Luke Sequeira's Blog

Dining in the dark

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 11:29:55 -0700

I was invited to review a restaurant at the Alila Diwa Goa resort. The theme was dining in the dark.

I never saw food in such a light. The aroma and textures stuck out more than ever. This resulted in a storm of old memories, from childhood, school, my travels etc.

Can apps be capable of such sentimental feelings?

Un-predicting the future

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 18:54:14 -0700

At a macro level, it is somewhat easy to predict the future - nearly everything will be technologically possible; it’s just a matter of time.

At a company level, it gets a little harder - will we be part of the wave or will we sink in the storm of oncoming innovation.

Finally, at a personal level, it’s almost impossible to tell how your life will pan out, where you will be, and innovations, if any, you may be responsible for.

So attempting to predict what you will do is pointless. Too much energy s spent down too many rabbit holes, with few actionable insights.

Instead, it may be simpler to determine the verticals you would like to be involved in and then eliminate the areas within them that don’t interest you AND that you aren’t strong at. Finally, you arrive a set of options that you can compete in and likely have a competitive advantage at.

It would likely also be valuable to identify any broad cultural and technological shifts that will impact the viability of your area. For instance, we know that at dccper, we have a solid product proposition fro real customers and it will continue to generate value for the next 5 to 10 years. However, we simultaneously also see the signs of the tectonic shifts in hiring, retaining and open-markets that encourage us to begin building our next ship, that will cannibalise dccper. But if we don’t, someone else will.

Why Goa is Emerging as the Ideal Location to Launch a Startup and Build a Company in India

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 03:34:00 -0700

Why Goa is Emerging as the Ideal Location to Launch a Startup and Build a Company in India:

A post I wrote for startupgoa:

Goa has long been synonymous with beaches, parties and music festivals, but slowly and surely, Goa is becoming the preferred base for startups in India. But what is it about Goa that is making it an ideal location for startups in India?

Goa has Great Infrastructure

Goa boasts of stable…

I don't write for search engines

Sun, 26 Oct 2014 07:57:52 -0700

Neither do I write for people.

I write for myself, to document my mind and stumble upon my own thoughts at a future point. So please pardon my brevity and usual lack of detail. I only bother documenting concepts.

Trust is binary

Sun, 26 Oct 2014 06:30:01 -0700

Feelings can be fuzzy. It’s easy to confuse exactly how you feel about somebody. Are you close friends or is it just a buddy to hang out with.

But trust isn’t fuzzy, or quantum. There’s no, ‘I kinda trust you’. That simple means I trust you in a certain set on situations - but not in others. That isn’t trust - that’s a calculated risk being within tolerable limits under select situations.

Trust is straightforward; we either trust people or we don’t. The people I trust, are few, but I trust them with everything. The others, I don’t trust and that’s that. They may be part of low risk or non critical aspects of my life, but nothing beyond. Even if they acted in a trustworthy manner in small ways, I wouldn’t trust their actions in larger ones. Specially within our company - most teammates enjoy my trust. For the extremely few that failed it, there is no cure.

Either be entirely trustworthy, or don’t bother at all. Trust is binary.

Patience, not Paperwork

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 11:37:00 -0700

DCCPER will turn a year old in a few days from now. We built a team around 19 people and have grown to be one of the best places to work in Goa. In doing so, we’ve been able to attract world class talent to a non-financial location and worked with clients and partners in every major world market.

This quick growth has strained things more than a few times. I have learned a lot, but more than anything else, I’ve been re-schooled in how important people and relationships are.

We are now in the midst of launching two new businesses with two very different partners and audiences - but one thing is common. We get that paperwork doesn’t hold partnerships together, patience does. Being bound by legal lassoes is not going to solve any underlying issues that stem from dishonesty and immaturity. Thus, if we were ever to end up relying on paperwork to keep things together, we would have already failed.

So therefore, to us, it is more important that we take it slow and work patient and honest people. The paperwork comes last.

Hire like you're attracting students to an MBA program

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 02:24:22 -0700

The best of us have the best of opportunities. In fact, the choice to do whatever we want can even become paralysing at times. I could be working in any part of the world, for pretty much any company that interests me. Even if they didn’t hire me directly, I’d still be able to work in the same niche, possibly at a competitor (which would drive me even more).

So why would I hire people for my own company, and expect them not to have options or want to follow their passions.

Companies that try to hire ‘employees’ and 'retain’ them with stupid ping pong tables and free coffee, are in the same league is rich people that attempt to find and keep their life-partners through private jets and pre-nuptial agreements. A messy divorce is usually the outcome.

My philosophy for hiring is the same as my philosophy for dating - let people be. Those that want to work with you, will work with you. Those that find other opportunities interesting, will move to other opportunities. Tying them to our company makes no one happy. I won’t trust them, because I know they don’t really want to be with us and they won’t trust us, because they’ll see us an manipulative and controlling. When was the last time being manipulative and controlling worked out for anyone dating?

So because we want to hire the best and because we respect the fact that just like us, they have options they would like to explore, I think of hiring more as attracting students to learning from our school of thought. Join, learn from us, learn with us, make new connections, grow, figure yourself out and then grow into your next role - quite likely somewhere else. Everyone wins and everybody is happy.

Risk isn't rational

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 10:56:46 -0700

There is no objective analysis of risk in our human minds. Many things that I thought weren’t risky, now seem outright stupid. But many of these risks resulted in later successes.

A consistent trend among the better entrepreneurs I know is that they don’t see things that normal folk consider risky, to be so. It isn’t that they aren’t attuned to risk. Risk can be costly. However, they risk threshold is significantly higher. This drives them to demand more, push harder, be confrontational or do things that for people on the outside, seem irrational.

Risk is irrational.

Options not directions

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 10:46:20 -0700

Today I understood that strategically, specially when dealing with creatives, it’s better to offer options instead of directions. Few like being told what to do and even fewer actually follow orders.

To get the job done, it’s sometimes easier to create plausible alternative routes. Let your target debate these alternative routes and beat a path to your original but unstated direction.

betalist: Everpresent is a web-based application that manages...

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 10:34:30 -0700

betalist:

Everpresent is a web-based application that manages your social media updates so you don’t have to. It stores content you choose and posts it at times you choose just like you’d do yourself. It shares links, images, videos and text to one or all of your social channels. Keep your social campaign cranking while you’re at the beach (or asleep, eating, on Facebook, etc.)

Sign up here

A buffer competitor

dccper

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 06:18:57 -0800

dccper:

We design and deliver beautiful web and mobile applications for seed stage startups. Pronounced ‘deeper’.

architecture-blog: Eco-friendly Thermal Energy Exchange...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:41:15 -0800

architecture-blog:

Eco-friendly Thermal Energy Exchange Systems

Based on innovations by @CenturyThinking at Sunridge Gardens in British Columbia.

mashable: Today is the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:31:49 -0700

mashable:

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the moon.

What would it look like if they had Instagram? We imagine the past through today’s popular photo sharing app, such as this picture, filtered with Amaro and Lux.

Microsoft Sharepoint vs Dynamics

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:08:00 -0700

A lot of people keep asking what’s the difference between Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Dynamics.

Here:

Microsoft Sharepoint

Unstructured data
Storage, collaboration and content management
Cannot define relationships between data
CMS

Microsoft Dynamics

Structured data
Defines entities in business and how they relate to each other (Eg: customer, accounts, contracts, campaigns and how they all link to each other)
Models relationships between data
CRM

They work best together.

"Thanks to an FCC filing from Comcast, IMS Research, has learned that the small, privately held firm..."

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 10:01:33 -0700

“Thanks to an FCC filing from Comcast, IMS Research, has learned that the small, privately held firm of Boxee, with no external lobbying budget, appears to have almost single-handedly brought Comcast, the largest cable operator in the world, to the negotiating table over basic-tier encryption, and has apparently won everything it was looking to get.”

- Boxee brings Comcast to negotiation table (via zachklein)

minimalmovieposters: Drive by Sean Brown

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 16:23:46 -0700

minimalmovieposters:

Drive by Sean Brown

I just love this Toronto Catering company! Neapolitan maki nori...

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:08:55 -0700

I just love this Toronto Catering company!

Neapolitan maki nori stack: layers of sushi rice, cucumber, avocado, faux crab meat and crispy seaweed.

The ventures live - wipe out

Sat, 19 May 2012 08:48:59 -0700

The ventures live - wipe out

atravisscorry: 5 part talk from Marshall McLuhan. #Toronto...

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:35:42 -0700

atravisscorry:

5 part talk from Marshall McLuhan. #Toronto #Philosopher of #Media #Technology
Way ahead of his time.

What happened on Jan 16th that saw a surge in fans for Google,...

Wed, 09 May 2012 21:42:18 -0700

What happened on Jan 16th that saw a surge in fans for Google, Apple, Nokia and Blackberry?

The Facebook blog says they launched new apps for timeline - but that doesn’t seem to be directly related.