What an Idea

February 2nd, 2010

Numerous questions have been asked on what’s the most important thing for a startup – team? idea? execution? investors, etc. Most young startuppers (fresh out of college) tend to romanticize the idea they have in their minds. They are on cloud nine when something strikes them and just can’t control their excitement – a belief that they have latched on to something big and the only thing remaining is developing the website and hosting it.

It’s good to aspire big (or) move on with a positive frame of mind, but the value of just an idea is cheap! Most of the startups have been started either because the founder himself has been affected by the lack of something (or) he/she is dedicated to give back something to the community.Everyone of us has an idea and everyone has got another way to simplify the existing processes.

Holding just an idea is equivalent to just seeing a beautiful girl. Everyone in the shopping mall would have had a look,the tougher/main part is not having a glance at the girl but asking her out for a date – in the startup scenario it’s not the idea that counts, but it’s execution.

The misconception that an *idea* is everything leads the startuppers to keep it to themselves (or share with their very very close buddies) and not discuss in public – why? the fear of someone stealing it! I have already mentioned the value of an idea :-) , still lets meet the types of people whom you can possibly bounce the idea with:

  • Budding entrepreneurs/entrepreneurs: Like how your girl is the most beautiful angel on earth, for each entrepreneur his product/company is *the* thing. He is definitely not going to drop his own project and start with your idea, for all you know he might think your plan is stupid! Infact, it’s a good thing to bounce your idea with like-minded people, they might provide valuable insights
  • CEO/CXO of a big firm in the same domain: He has 1001 things in his mind and 10001 clients to serve. He is not going to put a team and rip off your idea, there are already many products waiting in the queue. Again, he might provide you good tips and suggestions on how to proceed in your domain. Make good contacts & network, someday he might acquire you :-)
  • All iz well – the happy MNC guy: No way he is going to start! He is a happy guy with a good salary and a comfortable position. Again, its good to bounce it off with him, he might give some industry perspectives and if he/she has a lot of cash – potential angel ;)
  • Wannabe entrepreneurs: These guys just want to start-off something – maybe because they are bored of their day jobs, maybe they want their business card to say ‘CEO’, many more reasons. I am not sure whether discussing with them would help, but some of the guys in this category act as a very good devil’s advocate :-)

As Abhishek Bachan in the movie Guru says ‘Gurubhai se ladna, tho Gurubhai banke. Lekin gurubhai eki hai‘ (To have a fair fight with gurubhai, you need to become one. And there is only ONE Gurubhai!). It’s not enough for someone to copy your idea, they need to copy your mind, your execution, but there is only *one* mind like you! Bounce your idea with smart guys and start thinking about how to execute.

All the above are just to emphasize the fact that having an idea is *NOT* a big thing. You can copy the idea, but not the mind, not the execution and that’s the challenge for every startup. The mistake I made was, the idea can mask all other challenges that a startup undergoes – it’s good you have got a nice model, but think and move further.

Race on…

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Wery Weird

January 8th, 2010

Good to meet you all, I am still alive :-) . Of late (4-5 months), I have been meeting truckloads of people from students to CXO’s and sometimes queer things come out of the discussion. I talked to a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs asking them why they really want to start off, a few reasons seemed surprising and deceiving….

  • ‘It’s fun to run a startup‘

    • I think there’s a difference between fun and excitement. Fun is something you do with your mind free of any pressure – a trek trip with your friends (or) a week long vacation with your girl at goa! Excitement is something that’s interesting but not without tension/pressure in your head – an India vs Pakistan WC finals is exciting for the players but has it’s own share of pressure, tension, etc accompanied with it.

    Startups are mostly like the latter. It’s really exciting as you keep learning a lot of things, meet new people but something is constantly running in your head! If one thinks it’s going to be a relaxed life since he’s the owner/founder, etc. I think he’s terribly mistaken! I would call it exciting not fun!

  • ‘It looks good in my profile’/ ‘I get more respect in barcamps/meetings, etc’

    • If this was your primary reason, I think you are almost heading for a failure. Quitting a big MNC for the sake of having an ‘entrepreneur’ tag is just a heroic act – doesn’t serve any purpose. It might look good in your profile only if you have worked er..slogged in your stint as an entrepreneur and done some solid work, for which the motivating factor is entirely different.
    If it’s for garnering respect/people raising eyebrows, you might be better off saying you work for Google News Team than some random abc.com!

  • ‘You are your own Boss‘

    • This is the one common reason cited by many and frankly I think this is a huge misconception. You are the boss only in your business card. What people fail to understand is when you run a startup, you are essentially answerable to all your customers. So if there are 1000 people registered with you, then you are answerable to 1000 guys! Well, earlier it was only 1 guy, now? :-) . And nowadays, it’s become so simple to tarnish your reputation with the advent of tools like this and this. A CEO/CTO/VP etc. doesn’t really make sense if your customers aren’t happy… rather if you don’t have any customers!

  • ‘I get to spend more time with my girl/wife since I am on my own‘

    • Yes, was told by someone who was in his mid-thirties. I think the problem of work-life balance is even higher for an early stage entrepreneur, even if you work out of your home. I don’t know how/why, but atleast in the initial stages, attempts mostly would be futile. The probability of meeting an early stage entrepreneur who says ‘I spend more time with my wife than when I was working in an MNC’ is like seeing Ashish Nehra rattle the stumps with the middle stick out of sight!

    I am not even sure if the guys whom I met are going to read this (yes the URL is there in my business card), but I just wrote what I felt applicable to early stage entrepreneurs ( < 1-1.5 years). It’s not to discourage anyone but I think this is the reality.
    The bet you have to make is on the team and the idea and the rest of MBA jargons ‘customer segmentation, market research, etc’ can be figured out! Race on…

    Viv

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Mythful Money

November 17th, 2009

3 months into this startup world has taught me a lot of things – the way I work, the way I talk to people, the way I send e-mails :-) and most importantly the value of money. I haven’t taken any salary (yet) till now, and I travel mostly by buses however long the destination might be [even to Bangalore ;) ].

As I see the odd sticker on the bus which says “Rs.6K/month work just for 4 hrs/day” makes me realize the value of earning 6K/month. If I was so fussy about money, why am I spending hundreds on getting LFY, DARE, Entrepreneur magazines, buying geeky t-shirts at tshirts.in,getting my iPod replaced [not free!] – there is clearly an alternative to all the above I mentioned.

This has made me believe ‘Not having money‘ is a myth unless your bank balance is an absolute zero and the world is doomed with none around you! There are 2 important things I believe to acquire a customer

1. Pitch

I think a lot of people take this for granted. The pitch about your product is a key aspect on how far/deep you reach your potential customer. If you didn’t know, I have started a startup – interviewstreet.com where students can attend mock interviews conducted by working professionals on different domains.

It is generally not easy to make students understand the value of a service. Lot of people discouraged [and still] me saying ‘Abey, students don’t have money!’. A dinner with friends would cost them around Rs.250, a movie at a Multiplex with popcorn, etc would cost them around Rs.300, a night at the Wild West bar would cost them over Rs.400, 10 cigar packets cost Rs. 350 – clearly I won’t agree students don’t have money!

For certain confidential reasons, I can’t list down how my pitch improved, but I slowly realized that you need to put yourself into a student’s shoes and think if the offer is really compelling! My dream job pays me 6lpa, would I like to pay just Rs.350 to attend a mock interview improving my chances of striking the job? – this is not a pitch :-) , I am just trying to analyze!

For eg: if I were to tell you ‘Hey, I saw this headphones which were amazing,costs close to 20K‘, you would probably brush me away. But no, it’s true. The headphones you see below is the BOSE QC3 comfort [pitch: acoustic noise-cancellation, rechargable batteries, almost all the external sound is suppressed, etc..] headphones which costs Rs.21K in India! . Well if you are really thinking these are for the CXO’s, pause, I know two of my friends who have already bought this which is almost half their earnings per month (or) even more!

2. Quality of service

The 2nd important thing is the quality of your service. If your pitch is impressive but lacks quality when users try it out, it’s a bad sign! If not surprising your customers, at least remain true to what you pitched.

So, if people are ready to buy those BOSE headphones (or) take mock interviews :-) , it means that the pitch and the quality of service are both in sync and impressive.

Once you are able to achieve this, I think money would occupy the back seat and people would probably even save up money to consume your product/service. Put yourself in his shoes and see if the pitch, price and the quality-of-service/product is worthy enough. With this, I go back to surprise a few more of my customers who are in the queue! :-) . Bye!

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The loudness of a tweet

October 2nd, 2009

No, I am not going to start off with why I haven’t been blogging lately – I keep giving the same reason! Let’s talk something else.

I have lately been fascinated by the power of twitter but have always wondered how/when they are going to generate revenues :D . As your granddad might define, a tweet *originally* was supposed to mean a high pitch sound of a bird. But now it’s taken a whole new meaning with words like microblogging, social networking associated with it, so much so that there is a website dedicated to it’s definition – http://www.definetwitter.com/ !

But then after I joined, I realize that twitter is much more than a social-networking site! It acts as a real time search engine and provides information that sometimes even Google can’t! You knew that the entire world was cribbing when GMail contacts went down recently.
I also think it’s the best platform for publicizing your product/event/short-notices, etc. where people get updated immediately!. Alright, everything is fine, but what is it in for me? – I will tell you 2 short stories about 2 famous bloggers whom I met a while ago. I have been following their blogs since then….

1st short story – Kiruba and his Kleared Trip
Kiruba is a famous blogger and a tweeter who has close to 30K+ people following his tweets! He had booked his tickets to attend a conference at Kuala Lumpur using ClearTrip.com. All set, he and his wife reached the airport and they were in for a big surprise, shock I should say! The airport authorities declared his ticket VOID! 12 minutes to go and his *booked* ticket was declared void, wtf?!

In what would typically happen only in Tamil cinema, luckily happened to Mr. Kiruba also. He found a travel agency outside and booked another ticket for the same flight and phew, what a rush it should have been to the flight! Now, how do you vent your anger? Simple, just send a tweet, and that’s all he did which immediately went to his 30K+ followers, some of whom re-tweeted and you know the news has become big, don’t know if it was the trending topic of the day ;)

The ClearTrip guys immediately confirmed their return tickets and guess what, they promoted the tickets to Business Class! Wooohooo! To read the full story, click here

2nd short story – Sidin and his Jungle safari – madethemrip.com
Sidin, an NIT-Trichy, IIM-A alumni works as an editor for livemint journal. On a peak holiday season, somehow makemytrip.com[MMT] had managed to book rooms for him and his wife at a resort in Corbett – yes the jungle :-) . Once they arrived at the resort in a relaxed mood, they too, were in for a big surprise – apparently MMT did not confirm with the resort authorities and there was no room available! OMG!

How do you vent your anger? Simple, he sent out a tweet saying “Thank you MakeMyTrip. I am at my hotel in Corbett and they don’t have a room. Never did. Sorry, but I am taking this very personally indeed.” – exactly 140 chars! :D . Within 10 minutes he received a call from MMT staff who reassured him that everything would be fine and taken care of!

As promised, MMT booked rooms at another nearby resort. As they sat back watching a movie, a knock at the door – the resort staffer with a wine bottle, courtesy MMT! Wooow! You can read the full story here

Well, as you may have noticed, technology is making great advances. Gone are the days of calling up customer service, posting a comment,e-mailing them, etc.. Now, all it takes is just a tweet!

Next time, you are going for a vacation with your girlfriend/wife, make sure you have enough people following your tweets :-) . And yeah, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/rvivek. Don’t ask where I am heading to ;)

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Entrepreneurship in love

July 17th, 2009

As I was walking along the beautiful IIT-M campus yesterday evening, I bumped onto this inspiring entrepreneur who currently runs a startup in the education domain. I have met him earlier in a couple of events, but happened to talk to him only then. We kept walking, discussing various challenges in the life-cycle of a startup,how he solved, etc.. We kept walking for almost an hour when I thought it was time for me to get back home. Just before I took leave, (out of curiosity) I asked him about his educational background. He replied ‘I just completed my Masters in Entrepreneurship‘! What?! Is there a course M.S Entrepreneurship?! Sounded weird to me. I just nodded and left.

This thread kept running in my mind, difficult to kill (damn the geekiness!:)). I just questioned myself ‘What is entrepreneurship?‘. Entrepreneurship to me is a feeling – a passionate feeling towards your idea/product. It’s something that can *not* be taught in a classroom or can be studied from a textbook.

When you see a beautiful girl pass by, there is this sudden rush of energy,2 wires standing up,bells ringing on top of your head and nothing else visible to your eye! That’s exactly how an entrepreneur feels when he gets an idea! – can strike him anywhere, anytime, when he is taking a shower, or an evening stroll.

You cannot wait, but to gather more details about the girl. Is she from my college? How old is she? How can I impress her? Does she already have a bf? Is she an FCP? ;) . An entrepreneur does similar things – is a similar offering of my service already present? What is my USP? let me google for similar products like these, can i conduct a survey to see the response?

Once all these cobwebs are cleared out, your phone bills are on the rise! Message more, talk more, dream more, etc.. On the other side, you start off with the prototype, keep improving the design,dream about making the product really big, innovate and add new features, etc..

Now comes the D-day when you say those magical 3 words to your loved one and you are fully committed! On the other front, it’s just 2 words (I quit!) and it’s definitely not to your loved one! ;) . You are fully committed to your startup and its your life! And as the history says, ‘They happily lived ever after’ :) .

These thoughts occurred to me as I was on my way back home!. Now, don’t ask me an analogy for a serial entrepreneur ;)

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Adieu Amazon!

July 9th, 2009

Yes, it’s true! Today will be my last working day at Amazon! I never expected it to be so quick (14 months) and never thought I would start something on my own after this! It’s been exciting,fun,happening,interesting,mindblowing – all in the same breath!

Why is it the *best* MNC to work for ?

  • Amazon has got the right mix of fun and smartness embedded in their employees, you have no other choice but to just admire.
  • The amount of visibility you get while working on a project is tremendous. I doubt any other company would have freshers directly interacting with top management people and principal engineers
  • Exposure to the latest technology from a wide variety of streams in Computer Science. You get to work on Distributed Systems, Databases, UI (CSS/HTML,Perl,Ruby), OS (Kindle), etc. At the end of the day you will have such a wide breadth of knowledge
  • Extremely customer centric and focused – *Never* do you see Amazon doing stuff just for the heck of it. Every project you are involved in, has its own USP and unless and otherwise it’s something novel, Amazon doesn’t put it’s step forward
  • Fun Atmosphere – Even though you can see a geeky halo at the back, you can talk to anyone about anything – T20, Sachin (vs) Sehwag, many more… There is absolutely no barrier to talk to people. I never imagined I would refer to my manager as Dude(always) :) and even give bumps on his bday ;)
  • Startup Flavor – You don’t work on a product for 2 years to see it’s release. The deadlines are little hard making you learn more and deliver more in quick time. C’mon there is a production push almost every week!
  • I am pretty sure you would have heard about the compensation and perks :) . Makes you wonder whether you are really worth that much!
  • Guess how they celebrated recession? – hired a whole bunch of SDE’s and formed a couple of new teams here! Have you ever heard Amazon firing people?

    • There would have only been 2 reasons why I could have possibly thought of parting from this organization.

    • To pursue my graduate studies

      • (OR)

    • To start my own startup.

    After pondering over deeply and consulting with a lot of senior people, I thought I should do justice to both my conscience and to Amazon. Hence, I have taken the bold move of starting on my own with my friends, and time will tell how it works!

    Altogether it was an amazing experience to work here. To explain my current position, its a very tough state to be in – you really love the job but still you need to go! At the end of the day, I would really really really miss the people out here and hope to stay in touch!

    I still remember when the HR sent me a pre-placement form during my campus recruitment. It said “Amazon is looking to hire superstars!”. I chuckled then, but I now realize, you guys are really superstars! I have worked hard, had fun and should be making history soon :) ! Good luck with all the projects,keep making Amazon proud and more importantly stay connected! (vivmbbs AT GMail)

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Europea(or)n entrepreneurs

June 15th, 2009

I heard this interesting story about a couple of entrepreneurs from Europe. After having lost their jobs, they planned to launch a new startup which would sell pornographic cd’s featuring top stars at a very low price!. This drew the attention of a lot of excited folks and hence they decided to get themselves a copy.

The entrepreneurs were amazed! They never expected such an overwhelming response! :) . However, they had very little stock,enough to serve only about 5% of the requests. But the mastermind act comes here! Instead of trying to serve the remaining 95% requests, they put out a banner on their homepage which read

“Sorry, we ran out of stock. We will refund your amount if you request us to do”.

But, almost none wanted to request for a refund! Why ? – for the simple reason they did not want to have a transaction in their account statement which read

Debit X pound from Pornographic community enterprise

and the amount they spent was also pretty low!

Lol! And they enjoyed all their free money! I guess they were caught later! I understand entrepreneurs should be innovative, but this was, well….. :)

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A Strange(r) entrepreneur

June 1st, 2009

Not many times you get to meet a stranger and strike a conversation that lasts for slightly over 30 minutes and finally derive some inspiration out of it! Well, it did happen to me yesterday. My friend & I had some work on the ECR (East-coast-road). I hopped on to his bike, we would have hardly moved 2 km, when the back tyre got punctured! After walking a few metres, we found this un-puncture shop :)

He quickly got into his act. Busy fixing the tyre, he shot a question to me “What are you planning to do?”. I was taken aback a little, quite unsure as to what he was exactly asking and hence said “I am planning to start my own business”. He then shot back again “Do you know what business is?“. Little irritated, I wanted to say, it is a Web 2.0 application built on PHP and Java, but I just controlled my temper and thankfully let him speak! He started narrating about how he built his shop….

[Speaking from his perspective]

I started this shop 2 years back. I had no job then and none gave me any too. I decided to start a shop that would just sell tyres. I spent close to 6 months walking down the streets of ECR trying to find a place to start my shop. Everyday, I talked to 10 different people with just a single ray of hope that someone someday would tell me there is a vacant place you can use. Finally, the day came after a loong wait for 6 months.

My family being a little superstitious, wanted me to start the project after 2 months. Hence I paid 2 months rent for nothing. I started it after 2 months, bought all different types of tyres and waited for people. I waited..waited…waited… it was another 6 months and I did not get even a single customer! And I mean it – not a single customer. I was disappointed earlier that I had to pay rent for 2 months without using the place, but just imagine the situation that I was put in after 6 months!

I started analyzing the cause as to why this didn’t kick off. I went and knocked at each door in the ECR to gauge the market for a tyre shop, conducted a survey. Many people just shooed me away. Some even told me that they don’t possess any vehicle with a shining Merc parked in the front! This continued for another 6 months… Hence, I was effectively paying rent to this place for 18 months without earning a single pie. But, somewhere inside my heart, I knew I could fix the problem and come out.

I then decided to start multiple services and not rely on one! It was not just selling tyres, my shop did overhauling, fixed punctured tyres, and I am starting to run a service where I would recommend drivers for people here and ofcourse earn a referral fee, he chuckled! :D . The business slowly grew. Each customer came for different offerings and my shop became a commonly used word in the town – more to say, it’s almost a landmark here!

The name spread by word-of-mouth. I did my job to perfection and always stuck to my timelines. I would never do stuff that I was not sure about. If I take up, it would be real neat job! People were impressed with my work.Now, I am the Raja (King) of this area. Anyone who has any problem with their vehicle tyre, come to me. I am earning a good sum. I waited for 2 long years to get to this state.

[End of story]

I didn’t know what to say. It was really really inspiring! Never thought, I would bump into someone and be inspired so much. I could just relate a few things what he said to the startup world.

  • Perseverance and determination are the key factors! Try harder, be patient and you succeed. Never never give up!
  • Never rely on a single service/offering. If Google had just stuck to Search, I am not sure it would have reached the level it has now!
  • The 1st guy you approach is not going to be your client. You need to knock at each one’s door and be patient to get your client!
  • It’s ok to slip the deadline by a few days and give an impressive product rather than sticking to it and making a mess. The service should be of high quality for people to refer!

Phew! Great experience! :D

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Anniversary At Amazon

May 27th, 2009

Yes, its been exactly a year since I joined this wonderful organization :) .  Let me put it alagu’s style :) . learnt java, junit, jsp, tomcat, perl, mason, CGI, S3,CSS/HTML. met a lot of geeks, nerds, dudes. clashes with cab services ;) . lot of code, tt, night-outs, sodexho coupons. database classes by our DBA.

started tweeting/facebooking/blogging. stopped [unintentionally] topcoder,spoj, acm, usaco :( . ironically, started topcoder-chennai discussion community here :) . understood a developer’s lifestyle and opportunities available.

shook hands with jeffb, shot a question on one of core principles of amazon to which he gave a stud reply :) . wonderful team and product to work on. team-outings, mayajaal, yercaud, lunch at hi-fi places, movies with team. worked hard, had fun and should make history :) .

Altogether a place which gives you a lot of freedom to do the stuff you really like. If anyone is interested to apply, let me know :) .

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Startup Frenzy #4: When do you quit?

May 20th, 2009

Welcome to yet another episode :) . This is probably  the critical step that might change your life – are you ready to take the plunge? There is no fixed formula to this and depends largely on each entrepreneur’s vision. But from what I have observed, I could see 3 different types:

1. High Risk

You just have an idea (a brilliant one, obviously :) ) , done some market research, found it’s feasibility and confident of implementing it.  You have not built a prototype and not a single line of code written. You just trust your gut and take the plunge! A neat example in this category – Mr. Jeff Bezos (CEO, Amazon.com). The moment he found the internet usage rose to 2500 percent, he knew there was a market! He quit a coveted job (Senior VP of D.E.Shaw!) and started off Amazon.com. You trust your inner voice and proceed.

2. Medium Risk

You have a working prototype ready, showcased it to a few potential angel investors (who express interest). You quickly realize, its grabbing people’s attention but it requires a lot more time and commitment from your side to make the product a big success. The progress of your product seems to dampen and it gets increasingly difficult to balance both your day job and your startup. Quit!

3. Low Risk

You build a prototype, rather almost the full product. Release it to the public, let people try out your service. You notice the graph of the number of users rises in a pretty steep manner. You see the revenue stream growing, along with the advertisements making their way onto your website. You realize the graph can be made more steep and a potential for an exponential growth. Quit! A typical example -  Mr. Allwin (CEO, Paagalguy.com). He started this website and let it run for 4 years during which content gradually accumulated. He quit after that and its been a really successful journey till date. I am happy to have got an opportunity to talk to him – inspiring!

One really can’t rank/order which would be the best/ideal way. It greatly depends on the type of startup and the entrepreneur’s vision.

When you quit, quit gracefully!

However, one common thread that should unite all these cases is when you quit, quit gracefully!

  • Never leave a bad impression on your manager before you quit – he might be ready to hire you later, if you fail (or) might even be interested to join/help your startup during the initial run ;)
  • Keep an eye on your productivity graph. The decrease should be very thin and almost invisible.
  • More than the work you have done, your morality, commitment is what will stay in people’s minds. When you are at work, do justice to it, when you are not, obvious :)
  • Don’t try to use your company’s resources for your startup. They might not sue you (even though it’s legally possible), but leaves a bad taste!
  • Don’t Ctrl+C :)

All the best! Get going now! Have you told your manager yet ? ;)

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