Entrepreneurial Reasons

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

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

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

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

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 ?

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?

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

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...

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

[ 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....