Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
8 Reasons (You Never Thought Of) That Sustainability Will Change Management
As sustainability affects how the world works, so will it affect how business works in the world. Here are eight changes that smart managers are already talking about. Click here for the full article
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Clean Tech - SSB Aug 09
The August edition of Startup Saturday showcased two of the finest efforts in the domain of clean tech. While the term clean tech is in a lot of discussion, these days, there are a number of concepts that need clarifications, and when it comes to start-ups in clean tech, SSB is always at the forefront with its showcase! In fact, we had rush not just in nominations, but also amongst speakers and the demos in Lightning Pitches - we had more than we could accomodate and till the last minute, this kept us on our toes! So finally, NextGen PMS and AutoBoxx Automation were the ones that comprised the main demos and we had a number of speakers that made us decide about having a panel discussion. The concept of a panel discussion during an SS event was one of the two 'firsts' that we had - the second one being mentioned next.
One of the newest feather in our cap was the concept of live streaming of the event, thanks to mobisy.com. The idea sprung up from the fact that we needed online videos of the event for archiving and streaming over the Net. In fact, our media partners have always been interested in having a copy of the part they have sponsored and live streaming really served this purpose.
Since this was an experimental effort this time, we have further efforts to improve the quality, lighting, timing and other related aspects of the video. View videos
The way the volunteers have been supported by the people who attend SSB events was so clear when we faced a hitch in the mobile camera used for live streaming (it's battery went off!) and immediately, one of the members of the audience offered his phone's battery to continue the recording. Thanks to this spirit that SSB events have been so successful in Bangalore.
NextGen PMS are involved in the entire green chain, and are involved in estimating carbon waste footprints, and providing energy and emission efficiency measures and implementation plan. It was really a crisp presentation and Abhishek, who is the co-founder of the startup, interacted very well with the audience. He seemed to present a number of complicated topics in a very simplified manner to the group.
Think about managing energy in offices and houses and you got to talk to Ramandeep from Autoboxx Automation. They are not just into this but also in monitoring and tracking of company personnel, outsourced vendors as wel as customers. Their clientele includes banks retailers and telecom companies.
InOutAds was the first one to come up for the Lightning Pitches and went to showcase their approach towards connecting the folks who have places to advertise with the folks who have things to advertise. This was followed by Narahari from Presiding Tech India (They are primarily into Carbon credit and related activities), and Freeman who talked about the iAccelerator program at IIMA. Alleway Info talked about grooming the students entering the job market, and how they are not a placement agency but a source of well qualified and more than normal freshers in to the industry. Daniel from Daniel Power Systems was on stage with his wife and 3 month old kid and showcased his efforts at minimizing power thefts from the supply lines (not from homes) and at optimizing smart grids (without the hassles of having expensive smart switches at home/grids). MASH from IIMB presented the Marketing club efforts by the students and how they are coming up with innovative methods to reach more relevant people. They also mentioned briefly about the upcoming events at IIMB during the networking sessions.
The panel discussion was a very warm one with biggies like Vasudev Avdhani from the Tata Group, Karthee Madaswamy from Qualcomm Ventures, Elmar Stroomer and Pradeep from Enviu, and Shashidhara K from Blueray Solar joining together with the audience to understand deeper aspects of opportunities in Clean Tech in India, and part of the discussion involved topics such as solar power, rechargeable dance floor, and hybrid autorickshaw project in India.
We had a new concept of categorized business card collection and folks dropped their cards in to boxes with different labels such as web services, product based startups and so on. We also had a graffitti board up during the networking session for people to put in their thoughts about Startup Saturday events! Bangalore Mirror and StartupNews.in were present amongst the audience and did an excellent job of interacting with the audience. The audience enthu was brimming, and was visible during the networking session!
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Seth Godin - The bandwidth-sync correlation
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Friday, July 24, 2009
The Next Energy Innovators - BW
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Alternative Startup Financing Schemes - Freeman Murray
I’ve seen a number of posts lately discussing the ‘changing face of venture capital’. Paul Graham talks about the change in dynamics caused by the low capital requirements of technology startups. Fred Wilson discusses the need for a market for privately held common stock. There seems to be a general consensus about the growing role angels play in the startup ecosystem, and sadly there also seems to be a general consensus indicating that angels should basically write off their investments the moment they make them.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Seth Godin on 'The next Google'
Microsoft, home of the Zune, has just announced that they're going to launch Bing, a rebranding and reformatting of their search engine. So far, they've earmarked $100 million just for the marketing.
Bing, of course, stands for But It's Not Google. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that it is trying to be the next Google. And the challenge for Microsoft is that there already is a next Google. It's called Google.
Google is not seen as broken by many people, and a hundred million dollars trying to persuade us that it is, is money poorly spent. In times of change, the rule is this:
Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.
If Microsoft adds a few features and they prove popular, how long precisely will it take Google to mirror or even leapfrog those features?
With $100 million, you could build (or even buy) something remarkable. Something that spread online without benefit of a lot of yelling and shouting. Something that changes the game in a fundamental way. The internet works best when you build a network, not when you buy a brand. In fact, I can't think of one successful online brand that was built with cash.
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Watch the Google Wave
Email, instant messaging, wikis, forums, blogs, mobile, SMS... Google Wave completely obliterates business models and entire verticals of companies left and right.
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Venture Capital in India - Sramana Mitra
Sramana Mitra's views on Venture Capital in India. Please click here to be taken to Sramana's website.
India is flushed with investment commitments from the giants of technology. Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, SAP, Intel, and AMD have each committed over a billion to further develop their India presence.
So have many of the leading venture capital firms from Silicon Valley. For the longest time, Valley VCs would only invest in their backyard. No more. India, China, Israel are fair game today. This month, Matrix Partners has announced a $150 Million India fund. Sequoia has acquired Westbridge Capital, an India focused fund that has been around for five years. Several other major VCs are playing the space – Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Norwest, Battery, Sierra, Canaan Partners.
Yahoo has started investing in Consumer Internet startups, the first of which was announced recently (Bharatmatrimony.com), playing the corporate venture capital game.
Together, the committed capital chasing India is abundant.
Business Week writes cover stories on how the new billion dollar companies will emerge from India. Some have, already. Infosys, Wipro, TCS. No doubt, the lure of India for VCs is legitimate. These new darlings of Wall Street were built without their money. They want to make sure the next wave is built with.
In today’s India, the commodity in short supply is good entrepreneurs. In VC parlance, fundable deals are few and far between. Why?
Historically, India has been the world’s back-office. Consequently, the skill-set that has developed in India is that of engineering management and coding. The specifications are provided by teams elsewhere. Elsewhere, the market studies get done. Indian managers do not understand global technology markets. They have hardly had opportunity to learn this aspect of business. Entrepreneurs try to position products without knowledge of the product marketing discipline.
The natural instinct for Indian entrepreneurs is to build outsourcing services companies. BPO. Software Development. Chip Design. Those ventures take less capital, and become revenue generating fast. None of the Operating Loss period of a pure play product company is necessary, and hence, venture capital is also unnecessary.
VCs typically do not like this business model. It has low entry barrier. But those who have invested in India in the last five years have also invested in this model and made money off it. It was the only thing that was available. It is, however, becoming less appealing, since those markets are also maturing, and behemoths start to rule.
The next stop for VCs, the most recent wave, has been Consumer Internet and Mobile offerings. India’s growing mass of connected consumer population is the target wallet. Travel, Matrimonials, Jobs, Games, Mobile Payments are all segments getting substantial capital infusion. This trend is likely to continue for the next 18 months. The engineering required in building these sites is marginal, marketing being the big differentiator.
But it will still not consume the available capital. Those who understand the subtleties of these dynamics have started diversifying their portfolios with Retail, Bio Tech, Real Estate. Sequoia’s Royal Orchid Hotels is a case in point. Oak Investment Partners has set up a $200 Million venture fund to focus on the retail boom in India. Veteran retail investor Jerry Gallagher visited India and was astounded by the revenue per square feet in the malls and stores. He came back and convinced his partners to commit capital.
Bio Tech has produced one of the flagship entrepreneurs for India, Kiran Majumdar-Shaw, who is now pulling her weight to drag the entire industry up. India has a better opportunity in this field for the same reason as Retail: domestic producer, domestic consumer. Tests can leverage a gene pool that is perhaps one of the most diverse and universal in the world. If Indian policy-makers can get their act together, then India could even lead a stem cell research effort that is so far faltering in the US. VCs would be delighted to play.
Real Estate, however, is a different animal. For the longest time, the old money in India had only one legitimate investment vehicle. That was buying properties. Indians know a lot more about Real Estate entrepreneurship than any other kind of entrepreneurship. There is a financial eco-system around Real Estate that works, and by and large, venture capital is unnecessary, even unwelcome. Private Equity investors, however, are playing this market.
Conspicuous by its absence in the above discussion is traditional technology venture investing, the game that VCs know best. The reason being, it is almost absent from the technology firmament of India.
Intriguing, but entirely logical. Technology innovation takes intense domain knowledge. Be it in software, hardware, chips or communications, the engineers capable of innovation of this nature are inside the multinationals, harvesting unthinkable salaries, enjoying unbound luxury and lifestyle with servants, chauffeurs, maids, nannies, and cooks coming out of their ears. A $200,000 salary in India effortlessly affords a grand lifestyle that even multi-millionaires in the US cannot dream of.
People become entrepreneurs for two reasons: either they have a chip on their shoulder, and have something to prove to themselves and to the world around them. Or, they want to afford a lifestyle that is substantially above their current means. India is banking on the motivation of the former category alone, to find its technology entrepreneurs.
The onus, I am afraid, comes back to Silicon Valley to come up with technology innovation, which Indian back-offices can then implement and scale.
Venture capitalists will continue to go on their eco-tourism trips to India, then return. In the words of Marcel Proust, The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
Edutainment: Highs and Lows
The recent times have seen the most number of new words being coined - and edutainment happens to one of the new guys on the block. This term has been thrown around since a few years in order to promote the entertainment industry in a saner way (or to show that they are still sane!). For parents who are more concerned about this aspect of the game, there has been a huge number of innovations - whether the kid likes it or not, the amount of information bombarded on the kid, as well as that which the kids grasps, is enormous! And it is not at all surprising if the kid knows more about rocket science than you ever knew.
When a kid is playing a financial game, he is getting the understanding of the way money works, but unless guided in the right way, he considers all money matters as just games. Some kids get very obsessed with winning and most of the kids get ideas about hacking into banks and playing in casinos, just because they are always used to winning the game. When edutainment systems are designed, hardly will you see games that develop characteristics of facing a failure and patience.
On the contrary, if you look at the better side, kids who have been exposed to this during their development always look at challenges in life in a creative way. They are fascinated to know more about things and they are the ones who become great developers of technology. They are the ones who can imagine the next step in the technology front, and they are the ones who can undo the biggest blunders that technology can create. The biggest hackers are the greatest anti-hackers!
“Memorizing” is not education. Unfortunately, it has been the cornerstone of Indian education system, producing droid-like majority.
Looking at other aspects of edutainment, how many of us would like to learn Chemistry in a more fun-and-game manner than just memorize methods of balancing equations! Relevance, incremental learning, and distributed learning can help us be smarter at our subjects.
The only way to avoid mission-drift in the field of edutainment, is just to be careful. There are a number of tools available, and for a kid, being an understanding parent is what is needed most. Emphasis on fun and enjoyment should not be at the expense of educational content. Its a double-wedged knife, and we got to handle it carefully. A line has to be drawn that can show the kids, the difference between a real bullet and an on-screen game bullet, between really losing money and losing it on a game, and between handling emotions in reality than in just few sessions of a game.
Any thoughts!?
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Escape Mundanity
This article is a brief pointer to the original article by Guy Kawasaki. Credits for the original post, to 
.
Click here for the complete article.
How to Escape Mundanity
Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World
In this interview, Pamela Slim explains how to escape the mundanity of corporate cubicle life. Pam is a business coach and writer who helps frustrated employees do just that. Her blog, Escape from Cubicle Nation, is one of the top career and marketing blogs. Her expertise in personal and business change was developed through many years consulting inside corporations such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Charles Schwab. Her new book is Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur
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Question: How do you know when it is time to quit your day job?
Answer: There is no perfect formula to ensure that you are 100% ready to quit your job and start a business—if I could figure it out, I would be rich! But there are a few critical things you need to take into consideration in making the decision. First, you have to have a really clear, realistic picture of your financial life and understand the specific risks you are willing to take. For some people, this is a defined pile of cash to burn through, for others it is a period of time you set aside to see if your business will work. Second, you will feel much better about your decision if you have been working on ..... Click here for the complete article.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Lost your job?
Humor, they say, is a great medicine and making people laugh at themselves is helping some new businesses break even in just a few months time. Daniel Brabson, 38, launched RecessionJunction.com. The site sells beer mugs, T-shirts and bumper stickers with humorous sayings about the economy and layoffs. Bestsellers include a pint glass that says "This Beer is Going Down Like the Stock Market."
I am not sure how long this can continue giving profits, but it sure is a profitable way of making a living in these slow times. In any case, they do provide a small laughter to many and make them forget their woes for a short while. And its cool if such a T-shirt really helped you get noticed and grab a job back! (In addition to making the T-shirt seller, richer by a few bucks.)
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Secondary Intelligence
Now comes a twist. If the Internet had a life of its own (in fact, it does have, to a large extent!), 'it' knows a lot more than any single individual. Right? And if this information could be understood well by the machines (after all, the whole of the Internet lives on numerous computers), given the fact that most of the relevant knowledge is 'well-organized' or being attempted to make it better organized, how much more powerful is the Internet than any group of human beings!! And add to the fact that this body of knowledge is being updated every moment, with predictions that the whole online knowledge base can double in just about 11 hours. Much of this knowledge is just data, including personal and critical information.
Imagine typing in some stuff to search on the Internet, and getting a message like 'why do you think you want to know about this?'!! ;-)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Before you startup!
Well, this is true, though not completely so. The success rate of a startup is something of the order of one in a thousand. There are many folks who come up with ideas every fifteen minutes, ideas that can supposedly revolutionize the world - very few of them go a long way and be successful. So, apart from the blue-eyed dreams of people who really started up to be millionaires, there are certain things that you need to really put a thought to, before you take the leap.
What does it mean to work in a startup? Well, to work in a startup is to work in a challenge-filled environment, fired with passion, because passion is the only thing that is going to replace the frustrations due to lack of infrastructure, finance, and support from the outside world. It is a place where your confidence in yourself is getting tested in the fire. It is a place where you see light at the end of the tunnel even before the tunnel is dug, and you have to keep the light on till the time you really dig through and come out of the other side of the tunnel. So, be ready, with guts!
Apart from this, you have to do something that you really love doing! It will be something that never tires you. Something that is so important to you that you are ready to come out of the comfort zone that you may be in right at that moment of time.
Next, it is a place where you get hit on the monthly compensation that you may be commanding in the outside market. Be ready, not just in your mind, but inform your families as well, that you are taking a dip in income! (Of course, they'll say you are out of your mind!)
One big point is the team that you are working with. It can make or break your situation. In fact, most of the successful startups had a smaller team to begin with. In the words of one successful CEO that I talked to recently, you can afford to have two, and at max four points-of-failures in your team. In such a case, even if few folks in your team are still not convinced, make up a team with you alone! (I myself had to roll back my startup plans right from the doorsteps of a potential customer, after one of my teammates, who was the main technology person involved, backed out!)
Do think about the monthly burn rate of cash in your proposed startup - it seriously makes sense to be austere in your expenses at the beginning stages. Have a thought on the positive bank balance (friends, families as well as and if possible, foes!) and the cash inflow mechanism of your idea. However great your idea may be, if it cannot generate positive cash flow, you better take Sanyaas! (In other words, grab a sandwich and go ahead with your day job with your startup ideas in the bookshelf!)
Create uniqueness (say, intellectual property) - for Pete's sake, please create something that is going to be unique to you - it can be intellectual or not, is not important - what is important is that it should be unique, and differentiating you from the rest of the herd!
Never be worried about the thought storms in your mind! Madness is contagious - if you have the bug, you are gonna do it! Startup!
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Friday, January 30, 2009
Question the world
Everyday after he came back from school, the kid was asked a single question by his mom – What did you ask the teacher today? She made it really a fun session while asking this question and the kid felt happy explaining how he could ask clever questions to his teachers. But as time went by, he really fell short of good questions. He used to think a lot before making up a question worth asking. It was a good exercise for him everyday, though he really felt frustrated on days that he could not get a reasonably good question – his mom just smiled at these times and said, 'Look deeper and wider, sonny!'. A simple childhood game started to develop as a passion inside the child – he no longer asked questions that he knew answers of – rather, he tried to get more and more original in his thinking pattern, trying to find out every unanswered question around him. This small boy grew up to be a Nobel Prize winner in Physics (if I am not wrong, in all probability, he was Niels Bohr, the first Nobel Prize winner in Physics from Denmark! Please correct me if I am not right.)
What matters in the above anecdote is the fact that there is an art to observing deeper and wider around you. You get propelled towards original thinking only by asking questions. Asking relevant questions is as much an art as asking irrelevant questions is an irritation. To quote Hal Gregersen, INSEAD Affiliate Professor of Leadership, "Transformational leaders ask numerous innovative questions. Research on the entrepreneurial founders at 25 of the most innovative companies in the world — places like Apple, eBay, and Amazon — reveals that they rely heavily on countless, catalytic questions to create revolutionary new ways of doing business. Such questions help break the status quo and prompt powerful, personal action."
One good thing about a good leader is that (s)he not only asks good questions, but also genuinely makes an effort to answer them, even if the answer is preliminary. People who just ask questions are smart, but folks who try to see around for an answer are smarter.
Questions change the world.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Waiting for ideas?
What do you really want to get a good idea? An apple falling on your head or just simple observations of things around you that make your thoughts 'click'! Going through an array of ideas that folks have used to really setup a business, I find that all that is needed is dedicated and passionate implementation of your ideas. I was surprised to find that people have made money out of making a new style of clothes hangers as well as new style of gift wrapping. In fact, there is a cool start-up called ASAP "Any Surprise Any Place" which specializes in giving surprises to your friends at any point of time, any place and in truly surprising ways.
Many a times such ideas are inspired by a personal need - here is a dad who invented a really innovative kind of hairbrush whose bristles vanish when they get tangled in the hair and re-appear in a short while to continue brushing the hair - have a look at http://www.orbitbrush.com.
What do really need is observation and a continual thinking of how to make things better/different/more useful.
What do you say of the idea of a boy who designed a window pane color using ultra-violet colors that is very visible to birds but not to humans? The result is that thousands of city birds save their lives by not crashing into window panes (and the window panes are just the same for humans!). Have a look at the story (click here).
Any ideas? ;-)
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Monday, January 26, 2009
Re-public Vote
I seriously do not understand the voting system in India where you cannot vote if you are a resident of a city other than where you got your voter's card. Like a driving license, I should have the ability to vote in any city that I reside in if I satisfy the other criteria that allow me to vote. I know we have gaps in this proposition - but isn't it high time that a IT driven country uses IT to eliminate the gaps in implementing the above requirement. The call is a long one, but I want to contribute my two-paise thoughts in to this. I have a I-card like my PAN card or a driving license and I am qualified to vote in Bangalore - I walk to the voting center and register my vote for the required election. If I vote at one place for the same election, I cannot vote once more. But if I want, I should be allowed to vote in my native place for the lok sabha elections as well. We can sit together to formulate how things should be. This will help me if I am unable to travel to my native (or wherever I have the voter card issued), to still vote. It is really important that the educated India votes. Any thoughts?
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