Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts

More Resources for (Bangalore) Startups

[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

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.