manage uncertainty almost all the time. Doubt too, often, though one might not admit the same.
You will make mistakes, despite your best efforts. And there will be some goof ups that you did not plan for, and cannot control. There is little time for regrets, introspection. Get over it, fix what you can and get on with it.
Your venture is often you! It takes your personality, and what you like and do not like, how you do things starts showing up everywhere. So figure out early if you're in a business where your interests and personality resonate with the business success parameters.
Its rewarding! Only, for an entrepreneur, the reward is rarely monetary alone. In fact, that bit may not happen for a while as your spreadsheets start making less and less sense :)
Honesty works. With customers, employees, your own self. Don't pretend to be what you're not.
Defensive pricing is a bad signal. And you do not want to attract the wrong customer or keep the right one away. Even if its slower, build the brand/attributes right.
The expenses are always more than they seem to be :)

I've also learned I enjoy the hospitality part of it a lot! I love it when people tell me they read a book, or spotted a bird, or were surprised by the stars in the sky. I appreciate it when they appreciate the raw, warm but with-no-formally-training service provided by the staff.

Its a tough journey, but it seems totally worth doing.

Tech, Non-Tech and All That

2010-06-19T11:17:00.001+05:30

By and large, in the startup space and media, startups, VC funding, and the entire ecosystem is more or less is assumed to be about technology, software products, code, platforms, etc.

In real life, entrepreneurship is all about businesses, deals, real needs.

VCs go right ahead and fund companies based on a product seen (despite what they claim) and more or less hope the team will learn about the actual business they are engaged in serving. A travel portal is more about travel and the food chain in the industry, and less about the technology powering it. Very few software businesses are about usage of the software itself - BaseCamp etc come to mind.

However, when funding non-IT businesses, a question about the team's lack of experience will promptly raised! How's a bunch of guys who can write code to create a site tracking brand reviews more equipped to understand branding, brand management budgets, advertising, than, say, a geek starting a restaurant is to having a good knowledge of how that space works ? Yet, the ecosystem does look at both differently!

I am hardly suggesting that people start doling out cash to geeks starting restaurants, or getting into hospitality randomly, but quite the opposite. When we stitch up teams to create businesses, and write up plans and models, and invest in these companies, we consider the business cases, needs, and think of the software as infrastructure that is needed for the execution of that business. The search engine that managed to then grow an advertising business just happened, and chasing that as a model is fraught with dangers.

First, figure out the business first. Next, whether its interesting enough for you through its ups and downs, and does running it have by-products that make it worth it for you?

And if you understand and relate to the above it, does not matter whether you want to code it or not, or build the house, or cook the food. Those are details. Details which can make or break the business, and must be executed right, for sure. But they come after you've figured out the business, and your passion for it. Technology itself - the love of it, or the need to create it freely - cannot be a healthy, sustainable enough basis for entrepreneurship for a large percentage of cases.

Twitter, Next ?

2010-06-19T11:15:00.000+05:30

GigaOm had a post on a more open Twitter like universe: http://gigaom.com/2010/06/17/what-would-a-more-open-twitter-look-like/

I quite like the thought and would like to extend it

Use twitter's downtime to "fill transient need"
Support Closed communities/groups, workgroups, signed up customers. Yammer, for instance, could also support Twitter accounts with a failover option for account holders! So folks from co X, Y, Z can still communicate beyond workgroups using @twitter-id@twitter etc
Create add on functionality that makes it valuable for specific interests. E.g. a cycling community that also has syntax/an interface/smart parsing for logging, planning rides, in-community classifieds, etc. Some sort of an enhanced forum on the same channel ? Again, keep the links alive with Twitter and other open standards.

Some of the above do exist - but there's clearly a space for niches. Twitter has essentially helped establish a habit of and create a market for a new mode of communication on the web and mobile. The next round of innovation to piggyback on this is just waiting to happen!

A few things I've noticed/felt

2010-04-07T09:32:00.000+05:30

CRM is broken. Sure, I have almost no knowledge of formal CRM systems etc, but having sat through a few presentations and discussions on this, feel strongly that both the Customer and the Relationship are completely missing from this - its from a sales force pov, completely. There's a startup idea in this somewhere - ping me if you're keen and can help find a market.

Hyperlocal will be big. Sure its been a jittery start, but there's no other way to go. And the JustDials of the world ain't cutting it.

Search will be more about how Soc Nets/people's heads are crawled (/trawled?). Realtimeness is one attribute, reactively looking for things, opinions, thoughts, ideas will be another. Aardvark has already been one small tiny step in the direction - there will be more.

Skills : breadth is catching up again. For a while the world was too taken up with specialization - at the cost of wider skillsets. Specialists are very critical, as are those who can do 5 things well.

I'm guessing a lot many in our generation (ok, I'm already old, so maybe half a generation downstream from us) will have second/alternative careers. Workplaces, HR practice needs to factor this in, starting now.

Google makes the right move: Aardvark!

2010-02-12T09:30:00.000+05:30

I've been following Aardvark (and similar social search efforts) and in fact, had mentioned to someone as a follow-up discussion to the post that Vark would be a very likely candidate for a buy-out by FB or Google or anyone with an eye on the next generation of search. Bingo!

Of course, it would have been great if I'd gotten around to doing it myself, but thats the thing with lost opportunity :)

What I Need On Facebook

2010-02-05T09:34:00.000+05:30

Facebook is up to 400 million users. Thats almost 6.7% of the world population! Awesome.

What does it mean to me ?

On the plus side, I've "reconnected" with a whole lot of folks from my past life. school, college, hometown - they're all in there. I've also connected with a lot many new connections that I forge through cycling, or other activity I participate in these days.

Amongst these, I get to know on an ongoing basis who's working in what part of the world, and who's had kids, and partied last night, and even the political, social views of many of these folks. Sometimes, I feel like an inadvertent voyeur!

Too broad a social landscape ? Too much info ? Some of these are context specific contacts, and while I do share some interests with them, I do not need to know every little detail in their lives, their friendships, their views on everything! In fact, with many there's little beyond the "Add as friend", and apart from having access to their inboxes, or walls, etc, there's little else by way of friendship or any sort of relationship. The context's too weak, and too distant, and its a farce, really.

I certainly am interested in a smaller, tighter circle of friends, and have been actively thinking I need to keep my 'active social circle' much smaller, and more meaningful. Sure, I do interact with the larger set of people on specific interests, and it would be great to tap into their collective knowledge and wisdom on a need-basis - but without the full duplex intrusiveness of every little update from each others lives, social circles, etc. I might be old fashioned, but Facebook is not how my social life - at least the meaningful part of it - really operates. This was NOT that much of a problem when the number of connections was smaller, but the amount of fluff has grown manifold since. And turning a request down has since become some sort of a social faux pas.

There's opportunity for a different layer atop Facebook - which is reducing to some sort of a storage and archival medium for one's entire social graph - personal, hobby-derived, official, formal, etc as well as the activity on it - that helps consume the data from this store in a more meaningful, natural way. Either Facebook could add features to enable this (they were kinda forced to handle the Twitter deluge using the "Live Feed" vs "News Feed" split) or a 3rd party app/site will spring up sooner or later to do this. The noise in there is getting a little too much, and I've been wondering if it really matters whether I'm "on Facebook" or not.

Those who really need to find me or talk to me, will, anyhow. The rest is often just noise/PR.

Startup, Salaries, Risk, Entrepreneurship, Payoffs

2010-01-19T10:36:00.002+05:30

No, those aren't tags for the post, but the cluster of words that should go together, but often do not.

Entrepreneurship implies risk and the possibility of a payoff.
A startup, as we know it, is one for of entrepreneurship.

In this context, the concept of market salaries has no meaning at all!

More and more and more startups I see, hear, read about are trying to behave like larger, more structured organizations. The worst part is that they model "compensation" (oh, how I hate that word - its what accident victims get, not motivated people working towards a dream) and other "HR practices" on how-its-done-at-big-co-X. Where is the innovation there, people ?

Here's some ideas and thoughts that are worth remembering/attempting

Market salaries : this is an absurd phrase for anyone in even a partly decision-making position in a startup.
You need empowerment, ownership, flexibility way more than you need processes
Try this : Keep a very small 'retainer' component, and then a percentage of profits, not equity stake etc. Sure, do that as well for the early ones, but since you're small and all, nothing like direct participation in profits, and nothing quite like that to keep folks 'real' and focused on the bottomline. It'll build a business like nobody's business :)

Don't ape the last big company you work at. You never know whats going to work, so at the least give it a shot! And just because you need people, do not "attract" those who're in it just because ots cool to be seen as 'taking risk' without actually wanting to take any.

Posted via email from workFront

The US Immigration debate

2009-12-06T11:29:00.001+05:30

Vivek Wadhwa has been working on, and pushing forth the idea that the US needs to 'allow' more and more smarter guys in to start businesses and participate in the American Dream, so it can grow. There's some support, some opposition, some hate-mail. I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with the Startup-Visa idea, but overall, he makes sane arguments for an open world.

However, there's just one little hitch. The world's moving on rapidly while people argue on the allow/disallow lists! Sure, the US has been a major destination for folks across the world over the last 30-40 years, but the gloss is gone, and the action's moved/moving rapidly elsewhere.

In fact, the numbers of 'foreigners' doing ventures in India, tho small, seems to be on the up. China and India were 45% of the world economy till a couple of centuries ago, and it'll probably get back there quite quick. its just plain logical.

So while Vivek's attempts at ensuring his adopted country doesn't lose whats been its competitive edge for a long long time, it might turn out to be too optimistic an argument in that geography soon.

India, on the other hand, needs to silence its Xenophobes really quick if it doesn't want to get into the same situation. Yes we're a lot of smart, entrepreneurial people, but special skills, smart ideas and a few more herbs and spices enriching our melting pot is not only a wonderful thing, its also been a tradition here forever.

Posted via email from workFront

Catching the Entrepreneurial Bug : Side-Effects

2009-11-17T17:39:00.001+05:30

Choices force thought.

Its true for startups (one reason I say delay the funding so you're forced to choose this over that, etc).

But so very true personally as well. Been getting "Opportunity" mails in the Inbox. A couple of them would've been dream jobs a couple of years ago, but now, I feel apprehension. Will it be too narrow a "Job Definition" ? Wait, what'll I even write on my CV - if I do even feel like sending across one - ohave done too wide a variety of jobs over the last few years to try and showcase this over that. Will I get bored in a 9-5, and will there be enough flexibility ? Can I even muster up the requisite formality - and I mean that in the most positive sense of the word - for a regular corporate setting ?

On the other hand, there are half a dozen ideas. At some level or the other all seem worth pursuing. There are also other interests I am pursuing. Nothing's crystallized enough to warrant undivided attention, and to a great extent I just love the energy that pursuing multiple ideas creates. Thats one reason SlicedBread happened.

Which is the opportunity, and which the cost ? I only wish I had the benefit of some hindsight upfront :)

Posted via email from workFront

workFront is moving too

2009-11-07T10:58:00.000+05:30

To http://entrypreneur.posterous.com

Am quite sold on the ease-of-use, and they're importing the older entries as we speak. Cool.

The Great Indian Ecosystem

2009-10-29T11:28:00.007+05:30

Some gems I heard over the last two days (All paraphrased. Non italicized bits are mine):

Indians don't take risks. Yeah, right.
Indians are immature. We should read more books. Whoa, there!
Indians don't know how to sell :)

So, more or less, "Me = All Indian" seems to be a strong foundation of the ecosystem. Add to that the repetition of the sentiment. And again. And expertise is thus born!

So the hordes selling Tally, and of course making it, and the numerous loads who set up Potels, and the Tata Nano and the risk associated with buying a JLR or a Corus, the buying and selling of Glaceau - I guess no Indians in any of those pictures, eh ?

Ok, sorry about the sarcasm etc. I will confess it did get my goat and this was not a mature reaction. Should probably go read a book to figure that one out :D

Seriously. Guys, please. There are numerous other Indians who take risks, sell awesomely, and while they might not read books, their business maturity will be the content of many. Hordes of them. We're the nation who's everywhere - amongst the largest trading, immigrating, innovating populations. (Its not, repeat not, repeat not about patents and lab research alone. Please get over that inferiority complex of yours. Please.) Yes, I personally suck at a lot of these attributes, and would love to learn how to deal with this gap. So do a lot many from the technology space, and this is surely a gap we need to bridge (probably through partnering).

So lets please find those Indians, learn from them. The sweeping generalizations will not help. A pets.com, amongst a gazillion similar examples, sucked as much, so the nationality tag doesn't help at all!

If we all become a little more straightforward, show a little more honesty and humility, and focus on the solutions, we might yet create an ecosystem. Judgmental generalizations, though, will probably not be part of that...

Why Kawasaki at Nasscom ?

2009-10-29T09:45:00.003+05:30

Bangalore played host to the Nasscom Product Conclave over the last couple of days, and it was a brilliantly organized event. The best part of it, imo, was the cross section of participants the event was able to pull in. Such major industry events usually get a little intimidating for the smaller, just starting out guys - but this conclave easily avoided that. The sessions were useful, deeper than usual, and because of these reasons, packed. The networking was very very active, and I pretty much caught up with everyone I've met and come across over the last four years!

Amidst the relevance, interactivity and focus of the event, Guy Kawasaki - as a keynote speaker and twitter specialist :) - added the superstar draw for many folks. Guy's a great speaker with ready wit and humour, and very, very approachable. He's also a persistent marketer.

However, I do think he wasn't the best choice for the keynote. Also, the session he conducted was as much a distraction from the theme of the event as it was an attraction for many. Why do I think so?

Guy Kawasaki @ Nasscom 2009 , Bangalore

View more presentations from bloggersrikanth.

The keynote presentation above was not the most relevant to the ground reality in India. At all.

We do NOT get people for free here - not that much of a resession after all.
We also are awesome "value" creators and it often makes sense for a large chunk of startups (especially as they learn about business) to start in the lower right quadrant - a small chunk of startups can shoot for uniqueness, and especially building a business around it. Execution, value hold they key to getting a shot at stage 2.
Twitter as a marketing tool in India ? Hmmm. I'd almost say a large chunk of active Tweeters were actually in that room :) I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

We need a couple of home-grown superstars who, like Guy, are great speakers and approachable, and are less jargon-laden than anyone who gets to some level of success has a tendency to become. Entrepreneurs building products need stellar examples they can relate to, as well as understand!
The Twitter 101 was a little too basic for a lot of the crowd. Some of the ideas shared both in the keynote as well as the sessions would be very very useful in a college, or what-do-I-need-to-know before I start out crowd, but a lot many attendees have progressed beyond that. We needed Marketing 102, or Sales 102, etc. more than this.
I'm completely guessing - but it must've been expensive :)
The Indian product space needs a little more grunt and grassroots and less superstardom-aspirations - and getting a major star like Guy can reinforce the wrong message. Too many folks already confuse the superstar dreams for passion.

Apart from this, though, I had a terrific time at the event. Made connections, and started out on my journey to understand the fascinating world of real world marketing and sales (I'm still in Kindergarten wrt those, especially sales). The CIO session was very useful (wow, people who really spend money on software :D) though one always would love more direct, straightforward and precise ideas about how the real world operates (no discussions on size difference related issues, kickback-demand handling, etc)

Nasscom has taken a very conscious step towards supporting product creation out of India. And from the evidence at hand, its at most an iteration or two before the geeks really connect with the biz folks, and magic happens.

Personal Finance Software

2009-10-23T13:46:00.003+05:30

I was at a small town in Coorg day before. We - a local friend and I - were sipping a cuppa in the evening - when a guy ambled buy with a rather bulky handheld device. My pal greeted him, and took out a 500/- from his pocket and handed it over. The guy greeted him back, and immediately gave him a printed acknowledgement for the cash received.

Obviously, I was terribly curious by now!

Turns out, the District co-operative bank has a go-to-where-they-are scheme to create a small savings habit. This is a special account, and people can essentially hand over whatever little money they want to - 10/- or above - whenever the guy comes along. The smaller businesses there have managed to save a lot, and the saving habit encouraged this way ensures a little less is spend on 'god-knows-what'.

This is a fabulous example of the primary task of a personal finance tool/service! Not just provide fancy tools to those who've converted, but provide encouragement and some discipline to those who're open to develop a savings habit. The investment habit follows soon.

The bank offered a very small return on this saving, but I guess this idea is more about capital building than about growth. The collector also got a 2% or so share in the monthly pickings. Win, win, win!

Execution : What Use Is An Imaginary Business Plan ?

2009-10-12T13:26:00.004+05:30

We covered this a lot in the recent PM Workshop we did.

Now, as part of a business I'm trying to setup (and am very very new to), there's a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet which are what is popularly known as the business plan, and what I would rather think of as a rough draft :D

Investment ? How much ? When ?

There's a certain amount of seed capital, obviously, as the idea starts taking shape. What I'm doing is a little capital-dependent, so the initial 'sunk cost' is key. [ Notice I called it sunk cost since I do not want it weighing down the operation with numerical pressure just yet. ] Of course, in the sheets, and in life, there's more that can be done for greater returns. Its very very alluring to try and start just a little bit larger so it can start paying for itself soon.

But wait, do I trust that sheet ?

There are a bunch of revenue-side numbers in that spreadsheet that are key. Tweak them around a bit, and the end results change dramatically! And a lot of tse have been based on certain assumptions that produce a wide enough range of outcomes from hardly managing to break even to unbelievable levels of profitability. Obviously, the numbers are somewhere in between.

(Pic Credit)

Re-examine your assumptions as you go along.

Then there are costs. And hidden costs accounted for as a percentage factor. Assumptions, and assumptions about assumptions :) The whole model is one big fairy tale, or so it seems.

So why build a model at all ?

Getting familiar with the assumptions. Play around with the sheet a bit, and you'll start getting the hang of the assumptions you're making in there. Make a note - at least a mental one - of the bits you're tweaking a lot to understand outcomes. I would not be surprised if over half your real-world numbers are what you might consider wild guesses :) Its important to know what you do not know.
Getting comfortable with the worst case, and then some. Taking risk is a major part of being an entrepreneur. Understanding these risks is even more so. Learning how to manage the risks, eventually, could help you become a successful one! The spreadsheet does help understand risks better.
It helps to have a reference as you execute. Since you're testing a bunch of hypotheses, you need to be measuring against something - perhaps ranges if not precise numbers. And its not just the numbers you might get wrong - but the assumptions about the bits and pieces that define your model itself - this needs to be validated before you start taking your numbers too seriously! Say, your business is a quick turnaround, low margin one - if you leave out - for lack of effort or knowledge or change in business scenarios - one variable that jacks up your costs by, say, 4% for every cycle, you've had it! Having this reference will help you understand how much you still need to figure out before you try and mesmerize the world with words like "scale" and "growth" and sink in a gazillion into this.

So there, this is coming from my experience-as-I-experience it. Will keep this blog updated with the aftermath, and how effective the fairy tale was in making my dreams possible.

I'm the User. Find me ads for my blog :)

2009-10-05T12:35:00.004+05:30

Who's ever made money from ads ?

A large majority of people who write blogs (note: I do not say blogger) do setup adsense and keep the big G fed with below payment thresholds, and never make anything substantial themselves.

Most individual blogs (like mine) do not have a huge set of readers. Yet, some percentage of these blogs are very focused in terms of the topics they touch and the geographies they are in and write about. My tag cloud would mention cycling, bangalore, carbon, entrepreneurship etc.

Is there a case for a more targeted monetization for these ? Its like the hyperlocal (or hypertopical) of the online space, but isn't there a case for certain high value transactional ads (actual sale, or coupon download, etc) on a site like mine ? Of course, I do not want random ads from across a gazillion advertisers with a really remote chance of being of any interest to my readers. I'd rather pick and choose and get a few onboard that I think I would not be embarrased, and possibly even happy, about promoting, and that might have a better shot at actually interesting the readers I obviously know better (demographically, behaviourally) than some clickstream analyzer sitting a few continents away.

Sure it will not scale and is not appropriate for large sites with lotf of content and/or traffic, but conversely, for the huge set of small fries like us, a shaper, cleaner set of advertisers, or promotional content might just make a lot more sense!

// this post goes against the "I as a user" thumb-rule of product management. But many an opportunity is found in suchlike. Of course, the followup discipline for evaluating the opportunity is critical, and out of scope for this blog ;)

Product Management Workshop

2009-09-30T11:16:00.001+05:30

Ashish (pluggd.in) and I (representing SlicedBread) are doing a workshop this Saturday, the 3rd of October, to try and get across a feel for what holding the the threads of a product from its conception to its maturity involves. Of course you're unlikely to become a great Product Manager (and I am still learning every single day!) simply because you attended the workshop, but it does introduce you to the structure around this role, indeed the very need for the role, and common mistakes we make during product development. Theoeore basic idea is to be able to connect the product development effort much better with the market needs as they're discovered, be able to respond to changes, and keep the costs of these cycles low.

More details here.

Chamak washes dirty linen in public. Execution, Execution!

2009-09-29T10:13:00.009+05:30

Just yesterday, we had been discussing what else hyper/local play could do to expand business and create differentiators, and I'd mentioned to Indus that ironing services inside apartment complexes have always been a major point.

This morning, went downstairs to drop the kids to the school bus, and what do I see ?

Chamak - Neighborhood Washing & Ironing Services

Each kg of clothes is 40/- and they even SMS you once its done!

Quite obviously, its intended to be a big chain over time - a la Ferns And Petals for flowers. They seem to have about 10 locations in Bangalore itself. Someone obvioulsy heard the chatter about the pain points with the existing vendors etc and decided to give this a shot. I'm not yet debating about it being a great idea etc, but its and opportunity, and its heartening to see someone take a crack at it.

On digging just a little, here's what I found - introducing the Village Laundry Service funded by Innosight Ventures, and promotes individual entrepreneurs to run their rigs.

One's heard often that 10 other people have exactly the same idea at the same time as you have it (or even earlier), and it boils down to execution, but it was still a very wow moment to come across a real world example of one such.

Suspiciously Round Figures ?

2009-09-28T10:24:00.002+05:30

While we were on vacation, Twitter raised a 100mill, supposedly at a #1Billion valuation!

As I read this, the nose twitched. What is it with the round figures ? I mean they sure do their due diligence, and Twitter probably did some work on how much cash they need. I can understand guys keeping it at back-of-the-envelope levels when doing seed stage, or even series A funding. But at this scale, for folks who're still trying to figure out monetization, sounds a little too strange. Why not 87 million (imagine how many startups you could fund for 13 mill!) and why not a valuation of 0.93 Billion ? Are these numbers arrived at through some kinda-shoulda-perhaps-maybe hand waviness ? Is there more ? Perhaps a contigency chest for an acquisition thats part of the deal but not really available unless... ?

Someone who knows the insides of these deals please throw some light. $100 million of a $1 billion valuation - it just reeks of laziness or fuzziness otherwise.

To Re-Iterate!

2009-09-18T14:09:00.005+05:30

Had come across this long read - but its totally full of great points which are nevertheless tough to internalize!

Here's one about agility:

26. Ready, aim, fire. Back when Beowulf was a lad, he used his trusty old slingshot to attack his enemies, kill squirrels and impress the maidens. Chances are he didn’t aim all that much. What he did was just let ‘er fly. If the rock fell short, he adjusted so the next time he got closer, and closer the next time. Same thing in a new startup. The situation favors action over planning. It really should be ready-fire-adjust. One of my favorite cartoons is the one with the two buzzards sitting in the tree waiting for the man to die from thirst…”Patience, hell,” says one to the other, “I want to eat something.”

Action over planning is a great one to follow. Especially given that gut feel is often all you got unless you really want to believe internet driven 'research', your business-plan spreadsheets, and other related conjecture.

And some follow up:

91. Trust instincts, but drop bad ideas fast. The subtitle of this blog perfectly describes this entrepreneur: “frequently wrong, never in doubt.” That was intended to be somewhat funny, but the people who work around me would probably say it is so so so so true. Hey! If I don’t believe in my own ideas strongly, how will we actually find the RIGHT one? I don’t care if I am a universe of one, I trust myself more than some un-engaged focus group. And so should you. And, I never guaranteed that I would have only good ideas anyway.

...

94. Understanding of the Law of Requisite Variety. This is a law described by cybernetician Ross Ashby which perfectly describes the creative entrepreneur. Basically, the law says that in any system (company, department, a meeting) all things being equal, the individual with the widest range of responses (the most ideas) will control the system. To me this means that the gift or trick is in promoting plenty of ideas, fast and furiously. The process is quantity first, then quality. Lots of people can sift and sort ideas, criticizing and developing. Your job is to get the most ideas on the table, from you or others.

[ Plug: this and related stuff will be covered here. I think the date's likely to change, given Dussera. ]

Substitutes, Alternatives and Opportunity

2009-09-13T12:32:00.005+05:30

Here's what an ISP is having to contend with, in South Africa.

This reminded me of something we read in our networks course - "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes hurling down the highway" - Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Sure, this is a stunt by a really pained customer to highlight the pain point. But it brings alive an interesting fact - that you never know what corner the competition will come from. The obvious ones are never the only ones to worry about.

And when looking for opportunity, do not be discouraged merely by what seem like saturated markets served by existing players. Despite better-than-South-African-speeds, the above did get me to think if there is a logistics business to be built here in India around short distance high volume data transfers. Of course it needs more market research than I want to do around that - but nevertheless, the opportunity that pain points present are numerous. A better email service seems dumb, but who knows. Or a common kitchen in apartment complexes.

Out of the box is the only way, or at least a terrific one.

Update: Ashish discusses the same example here. Its a very strong example - and this opportunity is something we'd discussed over chai. Sure its a little crazy but hey, the message is - think hatke.

Customer Focus : Why the online travel space is not with it, mostly

2009-09-11T09:00:00.007+05:30

This post is NOT a rant, but something that highlighted how difficult it is to really understand the business you're in, and serve the needs of the customer, not what you think you should be selling!

A short story, to start with (Mine)

I've recently gotten involved with The Tour of Nilgiris as a volunteer to help organize the 09 edition. This year, one major focus area is to up the level of accommodation provided to the riders and support team, as compared to the previous edition. Being a little connected to the startup world, I thought it might be a good opportunity to provide some startups an opportunity to showcase themselves, and the difference they can make.

The target audience, in this particular instance, is just perfect : upwardly mobile, made-it-in-life audience willing to pay for convenience, travels, is adventurous, and usually, invariably online (which is otherwise a big pain point for Indian startups trying to get to the right TG).

So, I dashed out a couple of mails to startups I thought might be interested and able to help out with the request.

The brief : we're 90 ppl and need to book acco for each day of the tour (7 nights). Promised to provide publicity for both the hotel as well as the hotel-partner (TFNs gotten a huge number of enthusiasts and media support, and thats growing all the time) and need very competitive pricing (provided rates we'd and a end-to-end solution in return.

Guess what ?

Startup 1: Got lost in the "response" process! :) Auto genearted mail, with a ticket number and everything, and a couple of SMSes confirming that someone was looking at the same! No real responses though - at all!

Startup 2: Personal email to a couple of the guys running the show. Got responses. In a couple of days, mails with rates that were actually worse than what we managed ourselves. Re-emphasized that we wanted an end to end solution, and that with a certain %age of costs shaved they'd be the hospitality partners - included in all communication. The response was astounding - I was given some soundbytes on how, instead of the usual 10%, we were being charged only 5% by the startup over the hotel's rates. That, as you can imagine, was that!

Thr trouble is, the users are looking to travel for a purpose, and the journey/hotel is one piece of the whole experience. They want to be assured of a certain quality and wants a no-hassle experience. And all thats on offer is inventory, with some lip gloss on top by way of an interface, and possibly sorted by this or that.

What about the guy who want to fly to Delhi from Madurai and may be open to combination of either a bus+flight or a train+flight ? From either Chennai or Bangalore. What about the NRI-in-India-for-a-month traveling to 3-4 destinations who'd hire a car, a cell, take a couple of domestic flights, perhaps a holiday to some destination while here, maybe even love to have a data card ?

Your users are looking for very different things. Playing "agent" for a ticket trasaction, or a hotel reservation, is hardly what I'd call sticky, or a customer delight strategy. What is the value that you're creating ? For OTAs - and there are almost as many as airlines - its even fuzzier these days without a deal or discount. Not long term at all, I'd imagine.

And please do not talk to me about the reduction in your cut as a benefit - I really could not care less about that!

Forced Entrepreneurship ?

2009-09-09T09:37:00.002+05:30

Amongst the elites of the blogosphere, this is a phrase used often, and usually somewhat condescendingly, to discount the efforts of those who run mom and pop stores and businesses, only, as the argument goes, because the they did not have a choice.

Yet one sees a whole bunch of of these "forced entrepreneurs" flourish, learn better than most "choice" entrepreneurs about managing cash flows, hiring, marketing, CRM, and even scaling. Sure - its not usually about 10x scale (though a few do turn out that way) but thats a very VC driven attribute, and entrepreneurship is defined by so much else.

A plumber whose service my wife employs for certain rainwater harvesting and water management projects they undertake is one example I've seen. The guy now has a bunch of other guys he's trained, manages, finds work for, supervises. He takes bottomline responsibility for the team, has printed business cards and invested into a van for transporting his team and material more efficiently. He's been known to go ahead and market the idea amongst potential customers. He's managed growth - both of his business and of his role. Sure, he was probably forced into this - but that has hardly stopped him from embracing entrepreneurship.

There's a couple of legendary tales of paan-wallahs who've built business empires from their vantage points, while continuing to humbly assemble the daily dose for customers. There are small grocers who've adopted the aisle format and setup chains without losing their USPs of delivery, cash on delivery and the personal touch they had when operating a single small store. They've obviously managed hiring very closely since that was key to the whole experience.

Darshinis which grew into large catering businesses. Tailors who now own brands. Local courier companies which now manage logistics for corporates across the country - there's just tons of examples.

In some sense, aren't techies who're "forced" into entrepreneurship because of circumstances - perhaps a stream of bad bosses and workplaces, or the peer pressure of everyone else around them striking out on their own - also "forced" into entrepreneurship ?

The point of this huge rant ? Its not important how you got there. What you did, learned and what you managed to make of it afterwards is. So next time you use "forced entrepreneur" dismissively, think again if there are lessons there that you could instead gain from.

Some references to "forced entrepreneurship":

http://www.swaroopch.com/blog/my-benchmark-for-entrepreneurship/#comment-130025
http://www.venturewoods.org/index.php/2009/01/21/state-of-innovation-perspectives/

And, from a different perspective (and continent) ...

http://steadyblogging.blogspot.com/2009/03/nyt-on-forced-entrepreneurship.html

Hiring, Motivations, Pay Structures & Rewards

2009-08-27T16:16:00.006+05:30

Attended the last Unpluggd where the topic revolved around signing up folks for startups.

And then saw this:

Amazingly, was also thinking (during a bus ride today) about why we do some things despite severe odds, or hindrances, or the need for effort and learning curves, and certain others never get done irrespective of how easy, or 'within our scope' they are.

What is this motivation thingy ?

As a result of all of the above, here's some word/phrase groups to consider:

Reward, risk, compensation, appraisal, objectives, measurement, schedule, 1x1, incentive, weekly status report, stress, problems, constraints, roles, job descriptions, job, prove merit.

Dream, buy-in, belief, desire, effort, solution, honesty, freedom, fail fast and free, lateral thinking, boundlessness.

Of course one's made to sound rosier than the other. But pause and examine which of the above are the truths caused to/by/around you.

We buy ideas, rewards, philosophies at a level we never execute those at - its the day to day efforts and battles that its about. Its like honesty - unless you really really buy it - not as a 'good to follow' truth but somethings that part of you bloodstream - you'll slip here or there in the day to day.

So the stock options stop having any connection with the product features.
And marketing to the guy who's doing the appraisal is the be all and end all.

Would you not rather have people who were paid adequately, and then did stuff purely because they either love to, or they think its necessary to do it ? Would you rather not people have the guts, freedom, desire and authority to, say, pull the plug on something even if its 90% done if they really really get convinced it's no good.

Of course, thats not to say that you need to let chaos reign - but if you have free, smart people, they will listen to reason. They will learn and you will learn from them. Thats an orthogonal problem to solve - but having people who're "into it" can only help even there.

The video proves what I've always believed - creative, fuzzy-result-oriented work needs free minds. Don't try and pressurize these flows - either through incentives or through disincentives. In fact, incentives usually imply measurement/observation, which implies expectations. And sometimes, things that "being discovered" need to be done without those disincentives weighing them down. If the people involved are good, and they're really into it for belief/faith/interest/passion, something useful will evolve.

You cannot buy passion. Or creativity. Or ownership. You will surely lose it if the attempt is to coerce it using fear, however subtle. Do not try corelating risk-reward, probation, appraisal cycles with work directly. People need money to live, spend on nice things, secure their future. Not to work. Do that for them.

Enagage, and focus, on the usefulness, and marketability, and goal-appropriateness of the work they're doing. Not on the carrots and the sticks that those will lead to - thats so last-century.

Product Identity Crisis ?

2009-08-21T08:55:00.003+05:30

[ Cross posting from the SlicedBread blog ]

Ashish wrote a post about the importance of recognizing exactly what business you are in.

This cannot be over-emphasized during the early days of a product, or a startup. You cannot be nebulous about exactly what problem it is you’re solving, and for whom. The trick is to tackle this at as fine grained a level as you can (and not just at a we’ve-built-a-tool-let’s-see-how-its-used-level). If you cannot answer clearly enough for the first guy who asks this question to understand, its unlikely that users will see easily that its for them!

One trick I’ve found useful is to think in terms of nouns and verbs first when describing use cases, and avoiding the adjectives and adverbs. Also, pick verbs that can be acted out immediately – say – in a dumb charades or pictionary game. Or at least something multiple can clearly visualize as the same action or activity. “Evaluate”, “enhance”, “express” are some words that could be too ill-defined to capture or communicate a use case effectively. “Add as friend”, “read the shared content”, “rate the movie” are much clearer. As you start capturing it clearly, you will start debating the value each brings to your core idea more clearly as well.

And – this is my favourite take on all things computer science – its all about inputs and outputs. So given all those verbs and nouns, what does your product ask for, and what exactly does it give ?

Who are you ?

Update: One of my friends tweeted this morning (that I'd RTd) about FB's identity crisis. Quite relevant!

Ownership Issues. Founders too!?

2009-08-10T21:49:00.004+05:30

At first, there's an idea. There's some debates that follow, some iterations that help refine the idea. Then there's often a co-founder, some hectic activity and a prototype! The job is bid adieu to, the servers bought/rented, expenses planned for and the passion-of-the-founder has soon given birth to another startup.

Pitches are readied and made, and if you're onto something or an investor thinks you are, you get funded! Nirvana!

A year later, there have been hiring issues (people are so tough to find, or too expensive otherwise), development issues (its never as easy or as complete as you'd imagined), and issues with selling the product that you pushed off to 'once the product's ready' right from the beginning. The traffic hasn't taken off, and you take shelter behind the "alpha" tags, and in any case, the "full, matured" version with some critical pieces that will make all the difference isn't done yet. That will fix everything.

Iteration 2, and 3 and more come and go. Things don't look that great. You tire a little. There may be telltale signs, from a diffused market strategy that tried to please all, to multiple major projects running simultaneously - one of which will hopefully do it for you. You engage with a designer to fix UI, a mentor for advice, a PR firm to try and fix it on the marketing front, and maybe even get some big names on board to shake things up.

Familiar story ?

Somewhere, the tiredness does bite, and the ownership starts to dim, and even entirely vanish. Why ? Its the same people who were madly optimistic about their idea at one stage, after all.

Carrot uncertain, stick missing ?

Human motivation has got a lot to do with either the pursuit of pleasure, or the avoidance of pain. In fact, more or less all actions could be linked to one of these. At first, the dream that the idea promised is big, possible and a huge motivator. But, especially during a turbulent phase that comes after multiple bad patches, the dream can, and does fade.

Unlike a home loan, though, there's nothing to pay back! So hardly any stick. Sometimes a little bit of a pressure does help to come up with smart solutions that make things work. Sometimes you do your best only when you come out fighting from a no-hoper. But there's little egging you to do that.

I'm hardly suggesting that VC funding be replaced by loans - but its also true that founding a startup, at least for some and at some stage, does become merely a sexier, and in fact more comfortable job. Sure there's more to do, but if you're looking for that sort of a thing, its a great, risk-free (once you get funded) opportunity to have a ball! Its not just the founders though - even potential employees often tend to look at startups at a no-loss-possible situation. Better salaries, cooler image, better work and responsibilities so why the hell not ? The "struggle" bit is more or less limited to the pre-funding stage. Once there, there's only an upside...

If I were a VC, I'd be working on models to change this. Or even if I were a founder working on a new idea. If nothing, to ensure that the wrong kind of motivations got weeded out.

Entrepreneur, share thy burden. The VC-Entrepreneur Story part II

2009-08-08T15:44:00.006+05:30

After this post about the need for investors to get to, and continue to know their portfolio a little better, happened to have a chat with an investor on similar lines.

Apparently they sometimes run into what was described to me as a Chinese Wall, although the context was not potential insider trading, and for the purpose of this topic there is no conflict of interest. A few examples were shared that I obviously cannot talk about here, but boy, was that a revelation! I'd kinda assumed that being important stakeholders, and often with controlling stakes, they could breach any such walls that came up. But clearly, there are other dynamics at play, at least in some cases.

Some follow up thoughts:

If/once, as an entrepreneur, you ask someone to invest (and its a whole new topic whether, and when, you should), their interests are are your interests and their interests are ... you get the idea. The more you share, the more likely it is that you may get an decent perspective of your business that you can miss/gloss over while involved in the day to day running of it.
Tough questions are better asked early. If there are no tough questions, and no revenue, be worried. VCs can, and should play that role. And as an entrepreneur, it would do your business a lot of good to pester them for it. Your comfort zone is surely a bad place for your business to be in. The final call is still yours, and you need to treat the advice as an input, not a command, because even the best of VCs can miss aspects of the business that you may understand better. Yet, they do bring in a concerned outsider's viewpoint so seek it aggressively.
Trust. Its key to all startup activities. Be it with employees, partners, customers, investors, vendors. And this is even more true in India, where a ton of business happens in good faith and 'carrying people along'. There's also no ownership sharing without trust.
All the above is all great - but whether as an investor, or even as an entrepreneur, you'd still do well to have an "outsider" driven in-depth assessment of your business on a continuous basis. Not that you're sucking or that this will solve everything, but it brings in functional expertise with an unbiased viewpoint, and thats rarely a bad thing. Its also less dependent on maintaining relationships, worrying about appraisal cycles, and the like. In the finance world, auditors are almost always external, and I'm guessing they serve more than just a "external policing" role.

On a tangent, a question was asked about whether any business in India was VC fundable at all !?? Thats the topic of a future post, but at the outset, I'd wonder if the VC model is necessarily a static thing, or does it need to adapt to a different market, different set of rules, and success rates ? The endgame is to essentially provide a 25%+ return while promoting entrepreneurship, isnt' it ?

Online ? Who's online ? Get outa there....

2009-08-08T15:25:00.002+05:30

... and be where the customers are!

Context : was pleasantly surprised to see this along with our morning newspaper a few days ago. And there was another one this morning.

Now everyone's been talking about hyperlocal, but guys like CommonFloor and Open2Save seem to be actually doing it.

I've believed for a while now that

Hyperlocal is big
The internet is a tool - it may not be the final consumer connect but can enable a lot of it

So its good to see both these players trying to connect online with existing channels, though not everything has been tried or figured out yet. Purely as an advertising play (some coupons are little more than plain ads) this serves a market which cannot afford and does not need city level visibility, but did not necessarily want to go with what was being offered by the guys who print and ditribute flyers on cheap paper. Given the "aggregation" of deals etc, there's also a better chance of the user being interested in one or more of the deals, and retaining the coupon, unlike single-business flyers.

There's a bunch of other ideas that can be tried in the web-as-a-tool for hyperlocal businesses space. But I'm pleasantly surprised to see efforts to look beyond the web and work with existing behavioural patterns and business flows to provide a better mousetrap within those. The changes can then be effected once some traction happens.

Who says its all about web 2.0 ?

VC, Know Thy Fundee

2009-07-31T15:13:00.003+05:30

The Venture Capital industry in the US has given extremely poor returns in recent times, and some consider it broken. I'm not sure what the India numbers are, but the focus, modus operandi and problems facing the space are similar, and in some senses, less effective. The huge factors in their favour are the relative stability and ever growing domestic markets (of course, for those focused on India, and more so for those primarily into the PE story), and of course tremendous cost tractability vis-a-vis the Valley, for instance.

Now, imagine:

Don Corleone invests in a million bucks into a "business" run by a fledgling caporegime in a territory with lots of promise. A few months down the road, the monthly meeting is in a dark room full of cigar haze with tough questions flying across the table, and the Godfather surprising the capo with info gathered from the street that the capo might be trying to hide, or gloss over. It could either end in the capo getting a thumbs up for establishing firm control, or a "Its strictly business" list of to-dos to strictly be followed for ensuring the family gets there profitably.

Or, a traditional business family in India pitches in to get a young chap striking out on his own in a new town/business/opportunity afresh. They obviously need to buy in to the idea, and measure progress often enough. They also dig up every source to keep tabs on where the markets headed, what the guy's reputation, image and credibility is as he engages with the market, and offer both advice and tips, as well as harsh feedback on specifics that is passed on immediately and well - transparently.

Thats how businesses get built, sustained, nurtured.

The Venture Capital industry plays an important role in discovering and nurturing new market opportunities. In fact, the businesses they try to help build are usually much larger than what an average capo or a family businessman would attempt at creating. These businesses need even more nurturing, and inputs. Theoretically, at least, the VC not only brings capital to the table, but also helps keep the ship on course, plugging the gaps as they're spotted. They can help engineer the right contacts, aid the best executive hiring, enable appropriate mentoring amongst others.

But then, there's a gap when it comes to those value adds, at least in the Indian context. Unlike Don Corleone, or the average business guy on the streets, venture investors often fail to connect with their startups' work - operationally, technically and sometimes even from a consumer/customer point of view.

The best understanding of the businesses investors have today depend on "other-investors'-opinions" and on their own take on it. Generation, technology gaps, lack of empathy with the target market, and an uncertain understanding of what's really getting built ensure that the meetings are once-a-month "updates" affairs, and the data collection is usually limited to what their protégées tell them. Sure there's some cross questioning, and the numbers sometimes start communicating the true story (often too late in the game).

But to be able to really relate to whats happening, whats right and whats not, and most importantly, what the options are from thereon, VCs would benefit from a deeper, independent assessment of the businesses they're banking on. And of course, the technologies, products and target markets those businesses are banking on!

There is a need for a role which can better understand the domain or technology that the startup is built around. This is truer for technology startups than the others, but there's usually something technical/domain specific about every startup (at least the better ones) that differentiates it. Most investors are generalists and connectors, because of which they bring together a wide array of skills, perspectives and contacts! Obviously, their understanding of what's happening inside of their portfolio companies, and what course corrections could and should be made, is limited to the level of a higher level business scenarios that can only make uncertain assumptions about the finer, and often crucial, details of the product or domain. And we do hear a lot that execution is everything!

So, how do investors get to know better ? Call in the experts!

To someone in the know, the red-flags show up all over the place as you dig a little! One hears of huge investments in companies build around technologies (sometimes mere features) that could be build primarily around commodity stuff that might even be free to download off the web. Other startups build vanity-features that are unlikely to see much usage amongst their target audience. And a whole lot of startups do not even figure out who this "audience" is, and at the same time worry about the numerous textures the product could have.

Then there are obviously numerous "high technology" stories where the potential is enormous, but the success is extremely dependent on both the core as well as the packaging and positioning of the product. A lot many might potentially succeed in one of many avatars, and would benefit from rapid experimentation enabled by flexible product design.

Clearly, VCs would benefit a lot if they got dope on some of the above, early and regularly. This obviously needs a continuously updated understanding, and measurement, of what their companies are doing. Every decision around the product feature and roadmap, its architecture, and even the robustness of the process through which these are arrived at, makes a huge difference to the product's chances in the market. These cannot be gauged easily from a short monthly interaction with the CEO. You need a sharper focus on the goals, and ongoing engagement at various operational levels to ensure those are being worked towards.

Goals

What are the companies goals ? Are the same goals visible to all functions across the organization ? Are those the ones driving value for users/customers ? For instance, you're trying to create a service that delivers content over SMS along with contextual advertising, and a product loophole that allows people to essentially send free SMSes to friends could be the one driving traffic!

Roadmap

Is the Product Roadmap in line with the goals ? Often, beyond the first release, nimble startups get into a reaction mode where every little piece of feedback from users, VCs, the media and other assorted sources is incorporated, and every little idea that comes from competing sites, or merely sounds cool, gets implemented. You end up with a host of features and functions that are no longer coherent or cogent to your primary USP, which was .... ? Obviously, even the metrics gathered start reflecting this, and there's confusion both externally and internally about what the product or service really is ? Crispness is key.

Team, Hiring, and its first cousin - the Burn Rate!

Funded startups are usually at risk! There's money, and folks now have the luxury of pursuing the various ideas that have not been able to get attention so far! Add to this the ability to right away target multiple groups of customers and consumers, do branding, create pitches and soon, you're lost in infinite activity thats gong nowhere. There's a need to link all spending, right from the size of the team, the skills needed, the necessity of doing certain things all together, to the goals and the roadmap.

Keeping the burn rate down not only helps focus, and it gives the startup get operationally viable sooner, and provides both the founders and the investor a lot of buffer!

Obvious Benefits

The returns on getting onboard an operationally focused team are quite apparent. An investor would do well to have help at hand for regular, clear understanding of what's happening in the portfolio companies. This would ideally be a team which brings in both technology and product management experience from a in-the-trenches perspective. The startup would get better help, better focus and probably leaner.

Quite obviously, whats better for the startup is better for the investor!

Disruptive ? [ Fly standing ]

2009-07-16T20:47:00.006+05:30

Its pretty straightforward - if most people are a little shocked and taken aback with the idea or change you're suggesting, it could be one of those big ones. Sure there's a risk, but just might be worth taking!

For instance, I've been wondering why, even on flights that last not longer than an hour - everyone needs to sit! Especially in nicely padded seats that cocoon them. People do take the tube and stand for those lengths of time, and its conceivable that a "rest your butt against" something design works. At the least, rows of long benches can surely optimize space.

Of course, the first reaction is "it compromises safety". But I'm very curious, as a percentage, how much of a role better seats had in reducing fatalities. Unlike road skirmishes, if it fails up there, you usually say your prayers. Yeah, I hear ya about the "every life is worth saving, etc. But,

You're assuming the cabin overall cannot be made safer for standing passengers! I'm talking about redesign not mere re-fitting.
Air accidents take far fewer lives than road accidents than pool drowning incidents....
Despite how it sounds in the context, there is something such as a tradeoff. Else, we'd be all outfitting our cars with roll cages, wearing helmets inside them, and donning safety gear before driving anywhere. Everything is percentages.

Its an industry in deep trouble. They need to make more, so we can all continue to fly. We need to reduce our flying footprint. So go ahead, innovate the hell out of that cabin space and we can make space for a few more, and keep things cheap too.

Sounds crazy ? But to start with, disruption should. Its a question of figuring out if there's a feasible path to getting there, and making those numbers work.

Data-Driven Decisions vs. Intuition : Is it really a "vs" ?

2009-07-06T08:52:00.007+05:30

Its very hip to talk about being data driven, and as engineers, very appealing as well. Its also a more provable way of justifying a decision. User A/B tests on various designs prove it like no amount of brainstorming can, and clickstreams, sales numbers do not lie!

Yet there are majorly accomplished folks that disagree vehemently with the data-centric approach to decisions, and that makes for a good debate :). Here's a very good 360 around that particular one.

So, is the "versus" in the debate actually called for at all ? As engineers, do we beat too many things down with the data club ? (I somewhere suspect the opposite is not that strikingly true for designers, decision makers, etc who are seen as "following instinct")

Let's deconstruct this data driven decision thingy, shall we ?

You gotta decide about a product idea, or a sales strategy, or a marketing message. So typically, this is what you do (explicitly, or otherwise)

Imagine who might consume the outcome of the decision
Try and figure out something about the above set. Data ? Helps a lot!
Take a call on what'll work.

The data is an input (and comes in many forms!). Over this input is a layer of interpretation, analysis and the final decision is a reaction to this process. Data can help decide, but data cannot decide!

At what level is the decision ?

Are you deciding about a UI attribute for an existing, popular product ? Sure, do bucket tests and let the audience speak. Is it about the product's copy ? Hmm, a little less black and white. The positioning and concept you're trying to communicate about the product ? Well - there's no getting away from hard work and decision making on that. If you expect data to always provide all the answers in black and white terms, you're likely to freeze when working on a lot of things at a more "zoomed out" level.

For entrepreneurs, its often a question of whether the product (which is usually the company itself) is working, and if its not. If you need data to tell you that, you have other serious problems :) Of course you will be going through data, and what we popularly refer to as "instinct" or "intuition" does not develop in isolation of data. On the contrary, its something you develop as you learn how to sift through data, read between its lines and deal with the apparent conflicts it sometimes throws at you.

Conflict ? Aren't numbers black and white ?

Are they ?

Here's two data points from an example I remember reading about recently (sorry, do not recall the source). A survey of numerous car buyers in India put safety high up there in the lsit of influencers for the buy-call. Yet the actual purchase decisions (vis-a-vis the information requests) for models with ABS, airbags or till some time ago, even those with seatbelts at the rear said it was not necessarily an important factor.

The case study surmised that the latter was to be believed, and the former to be ignored. Its probably a more trustworthy data point! So the models which get ABS etc continued to be those at the top end of the offerings.

There - you already needed to pick and choose, and not trust every bit of data as is. But is that all ?

Weren't the consumers also communicating an aspirational need, or one that got negated merely because the cost differentials between the (usually high end) models with ABS etc and those without were extremely high ? Would these people pay a smaller difference for the same in an otherwise lower spec'd model ? Is there a way to lower the cost of including the safety add-ons ?

Do you have enough data ? Qualified ?

Very often, a new venture, idea or product does not even have enough data to start with. Product and entrepreneurship decisions are full of these cases. You still do your best to understand what the picture is, and base a call on that. Would you like to base your calls on tiny samples ? Or would you rather ignore them, unless a clear message emerges ?

And them, lets say you launched and had a couple of hundred thousand clicks on a new page/feature. Of course, you SEO'ed, maybe ran an ad or two, and maybe got some initial coverage? What was the quality/value of those clicks ? Did they all come from ad-clicks, with little repeat usage? Are they from the right target audience which might help in engagement and drive usage/consumption of the important features? Should a transactional site be very happy if a lot of folks turn up looking for info alone? Should it be despondent ?

The clickstream is quite useless during the early life of a product unless qualified. Yes you can collect more data for it, but each qualifier and context for data that you measure stems from a judgement call about why a number is important, and when must it be factored in. Of course, again, you can create a analytics framework to crack that as well, but at some stage or the other, its impossible to keep out human judgement and interpretation of data completely.

Its not "data vs intuition".

There's a huge risk to merely following data - in case you've not set the right context. You can be lulled into a sense of safety/driven into panic needlessly merely because the data says you doing great/horribly, and you forgot to try and see whether you were missing some part of the picture.

Data is only about the stated. The rest is conjecture or extrapolation!

Extrapolation (quite like analogies :) ) is a pretty strange thing.

You can collect data about what's out there. What did the user leave unsaid? Did they like your logo? Why did the dropoff happen at some point ? Did something trigger a word of mouth ? What about the not-clicked links - why did those get ignored ?

Some will need another round of hypothesis and data collection. Others will need some level of an educated guess so you can move on. You've got finite time and resources, and your product is not a grant funded lab!

Data is valuable. But the value is elsewhere.

A lot many great businesses have been built on instinct. That does not discount the research they did as preparation, or the amount of information they might have collected. It only highlights that the ability to make a decision with whatever is available is far more valuable. With the same data, the same inputs and for the same scneario, there will be multiple decisions that succeed to varying degrees, and numerous possible ones which might fail. It is an art, and the attempts to reduce it to a science can only work for low-granularity decisions, and that again for existing, running-state stuff.

What's probably more critical, and to be practised to improve one's judgement calls, is to actively seek to verify hypotheses through launch-and-test iterations, and do these cheap. Developing a good sense of what data to collect, how to read it in the context of other numbers, words around it - this will serve you much better than being a data driven automaton. Its a great help to have numbers, but remember to use them both judiciously, and honestly.

Its not yet time to let the machines take over ;)

SlicedBread

2009-07-01T12:24:00.003+05:30

Its been a month!

I've gotten together with a couple of other people who're Gurus at understanding various aspects of Products - strategy, positioning, technical understanding and roadmaps, analytics, etc - and created SlicedBread. The idea is to - oh, well - there you go...

Enterpreneurial Enterprises ?

2009-06-22T12:25:00.009+05:30

"What can we do to make our employees more entrepreneurial?"

Thats been asked often enough - a couple of times even to me personally - inside larger, less nimble organizations. Over the last couple of weeks, I've had a few discussions in various contexts that have highlighted this need.

Fact:

Large organizations need processes and systems that can be followed to replicate, predictably, certain outcomes. These need discipline, conformity and some sort of a hierarchy to get executed smoothly. This is true across functions of the organization - production, sales, HR, procurement, you-name-it. Product innovation and R&D is about the only one which has some leeway on this, but there's a tonne of effort to put measurability and processes around that, as well.

Fact:

Businesses and their needs are dynamic! You get into new products, manage new regulations, expand into new geographies. Old models do not always work in these situations. You might need to package differently, market differently, or price differently. You may not get the product, or positioning right at the first go. You want to be agile, nimble and ready to experiment with more than one approach around the core idea, while measuring constantly to figure out what works and what does not. And you want to keep your costs down, while you figure things out. Be frugal.

Who's good at these fuzzy situations ? Entrepreneurs!

So obviously, there needs to be an element within large enterprises which is entrepreneurial in nature, from a risk taking and nimbless viewpoint, not bogged down by heavy processes and relatively comfortable with lack of resources and clarity. And within this space, folks need a free hand.

Once the core problem is solved, the corporate machinery can - nay - should - move in. Beyond the establishing of the models, processes are needed to ensure scale, consistency, reliability, profitability over a sustained period of time.

But when you gotta go-in-there-and-get-things-done, having a few "mavericks" (from the pov of established orgs) is a huge help.

And the other side

Entrepreneurs often know certain aspects of the business well. Many are engineers who know the product real well, and haven't a clue about other areas. There's often a disconnect from the real user out there, or about pricing models, or undertaking market research and the like.

This is where a stint within a large consumer facing organization will help! The ITCs, HLLs and Tatas of the world have sales folks who've been amongst users across the country, and have insights like nobody's got them. A successful marketing head who's sold gensets in a particular territory will provide important clues about consumer behaviour that will be pretty much impossible to find for a small startup. The pricing and distribution models for entry level mobile phones have a lot to teach entrepreneurs about aspirations, and managing them. And there's no better teacher than been-there, done-that.

Is there a symbiotic relationship here ? At least a limited, short term one ? Perhaps an "internship" or "guest worker" like program, where both benefit from each other and work towards cross pollination of specific skills and attitudes. Who could take the lead on this and do the connects, walk the program through its paces ? Thoughts, ideas welcome in comments.

The "small SMEs" space : Marketing and Sales

2009-06-20T08:58:00.002+05:30

I think thats a huge market, and could start driving local software business over the next few years.

If the idea of selling to them appeals to you, and you're open to the idea of managing your own brand, drop me a line. You would, of course, know how to sell to this market and have some decent connects into it already. This is not a job offer by any means :)

More Resources for (Bangalore) Startups

2009-06-15T21:45:00.002+05:30

[These are a completely different kind!]

You're a startup. Whether or not funded, you're better off not blowing up money. But then, you pretty likely do not have a conference room at office, and want to meet people at Coffee Days, Baristas, and the likes.

That Cappuccino is a 50, dude! And let's not even get into the Lavazzas etc.

So here's a few tips to stay frugal while you're trying to not stay hungry in the literal sense.

The Cafe @ FabIndia, Koramangala

This is in Madivala - on the Ring Road just before it meets the Hosur Road. Nice Chai for 12/-, decent sandwiches for 25/- and the setting's very pretty too. I've started preferring this to the coffee places not just because of the price.

2/3 Cafe @ HSR Layout

Kinda opposite the BDA Layout. Nice balcony, good filter coffee for 20/- and short eats at an ok price. Not particularly cheap, but way better than the CCDs of the world.

BMTC - Ride the Bus

Do the environment, your stress levels and your wallet a favour. Take a bus. Indus has been taking Volvos all over town for meetings, and manages to catch up on calls, save fuel, and understand a little more of Bangalore. It does take a little more time, but once you get the hang of it, its not that much more. All important routes have decent frequencies. I personally travel junta class on the 30/- day pass since I travel off-peak hours - and the Gold Pass is 75/-. It really frees you up from a lot of hassles, helps reduce a serious amount of your carbon footprint and saves some moolah as well.

The Sagars

Quick catch-ups and 20 minute meetings are perfectly do-able at a Shanthi Sagar or suchlike if its more for networking than a serious brainstorm or discussion. Their coffee is usually better than what CCD can come up with.

I'm sure there are many more such options all across town - do leave your favourite ones in the comments.

Some Interesting Resources for Startups

2009-06-15T20:45:00.002+05:30

Here's stuff that i've used recently, or might use, that could be useful for startups - and for that matter for any organizations that are open enough, and broke enough, to experiment.

Get IMified
Your app can go live on GTalk, Twitter, whatever real easy! Opens up a whole new world. And UI challenges, of course :) Terrific stuff.

Yammer Away
Twitter for teams. Collboration gets a new twist - update and communicate informally a la Twitter, and keep it to 140 chars. "I started on code freeze, dnd", "1000th signup let's get ice-cream!" are all possible! The Firefox addon helps.

PebbleTalk
Just out of the foundry - functionally Yammer++, but the interface is a bit on the "ok" side. Fora, status updates, notices, discussions, groups - a Yahoogroup - meets - Twitter but needs more definition. Nice for informal sharing of sutff within the team.

Of course there's Google for Domains, with good ol' GTalk and Gmail, plus docs.

Mind42 lets you collaboratively brainstorm and develop ideas using Mind Maps, thoughts and on a related note, for sequence diagrams I used the very basic but quick and easy http://www.websequencediagrams.com/.

For the basics, NettiGritty are pretty responsive and reliable (use them for domain registration and DNS management), and NearlyFreeSpeech quite cheap for those starting out, easy to get setup with (used this for the Wordpress install).

Zoho Business then gets you setup with mail, task lists, and a bunch of other stuff (even though its work in progress and there's lots of things it needs that could easily make some of the other tools unnecessary).

Will keep posting as I come across more stuff.

Smaller, cheaper, faster

2009-06-14T10:36:00.005+05:30

I've come to believe in this philosophy for starting something, and here's some more support for the cause. (From Getting Real - a book by 37Signals) (Thanks Sid, for the link)

The main advantage that I think comes from working under constraints:

"Constraints also force you to get your idea out in the wild sooner rather than later — another good thing. A month or two out of the gates you should have a pretty good idea of whether you're onto something or not. If you are, you'll be self-sustainable shortly and won't need external cash. If your idea's a lemon, it's time to go back to the drawing board. At least you know now as opposed to months (or years) down the road. And at least you can back out easily. Exit plans get a lot trickier once investors are involved."

From even a product management pov

"Think hard and determine what's really essential and what you can do without. What can you do with three people instead of ten? What can you do with $20k instead of $100k? What can you do in three months instead of six? What can you do if you keep your day job and build your app on the side?"

Give it a read - the whole book's available online - free. Of course, there's a world of effort, training and belief between knowing it and living it. But there's always somewhere you start....

You Are L(ured) ? Self selling retail web

2009-06-14T10:05:00.002+05:30

Imagine!

You're driving and drawl up next to this this majorly cool car (or cycle, or motorbike) at the lights - and you go wow! What's that ? A quick check on the phone brings up the model, reviews, price, blah.

You've memo'ed the specific medicine/grocery item/whatever that you need to pick, but thats not that easy to find. You cross a store where this is available, and your phone goes "beep-pick this up here" immediately.

You're in a meeting and totally dig that phone, or pen, or laptop that X-Y-Z in the room has. You're curious. Problem solved!

You're house hunting and pass a property you think you might be interested in. Check if something's available, prices, T&C.

The guys at the next table in a restaurant get served and you totally want to know what is the yummy looking dish they just got...bingo! The menu presents itself.

Wouldn't it be great if these things could announce themselves, and inform, and even connect you to an interface where you could order it ?

Here's an idea for the RFID guys, retail, and a totally new store format.

What you need:

Smart tags (RFID?)
Phones with sensors for these tags
Brave new retailer

I don't think I need to explain more. Can be applied to non commercial stuff as well.

Some thoughts/use cases:

Its a distributed web of real things, way more contextual!
Its a distributed retail mechanism
It will lessen social interaction in some case, trigger them in others
Maybe poiliticians/marketers could distribute these real world URIs to campigners for info dissemination
A limited version of this is already in use at toll booths! So why not a larger "web" ?
Everyone could possibly be a walking blog!

Oh well, Sunday morning stuff :) What we call these - WorldTags ? LORs (Life Object Resource) ?

I'm already half sure someone, somewhere, has given this a shot.

Manufacturing Giant ?

2009-06-11T19:24:00.004+05:30

Well, there's more than meets the eye, or gets the headlines.

"It’s not commonly known that India is the largest manufacturer of motorcycles, second-largest maker of small cars, and third largest manufacturer of automotive components. In the pharmaceutical industry, India has quietly become the fourth-largest producer of pharmaceuticals, while also showing the ability to innovate with the second-largest number of drug master filings. It is also one of the largest exporters of steel, has one of the largest forging facilities in the world, is among the largest consumers and producers of energy in Asia, the second-largest manufacturer of CD ROMs, and so on."

The Challenges are enormous, but there's so many growth stories, and so much happening, thats its tough to not be optimistic. The startup space needs to open its eyes to these and engage, understand and explore opportunity better. It may be less sexy than the current romanticized attempts at entrepreneurship, but it'll make better business sense for sure!

Update:

Indus commented on an article about Indian internet startups failing to meet VCs expectations, and I responded to his comment. I think my response there was relevant to this entry - so cut-pasting:

"The internet, by and large, replaced TV in India. Not malls, not utilities, etc. Some businesses have engaged a portion of of their consumers by using the web as a (cheaper) channel, but by and large, real business happens outside of the not-that-much-of-an-idiot-box.
Its not a question of lack of innovation (that'll happen), or of merely "following" a model from someplace else. Its the vacuum of real-life and real-biz requirements that causes the same to be more or less dreamt up over coffee - and with little follow-up validation.
A little more rubber off the soles, a little more connection with real needs, and the right ideas, right innovation and decent success are likely follow..."

The stories That Aren't [Told]

2009-06-11T17:15:00.003+05:30

Everyone's heard of the huge IT Services in India. A lot many are giving products a shot. Some are exploring SaaS and a few are even swimming in the shark infested waters of the web-products-for-the-arrived world!

But there's some mundane stuff thats unknown, for the most part:

How big is the assembled server market in Bangalore ? Its AMCing ?
What margins do data recovery businesses have ? What are the volumes ?
What is the "chip-level-repair" industry ? Is it attractive ?

Is any of the above a scalable business ? Is there a Dell-on-some-scale waiting in the wings ? How much is the organized, and how much the unorganized market ? These guys obviously have a deep sales reach - what can that be used for ?

The current focus of the Ecosystem - especially the technology related parts of it - is limited to a narrow band of technology activity. This is probably driven by the dollar or potential-stardom value of the technology. Its a similar story for investors - both angels as well as VCs. The lack of exits in the current market has probably got to do at least partially with the huge valuations at which those wil make sense given current investment sizes.

Are there smaller stories in there ? Take Bangalore's best data recovery guys nationwide ? Or help an efficiently run AMC business scale, reach out to the government and big business and grow ? Or explore if there's an aggregation story in there somewhere ? Or data collection and market research ?

I was speaking to my cousin the other day about some ideas. He's been in the hardware space for a while (hence the bias of the examples above towards that industry). He's moved from a large org where him and his partners sold a lot of hardware at low margins, and some services of various sorts at better margins, to his own outfit where he's focusing on the margins and has cut out the pain of sales completely! He also knows his customers really well ("not servicing the software industry right now at all!"), and can hit them for upselling related stuff!

There's many such entrepreneurs, and many such stories. We can glean a lot of wisdom from these, and possibly spot opportunities for co-operation, investments on a different scale/model, lowering our costs, getting a foot in the door with customers, etc.

I daresay my cousin's lessons in entrepreneurship have been a lot more valuable, richer than mine. I also think engaging with other, real-life industry around us will help us think of our work with more ground truths and reality included in our plans, pricing and projections. It will help us realize and respect true customer needs and sentiment, and step out of the echo-chamber for a while.

The breath of fresh-air-nee-reality will do us all a lot of good :)

The Ecosystem is Broke(n)

2009-06-08T09:25:00.004+05:30

During the course of a conversation-over-chai after a meeting with fellow entrepreneurs, we eventually got to the usual analysis of whats happening in the startup and entrepreneurial space around here.

Surely enough, the echo-chamber that resonates its own thoughts, and has little connection with those outside, soon came up.

So what's paining/failing early startups/small companies/first time entrepreneurs ? What does a business need to make it ? You've got the idea, you might get to the product, or some version of it, but then you sometimes kinda get stuck. For lack of decent, honest, precise advice, information, knowhow, or even plain awareness.

Distribution, the right pricing, what should your outbound communication be ? Are the buyers interested ? Why not ? Is it technology, or support, or something else ? Do we even know what's really happening in the spaces we're trying to connect to ? Is there any form of market intelligence at all ? (I do not include a critical analysis of launches, PR statements and quarterly results in this - that often does not help a startup too much). What's the government's take on issues ? What are the infrastructural changes in the offing and their likely impact ? How do you engage in a dialogue with these (you're already drowning in work) ?

An early entrepreneur would surely love an ecosystem into which inputs that cover the above aspects are drawn in. An ecosystem, again, is not the creation or sole preserve of this forum or that, or some or the other online publication. Its the coming together of all of these, with dialogue flowing between the various stakeholders.

That ecosystem is quite inadequate in India, as of now.

As I see it now - be it major startup events (both structured and otherwise), or online coverage of entrepreneurial activity - there are two major problems:

There's no EcoSystem (but only a part of it)

Sure there's a bunch of enthusiastic VCs who participate. There's a few industry people who even mentor folks. There's a lot of aspirants who want to get going, and then there's a bunch of people who've seen and done a little, and pass off a lot as knowledge.

There's a lot of hype, jargon and very little honest learn-as-we-participate happening inside this echo-chmaber.

More importantly, where are the people who're connected to the real world ?

Are there any top sales folks from FMCGs, Financial Services, Retail, etc, who're telling it how it is ? Do we get real info on what directions business development is taking in healthcare, telecom, energy, real estate, etc ? Yes, you sure pick up bits and pieces of info as you run into these industries, but you're on your own, and its a very incomplete ecosystem without these inputs.

Things are being built, reviewed, validated in isolation from these realities, and only a rude jolt much much later in the process forces a rethink. By such time, some have lost too much money, or people, or enthu, or time. People seem to go through entire entrepreneurship lifecycles with little connection to their real markets - and with a very fuzzy understanding of its behavioural traits. User personas are tough, but even worse, they're probably non-existent in our startups!

A few honest tips from people who've sold stuff "out there", figured out causes and relationships on the ground, would go a long way. Having access to thoughts from a senior bureaucrat who might be able to analyze government policy and directions better than techie-turned-analyst/VC/blogger would give the ecosystem a serious leg up. And so on - for media and communication, for figuring out pricing, and a whole lot more.

We need "more-360". Its a very very small world right now with few connects into reality. Gotta change.

There's no co-operation

This is true for both the players that help create the current ecosystem, as well as for co-operation amongst startups. Everyone is trying to do everything, be everyone, and seems a little fearful of opening up to inviting folks with other competencies. The expansion of the ecosystem needs an honest appraisal of whats available today, and whats missing. There needs to be a concerted effort to expand it, collectively. Each resource, each forum is so small and ineffective at this point that talking about competition is plain short-sighted.

Some gaps that I think exist:

Experts for many aspects of entrepreneurship are missing from the discussions/fora.
The entire focus is on "how to start" and "how to get funded". Even the words mention otherwise, the actions focus on these two. What about the startup which has been around for a while ? What about those who need a redo, or are about to pack up ?
Exploration of new models. Right now - pretty much everything is a lift-and-fit from the Valley, and there's a tonne of traditional business knowhow thats ignored. The Nano was not created by adopting and stripping down an existing design. Need models for small ticket M&As, newer funding models that may not work like the current fund-of-risks model we see today (and that may have different investors from the essentially financial players one sees now), newer kinds of VCs, different models for hiring/organizational structure.
Way more co-operation between startups. Trying to focus on what one does best, and keeping burn rates ridiculously low, will help get better success. There's often failure induced by a lack of understanding of competencies that could easily be co-operated on, but that essentially smart folks fail at trying to understand and learn quickly enough. If you can get products out fast, marry someone who buys in and sells well. If you can network, help create and manage partnerships for others. More distributed ownership, higher stakes and commitment, lower "salary" costs.

Someone's gotta to take the lead on some of this. A few success stories (to whatever extent - its not just $100 million exist that count) and we'll see more entrepreneurial activity that's built on newer models, for our own markets, at our price points, and stuff that sustains.

Entrepreneurial Reasons

2009-05-30T08:40:00.004+05:30

Why one should NOT pursue ideas:

Buzzword
Peer group seems to do similar stuff
Sounds cool/sexy
"But I would use it anyday"
I cannot stand my current job

Why one should:

Will make lots of money, surely
Will make decent money and be lots of fun
Will let me survive, and provide immense satisfaction
I cannot die with a "What if I had...." on this
I love to do this, what the hell (and I have worked out the finances bits)

Got more ? Disagree ? Discuss it here... or leave a comment.

New morning tomorrow

2009-05-29T18:39:00.003+05:30

Ziva was a great journey that drew to a close this evening.

It helped me make the leap from techie to entrepreneur. Of course there's still a lots to learn, but the last 3.5 years have got me thinking and moving in the right directions wrt product vs business issues, helped me connect with a lot of great people, and forced me to learn multitasking like never before. It was fun getting stuff running from a scratch, thinking of the 360 around every little decision - from how it'd impact users, costs, developers, the story, and its opportunity costs. Pretty much everything was a tough call!

There were lots I read on blogs, in articles, and some of it even started making sense as we stumbled onto problems which needed those tricks to solve, and where the advice mattered. I got to push myself in multiple directions - managing myself, code, design, people, products, marketing, customers. Some I discovered a flair for, and others were a no-go and I learned my limitations. I learned how and when to factor in, or discount advice. When to back and not back my own instincts. To evaluate thoughts from multiple angles.

I'm not the kind of guy who can go back into a classroom to learn stuff after years of working in the real world. But the last few years have been a huge push towards a well rounded experience. Zook and its associated roller coaster was a fun experience. I learned the value of alternative strategies, and how to mesh the long term and short term goals and tricks.

I had fun. There was celebration, pain, arguments, glory, euphoria, and all that a startup involves.

I feel much more prepared for the uncertainty that I'm trying to embrace. Should be a lot of fun.

The Bing Thing

2009-05-29T10:26:00.003+05:30

Microsoft is re-searching. With Bing - A Better Way to Search.

Danny Sullivan is partially impressed, but thinks they're positioning it wrong. Fair enough. But that discussion also brings up the usual question about who (or what - since it could be something they make themselves) will displace Google, or at least lower the following that it has.

My personal take is: the answer is multi-fold.

The Game You're Trying To Play Has Been Won

Because the current victor wrote, and continues to rewrite the rules.

Every website tries SEOing - and that plays right into their hands.
The reasons why people will seek alternatives will be the ones that break this vicious/virtuous SEO loop
More people should be trying to be found *fairly* but its a mad scramble for the first 20 results of one site - and that serves Google's cause.
Everyone's trying to be friendly to the Google crawler.

So..... ?

Generic vs Specific

Discovery is a major problem - to start with. For travel related queries (airfares, rentals, hotels), for instance, Google is often NOT necessarily the starting point, and certainly not where people spend too much time. Once they figure out a site they feel comfortable with for their particular vacation/trip/destination, their spend more time researching that instead. Trouble is, the latter is not a large organized set yet - and you keep running into different "important" sites with time, change of destination, etc.

News is another major area where Google is dependent on News sites, since it does not "create" news! Its merely the huge attempts at making themselves as easily discoverable on Google as possible that keeps Google News in business. News sites could so-very-easily establish an alternative for themselves, only if they thought it through and collaborated some.

Vertical focused destinations have a huge advantage of industry understanding - the "semantics", behaviour derived design and interfaces come for free! Google News is mere links - there's hardly scope for editorials, commentary - those often distinguish the great newspapers from the ordinary. The News industry, by virtue of being the producer of content, can do a much better job of a news destination. From thereon, its just a matter of starving Google of good enough, trusted news and commentary, and exposing it through an API at most. Make Google play your game, instead. At least the big guys surely can, while they still have some control over mass media and distribution.

Data is Key

And Google's just about scratched the surface. The deep web has an unfathomable amount of valuable, clean data. Yes Google is making attempts at a semantic understanding of what it crawls, but at the end of the day your forms are the sentinels of what you posess. As data gets deeper on sites, and forms get smarter, more interactive and un-crawlable, there will be lots of data that can only be co-operatively shared. Deeper data is also more useful for the end user (one of the points that MS has tried to make) and can be linked to actions that are relevant to the specific category.

Google's "control" over sites trying to feed its supremacy will reduce dramatically as and when a "co-operative" search engine starts attempting aggregation of deep data whilst not denying individual sites negotiating power for the data they own, its usage, and the actions that are associated with it.

Mobile

This is a completely new ballgame. Some of the above strategies will come alive here, and add to that a mix of the mobile apps battles in which operators, handset manufacturers and Google are all trying to establish control. One scenario is that people stick to a lot of individual apps on an easy to use platform rather than rely too much on discovery. Each app will need discovery within a particular domain or vertical, though.

Going back to data,its especially true on the phone that a larger index is not what interests folks anymore (iPhone or not - the form factor is still a pain, and user behaviour on the move is unlikely to be similar to what it is on the desktop). Smaller, cleaner, better categorized and graded indices will automatically help decision making, and users could choose the route of a "bouquet of relevant services" rather than a massive ocean to fish in.

SEO and the Tag Games

Try queries made up of common words (more so if they're of commercial interest) and your first few results - and sometimes a page or two of results - is all SEOed, not-necessarily-relevant crap. Yes, Google's trying to fight this battle, but the current algo is almost fair game and SEOing, which should, from a search engine's point of view, be outlawed, is a huge industry! All built around this one search engine. Its a cat and mouse game that Google's caught up in - and an case for a "SEO-bombed? Try the other engine" opportunity for engines which have a different algo, or solve problems in a specific domain.

My guess is that the current state and dominance of generic websearch will last at most for another 3-4 years. Indeed, Yahoo's continuously changing mobile search and Google's attempts at "injecting" results from other properties into the SERP are an acknowledgement of this direction. One possible replacement is a personalized swiss army knife of sharper engines - somewhat analogous to your bookmarks which continue to guide you to your frequented sites everyday. A tool-set of searches that serve your interest will be a wider set than a few sites and much cleaner, and more interactive (in terms of what you can do with the information once you find it). The interface for this is not too clear, and likely to be different from our current experience of the web. It'll need to come "pre and auto configured" for the less savvy users for sure.

In 2015, we'll recall amusing statements from 2009 about the state-of-the-art of web search :)

Xtreme Startups @ IIM Bangalore

2009-05-25T20:11:00.012+05:30

NSRCEL hosted Xtreme Startups - an event where entrepreneurs share experiences and discuss issues that could affect us all - last Sunday. It was a very candid, open discussion and fortunately, the discussion was much better than the usual level at which it ensues at BarCamps etc. Khaitan (representing MVP) did a great job of keeping a lively discussion going. He can also blow a whistle like he could in college!

The founders from Muziboo, LifeMojo and RedBus shared their diverse experiences - the great thing was that all three were as different from each other as possible:

Muziboo is done by a couple - Prateek and Nithya - working out of home over the last two years. They did little market research, but had a very strong sense of how online communities might work - and music was an area they thought would attract a passionate enough crowd and one which was a need not met online yet. They've done some consulting on the side (No end to end projects, low end stuff that keeps the cash flowing and lets them experiment with stuff they can then use on their site as well!), kept costs low, the team small and growth plans flexible enough to not need to go to a VC yet. They've tracked and cracked - through some trial, error and insights developed first-hand - a lot about what different segments of their traffic means in terms of value - what behaviour they want to encourage, and what will get their users to talk more about them. They seriously think SEOing, "buying CPCs" and beating your own drum about the product is best avoided early until such time as you attain critical mass, and its best to keep working on the product till it gets users to talk to others about it ("People try something when they hear about it from at least three others").

I loved the courage they've demonstrated to do things differently from the regular startup-VC-conveyor-belt approach. I liked the fact that understanding the market happened as a process (which is the real truth anyhow) and not as some upfront spreadsheet and search-engine derived wisdom. Their apparent willingness to experiment, learn, rinse, repeat and total honesty about it was heartening, and I think this will grow into a very successful business over time. They have a very healthy percentage of prosumers already - and I wish them godspeed.

LifeMojo's Namit went next, and his motivation was the clearest from the word go! He got very serious about pursuing a dietary plan to lose weight, and spotted the market and acted on it, along with his friends. They managed to rope in professionals to both advise them, and be their reference customer. Their learning curve for both the B2B space as well as the foray into the B2C story has been quite steep, and they seem to be evolving quickly. Again, the market research was informal and intuitive, and they were sure they wanted to have a positive impact on personal healthcare management much before they'd figured out the exact ideas and form those would take. Business and product development have become two separate focus areas quite early, and its good to see the revenue focus right upfront though the exact models are still on the evolutionary treadmill. Their enthusiasm and the proactiveness in engaging various stakeholders of their industry is something that should stand them in good stead.

RedBus and Phani are well known as are their stories. What was surprising was his attributing a lot of their success to mentors whom he's consulted each time they had a dilemma, and whose advice he always goes with. His focus on, and efforts to rope in seriously big names as mentors were awe-inspiring.

RedBus was born of an opportunity spotted when Phani missed a bus. He then spent months traveling (in buses that I guess he did not miss) and understanding his market, and months again convincing the first few operators of the need for and value in making inventory available to them. To me, this was the most critical differentiator of the business that depends on relationships and efficient operations. RedBus has been pessimistic in its projections, efficient in its operations and has consistently beaten its projected numbers. The investors have reposed their faith multiple times already, and Phani seems to be thinking big, while being very focused on building a business which can sustain growth. Decision making is not a CEO-only thing at RedBus, and the fact that 170 families depend on the business makes him avoid whimsical decision-making completely.

It was a great session - and nice to see that entrepreneurs have varied motivations, and paths to and even definitions of success. Its important to "not just read blogs" and latch on to someone else's agenda as your own. Phani will learn from everyone because he's looking out to doing that. Prateek/Nithya can easily question conventional wisdom because of a deep understanding on how his users behave and what they're looking for. Namit is likely to brave any storm cause he's pretty sure there's so many folks out there whom he can help and that they understand that better than most.

Its the optimism, the focus on the goal (though those vary a lot) and the willingness to learn along the way that were common across all of them.

Rebooting

2009-05-18T14:34:00.005+05:30

Have decided to move on from my current role at Ziva. Its been a fun nearly-4-years and I've learned tremendously about more than just technology and products in this time.

Next ?

One clear plan is to try and offer the experience I've gained to help folks execute product ideas quicker, better. This will help build on what I and a couple of friends have learned during our tenures as product people at both startups and larger corporations, including some ideas I've discussed in the past.

There's a couple of books to catch up with, and a few dreams to pursue. For 6 months, at least, its likely to be "unstructured" and I'm taking time off for some good thinking, and exploring various skills and interests I've taken a shine to.

Primarily, lets-see-how-it goes :)

// maybe this is all so I can write a good book someday!

You really want to do that ?

2009-05-10T13:28:00.009+05:30

The last few days have seen a lot of mental, psychological and emotional acrobatics towards answering a question : what do I want to do ? I mean really want to do.

Of course, what I really really want to do is travel a lot, meet tons of people, write a few books, share experiences. I also really would love to be able to impact Urban Planning positively, and help drive the right goals for the city.

But then as an entrepreneur, how do you decide whether you want to dive into that exciting sounding idea ? I've written about "passion" earlier - but how do you even figure out whether you're really passionate about something, or what exactly is it in a story that you're passionate about ?

One thought thats emerged - in discussions with fellow truth-seekers - so you can evaluate something like this more meaningfully is:

Imagine what you'll be doing, and see if you like it...

This involves a fair bit of homework.

For starters, you need to understand the various aspects of your venture/job.

Initiation:

How do you get it off the ground ? How do you validate the technology, and the business parts of it ? What does it take to get all the "unknowns" answered - contacts/travel/interviews/research. Is there a brick-and-mortar part to it that'll need observation from close-up? Do you need to learn a new language to get it running ? And I mean Kannada/French, not Ruby :)

Up, running:

Lotsa coding ? Setting up operations ? Simultaneously ? You probably need to start pursuing the stakeholders for a buy-in, not just information. Thats a lot of pitch-creation along with collateral for that.That could involve a lot of sucking up, travel, deal-making. Is it time to hire some folks already ? How much cost cutting are you starting to do on the personal front already ?

What are the reactions/strategies when you hear a bunch of people saying "no" ? What happens when you encounter muscle ? Who handles that, and how ?

Grow! Awesome.

Operations : manpower, processes, glitches abound. This takes up a lot of effort. What are the day to day challenges ?

Sales : Finding new leads as you expand becomes a huge challenge. And since you're not "reacting" to a few reference/early customers or consumers, it becomes tougher to come back and change stuff too easily and the focus shifts to packaging/messaging things so that you can get the point across. Hit rates could drop, so you need a wide audience. A full time job, again. Deal cutting with the big guys becomes nastier, and there's some competition you start to become aware of that you knew nothing about earlier.

Development : Its kinda on auto pilot, since you're focused on the ops and sales. But hey, there's lots more inputs flowing in, and then you're suddenly scaling, and quality glitches are starting to show up.

Stable State:

What makes or breaks the company now ? What drives growth ? Is the primary focus managing relationships ? Deal-making ? Financial jugglery to keep costs/margins healthy ? Is operational efficiency what your business depends on ? Is an ever-widening network of contacts the mainstay of growth or even sustenance ?

In each of the above states, identify what tasks are important. Don't just pick stuff thats sexy, or that you would like to do.

Identify the important external stakeholders in each. They'll need to be cultivated, managed, engaged. Thats a job! Irrespective of what the venture is. (Or even in a job)

What are the likely problems that might arise in each phase ? Which are the human issues, or technological, or marketing related, or financial ? You'll be fixing all of those whether you like it or not :D

List down the important tasks in each phase that will need doing to answer the above, and more questions if you have them in your venture's context. See if between all the founders, you're ok doing all of those. Sorry - make that enjoy doing all of those.

What do those tasks involve ? Coding ? Travel ? Negotiating ? Groveling ? Financial skills ? Language skills ? Marketing ? Creativity ? Talking ? Documentation ? Elevator and other pitches ? Collaborations ? Mild lying ? Hiring from tons of fluff ? Convincing and managing people with lots of attitude ? Being "available" all the time ? Dressing up and attending parties ? Getting your hands dirty and legs dusty "on the street" ? What ?

Cause when the chips are down, just being "ok" with those task will not be enough. You'll tire of things, or get bored, or distracted by other stuff that really interests you. The early challenge of exciting problems to solve, or a fuzzy dream of pots of gold at the end - these fade quite easy but for a very very very few souls. Each little task that you do owith some sense of resentment builds up stress, and fatigue - especially when the going is tough.

For most of us, the love of the underlying space will see you through the troughs. The goals and even the ideas might continue to change, but none of those tasks will seem too painful if you're in a happy place vis-a-vis what really interests you.

So go ahead and write it all out - and see if its a happy picture that emerges when you draw it in detail.

Smart Idea Vs What-You-Love Vs Will-it-get-funded?

2009-04-23T10:19:00.004+05:30

Its a similar theme to what I've written about on this blog earlier.

Essentially (from a tweet I'd made yesterday) :

Betwn a "smart idea that has major potential" and "a nice idea which you'd love to execute" which would you pick? #entrepreneur #philosophy

Some responses -

@zenx I'd go for the latter. The 1st one is pure business potential, but does not address skills or liking - both critical to keep u going. @raodyboy

@zenx "A nice idea you would love to execute " any day it's about you at the end of the day and not abt the idea itself @lalitgbhise

@zenx Most ideas in startups change, even the 'smart' ones. If you love working on a problem, you'll hit upon an idea that has potential. @avinashatreya

@zenx I must admit it's a hacker's perspective. From a biz PoV, if something has potential, and others consider it a PITA, nothing like it! @avinashatreya

@zenx @avinashatreya by no means am I disregarding the need for a good biz model. The "love" is needed to stay driven at all times. @raodyboy

@zenx it should be a bit of both. Else you stand to lose either your money or your passion or both @biggfoot

@zenx Agree with @avinashatreya ; There needs to be a fine balance though & a lot of "common sense" :) @m_mekin

@zenx Depends on how interested you are in the first. Is passion inherent to an idea or is it part of execution? #entrepreneur #philosophy @sids

@zenx "a nice idea which you'd love to execute" for me @randombrick

Most folks instinctively went for the "love to execute" part - yet on reconsidering it some wanted to ensure it made business sense, and even had a business plan.

Now a lot of startups I've known about did not really have a clue to what revenue models they could realistically go after. Amazingly, a lot many of these were not even things the folks doing them were totally into, or believed in deep inside. They were essentially of the nature of being "great opportunities" from a cool-sounding technology point of view, and something that might attract investors. The ones who were more in love with the thing they started out doing did not write up formal business plans, or have fixed time-frames vs. returns targets, or want to attract a million dollar fund.

As an example - a lot many travel companies which want to, like so many before them, help search tickets across airlines. Surely there's more to travel? Were the founders real travelers themselves ? Did they truly want to make a difference to how travel related planning/execution happened ? Of course there's success to be grabbed in this model itself, though no way thats ever getting as sticky as an IndiaMike. Or even GetOffUrAss. The former thrives on operational, technological efficiency and deal-making capabilities. The latter - both in the commercial format and otherwise - live and grow off their enthusiasm for travel/India and the creativity and interest to go-deeper.

Numerous real estate sites are essentially listings of properties, like the last one and the one before. I do remember one which took a shot at playing concierge for buyers and tried hand-holding them through the process. But most are about a cooler website, or a better interface. The nuts and bolts of the industry the startup enters seem to not be appealing, or even factors in the startups plans. Thats a "will somehow get past that".

Perhaps thats the part that needs the "passion" - the word that's gotten a little overused in every venture's context. Not the passion to overcome an operational challenge, or create an engineering solution, or other such meta goals - but the passion for the core of the business.

Questions to ask: Do I love this space ? Understand it so well I can make a real difference to the consumer ? Am I building gloss and UI, or value that will be appreciated irrespective of the gloss ? Do I enjoy the attributes I'm trying to make a difference to ? Can I empathize with the consumer ?

Of course, I'm sure there are people who live for ensuring every opportunity is made use of, and build great businesses targeting those specific opportunities, on top of their team building, marketing and operational skills. A majority of businesses in India are not necessarily driven by people's love for what they do - its not a love for fashion that drives the average textile retailer, or passion for music that makes a successful label.

But for those who translate their deep interest in an area into a venture, the chances of overcoming the lack of skills in marketing, or team creation, or the lack of contacts, etc, are good. For this kind of an entrepreneur, being totally into the space you're getting into helps. The specific idea can change, but it helps if you totally love the area you're into - you'll overcome hurdles that much more enthusiastically.

Your love of reading, understanding of books, authors and genres will help a lot if you're getting into publishing, or starting a library. The Premier Book Shop off Church Street - a small outlet compared to some of the big guys - had a kind of repeat clientèle few bookstores would see. The guy knew his books, and his customers. Sure he did not have (or probably want) scale, and new-age inventory management, a snazzy web interface, multiple delivery and billing option, etc, might've helped. But his customers - who went to him ever so often - did not go for those attributes - but for the connect he created with books. It was the deep love and knowledge of the books, not the technology or operations that catalogued, or sold, or delivered them, that kept people hooked.

This depth of the "intangibles" is what a truly devoted enthusiast can bring to the venture. Its provides a differentiator that is rock solid, becuase its not dependent on this feature or that, or a fleeting advantage in price points or suchlike. The "love for the cause" brings a certain authority, flexibility and even respect and friendships that customers gravitate towards.

So what kind of an entrypreneur are you ? Think hard and you'll know which ideas will sustain, and which will get "boring" or fade with the reduced relevance of the current idea.

Good Salary Advice

2009-04-02T16:34:00.003+05:30

Joel Spolsky discusses how salaries are fixed in his organization.

I agree with the overall attempt at subjectivity, though I believe it would be great if we could really "spread around ownership" in the truest sense, and that includes transparency in salaries, bonuses and figuring out if, as a company, we did x% on our bonuses, etc. That automatically includes involvement in fixing targets, a participative approach to strategy and tactics, and ownership of a small business that has scope for independent growth, if possible!

There's a very nice point made towards the end of that article:

At the same time, if you hear a lot of griping about salaries, you shouldn't look just at your system for paying people. One thing I've learned from experience is that happy, motivated employees who are doing work they love and feel they are being treated as adults don't gripe about money unless their pay is egregiously unfair. If you hear a lot of complaints about salaries, I suspect that's probably a manifestation of a much bigger disease: Your employees aren't deriving enough personal satisfaction from their work, or they are miserable for other reasons.

This is soooo true and its amazing how often even smart people try and fix just the symptoms. Unless you're totally off the charts, there are usually deeper reasons for the dissatisfaction, and unless there's a genuine effort to fix those, the symptoms will flare up again in one form or the other.

Meanwhile, outside the echo chamber...

2009-03-23T08:29:00.005+05:30

India isn't really slowing down that bad, and here's some reasons.

Of course, in the "globally integrated" (and ridiculously priced) pockets in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, parts of the NCR, Chennai, Kochi, etc., there is a recession underway and the impacts just about started to be felt. There have been layoffs, people are on notice, fortunes have been lost and there are netither large transactions happening, nor loans available to fund them in the first place. But the "rural economy" (is that primarily the agrarian economy, or is it more a geographical definition?) continues to do well despite a not very strong winter crop. I read somewhere that its share of the GDP is 54%, yet it manages a share of 62% of consumer spending! In essence, thats what drives the wheels of our economy.

Makes one feel kind of marginal, doesn't it :)

Question : what's our "startup" world doing beyond the slick 2.0 interfaces, and its connected high end crowd ? Where is the idea for major services for this huge, if challenging, market ? Why must we do essentially what The Valley does ?

I have no answers, but I do think part of the reason is that most of the "startup" entrepreneur space is not about a business, but technologies or often just their usage for a narrow, niche and usually optimistically sized target audience. Not just this, some people even seem to take offense that there's enterprising folks outside of tech (involved in real businesses - imagine), and that they deserve funding as well!

The current modus operandi of the VC sector does not demand an upfront "completion of the business" cycle and in the Indian context, version 1.0 of the biz idea gets too expensive on its own. A million dollars! Come on, many of the big brands we have today were started on lesser.

There are surely a few great successes outside of the echo chamber. If you know a few, would be great to interrupt our heady 10x multiple fantasies and get to know about them. It might benefit us to understand how to first create a real business, and then bring in its online/mobile/whatever interface as needed - as a tool to improve/enable parts of the business. The real need is never the interface, dears.

Gratisfication - free mobile stuff is fun

2009-03-02T11:58:00.001+05:30

[ blog.zook.in cross -post ]

A little snooping around all the content we've been adding recently got some interesting stuff (and converted even me, who's never downloaded a ringtone in my life, to do that!).

If you're so inclined, there's Mantras you can use, or various sirens if thats your thing. There's various other ways of getting you to pick up the phone, some very amusing :) Rock, F1, bells, funny ones, there's all kinds of stuff you can download for nothing at all. Go ahead and find it - its fun and its free.

There's also tons of pictures you could use, and mobile games and applications - all through one search box.

We continue to work to bring more and more interesting, useful stuff for you. Keep zook.in!

P.S. Reminder : you can also download and use the Zook client for S60 3rd Ed. phones - check out if there's one for yours....

Great at less than 100%

2009-02-26T08:10:00.005+05:30

Ziva is a very "dynamic" company, to put it nicely. There's always a dozen ideas, and another 10 underway, and plenty of possibility. Each idea has a bright blue sky story to it, and in its ideal avatar would yield phenomenal improvements/data/users/glory/whatever.

The big questions I've learned to ask is : What happens if the idea doesn't mature to its 100% ? Is it useful/worth doing/helpful to the product and direction at 50% ? 20%? Whats the first version and will it be something we can make use of in itself ? Is the "prototype" a product in itself ?

This isn't an execution issue. Its just practical. From what I've observed in the software world, rarely is an idea executed to its fullest ideal. There are engineering issues, time-to-market issues, other priorities, reactions to real need that create directional changes, etc, that all lead to a smaller subset or version of the idea being the end-product for the longest time possible. This is also a good thing - because it leads to practical, usable R&D rather than early, limited "lab prototypes" that don't really fit anywhere yet, but "we're working on ver 2". It also gives a feature/product a shot at collecting market feedback early, and helps optimize resources on it. Most importantly, it reduces wasted effort on half-bakery stuff that never got released. Sure, we still have a lot of those, but thats where the learning happened ;)

All Kinds of Alerts!

2009-02-25T10:11:00.002+05:30

I've been using Zook Alerts myself in the true tradition of eating your own dog food :) Just happened to visit the "My Alerts" page and here's what I got!

Headlines News Alert - 09:00 Everyday
Cricket Alert - When Occurs
Event Alert - Rock Bangalore - 18:00 Everyday
Weather Alert - Bangalore, India - 09:00 Everyday
Stock Alert - Satyamcomp - 11:00 Mon-fri
Stock Alert - Tatamotors - 11:00 Mon-fri
Deal Alert - Stationery Books Koramangala Bangalore - 19:00 Every FRI
Deal Alert - Sarjapur Road Bangalore - 19:00 Every FRI
Movie Alert - PVR Hindi Bangalore - 20:00 Every FRI
Deal Alert - Hsr Layout Bangalore - 19:00 Every FRI
Movie Alert - Pvr English Bangalore - 20:00 Every FRI
Stock Alert - Bsesn - 11:00 Mon-fri
Event Alert - Classical Music Concerts Bangalore - 18:00 Everyday
Event Alert - Drama Bangalore - 18:00 Everyday
Event Alert - Film Festival Bangalore - 18:00 Everyday

Of these, the News alerts, tho pretty generic, are a useful update of the world. The Movie updates are *sometimes* useful - totally depends on whether we're thinking in terms of going to catch a movie that weekend. The deal alerts have managed to get me to search a little more on occasion, and the stock alerts are what I probably read most religiously :)

Just signed up for HSR/Sarjapura Road deals alerts this morning - curious what it'll feel like to follow ALL deals in our area.

Happy Valentines Day-ulu

2009-02-13T22:00:00.001+05:30

Pink Unmentionables or not, we at Zook wish you a Happy Valentines Day.

Here’s some gifts you can share : some lovely Telugu Songs absolutely free!

You can also find some beautiful messages to sent to your Valentines.

Have a rocking day and may there be zero moral interference in your Valentine transmission

Software -> Auto industry!

2009-02-10T08:10:00.002+05:30

Had mentioned earlier that the software industry needs to emulate the auto industry a little more to become way more efficient, and a little less of a black hole to the lay person, than it is today. I've held this view for some time, and have believed that as more Indian businesses become enterprise software users, they'll drive the efficiency merely by their habit of questioning the reasons for the pricing of everything to determine VFM as best as they can!

Here goes!

This is a good sign, and a good time to drive this harder. The software industry has lived in its own warp for the longest time - productivity, salaries, lack of open standards (at least in comparison to other industries), different production and marketing styles. I think a v2.0 will start to happen as things start moving east.

Zook Client Featured S60 App on Nokia

2009-01-28T12:02:00.002+05:30

The Zook S60 Client on the Mobisy Platform was the featured App on Nokia

You can download it by pointing your phone here.

This is early days for the client - and we’d like your feedback on the same. What else would you like to see ? Whats good ? Whats bad ? What else ?

The Passion of the Entrypreneur

2009-01-19T08:54:00.003+05:30

There are businesses, and there are businesses. Some become big brands, some get into franchising, some are huge enterprise-driven cash cows.

My favourite kind of business is a little more romantic though - the kind where the passion of it rules - its size is almost guaranteed to be single-store or small otherwise because the energy and keenness it needs pretty much cannot be replicated. Its rarely the most profitable (in cash terms) but usually extremely loved and respected, and sustains. The brand is huge in its own niche, and its amazingly satisfying in its own way.

I'd place some of these in that category:

BOTS : Bums On The Saddle

Nikhil and Rohan are regular software guys who are passionate about bicycles, and dared to try and change the cycling scene in Bangalore on their own! They rented "space" on the terrace and built (by hand!) their showroom. They've got a lot many customers over the few hours every weekend that BOTS opens, and even more friends because of the amazing community they're helping create. They participate in biking forums as riders, enthusiasts and also as people who sell Treks if you need those. The DIY workshops at BOTS, the biker-movie-nights, the wiki/FAQ for rentals, what bike etc, and the readiness and enthusiasm with which every question - even from non-Trek owners such as myself - is answered - is what differentiates their approach to business as compared to the Firefox Stations which also carry Treks. I would not say they know everything about bikes (though the fundaes collected and worked upon has grown to a formidable volume over time) - but they're the most willing to learn quickly and even better, share widely.

Auto Service

Venkat Shyam's love for all things mechanical, especially bikes, and his never-say-die attitude when it comes to analyzing issues makes him a pleasant surprise in the otherwise murky two wheeler service space. Add to that his willingness to help anyone and everyone on the fora he's a member of, and his amazing innovativeness in running the service station be it customer friendly initiatives, employee benefits, or even helping out the parent brand with field level R&D, and to me he's a great case study for biz schools - how to think like a world class org even at a small family owned business level.

He's probably got more brand value than most big Auto Sales/Service chains in Bangalore or perhaps across India, and people have sometimes ridden down from Pune to get a decent job done :)

Rainwater Club

This is now part of Biome - which includes Chitra Vishwanath's efforts towards energy friendly, yet aesthetic architecture and construction.

I had interacted with Vishwanath about 6-7 years ago when we were considering inplementing RWH for our apartment complex. Recently have gotten to know more about him and the others who're part of this when my wife started working with the Rainwater Club. His determination to make a difference one little bit at a time, and the perseverance which has sustained the effort over years amazes me. Its not a not-for-profit venture, yet its focus is not profit. The impact, organizing the sector and its players, and defining a path for better water management is their agenda and given how critical water and energy management will become, its a great business to be in without being all "business-like" about it - if you know what I mean :)

GettOffUrAss

Santosh is more of a traveller and dreamer, but unlike the rest of us, has had the conviction and guts to follow up on these, and over the years, have seen him establish himself as a specialized, niche player in the travel space. He probably has more repeat customers (and even repeat non-customers like yours truly ;)) that most travel portals. He's also having lots of fun, probably making decent money and growing business while keeping it really really close to his vision of what it should be. I would be surprised if any large travel outfit can even come close. You need to be a traveller/biker/dreamer to get this far, and the average cometravelwithus.com just does not cut it! No VC, no IPO plans, no projections. Just does what he loves, and thats to get people off their asses and out there :)

MapUnity

Ashwin has a very very different approach to startups. While I will not claim to understand it, its probably not about VC funding in the classical sense, 10x returns and exit options. He's dared to create a very different model, build brand equity amongst the players that matter in the mapping space, learned how to work with governments and large organization without monetary transactions alone driving the relationship.

I cannot imagine how large orgs - an Oracle or a Reliance or an AirTel could ever hope to do anything like this. This is surely a beautiful form of entrepreneurship, and I hope to keep running into more of these examples. Keeps the enthusiasm going like little else. Their passion, their dive-into-it attitudes and their honesty is very refreshing. Its not unsurprising that bums and ass are part of the names of two of the businesses I've covered :) These guys are serious about what they do, but not everything is immediate RoI alone.

O perhaps their definition of "Returns" encompasses more than what shows up in the next quarter's balance sheets, and therein lies the "differentiator".

Edit : Some that I forgot to mention

Starc Audio

Rajesh Nair has a passion for music - and understands his valves and crossovers. Years ago, based on a reference, I'd prodded him to make me a home theater system from a scratch - and was very happy with the results. Rajesh has since embarked on a fantastic journey thats taken him to explore new heights of the high end audio market - stuff I cannot afford or even begin to understand, but for which there's a strong niche market of affinciados. Again, Rajesh has followed his dreams and lived them.

EasyLib

A lending library thats more than just that. They were small and fledgling when I first heard of them, and now are a business thats positively impacting the reading habits of many. They organize reading/storytelling sessions for kids too! No funding, projections etc, again.

Before you go buy that …..

2009-01-06T19:45:00.001+05:30

Check things out on Zook - O2S have added tons of great deals for your locality, your brand and service.

Great Beauty Services Offers in Bangalore

Best Digital Camera Prices in Mumbai

Best Samsung Deals Across Delhi!!

Check out Bangalore Laptop offers

Call up O2S at the given number, and they’ll help you out with more offers, and in fact find for you exactly what you’re looking for. Less headaches, better prices!

Special M-Coupons for Mumbaikars

2008-12-19T19:47:00.001+05:30

[ X-post from The Zook blog yet again. Am getting lazy.... ]

Our coupons and deals partners, Open2Save, have gotten some special deals in Mumbai. These will not be available through search, but you can subscribe for the same for delivery every month through SMS.

How ? SMS “O2S mum” to 57575665

You’ll get a the current deals in your Inbox (and we’ll keep sending fresh ones once in a while) - if any specific one catches your fancy, just SMS the keyword for that deal to us, and we’ll send you the coupon you need to show the store/restaurant before you order/buy stuff.

Happy shopping!

[ Tip: for the readers of this blog - 984-551-9665 - thats 984-551-zook on your phone-keypad - will work as well for now. If we see more usage on the long code - we'll move to one for good. Its a Karnataka number so in other circles you'll need to prefix a +91 or 0 - +91-984-551-9665 ]

"Q" it to Know it

2008-12-03T15:10:00.001+05:30

Good bisibele in Bangalore ? Distance to Goa ? How does one get to Chikmaglur ? When’s the next exam for this board or that ? Whats CERN ? How many moons does Jupiter have ? Meanings of words ?

We've launched a shortcut to answers from the community : SMS “Q ” to 57575665 (in India) to get a relevant, way more reliable answer to just ANY question you may have - directly from the community.

You can also help others with what you know at http://42.zook.in/. Can’t really beat real peoples’ knowledge for correctness, relevance, after all. You always know best.

In a G Spot ?

2008-11-19T13:29:00.001+05:30

Google advertised its SMS search today.

This kinda news always shakes things up for a small outfit like ours :) Its also a nice catalyst for a bunch of plans and certain points of views in stuff debated internally.

Most of all, they may help expand the pull-services-on-SMS market which may help us a great deal, indirectly. Out in the hinterland (where an amazing %age of our usage is from), "Google" and "cool" aren't factors.

But then its big-G, and you gotta watch out!

So far, we're ahead on the breadth of data we've got covered (tho they have some nice features pre-configured), and the community is an invaluable tool to leave the bother of figuring out the answer you need, rather than a generic "result", and always so! But then, G can always catch up on this, that and everything else - I mean it just takes money and developers with brains, plus some time, and they have bigger advertising moolah (actually, just plain old moolah) than we do.

This is exactly what makes doing startups so much fun :D Spotting a future challenge/opportunity and donning the thinking cap on for the battles.

Its an even field, and we have a head start. The huge question is - how does a startup with a very limited marketing/publicity budget stay ahead? Of course its for us to figure out, and sure we'll be stretching our grey matter as best as we can, but if someone has a great idea or two, the coffee on us while we discuss it :)

BTW, we have a decent TT table in office if you'd rather play a game, instead. Drop by....

Sad (YHOO)

2008-11-19T11:37:00.003+05:30

I've already been so proud of the good stuff I did there, and have a soft corner for Y!
Oh well, I hope the above is proven wrong...

Economic Cycles

2008-11-19T11:35:00.001+05:30

VeloWala.org > What is Velocommerce?

While I've seen all of this, never thought of it in terms of a "last mile" delivery channel. Great insight, and advertising opportunity ?

Other ways of doing business : Toyota and the recession

2008-11-19T10:52:00.002+05:30

American automakers are facing tough times, yet Toyota has so far avoided the usual reactions.

My gut feel is that Eastern businesses will evolve new mechanisms and ways of doing business, in how they acquire and retain employees, deal with customers, handle bad times, and conduct mergers and acquisitions. The "more recent" business truths (in the context of centuries old business philosophies) that gained foothold in the West primarily since WWII will be stressed, challenged - and we're already seeing some of that.

Zook for Cars, Jobs, Matrimonials. Tons more classifieds!

2008-11-15T12:40:00.001+05:30

[ Another x-post from the Zook blog. ]

Its a bad economy - the dazzling new model will probably need to wait - get a bargain instead.

We’ve also added a bunch of jobs, real estate listings, services, even matrimonials.

One more reason to use Zook. And please keep watching this space for alerts on these soon.

These are courtesy our data partners Click.in, and OLX.

Taking Stock

2008-11-13T12:56:00.000+05:30

[x-posting from the Zook blog]

Added Stock search on Zook - updated regularly with a small delay.

Check out how the Reliance Stocks are doing ? Its a pretty nervous market, and at least I’m watching a lot many of these and keeping my fingers crossed!

We’ll be adding Stock Alerts on Zook soon….

House Hunting - mobile!

2008-10-12T21:53:00.002+05:30

[ X-posting from the Zook blog ]

Zook, with Click.in, now brings real estate classifieds to your phone.

PG Accommodation in Pune

Koramangala 3bhk for sale

Land in Coorg!

Gurgaon Apartments

Find your house, for rent or sale! Or find people who’re looking for the same…

Gurgaon Apartment wanted

We’ll be adding other classifieds soon too - jobs, stuff for sale.

Flickr Pics on Zook!

2008-10-02T20:18:00.000+05:30

We’ve made downloadble flickr snaps available on Zook - go explore!

http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?query=flickr+ladakh

http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?query=flickr+butterfly

http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?query=flickr+merida

http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?query=flickr+ferrari

http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?query=flickr+coffee

http://www.zook.in/wap/search.jsp?query=flickr+sunrise

Mobile Greetings for your friends, and more

2008-09-30T19:58:00.002+05:30

Bunch of upgrades to Zook.

Find the alert you want to set. Try “alerts movies INOX bangalore” or “alerts electronics deals“ - essentially syntax independent after the “alerts ….” - find and set the deals/movies/events you want to follow, not the “best whatever” somebody else puts and pushes to you.
Greetings: Find a birthday/diwali/eid, etc, SMS forward, and set it up for the appropriate day as a mobile greeting! We’ll make sure its delivered on the right day and tell your friend you remembered them on the special day.
Web Search: We’ve integrated web search results on Zook - just in case the data isn’t there, or good enough right away. Over time, we’ll try pulling information out of that too so you don’t have to grapple with links and more links and more links….

Keep Zook.in!

What Are You Zook.in for ?

2008-09-09T09:46:00.003+05:30

[ X-posting from the Zook blog ]

People solve a nice variety of needs through the Zook community. Here’s a few samples:

Sports news and updates:
all winners of 2008 US open
olympics medal tally

Distances, though we’re not a maps service:
Choutapal, nalgonda is how far from hyderbad

Meanings, reference, current affairs:
Mesogynist meaning
what is 123 agreement?
where do we’ve nuclear reactors in india?
“in the red” means?
“spaghetti bowl” means?

Status:
pnr status 140494xxxx

Shortcuts:
RelianceGSM’s website Address
electricity bill of CESC online

Curiosity:
world fastest train?
Where is the place ‘Silent Hill’ actually located

Tough Ones!
rajasthani cook supplier Pune
world’s top most prizes after nobel?
malavan weather
Big purchasing dealer for mentha oil in barabanki (we got this!)

To anyone who asks “What kind of questions does Zook answer?”, or “How’re you like XYZ local search?”, the above should provide a clue. We’re amazed at how so many folks are actually SMSing in to figure out answers to whatever pops up in their heads - and the big challenge now is to get to the whole country, so there’s a new tool for the cliched “no such thing as a dumb question”.

Go ahead, ask! ANYthing that you think needs answering on the phone. Oh, there IS the usual “restaurants, movies, stuff” too. http://zook.in or sms query to 57575665

Web OScuse me?

2008-09-07T10:50:00.002+05:30

The Ted Dziuba take on Chrome-as-the-Web-OS hypereviews in blogosphere.

I'm really beginning to like this guy. Not that I'm totally in agreement over everything he says - but he does pose some interesting questions about architectures, usability, user needs and industry craziness! Yeah, most people still the plain vanilla stuff, and whyever does everyone now need quad-cores and 4Gs of RAM ?

Pretty left-liberal take on the Web2.0. And it needed a bit of that, if you ask me :)

Blogger Rant

2008-09-02T08:26:00.003+05:30

Why can I not set all my posts to be justified, or centered, or whatever by default? Invariably edit EVERY post after the first publish.

Edit: including this one :D

OpenID uncov'd

2008-09-02T08:21:00.004+05:30

Ted Dziuba takes openID on in his own characteristic way.

Again, I tend to agree with him. Single sign on is a great idea within an organization/site across various tools/properties. Across, as Ted suggests, hey, recycle!

There's something about too much componentization that gets painful. Especially for the lay user. But then, a lot of the blogosphere couldn't care less about the lay user, could it ? Its so Cool 2.0 to servicify, so a service it shall be.

The Power of Community

2008-09-01T08:33:00.002+05:30

Team-Bhp just helped trace and recover a stolen car!

Community at its best? Its heartening to see not everything is done for incentives and/or "social currency"

The economics of free

2008-08-31T13:27:00.003+05:30

Rajesh Jain talks about free subscription services

The logic sounds correct - the only question is how quickly will advertisers jump on? In the interim, the costs for the service provider are quite daunting. Good to see the optimism about pull services too, esp search :)

The same, on his blog, with some background too.

This (Interesting!) Day in History

2008-08-25T09:00:00.001+05:30

August 25th, 2008

Once in while we keep getting queries from people wanting to know what happened “today in history” - its a nice natural curiosity driven question that leads one into interesting journeys Aug 25th turns out to be an especially cool one -

today in history:

1609:Galileo shows his first telescope
1825:Uruguay declares independence from Brazil
1981:Voyager 2 at its closest to Saturn,in 1989 to Neptune
1991:Belarus declares independence from Soviet Union
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_25

National Obsession Alerts :)

2008-08-22T22:26:00.002+05:30

Ok, we just had to satisfy this major need that our users have been explicitly asking for, and that anyhow defines a major dimension of India in such a huge way.

“Score kya hai?”

Click here, and sign up for free Cricket Score updates when matches happen. For now we’re doing this for India interest matches alone. But then thats a sixth of the world listening, isn’t it ?

Totally thrilling “query” to get for a search engine

2008-08-22T20:11:00.000+05:30

We got this a couple of days ago :

Thank u for all ur response give by sms. on 10:50, Aug 19 from city:Mumbai

Its indeed heartwarming that someone not only found Zook useful, but thinks of us as a friend! Hoping to be as useful to many, many more ….

Nokia/iPhone kickstarted the mobile web ?

2008-08-21T08:57:00.004+05:30

Apparently, Silicon Valley tends to think there was no mobile web before the iPhone.

I kinda buy Nokia's point of view about parochialism in the Valley on this count. Japan, Korea are way more determinant of what the mobile world looks like, and functionally, the iPhone is nowhere yet. Nokia are surely ahead on the how-to-make-connections works curve, and Apple hasn't yet figured out communication yet.

In the mobile world, it just might turn out that the Valley, for once, is in the well it cannot see beyond.

Yes, a larger %age of iPhone users may use the web on the phone - but a lot of these users might've waited for precisely that - to be able to use the web on the iPhone when its available. A lot many Nokia users probably bought a phone, and personal tool for one of many reasons, and some happened to use the web on it. The numbers are very different, and a direct comparison isn't really on.

Finally, here's some food for thought. They didn't include Korea and japan, though!

Bronze for India - Medal #2!

2008-08-20T16:01:00.004+05:30

India gets in Second Medal at Beijing! Wrestler Sushil Kumar wins it in the 66kg freestyle.

Now we need one more from the boxers :) C'mon guys!

The iPhone is here. Or is it ?

2008-08-20T07:55:00.003+05:30

The much awaited iPhone is here! The above is the Vodafone page announcing availability in two days time. Only - 31-36k!!!! ??? Isn't that too high ? A diehard Apple fan who's been awaiting this forever is now looking for decent alternatives.

I see the prices "correcting" in a few days. Especially in the light of the mixed reviews the iPhone has been getting - with 3G issues and the like.

HungryBangalore raises investment!

2008-08-19T09:03:00.002+05:30

HungryBangalore - now HungryZone - have been working with Zook since their early days - and ours too. The closed their first round of funding yesterday, as reported by Pluggd.in.

Good to see their hard work and perseverance bear fruit. Of course, this is only a start, and while they were the first ones in this arena, there are more players now. How they differentiate and scale will be critical from hereon, and we'll help as best as we can.

Congarts Priyanka, Ritesh and gang. May you fill a lot many more tummies :)

Learning to Communicate

2008-08-18T12:33:00.002+05:30

After thousands of years, we're still figuring out how to communicate, while major changes happen outside of our limited lives....

Am beginning to like this blog...

2008-08-16T23:40:00.000+05:30

(Potentially unsavoury language warning)

An Ar ticle About Startups That Wasn't Written By A Pretentious Asshole - Ted Dziuba

:D

True!

On Specialization

2008-08-16T09:58:00.002+05:30

One day you wake up and see the amazing skills you've honed over the last decade be replaced by a DIY-for-dummies wizard :)

The Anti, and the Virus

2008-08-15T14:14:00.003+05:30

Something along these lines has been my argument against Windoze too, for both security and efficiency.
Also the whole paranoid mess that corporate IT security is - at large organizations.