The economist wrote a piece on my friend Sridhar from Zoho. There's a quote which caught my eye - As Mr Vembu puts it: “The India or China price will effectively become the world price.”

These are my first reactions and thoughts and I may change my opinion as I think more about this. As a software entrepreneur and from India, this is the MOST scary thought and prediction ever. I am not saying this wont happen, or may not happen, but its absolutely awful for the software industry if it does.

First to understand what that means, the "price" paid in India for software is non existent. Same for China is my guess, but I cannot confirm. A significant portion of the industry is bootleg software. India does not in general value software. That is because the "price" paid by Indian companies. So what are the ramifications if what Sridhar says does happen?

1. Innovation becomes minimal to non existent: Its fairly relatively easy for Zoho to tell their engineers to copy and paste the functionality that's in Word, Saleforce.COM, Webex etc. (Side note: Most would argue Microsoft and Google are not innovators, but fast followers, so that makes it a good model).  Innovation is underwritten by profits from products that are priced at market price NOT cost of development. If the rest of the world pays the India price, there's a) no incentive to innovate and b) no return for the risk taken to break new ground.

2. It would lower the standard of living overall. If developers in advanced countries dont see a premium for their talent and creation, they wont spend the time and effort producing good software. The cost of living (even in a place as inexpensive as Idaho) is a lot more expensive than most places in India. If you get paid about $7-$12 / hour (more than minimum wage but not by that much) then its a race to the bottom, because that's what Indian developers get paid. The annual 20% increase stories notwithstanding.

I admire Sridhar for all his accomplishments, and think he's been a great role model for many Indian software entrepreneurs. Pricing your software not on what the market would bear but more on what it costs you to build it is not the right way forward for the software industry.

        

I talked to a few entrepreneurs the other day looking for funding. The have bootstrapped their company and have done an excellent job getting their company to a point where a venture investor can put money to accelerate their growth as opposed to funding product development. I was extremely impressed by their market understanding, commitment to the cause and the traction they had gotten with literally no marketing budget. It spoke volumes about the problem they were trying to address and the product they built.

I sat down to do the "introductions". I explained my background and gave them an opportunity to give me their background. The first one said "I have a fairly boring background". Those were the first words out of her mouth.

Now I understand and appreciate modesty and understatements, but this was over the top on the other end of the spectrum.

The amazing part was her background was great awesome. She started early at a very high profile local software company, grew up the ranks, and did extremely well at a fairly male dominated industry to achieve a very commanding position, but she chose to downplay it. Maybe because it had nothing to do with the current venture, or maybe because it was in a different industry, but that's not the point.

I am very aware of the Indian (and also German BTW, but more on that later) approach and culture that expects you to not blow your horn, but I dont think it does any justice to the potential investor for you to say you had a boring background.

Here are my tips on introducing yourself and your background:

1. Talk about tangible accomplishments. What you did on any project that grew revenues, delivered returns, or saved money.

2. Discuss unique experiences that changed the way you view things. Put them in perspective to what you are trying to do next.

3. Share some customer experiences (bigger names better, name dropping is okay here) and how what you did helped them.

4. Relate skills that you gained which are relevant to the new role / position you are fulfilling.

5. Highlight about your ability to either work in a team environment, grow strong independent high performing teams or your ability to bring people's different opinions from different backgrounds together.

I believe you can do this in 90-120 seconds with a sentence max (and you dont have to cover all 5 points) on each area. What do you think? Am I off base?          

        

I have never met Blake Rhodes. I dont profess to know him well. I know about and have used the blog search engine iceRocket. Blake's iceRocket's CEO. I dont have a good photo so you'll have to make do with this one.

We have been working extremely hard to get a solution that required his blog search engine. But as luck would have had it, like most other online web services, they block requests over 100 per day. This is the same for flickr, delicious, etc. Nothing new. My previous experience was with another company which after 6 weeks of back and forth did not give us any information (even though we documented exactly how we were going to use the API for non commercial use) about putting us on a "white list" of API users.

With iceRocket, in a matter of 14 minutes and 2 emails the issue was resolved. 14 minutes - that's it. I was expecting like close to 20 days, extensive back and forth and lots of hedging.

Very pleasantly suprised. Kudos to Blake.

Apparently I am not the only one. He has built a reputation of doing this.

I think I learned a lot from a simple email interaction today. He further reinforced a key tenet of building great companies - be responsive. It pays off big time.

        

SF Chronicle has a great piece from Jon Stewart on the DNC '08. There's are several money quotes:

"We've fallen into this false sense of urgency that they create," Stewart said. "That idea that everything is breaking news and that if you're not watching us, you're going to miss this thing.

"But nothing they're saying is of any import because nobody filters it. (Print reporters) are able to step back for a moment and think. They're not. They're just pointing a camera and saying, 'What do you think that is? I don't know. Let's go to 'The Situation Room.

He's frustrated that the cable networks don't have the attention span to explore stories - particularly about the run-up to the Iraq war - that aren't easily digestible for TV. Stewart said he loves newspapers, and reading them makes him feel like they're writing about a different world from the one he sees on television.

I think liveblogging is similar to Network news. You have no time to process, not time to think and really understand what's going on. I did that during the Bangalore blast attacks and while it served its purpose, it was mostly a real-time perspective, which somehow in the grand scheme of things seemed small.

So what have I learned from Jon Stewart:

1. It's about earning your authority back. If you want to be taken seriously in any field, blogging is a good way to gain credibility by sharing your thoughts, analysis and perspectives. But if you dont spend serious time thinking about it and primarily just repeating what you heard, its just yet another source NOT an authoritative source. You have to be a thought leader not just another repeater. I think TechCrunch is good, as a news breaker, but they dont have depth and authority as some of the reviews I have seen featured on Hacker news.

2. Constantly aim to get better even if you are the best at what you do. After each show, Stewart gathers his cast and crew together to discuss that night's successes and directly points out what could have gone better.

3. Focus in a blog beats exclusive stories most times. Jon's very focused on what he wants the show to be.
I have watched my blog traffic and on days I dont post I get a ton of traffic (wierd isnt it?). I figure its because people take some time to read, form their opinion and then either link to me (which is the #1 source of my traffic BTW) or search and get to my website (#2 source of traffic). I used to focus on exclusive stories which no one else talks about, but then realized it was more about consistency and focus than just being exclusive.

        

Anyone that thinks that newspapers in India are going to go away the US route is just smoking something. Not for the near (10-15 year) future. In fact their readership and revenues will go up not down.

Why?
1. Literacy is going up - WHERE? in the rural NOT as much in the  urban areas. Urban areas have always been more "literate". What's the least expensive and most accessible medium for the rural poor - Newspapers. Then radio followed by television and finally Internet. Only the Urban few are using the Internet for their news and that's also the small minority. Most young Indians BTW prefer to sit down with a cup of coffee/tea in the morning and read the newspaper before they do anything else - its like a ritual.  The ones that dont have time, read the news paper during their commute or listen to radio.

2. Growth of PC's and broadband in India is still abysmal. I dont see anything changing this dramatically in the near future. Granted its faster than most other places, but its not big enough to make that dramatic a difference.

3. Mobile growth is happening in the rural areas also. And its happening in the Rs. 350 voice plans NOT in accessing the Internet plans. So it will be a few years (15+) before Indians start to read on the mobile given they have to pay download charges for data on the mobile.

        

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post on the lack of security in the Bangalore International Airport. I even got some good and indifferent comments on it. Mostly people that emailed me either said that was funny, or they opined that its was the same case in most Indian airports.

I was very surprised when on Monday at 915 AM I got a call from Gautam Banerjee from BIAL. He wanted to follow up on my blog post and said he would like to spend a few minutes to address the issue and tell me how they are fixing the problem.

Wow! To think an Indian company (for those of you that know India, this is pretty darn amazing) would actually a) Read a blog b) Do an investigation and c) Follow up on the complaint and communicate the results is short of unreal.

Added to the fact that they called up, I was pleasantly surprised with his matter-of-fact approach towards reading my blog. I did ask a few questions, and they have a google alert setup on BIAL and also Bangalore International Airport and they track it pretty frequently.

They could have acted much faster, but hey the fact that they even did something is amazing.

The end result is that every traveler now leaving Bangalore is asked to provide a legitimate ID besides their e-ticket. I can hear the brickbats already from others in Bangalore. I would also be the first to admit that the result of their "process" would not make flying any safer, but cause unnecessary "hassle" according to a few, but I think its a great step in the right direction.

Image credit: http://www.janchipchase.com

        

This post is meant to be a reminder and "sharpen the sword" type piece for myself. If you get value from it, that's awesome. If not I apologize for wasting your time with statement of the obvious.

I have always wanted to know how successful people are different from others. I define successful people at a very broad level. I would call Michael Phelps a superhero, beyond successful. I derive immense inspiration (for both software and startups) from him. I have read close to 120 different articles and news mentions after his 8th gold medal win. What I gathered about his success, was 2 defining characteristics:

1. Drive (passion, intense obsession) and setting goals: He lives, breathes and dreams swimming. I know this is a very abused term now (especially passion) and finding one's passion is very difficult. A few lucky ones either stumble into it or have an innate sense of what's in store for them. For the rest of us its what we enjoy doing. The goal setting process is the difficult one. Translating the passion into tangible, measurable milestones is very hard for a startup. Empty goals like make a million dollars in revenue or the new favorite - "make users happy" is easy to state and very hard to accomplish.

2. Discipline: Seth talked about patience, a few days ago, but its more than just being patient. Its having the discipline to "keep at it". Day in, day out. Endlessly, consistently and without fail. Showing up to make 10 calls, making those calls, handling the nos with aplomb and still showing up the next day to make a fresh set of new 10 calls with a revised pitch.

        

I was given a book a few years ago by my ex CEO Warren Weiss that was titled "Hope is not a strategy". Got a good reminder of the same when I read this post by Robert. Summary of his post is he prefers not to get PR folks not to get him to cover a company, instead get users of the product / service to tell him about why something is relevant.

We should all be so lucky. Of course he's probably advocating you dont need Venture Capital for your startup also and everyone can be as wildly successful as HotOrNot - "just build the right product and users will come and make the rest of the magic happen".

Shows a basic lack of understanding of the PR world, but he did say that's the way "he" prefers to cover startups. PR creates awareness. Its difficult to measure, not easily accountable, but its "yet another" avenue to get your name out in front of potential customers and users in a "mass medium" way than doing it one customer at a time in the trenches.

He's right about customers (or users) telling your story than either you or a PR person. That's what good PR folks do - they help you create situations where your customers are telling the story to the press, reporters etc.

So what are issues? Why cant every startup be like the one he's profiling?

1. Over 90% of customers (regardless of how passionate they are) are indifferent. Yes, you solved a problem. Yes they like your product, but they hate telling other people. There are lots of reasons why - they are shy, or they dont like talking about new products or they will tell everyone - AFTER they are sure it really, really works (which is a really long time) or the worst (in the enterprise side) - they view your product as a competitive advantage so they wont tell anyone else.

In reality if you look at the pyramid of customers, less than 1% of any customer (early adopter or otherwise) is so passionate about the problem your specific startup is trying to solve. They have to tell the story. If you find such customers, hang on to them for dear life. Realize you'll make mistakes, since choosing the first few customers is an art. More on that in a later post.

2. Time: If you had to wait for your users to love the product, tell the world and then generate press, you've got to have either time, money or both on your side. Why? It just takes longer. User have to be given your product, it has to work, it has to give them tangible benefits (which is not easy in enterprise software quickly) in a short enough time frame for them to say good things about you. Dont think that's the same for a consumer startup? Ask LinkedIn. It takes time to create value. You have to get more users (people that try it) so you can have a bigger base of users who are passionate about your company and your product to tell others.

3. The credibility factor: Its a lot easier if you are Max or Joel to have the street credibility of having created something of value before for the press and users to immediately cover something. Reality - most software startup entrepreneurs are "first time". They dont have that credibility. I noticed on YCombinator yesterday another user posted a new site he had created that does say 40% of the same thing as another well known site does. The user was hardly known and a first timer. Reaction - none. Good PR folks I know bring their credibility and value to your startup. Even if you are unknown to the rest of the world.

4. The lack of a story: Its very important for startups to "tell a story". Not a fake one, and not a fairy tale either. But a simple, coherent and compelling story. Most engineering entrepreneurs I know are not good at that. They would call eBay a 3 tier web technology that has implemented the Boyer-Moore matching algorithm. I exaggerate, but to make a point. Good PR folks help you create and then tell the story.

5. Creating opportunities. If you have a startup, you dont have a dozen people (especially if your product is just being released). You are either spending time building product or selling (either to customers or investors). Nurturing new users and customers is hard but a very required aspect of your business. PR folks help nurture them to be press ready. They also create opportunities for your customers to be in the press more for the benefit of the company than for the personal benefit of the customer. Its a subtle art and nuance, but very important.

Oh, and Robert, as you say "I’m tired of seeing crap after crap after crap. If someone pitches me another social media aggregator I’m going to scream. Even when you bring me stuff I check out reactions of real users who don’t have some vested interest to see what they think".

Stop getting pitched. Oh! I forgot that's your new job right?

Disclaimer: I know Robert, like his writing and think he's awesome. But I also think he's wrong on this one.

        

Ever notice those tiny images that appear when you bookmark certain webpage's on your browse?

Sacre Bleu! Moi? Bookmarks on the browser? That's so 1999. Yes. Of the 167 Million US and over 1 Billion Worldwide Web users, only about 15 million (includes Delicious, Stumble Upon, Diijo, Mag.nol.ia. etc.) use social bookmarking services.

Most are not into the whole share your bookmarks on the cloud thing.

Granted over 40% of the are not working on a computer that's "theirs" - its either shared or accessed from a cybercafe.

So then, when the rest of the "non Web 2.0" world bookmarks a file, its on their browser. And when they do a small image appears (or can appear in the new browsers) to further brand your website. Its called a favicon file and I just sat down with 5 random users who have things bookmarked on their browser. The only way they remember certain websites is by the logo (favicon logo) on their browser.

Its yet another opportunity to brand your website on their minds.

You can get one like I did. You'll thank me for it.


Image credit.

        

If you are following the Olympics here's some links to people I know that are blogging & on twitter.

The Lenovo bloggers - Olympic athletes who are blogging.
1. David Churbuck Twitter & Blog
2. Rohit Bhargava Twitter & Blog
3. Abhinav Bindra - he was the first Indian to win the Gold in an individual event.

        

Enough said.

        

The scale touched 158 pounds 3 years ago this May when I decided I had to do something about it. I had 3 major excuses for my weight - a) I had not time since we had our 2nd child since I had to either pick him up early or drop him off late b) there was no incentive to lose weight any more and c) I was eating healthy (vegetarian) anyway, so how is a little extra weight going to matter?

Self motivation was not going to work, so I took a leaf from my CEO's book (Amnon Landan at Mercury) who, had lost close to 30 pounds in 3 months and decided I had to set a goal – to weigh 145 pounds in 3 months. I started with a 15 min run and finally after 3 months ended up running 6 miles daily for about 38 min. My weight stood at 142 pounds after the 3 months. Having achieved that felt awesome. I had heard enough from others about how much easier it was to maintain that weight versus losing more weight so I let things slip. 6 months later, back at 154 pounds. 

Its obvious that you can’t stop exercising if you want to be fit. There’s no finish. No end to the “project”.  For people like me, who like to finish things (get them done) and move on to the next thing, the very concept of ongoing exercising “to be fit” is weird.

So how does this relate to building a business for revenue versus a company for an exit?

I read Paul's article a few days ago. I had to spend more time to think about how I really felt about his point of view. Summary is that he proposes you build companies to get a sale (of the company) than to build a business (i.e. profitable, sustainable entity). 

Having built and sold companies before, it had not occurred to me to consider one versus the other. I started out with most ideas and companies with the motivation to build a business. That they got sold was a combination of luck and time.

Here’s the thing – there’s no finish if you want to build a business. You can’t go “do the next thing” or “be ready for the next challenge”. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. For most “businessmen” their company is their lifestyle, work, passion and source of distraction. Notice I did not say money. I know enough people who have built a company and grown it well but they know is a daily grind and they love it. 

At the same time I know entrepreneurs who have built companies and sold them, changed their careers, their industry and are delighted. 

My experience tells me build the company for revenue, profit if you enjoy doing it. I.e. you like the industry, the people and the line of work. If you are just looking to make money and go “do something else which is your real passion” then build your company to be sold. I am very sympathetic to people who are doing “one thing” but have their passion elsewhere, since I know that not everyone can really do what they are passionate about. Real world constraints and responsibilities are that – real.

There’s nothing wrong with either approach, but if you don’t like to exercise everyday to keep fit, you won’t like to build a business.

        

I have a Google applications account for 2 domains I own. One that I use rarely and another that I use fairly frequently. This morning Chris broke a story of Nick Saber whose Gmail account was disabled. Possibly due to security reasons, quite possibly something else - either ways he was locked out.

This is not the first time Google's been heavy handed about this.

Here's a form that you can use to address hit issue, but you need to know a lot of details you probably dont remember. Good idea to keep this written down someplace.

Brings me to another question: If its free should you expect any customer support? Obviously you sign an end user license agreement (EULA) which prevents you from account misuse etc. when you sign up. So lets assume you have not willingly violated any agreements. Still, if its free what recourse should you expect?

I suspect most companies that provide services would say - nothing.

I also suspect most individuals using the free services would say - complete restoration and basic support (with basic varying from ridiculous to the bizarre). Or they would want an explanation of why - which any vendor will not / should not provide since it then opens that vendor's system to gaming. E.g. if I know that Google locks my account if I send more than 10 emails a day (fictitious) then I will send 9 daily and use another hack to send more.

So what would I do/suggest? For the account I care about I plan to pay the $50 / year for Google domain applications. Its a small price to pay for something that I use daily and also I dont have the time and patience to look for customer support when there's none to be expected.

        

When I was a kid my learning (in India) was mostly writing and repetition. I went to a fairly good school in Bangalore, but it was not exactly the world's best when it came to creative or unusual thinking. I was taught that the best way to remember things you wanted to was to repeat it (several times), either to others or to yourself and write (as in a paper, or assignment).

As I have grown older I tend to think about how I impart to my kids the value of the writing and repetition, but mindful of the Internet and its ability to deliver something in a second. Even with Google, bookmarking, sharing, blogging and all the other tools available, I still find the writing and repetition to be most valuable to remember things that I have to. This is different from things I just want to keep at the back of the mind or things that are mildly (or temporally interesting). I categorized the 5 levels (not types, but levels) of reading. I think I ought to call it 5 levels of recollection, but lets go with reading for now. They are progressively more valuable for things that I would like to commit to memory.

1. Reading passively or actively (commenting): Just reading means I have forgotten it as soon as I read it in most cases. If I comment I tend to remember 20% since I would likely go back to the page to see counter opinions, etc.

2. Reading then telling someone: Mostly my wife bears the brunt of all my "knowledge I gained from blogs". From the inane to the weird and from the innocuous to the bizarre, she gets to hear most everything. Sometimes its the kids also and other times my extended circle of friends and family. I think my retention in those items is about 40% since I after I tell them they usually either ask me a question or ask me to clarify.

3. Reading then bookmarking (tagging) or sharing (via email, delicious, etc.). I am not sure this is better than level 2 but I have found that if I tend to tag or email it to an extended set of people, I invariably get comments, notes or questions, which makes me go back and read the article or page and clarify.

4. Reading then linking on my blog. If I write about it on my blog, then I tend to remember it very well. My recollection of items from my blog tends to be higher than items I bookmarked.

5. Reading, internalizing, reading again, then writing about it on my blog (paraphrasing) and relating to my experiences. This is the best retainer and recollection level in my opinion. If you read something, then write it in your own words relating it to your own experiences there's a sense of internalization. Close to 80% recollection.

When it comes to books - i.e. not online reading I have found similar patterns, but I would replace the bookmarking with the garden variety pencil marks and sticky tape on the side.

I realize most of these things require multiple "readings" of the same content, which in itself might be the point of reinforced learning.

What about you?

        

There are over 1 Million people in the world who have a net worth more than US $5 Million. Here's what's common to them all:
1. First and foremost, they are almost always entrepreneurs — risk takers for whom wealth is a byproduct of pursuing their passion.

2. They're friendly and fond of new experiences, traits that put them on a collision course with new opportunities.

3. They're too pigheadedly optimistic to heed the long odds and call it quits.

4. And almost all of them made their fortune in a big lump sum after many years of effort.

5. Rich folks often make their fortunes after they make up their minds to solve a problem or do something better than it's been done before.

6. Getting rich also requires a certain amount of stubbornness and clarity of purpose.

7. The odds for solo founders were more like the oft-quoted one in 10, in part because they often found themselves working at cross-purposes with hired guns who see things differently.

8. Paradoxically, the road to riches often means acting as if you already have that freedom.

        

To Cori-centre—bringing all your mental force and faculties to bear steadily on a given center with-out deviation from that exact point—whipping into line all wandering fancies—stray ideas or thoughts that go off on a tangent—to hold steadily all your power on the central thing under consideration without an instant of wavering—that is Concentration.

Read the entire article.

Hat tip.

        

Branding every PC with an Intel Inside was possibly one of the best quality initiatives that Intel taught their customers. Its probably a HBS case study in making a brand out of something most people dont visually "see". I mean you see your PC, but its a DELL or Compaq/HP or Lenovo not an Intel machine.

Same for Made in China, but not sure the connotations are of "quality". Usually Made in China means, inexpensive (or cheap, depending on your perspective), good enough quality (until recently) but it also means mass produced.

I am not sure we can categorize a "backlash" against the Made in China brand yet, but there are enough questions about the quality, environmental effects and type of labor pool used to build those products.

So, it begs the question, what about the "Developed in India" brand for software that has either a significant portion of its design, architecture and development or maintenance done in India. I wonder why NASSCOM or other organizations have not initiated this branding effort yet.  There is a strong need for this effort before the "Developed in India" brand does not stand for anything. Already there are signs that outsourcing is not bearing a lot of positive experiences with its customers. If the branding effort comes with some really good quality assurance of the provider, their background and assures the buyer of the authenticity of the transaction, it would go a long way in addressing cautionary tales such as the on above.

        

You gotta laugh at a lot of things in Bangalore these days. Take for example all the "extra security precautions" that are being implemented in the wake of the bomb blasts. Let me share 3 examples.



1. I was walking into Bangalore Central (a mall in downtown Bangalore - M. G. Road) with my wife over the weekend. The better half wanted to check out the "sales". The place was packed and so were the entrances and exits. Imagine a crowd at the entrance and an airport-style metal / security detector at the front. And over 5 guards next to the metal detector. There's a line 12-15 people deep. Every time a person went through the detector, it beeped (like really big time, loud beeps). The 3 security guards all smile, look at the next person and wave you forwards. Happened with EACH and every person who entered before us. Beeps every time and everyone was let go with a wide smile. What's the point? I am not sure and I did not care to find out.


2. The security wand metal detector is another contraption that's become in the vogue in most office entrances these days. I have really no clue what they're supposed to do with those things. I am pretty sure neither do the security guards. Its not like they ask you to remove any metals, coins or other paraphernalia before they wand you. So what happens is the enthusiastic guard with the wand goes all over you from top to bottom and it beeps like crazy. He smiles and asks you to move on. My cousin's also very confused about this. His question to me was "Is it supposed to beep? Does beeping mean its okay? Or is it not supposed to beep and that's considered okay?"

The funniest part is when some employees come in packs of 3-4. So the guard mass wand-ed them. Really! No jokes. Imagine 4 people standing next to each other (not in a single file, beside each other), and a guard starting to wand them from left to right and top to bottom, front and back. Why? - Saves time.

3. Of course in places that are "extra sensitive" like government offices, they have to frisk you. Not the simple touch, but imagine someone soaping you (no dirty thoughts, since its same sex "frisking") top to bottom. After 6 frisks, the guard gets tired (obviously since he's frisking every person). He's got a backup guard and another who then takes over. So they cant really do things in parallel because if there are more than 20 people, they will all get tired.

I do feel a lot more secure. Why? If someone has to go through all this fake security and still do something nefarious, they're nuts.

        

Is "It depends". This article & writer lost their credibility as soon as I read the first paragraph. When you are in sales of any kind and you cannot clearly explain your pricing strategy, its dependent components and give a ball park estimate, most customers self qualify themselves out of the sales cycle.

That's not to say you ought to give them the exact price because in most cases you cannot. Not giving ballpark estimates though just seems like you are hiding something.

Pricing strategy overall especially in software is clearly not cost driven. Its value or the perception of value. If you are coming out a version 1 product in  most cases you will have a "sense" for what the value of your product is to its customer and be able to price lower (if you want huge adoption) or price higher (if you want a perception of quality).

Most enterprise sales people will tell you that the "It depends" is a consultant's answer or probably an answer from someone who has not sold anything that requires you to close a deal.

<Getting off soapbox>

        

Things are always a lot harder to do than they seem don't they? I have a new found respect for the "On the scene" reporter. The banal chiche's were about the only ones I was used to when talking about the "television reporter" on the scene of an incident.

"All she's doing is repeating the same thing over and over again".

"He's saying what we know already, what's the new news here".

"He has no clue about what happened and is saying exactly what the police man said".

"She's trying to make the story a sensational one, and generate hype so they can get more viewers".

Or my personal favorite:

"What kind of a dumb question was that? Even my 4 year old can ask a better question".

Well its time to eat humble pie and realize their job is hard. At about 2pm on Friday (local Bangalore time) I got to know about 4 blasts in Bangalore from my cousin who called me. Few minutes later when I checked twitter, there were over 20 tweets on Bangalore blasts. Having learned one of the blasts was very close to where I was working yesterday I decided to head out there - dont ask why.

Since I had broadband access I also was viewing CNN IBN and NDTV on my browser. The news was coming in fast and furious. the numbers slowly climbed to 5 then 7 and finally 8 blasts. It got more unnerving as I heard more and I was rethinking my decision to get a little closer to the site of one of the blasts. Since I did not have an option to head back home (I sent the car back home with the driver and most taxis/autos were not plying), I decided to just go for it. I decided I'd ask my cousin to come by and pick me up later. Most people were streaming out of the office at the central business district anyway, so I figured it was the only option.

The next 30 minutes were enlightening at best. The site of one of the blasts was an absolute mess - not from the carnage of the blast, and neither from the traffic - just from the number of curious onlookers - yes I was also guilty of the same. In the midst of this were 3 reporters from local television stations, at least 150-200 people watching and about 15 policemen. Here's what you as a reporter have to go through:

1. Separating fact from fiction & opinion. 3 policemen were offering 3 different variants of the blast. No kidding. Wonder why they even chose to speak to the reporters - I am sure they were not "authorized". On top of that 2 "eye witnesses" were offering their slight of the "sequence of events". Learning what happened and when was difficult at best, let alone trying to determine why or who. So imagine you are the reporter (and its hard enough trying to locate who was there), you are now being asked on your headset to report what's going on. No wonder the reporters back in the studios ask layup questions like "What's the mood out there?" and "What are you hearing?".

2. Determining what to report from all the information available or what's "newsworthy". Ultimately all people want to know (I think) is "What happened, when and why". Facts and numbers speak more clearly than multiple story lines to the same plot. There were 2 or 3 other subplots - size of the bombs, impact of the blast, what the bombs were made of, etc. But the main story line remained - there was a bomb that went off, 2 people were injured and no one died at Vittal Mallya road. But its hard to stop at that is it not? The subplots make the rest of the story.

3. Understanding who to listen to. Eye witnesses probably know best what happened. Police came there about 25 minutes later. There were onlookers who all have multiple opinions, but since they get to see the whole picture, their opinions sometimes contain certain facts that are relevant to report. In this particular case, the guy who was one of the eyewitnesses was largely ignored by the police who were busy trying to sort the wreckage. I dont blame them. There's enough panic around to deal with and multiple people asking you questions to which you hardly have any answers. The reporter in this situation has to prep the interviewee (at least understand which language to ask questions in and translate if necessary), prepare the shot and then report on cue. So who (all) do you get a perspective from? I chose to just ask the one policeman who was close by to where I was situated and a couple of people who claimed they were there during the blast. Obviously I got a certain perspective, not sure if it was the complete view.

4. Putting the story together so it makes sense. I thought the best story lines are those that are viewed with the dimension of time. Well turns out that's only one view. The subplots are more interesting to certain audiences. Many viewers (me included, all the time watching NDTV, etc.) wanted to know the extent of the damage. Others back in twitter-land wanted to know if their loved ones were okay. Still others wanted to know who was responsible for this. You get the picture.

5. Giving information that's timely versus repeating it as it comes. I sat on a couple of key pieces of information relayed to me by people next to me - why? - I was not sure of its authenticity. To give you an example I heard from a few others about a total of 8-10 blasts and I did not repeat that until 2 hours later, when IBN confirmed it. Realizing all along most people following did not want all the details, I stuck to information verified by 3 people or something I heard from the policeman. Not sure that was the right thing, but there's a lot of value to being timely. At the same time, letting everyone in twitter-land know everything I was exposed to made no sense. If you are a reporter however and you get scooped on the news - there's probably hell to pay from your news editor.

Long story short - there's more to television reporting than meets the eye.

        

Balu talks about the lack of privacy for his ATM pin number. Its a good read and a very strange yet disconcerting part of living in India. What's funny about this is that most people are so "curious" they really want to know your pin.

Mojo (dont know his real name) captures the essence of living in Bangalore - its a city most people love and hate at the same time. Especially long timers who feel the soul of the city has been compromised and sold to the IT crowd.

        

There were 7 bomb blasts (602 pm update: 8 blasts) from 120 pm to 235 in Bangalore: Madiwala, Mysore Road, Audogodi, Koramangala, Vittal Mallya Road, Nayandanahalli and Richmond Road  (Shivaji nagar).

2 people died and 4 were injured. (Updated at 545 pm local time - 1 person is claimed dead and 6 injured)

They were fairly small blasts apparently meant to cause panic and fear.

I found out about this from twitter 3 minutes after the blast and since then have been twittering with what information I have available.

Nearly 2 hours after the blast the city pretty much shutdown. Offices closed and everyone was asked to go home. Since nothing of this ever happened in Bangalore before, everyone pretty much panicked.

(Updated at 545 pm local time - Bangalore is returning to normal with traffic worse than usual at the locations of the blast). People are returning to normal and the panic seems to have settled down.

Since two of the blasts were nearly telecom posts, mobile communication was shut down for voice.

Text message (SMS) services were working fine. Calls to US (I called my sister and others) were working fine. Local calls were unable to go through.

All roads leading to and from the main downtown area (M. G. Road) were pretty much closed.

A perspective:

1. For communication: the Internet rocks in India - twitter stayed pretty much stable throughout.

2. Text message beats voice calls during emergency.

3. Local news providers were absolutely useless in getting information out. There was more nonsense and speculation on the motive and the reason for the blasts than real facts. Television did work, but it was useless information that was being transmitted.

        

Somehow the "rules of the game" for the recent consumer software (Web 2.0) seem a lot more simplified than the same for enterprise software. I have read these rules from various sources so I may not be able to identify the sources (that's not for the lack of attribution). Clearly some rules are very valid in both cases, but as you try to implement these rules, you realize quickly they are not always the path to success. So I thought why not examine these rules and figure out which make sense for enterprise software.

1. Release early: When I refer to enterprise I usually mean companies that make over $1 Billion in revenue. Having sold to enterprises for years I thought I know the rules of the game, but figured the Web 2.0 revolution had changed some of these requirements. Not exactly. Large enterprise still want a highly scalable, robust, secure and "complete" solution. They would not consider a Twitter (with its frequent failures) as a system to pay money for. While at Ariba, we had a alpha version that we called beta and a beta that we shipped as final release to 3 customers. The first few customers literally threw it out. It just did not work and was out too early. It was feature complete & had a very intuitive UI, but would not scale. So the first 3 customers refused to deploy it in production, until those issues were solved.

2. Release often: I have not used Friendfeed a lot, but I know they keep adding new features very quickly. That sounds very cool and seems like they are a company that does things quickly. With enterprise software however a version every other week means user training. I am often asked about the training requirements for customers. "Its simple and needs no training" is what I was told. Not exactly. When you are solving a business problem that's complex primarily due to the global nature of a large business, users expect training. Think of Microsoft Word. How long have you been using it? Its so easy to use that my 4 year old can use it with no "training" and he does. But try rolling out Office 2007 and you get a training budget that runs into 7-8 figures for most enterprises. Is Microsoft Word "complex"? My son will say No. But over 60% of enterprises are not rolling out Office 2007 since the training costs are higher.

3. Focus on user acquisition then on revenues: I am not sure any enterprise company can realistically go to their investors (VC or otherwise) without a clear revenue plan. I am truly amazed at how many Web 2 startups that are funded have no idea about their business or revenue model. I do know of how Yahoo, Google, etc. all got started without a business model, but they "figured it out" as they went along. But I have to admit, I dont subscribe to that line of thinking. For every Yahoo and Google there are 50 other companies that got started without a business model that failed.

I would love some feedback from some consumer or enterprise software startup entrepreneurs who have successfully followed these rules and achieved success.

        

Mark was itching to start a new company. It took him over 15 years to establish his business and it was a great success from his perspective. Starting at a small retail outlet reselling home essentials, with a very modest $7500 inventory investment, he had grown it to over $7.5 Million in annual revenues. Now 15 stores adorned with every possible home furnishing accessory, dotted 12 cities in the county he was born and raised. It was a tough road and he learned many lessons. Not to mention he made a lot of good friends in banking, accounting, retail and local government. He employed over 100 people (mostly women) in his busi