Best Engaging Communities
Personal Blog of Mukund Mohan
Best Engaging Communities

Returning to India - How to sell (software, technology etc.) in India

If you are looking to start any kind of company in India, remember this rule - "First generate revenue, then build a business. External funding of any kind is only to scale the business, not to start it". Innovation driven entrepreneurial ventures (unlike services companies or businesses that resell other products) are extremely hard in India. Given that it takes so much time to get things going, the first question most entrepreneurs need to think is "How quickly can my company generate revenue?".

If you are looking to get funded by Venture capital (and I know 5 VC's very well, to say this is the truth and the law). VC's in India will NOT fund any company without a proven and repeatable revenue model. Yes there are exceptions, and some VC's may fund the "show me momentum and traction" startup, but dont bet on it.

So that then begs the question, how do we sell in India? 

If you are a consumer startup, charge people early, and often. If your business model is based on large number of users paying no money, then figure out who will pay for those large number of users. If your product or service is primarily based on selling to other businesses, then this post is useful for you.

1. Like any other place, businesses and people buy from people they know and trust. The hardest part is to start to build those relationships. Start early. If you are a local (from India) tap into your college/ school network. If you have worked/lived abroad for most of your working career, join your alumni organization. Chances are high that your college alumni network has a few folks in high positions at companies in India. I personally know of many alumni networks which have regional chapters in the large cities in India. Go meet and schmooze. There's no alternative. If you dont like doing that, get someone in your team who likes to do that.

India can seem like an old boys network and it will be that way until you crack the first few. Then you are in that "old boys network".

Some tips I have picked up while trying to sell in India - HR folks have time, no money. Sales & Marketing folks have money no time. If you get an appointment with a sales VP or head of sales and your product helps him/her, go out of your way to make it easy for them to buy your product in your FIRST meeting. I know this is different from "dont try to close in your first meeting" advice you get in the US, but it is what it is. Building a relationship takes time and most of these people dont have time. Make your value proposition compelling enough for her to say "Okay, if this does what you say it does, we will trial it for X days and pay you for it".

2. Quickly understand the company's culture. If you are trying to sell to a company which rarely uses consultants or outside help, realize it will take you very long to get the purchase order process completed. Most services companies (Wipro, TCS, not Infosys) prefer to use inside resources and will build software than buy it.

3. Remember the element of service tax. Its a 10% overhead you have to account for. If your product is to be sold for Rs. 100,000 realize you'll get that minus 10% which the company will keep and report as TDS. When you file taxes at the end of the year, you can apply for a refund, which you will probably get after 2+ years (if at all). So the best is to add that as an element in your quote. If you want to get Rs. 100,000, price your product at Rs. 111,111 so you get Rs. 100,000 after 10% tax.

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Returning to India: A perspective on the "business" of India

There had to be a strong impetus for me to return to blogging after almost a year. Its been a thrilling year and half since we returned to Bangalore after 15 years in the US. I had never worked in India before, so was a little apprehensive about it, but confident that an entrepreneur who can do well in the US, can pretty much do well anywhere. 

After all the US market is possibly the most competitive, most difficult to navigate and the most alien to anyone from outside, right?

Well, after almost 2 years running BuzzGain from India, I can give you some insight into what we did well, what we did not and what we learned ourself. I was planning on a series of posts about this topic, and was just way too busy (or too lazy) to do it.

After getting this link to the NYTimes article on a few people's experiences on returning to India from several friends on facebook, I had to give a view into our experiences.

First the basics:
1. Each country has its pro's and cons according to me. I loved my experiences in America and wont give it up for anything. I have made the best of friends and have worked at some great companies with some excellent folks, while there. While some things bothered me in the US related to work - hiring was a pain, some developers were apt to adorn the "prima donna status", legal paperwork was expensive and the costs of getting a basic product was a lot (although its dropping), it was by and large good.

2. There was not a compelling reason for me to return to India. We (my wife and I) decided that our kids had to experience India at some point and the younger the better. Besides, our parents are all here and we thought it would be a good idea for the grandkids to hang out with them.

3. We dont have any plans to return to the US after "a 2 year expat gig". We have moved. Permanently. 

Do we love it so much in India? No? But we are happy.
Are we open to come back to the US. Dont know. Right now, No.
Did we not like being in the Bay area? We loved it. Its very similar to Bangalore, in terms of weather, which made the transition easy for us.

I moved back with no expectations at all in terms of the working culture. Having heard about all the paperwork and bureaucracy in India, I expected it to be a pain to get anything done at all, let alone ship product.

1. Bureaucracy
Its true. All the paperwork and red tape, gets in the way. There's no better way of saying it. Expect everything to take 2 months more on average. The only saving grace is you can hire people to get things done. You'll end up paying for what should be "free" to get done, but you'll be better of paying for incorporation, "Getting a name approval" from the ROC, setting up basic infrastructure, etc.

2. Professionalism
Its hard even to say this is not true. You can expect some degree of professionalism from folks who have worked at large companies like Infosys, Wipro, or some other big Indian company for most parts. If you are looking for freelancers who can help you get your prototype done, dont expect it. It never has worked. I have had very poor experiences with consultants, who I expected to get some portion of work done in a given period of time (given that you pay them more). They either will email you a day before the work is due to tell you that their kid has extra homework that day so they have to help out or they have to attend their brother's friends wedding in a place where they have no Internet access.

3. Access to lots of great talent
Yes, this is true. Much as been written about how all the top talent in India prefers to work abroad, but there's still so many great people still here. The average student out of a tier 3-5 engineering school is still very motivated, hungry and diligent. The downturn (recession) has only helped hiring. We get good quality resources a fraction of the cost of what I have hired in the US.

Coming back to the article, the main points made were the bureaucracy, lack of follow up and professionalism, which has many who returned to India think twice and return back to the US. I think the points are valid, and India can be a challenge for most "outsiders". Anyone who has been outside India for over 15-20 years and thinks like an American will "expect" a certain work environment, will be sorely disappointed, even if they are "Indian". I say that in quotes because they really have not worked in India to know the ins and out of doing business here.

If you want to succeed in India, after you return, you have to think Indian which has 3 most important tenets (according to me):

1. Plan for everything to go wrong, hence have a back up for every scenario, including people.

2. There's always more demand than supply for most EVERYTHING in India, so if you want it badly, expect to pay a lot more to get it.

3. Surround yourself with people who can get stuff done that you dont like to do. Its not that you cant do it, its just that its not worth doing.

As a follow up, India is apparently a top 10 destination for expats.

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How much do doctors in other countries make?



The US doctor gets paid among the most. Even US nurses.

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US Advertising spend by category and decline rates.

Magna Media forecasts are out for US Ad spend. 2 great graphics are:



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Invention versus Innovation


“The gulf between invention and innovation is often a huge one that many entrepreneurs can’t cross,” said Scott D. Anthony, president of Innosight, a consulting firm.

Take the example of the 4 years it has taken GreenPrint to go from product to market. Amazing story of patience, persistence, and perseverance.

Innovation is far more about prospecting, mining, refining and adding value than it is about pure invention.

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How to differentiate using a great positioning strategy and tell stories

Organizational storytelling is slowly but surely becoming a hot strategy for conveying important information about any business, both internally and externally.

"Charts leave listeners bemused. Prose remains unread. Dialogue is just too laborious and slow. Time after time, when faced with the task of persuading a group of managers or front-line staff in a large organization to get enthusiastic about a major change, storytelling is the only thing that works."

Here is an awesome example of how Costco does it.

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PC shipments and the Acer brand



A 30% drop for Dell, 17% for HP but 7-8% drop for Acer during the last few quarters shows how Acer is taking marketshare away from DELL in the recent past. Amazingly they are only focused on one of the many markets - Notebooks and Netbooks.

Shows how transitions in product cycles can create opportunities for new entrants.

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As a company, where would you go looking for new ideas? Innovation?

The WSJ reports:

When companies try to come up with new ideas, they too often look only where they always look. That won’t get them anywhere.


The ideas are typically at the edge of a company’s radar screen, and sometimes a bit beyond: trends in peripheral industries, unserved needs in foreign markets, activities that aren’t part of the company’s core business. To be truly innovative, companies sometimes have to change their frames of reference, extend their search space. New ways of thinking and organization can be required as well.


InnoCentive.com is a site where people and companies look for help in solving scientific and business challenges. Posters of challenges sometimes offer cash rewards for solutions: Amounts have ranged from $5,000 to $1 million. The site began as an in-house tool for research scientists at Eli Lilly & Co. to help one another. Now it is independent, with Indianapolis-based Lilly as a founding shareholder.

Sometimes innovations arise when different departments talk to each other. But what’s the best way to start the conversation?

Many companies set up so-called communities of practice, which are typically internal Web sites where employees are encouraged to share knowledge and skills important to the company.



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Teens and Media consumption

Nielsen released the "How teens use media" report.


Its a fascinating read overall.

1. They are more focused - they view one media type at a time.
2. They have better recall - they tend to remember ads and consider ads as content (if good)
3. They read newspapers - really? No really!
4. Television is still the most dominant form of media for teenagers.
5. The most popular genres for U.S. teens are Evening Animation, Participation/ Variety and General Drama.
6. In South Africa, teens averaged more than five hours per day of TV viewing. In Taiwan, teens averaged just two hours and 47 minutes.
7. Beyond the first (TV) and second screens (Computer/Internet) , teens are increasingly watching video on their phones.
8. Teens browse less than half as much as the typical user
9. Sixty-seven percent of teen social networkers say they update their page at least once a week
10. More than half of all U.S. teen mobile  subscribers (66%) say they actually prefer text-messaging to calling. Thirty-four percent say it’s the reason they got their phone.

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Real Time search = the next frontier? Or just more of the same


I was at the Buzz140 conference yesterday, in Chennai, organized by the effervescent Kiruba Shankar, Photon (Vasanth and others) and the knowledge conference. It was a one day Twitter conference attended by about 150 folks, many of whom were learning about twitter for the first time.

It was actually a trending topic on twitter for a brief few minutes. (Photos on Flickr) and some by tag.

There was event coverage in the local media - both the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle covered it briefly today.

There was a very interesting topic on Real time search and its implications on Twitter and Google. Many new players have emerged in the space like Topsy, almost.at and Scoopler.

Photo thanks to Keval Prabhu.

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What natural and economic disasters have in common


From McKinsey quarterly:

Scientists, sometimes in cooperation with economists, are taking the lead in a young field that applies complexity theory to economic research, rejecting the traditional view of the economy as a fully transparent, rational system striving toward equilibrium.

Many other scientists in the field of complexity theory argue that earthquakes, forest fires, power blackouts, and the like are extremely difficult or even impossible to foresee because they are the products of many interdependent “agents” and cascades of events in inherently unstable systems that generate large variations.

See the image below for the eerie correlation between banking crisis and earthquakes in So. Cal.

These examples indicate that power law patterns, with their small, frequent outcomes mixed with rare, hard-to-predict extreme ones, exist in many aspects of the economy. This suggests that the economy, like other complex systems characterized by power law behavior, is inherently unstable and prone to occasional huge failures.

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How to be a great community manager - 5 steps

Sarah Blue has some recommendations on the 5 steps to be a better community manager:

It not an earth shattering revelation but a tried and tested set of known best practices.

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The Paris Air Show 2009


I love planes. Of all kinds. There's no better sight to my eyes than a plane taking off (or landing for that matter). I was unable to attend the Paris Air show 2009, although I would have loved to go. Here are some amazing photos from the event.

Some more photos from Washington Post.
Here's the list of exhibitors.

Airbus seems to have a lot more orders booked than Boeing.


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Electrifying cars: How three industries will evolve

It’s a safe bet that consumers will eventually swap their gas-powered cars and trucks for rechargeable models. Electrified transport, in some form, would seem to be in our future. But how long will investors have to wait for the bet to pay off? Years? Decades?


From Mckinsey Quarterly

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What do successful people do differently?

1. Successful folks focus in on what they love and they wait for the world to come to them.- Jeff Bezos
2. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable - J K Rowling
3. Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity - Bill Gates


1. Opportunity never knocks.
2. Follow your heart, but stick to what you know.
3. It’s not about the money – it’s about winning.

Read it all

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The rise of urban poverty and how it will shape neighborhoods in India

I have an aunt & uncle who live in Chennai. After 20+ years in Singapore and the USA they are back. Always living modestly and within their means, they have 2 wonderful kids who are "well settled" - married, or engaged and doing well.  They came by last weekend to spend some time with us and the kids.

Wanting to give back they moved to India with the intention of setting up a "home away from home" for young girls from broken homes - about 50 or so kids whom they will completely pay for in terms of food, clothing, shelter and education.

Aunt's the passionate one and this has been her life project and mission for the last few years. They already support an entire school in their village (where they grew up). Its completely free for all kids and they paid for the land, construction, and pay for the teachers annually. All kids study there for free. Uncle for most parts, pays the bills and is an amazingly supportive husband. Its his way of saying thanks to her for being by his side for the last 35 years.

They came by home to see if I could take them around. Bangalore's weather is temperate and nice (like Silicon Valley) and unlike Chennai (think Dallas in Summer, 365 days of the year). They were considering opening the shelter here in Bangalore. We spoke to a few principals at local schools who each had over 20 young girls who desperately needed a safe place to stay.

They figured they'd need about 150 Sq Ft of space per kid (this is on the high end, but its worth it) so about 7500 Sq ft home, in a 10,000 sq ft of land space. They had planned on hiring help for the home - a maid, a cook and a security guard.

Here's their project costs. All numbers are REAL.

1. Cost of acquiring land in the suburbs of Bangalore (about 20 miles away from the city, think Morgan Hill or Gilroy for the suburb to a San Jose city) - $240,000
2. Cost of registering land (Taxes, government fees) - $3400
3. Cost of bribing officials to ensure their land can be used as a shelter instead of home - $10,000
4. Cost of building the home (structure) $120,000 ($16/sq ft is on the low end but its doable)
5. Cost of running home with food, maids etc. $40,000  (per child, per year is $800)
6. Cost of paying for kids education annually ($500 per child) $25,000

Total Capex cost ~ $375K
Annual expense - $65,000

The same costs were compared with doing the same project at the village that currently houses their school. The total capital expense costs were $120K and their annual expenses were about $20K for 50 girls.

They had budgeted about $250K in an evergreen fund (so it has to pay for CapEX and ongoing costs), so Bangalore priced itself out.

Trouble is urban slum dwellers need this kind of support. The average poor person in the city lives on the same daily income as the rural one.

With rapid urbanization (close to 60% expected to be in urban cities by 2020) this is the inevitable landscape change that Indian cities will go through. They are too expensive for the poor and too expensive for the rich to support the poor.

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How to define success in this new world?

"I’m even more convinced that success in this lifetime comes from our ability to think positively about others or growing a bigger vision about others."

One perspective.

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How Self-Made Titans Launched Their Empires


According to a 2002 U.S. Census Bureau survey representing some 16 million business owners, a whopping 55% were initially funded by personal and family capital. Just 11.4% snagged bank loans, and 8.8% got going on personal and business credit cards; much of the remainder lived on government loans and outside investors.

Which means only 25% (and less since many have government funds) are the ones that are funded by venture capitalists.

Sometimes sheer talent and persistence is enough.

As a single mother on welfare in Scotland, J.K. Rowling, 43, began writing the first Harry Potter novel in Edinburgh cafés whenever she could get her infant daughter to sleep. After being rejected by 12 publishing houses, Bloomsbury, a small publisher in London, offered an advance of 1,500 pounds (about $2,400)—even while one its editors, Barry Cunningham, advised Rowling to get a day job.

Good thing she didn't listen: The following year, U.S. publishing rights to the first Potter book sold for $105,000. Rowling, who is now worth around $1 billion, has since moved nearly 400 million copies worldwide, and is the only author on our list.


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Competitive the world over, but more in China and India

The world is a lot more competitive now than a few years ago, which is pretty obvious. In a recent speech president Obama asked us to buckle up as the Indians and Chinese are catching them fast, as Americans have now settled into mediocrity.

Ever since he started his presidential campaign more than two years ago, Obama has been urging people in the US to gear up to match the increasing talent of the Chinese and Indian students. "Their kids watch a lot less TV than our kids do, play a lot fewer video games, they are in the classroom a lot longer," Obama said amidst applause.

There is a piece today in the New York Times about the Chinese preparation for their
gao kao, or the high test.

Some interesting quotes:

Fourteen to 16 hours a day, he studied for the college entrance examination, which this year will determine the fate of more than 10 million Chinese students. He took one day off every three weeks.

The Chinese test is in some ways like the American SAT, except that it lasts more than twice as long. The nine-hour test is offered just once a year and is the sole determinant for admission to virtually all Chinese colleges and universities. About three in five students make the cut.


There's also a piece on the Indian IIT examination process on Rediff.

Some three to four lakh (300,000 to 400,000) people apply to the IITs and only 3,000 get in. What kind of a ridiculous shortage is that?

That shortage has created a desperate thought that come what may you have to get into these institutions. So with this process taking roots the whole process of education got killed.

From Class VIII itself you send your child to a coaching class or to Kota (where coaching classes that help prepare students for competitive examinations for institutions like the IIT are located) where whether the child likes it or not s/he has to get into either engineering or medicine.

I think an average Indian parent would commit suicide than rather accept that the child is going to an arts college to learn history. Especially if a boy says so.

Finally a piece on SAT preparation in Bloomberg.

Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, likens the situation to an arms race favoring the rich.

``Parents think, `Our child will be left in the dust unless they get even better weapons,''' he says.

Parents the world over are in the race to provide the best and most competitive education for their kids. everywhere.

The difference between the US and India and China is this - In the US, its the rich who know that the competition for your kids are not from other kids in your neighborhood, but from the world over.

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Rise of the freelance nation and its impact on technology


1. Wonder why Apple is doing so well with iPhone? How come even in this down economy, smart phones are selling like hot cakes?
2. Wonder why SaaS services for the individual - Accounting, invoicing, project management are doing well?


Empowerment of the freelancer who is looking for a virtual or an automated admin is driving it apparently. In fact from 2009 to 2019 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US will have moved from 30% (43 Million workers) to 40% freelancers.

This means we have to teach our kids  "all round" skills, including how to source projects, deliver, manage and keep customers happy. No wonder business networking is expected to take off.

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World's natural resources by country - Great image

Great visual map of the top countries for each commodity and natural resource. This graphic gives you the countries that have the most of:
1. Soy
2. Silver
3. Gold
4. Corn
5. Oil
6. Uranium
7. Cotton
8. Rice
9. Natural Gas
10. Wheat
11. Diamond
12. Cotton
13. Water


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China on track to sell 11 million cars this year


What will a China as the leading economy in world look like?

China also has, for the fifth consecutive month, beaten the US as the world's largest automobile market. "The growth in the passenger car segment will probably continue in June to hit a new monthly record, which will boost the whole-year sales to the 11-million-unit mark," said Rao Da, secretary-general of the association.

GM, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month, reported a monthly sales record in China in May. The automaker's total vehicles sales in May surged by 75 percent year-on-year to 156,000 vehicles in China.

Not very different from the United States.

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Coffee-Cup Power Inverter for In-Car Charging: Buy me one of these

I need one of these for my car.



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Why big companies fail: Jim Collins - How the mighty fall


Jim Collins author of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great" has a new book - How the mighty fall.

Money quote:
"Institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages".

He describes a five-stage process of how corporates rise and fall, with the following headings:

  1. Hubris born of success,
  2. Undisciplined pursuit of more,
  3. Denial of risk and peril (this may come at the moment of greatest apparent success), followed by
  4. Grasping for salvation, and
  5. Capitulation to irrelevance or death.
My general take. This book is below par for a Jim Collins type pedigree. Pass.

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How to find ideas for a new business



Mixergy has some great suggestions on ideas for starting a new company.

Here are some other means to find ideas:

1. Keep a list of things that bother you or other people every day. This could be big or small  - your commute, the way your brush works. Try and fix that problem

2. Brainstorm with friends on things that need to be fixed.

3. Review large company balance sheets (This is the follow the money approach). Then find out where they make money the most or where the spend money the most. Keep asking questions on how you can increase their revenue or reduce their cost.

Your turn. But remember to take a break once a while.

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Social good is the new Web 2.0 for Stanford grads

Welcome recession. Thanks to you we actually have people not wanting to focus on money, instead working to do good for this world.

A record 112 teams submitted business plans for a social entrepreneurship competition, Social E-Challenge, during the spring semester.



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Why Intuit's Quicken beat Microsoft Money? Or did it?


Microsoft Money is dead.

Long live Intuit Quicken?

No. I disagree that Quicken beat Money.

What beat Money was not marketing from Quicken either.

People prefer automation. It takes time to fire up Quicken or Money or any other program to keep track of your expenses and log your checks. Only the geeks or ones with OCD went to get checks that could be printed from Quicken.

The rest of us wanted something or someone to automate it. This "rest of us" is a very small fraction of folks, actually. The rest (greater than 50%) dont care how much they spend since they have a good enough "feel".

What killed Money was the effort to reward ratio was too little.

You spend 4 hours a month to get a report that tells you where you spent your money. Then what?


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Safest countries in the world


If you want to live safely.

1. New Zealand
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. Japan
5. Canada

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San Francisco vowing to levy fines of up to $1,000 on those unwilling to separate their Kung Pao chicken leftovers from their newspapers.

The Board of Supervisors passed new recycling and mandatory composting rules on Tuesday in a 9-to-2 vote.

The city already diverts 72 percent of the 2.1 million tons of waste its residents produce each year away from landfills and into recycling and composting programs.

The new ordinance will help the city toward its goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2020, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city’s Department of the Environment.

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Satire imitates reality or is it the other way around? Facebook Vanity URL

Anil Dash has a very funny post on the facebook vanity URL. I wish I was this accurate in my predictions.


A small number of super-geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address.

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Venture Capital returns are just not that attractive

8 percent returns for venture capital over the last 10 years,

compared with −27 percent for the S&P 500 and

−28 percent for the Nasdaq,

the Russell 2000, an index of small-cap stocks that returned 18 percent over the same period.

only about 0.2 percent of the estimated 600,000 new businesses created in the United States each year are financed by venture capital and about 16 percent of the fastest-growing companies are, he found.

Another problem he cited was that information technology has matured to the point that new innovations will not be hugely profitable and it costs a fraction of what it used to to start an I.T. company.

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Leadership TIVO style

Leaders may know exactly what they want to see happening.

They send out messages down the management line. Employees ought to understand. But between the top table and the shop-floor something goes wrong. Leadership teams can be scarily ignorant of how badly their wishes have been distorted, and how much unhappiness there is among those on the receiving end.

There are four things in particular that managers need to provide if they want to avoid this false anxiety syndrome:

predictability (over-communicate);
understanding (keep it “Sesame Street simple”, advises Procter & Gamble’s AG Lafley);
control (break down big challenges into manageable ones); and
compassion (show that you care).

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One way to be an innovative leader - Bill Walsh


Rich Karlgaard : Forbes

That ability to spot insights and lessons from fields far outside your own is one hallmark of an innovative leader.



Not every leader can—or should—be an innovative leader. Full article.

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Blaming the Baby Boomer for the recession and the new "jobs" for teenagers

Newsweek finds yet another person to blame for this recession - Baby Boomers. See graph below of US population by age.

"The Baby Boom lasted from 1946 to 1964, and some 78 million American children were born during that time. As this cohort ages, its sheer size overshadows the rest of society."


The worrying trend:
What happened in Japan in the 1990s was a demographic shift into retirement, where a large portion of the population went from a lifestyle of earning, saving and spending to a lifestyle of not earning, living off assets and spending less. This resulted in less demand for investments like stocks, less demand for housing, and less demand for material 'things' — and the prices of all these fell.


In one of the comments a user says "
Let's see, both my husband and I started working for cash before we were even in junior high (he had a paper route, I babysat). Funny, I don't see any kids working in stores now, or many doing paper routes either."

The thing is there is no more of the paper route job. And the "working in stores" job is being done by adults out of college since there are no more jobs for them.

I dont think kids these days are slackers, or obsessed with navel gazing on twitter. They just dont have the opportunities that existed, since those jobs are gone
.

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Large realty players in India looking to raise funds


QIP plans of the large real estate companies in India.

HDIL (about Rs 3,000 crore through QIP and Rs 850 crore through promoter warrants), Parsvnath and Akruty (Rs 2,500 crore each), Anantraj (Rs 2,000 crore), Sobha Developers (Rs 1,500 crore), Puravankara (Rs 750 crore) and Orbit Corp (Rs 500 crore through QIP and an unidentified amount through promoter warrants).

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Radio audience measurement in India's top 4 cities

The Radio Audience Measurement (RAM) data for Week 21 for Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore is out. Radio Mirchi continues to lead in Delhi and Kolkata. Red FM has regained its lost stance in Mumbai, Big FM continues to rule in Bangalore.

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Top telecom providers by subscribers worldwide

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How to bring out the best in kids?

I am going to boil down a 6 page article (its awesome) on How to grow a super-athlete to one quote. This I believe holds good for kids, adults and others.

" Deliberate practice means working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on improving weaknesses".

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Nokia's not all that smart



The mobile phone market is going to start looking like the pharma industry is. A bunch of "generic" drug makers sold OTC at cheap prices and another set of very expensive prescription drugs. Nokia's on route to become the generic maker and Apple, RIM will compete the high end. No wonder I compare the iPhone to Pfizer's Viagra. It was not until later that Cialis (Blackberry's Bold) came out, but Viagra had won the mindshare by then.

Of course people try to convince me the Palm Pre is going to change it all.

My answer, Yeah Right. If the Palm Pre does well, then expect Nokia to buy them out quickly. Else its yet another and an also ran.

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Are you a producer or consumer


Rob says that the single most important question in your career should be "Are you a producer or a consumer".

"But if you realize that one of the pleasures in your life is to read about code/startups/entrepreneurs/music, then embrace that you are a consumer. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is not bad as long as you realize that you are not working towards an end beyond your own edification, which again, is not a bad thing.

Likewise, if you’re someone who has an unquenchable desire to produce something, then stop reading about other people, and start doing it yourself. Seriously, don’t read another blog post, tweet, or issue of Fast Company until you’ve made a visible move towards that goal you so desperately want, but think that reading and dreaming about will somehow make it come true. Once you’ve made that single action towards advancing your idea, you can come back and read a few more posts."

I think its not a simple "either you are a producer or a consumer" discussion. Most people are more of one than the other, but being a producer requires more commitment to consuming for sure. Most producers cannot consume in a vacuum and the ability to consume what's relevant is important.

Personally I have reduced my consumption primarily because I have too many "useless" interests. I am thrilled I found this out and am taking a proactive step towards reducing my "junk reading" purely for the sake of spending time on reading. It makes you more "learned" but its a big time commitment.

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3 Things I (and probably you) did not know about the US car industry

From NYTimes.


1. Of the 16 best selling cars & trucks in America 10 are American vehicles. The Camry is the best selling car, but the Ford F 150 is the best selling vehicle (outselling the Camry by about 75% more)

2. GM and Ford both dropped far less than Toyota OR Honda in Dec 2008 ( I suspect its because of incentives).

3. Chevrolet is the only brand in the top 16 cars with positive change in sales year over year.


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The World (actually US mostly) economy is a story of 2 theories and 2 people only

Paul Krugman on beating the recession:

1. Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution's behalf: "You're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

2. John Maynard Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective under depression conditions and that fiscal policy - large-scale deficit spending by the government - is needed to fight mass unemployment.


Strange how 2 economists have influenced the entire US thinking on macro economics, but its true.

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The focus on short term vs. long term & striking the balance

In his piece End of the financial world as we know it, there's an interesting paragraph on the long and short of Wall street's interests:

"OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest."


This balance of short and long term is no different from other balance that gets talked about a lot - Work/Life.

There's no easy answer to solving either balance problem and I'm not sure solving it is going to get people happy either. Trouble is that the "balance" is mostly self determined. One person's short term is another person's immediate term and so on.

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The fairy tale of mobile handset operators

Snow White - Apple
Sleepy - Palm
Dopey - LG
Grumpy - Sony Erricson
Happy - RIM (Blackberry)
Sneezy - Motorola
Doc - Nokia
Bashful - Samsung

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Fixing something that's not broken

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) talked today about why Capitalism needs a makeover. In it he talks about what's broken (easy lending, profligate spending, unsophisticated investors and sophisticated crime) and what's still working (freedom of employment and entrepreneurship).

I dont believe this is yet another recession. Its a chance in a lifetime to reshape our approach towards economics. Its clear that capitalism provides some benefit and like all things provides some negative behavior among its participants.

What has to change in my opinion:

1. Spending: Living within your means has to become the norm. If you make $5 you have to spend less than that. I dont believe its required to force saving as much as spending less than you earn. Hence, lending practices have to factor in lot more that just your current earning. It has to discount it by several percentage points, keeping in mind the unpredictability of wage increases (giving room for inflation). I'm not articulating a non-consumer driven society, just a more sane one.

2. Enforcement of current laws: I'm not sure we need more laws. Given SOX already exists for public companies, (and its onerous) what's needed is active enforcement of it and fixing loopholes in the process.

3. Social acceptance of community good. Its no secret that there are more social entrepreneurs needed now more than ever. This is not so much an economic as a socio-economic requirement.


What do you think? What else's needed to make Capitalism 2.0 work?

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When's the best time to switch to a new job / role / company?


If it takes 10,000 hours for someone to become an expert at something, then it would take you 3 years at 60 hours a week and 5 years at 40 hours / week to become an expert - which is an euphemism for "you are no longer learning".

I am not sure I believe the number 10,000, but food for thought anyway on how often you should consider doing something new.

The book itself "Outliers" is interesting but I am not convinced its in the "Blink" or "Tipping point" class.

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WSJ on the secrets of Marketing in Web 2.0 world


WSJ has a multi-author piece on tips to leverage Web 2.0. They have interviewed about 30 executives and managers to gain the following insights:
1.  Don't just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
2. 
Give consumers a reason to participate.
3. 
Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
4. 
Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
5. 
Don't control, let it go.
6. 
Find a 'marketing technopologist.'
7. 
Embrace experimentation.

Interesting overall, but mostly 101 stuff for experienced folks. The trend to capitalize on is that the suits are now beginning to talk about it, so maybe we can gather that Web 2.0 is now arriving to the mainstream. Ironic that many have declared it over in the Valley.

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The most awesome video you'll see this month. If you need to smile

Here is a link if the embed does not work.
Watch it till the end. Its awesome. I guarantee it.

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Warren Buffet's greatest quotes

My personal favorites:

#42: We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

#14: It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

The entire list.

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What in the world did we do in 2008? Google Zeitgeist

2008 Google search trends and Zeitgeist is here. Unlike what people on Yahoo searched for in 2008 (that's Britney Spears BTW), Google searchers seemed more obsessed with      and American Idol.

No points for guessing the categories that made the top 3:
1. Politics in US - Obama, Sarah Palin, Fox news etc.
2. Economic crisis
3. Beijing Olympics.


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