Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Are you a music lover but don’t know how to play any instrument?

Fret Not! For now you only need to know how to use “Google Translate” and you will be able to create some interesting music and tones.

Just follow the steps below and enjoy your greatest musical experience:

1.  Open “Google Translate” in a browser and copy the text below in the source window.

   pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk

2. Set the source language to “German” and press the “Speak” button at the bottom right of the box.
3. Now translate the text into “Spanish” and press the “Speak” button in the translated box.
4. Repeat the previous step for translations in the following languages:
1. Afrikaans
2. Czech
3. Danish
4. Italian

Amazing, isn’t it? Try some variants and share in comments if you get some good ones.

The whole “Ambedkar Cartoon Controversy” got me thinking about whether we are really moving forward as a country or not. Just in case you have not seen the “dangerous” cartoon, here it is for your reference.

Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with this cartoon to deserve such attention. Images are a great teaching tool because visuals get etched in memory faster and also use the right part of the brain which normally remains grossly underutilized in all teaching methods. I must have read in the school that it took our constitution 3 years to be written, but I did not remember that number – I am sure students who were taught with this visual will never forget it again. And so goes with everyone who has seen this cartoon during this controversy.

Dr. Ambedkar himself was a liberal and the fact that he was the one driving our constitution goes a long way to show the respect he commanded and the fact that a dalit or anyone from a lower caste, could get a very high post even in those days, provided they had the skills required for it. That is a very high standard for any country to start their independent life with.

However, it seems like we have regressed in our moral values since then and any opportunity to divide the country based on castes, religion or region for that matter is lapped up by the politicians. The reason dalits as a community have not risen very high is not because every other caste is pushing them down, it is primarily because of lack of education and the right skill set. Its sad to see this being used as a political tool every now and then by the opposition parties, rather than trying to look at the big picture and solving a real problem.

And finally, we have the old media competing with our new social media. The moment someone initiates any baseless point like this, media lights it up into a big fire with all the coverage, panel discussion and what not, turning it into a ball of fire that fuels their TRPs for the next couple of days.

Wish we had visionary leaders, who would be able to rise above these petty things and focus on taking the country forward, not backward!

While building a product, dealing with release pressures, it often happens that you lose sight of who your customer is. And while you may not realize, losing sight of your customer often causes the value of your product to diminish significantly and sometimes leading to catastrophic results.

While building a product, I use a series of simple steps so as not to lose sight of the customer:

1. Customer Profiles: Never start a product without defining your customer profiles. A good user profile creates a mental image of your customer in the mind of whoever reads it and forces you to think about what is important and what is not.
2. Customer Interviews: Unless it is a futuristic product, it is always helpful to speak to a bunch of prospective customers to find out if what you plan to build affects their lives at all. Do not go for inanimate multiple choice questions – that will not tell you anything. Speak to them for 30 minutes and you will learn a lot more.
3. Mind Maps: Use a mind map to break up the product into smaller pieces and the smaller pieces further until there is sufficient clarity on the moving parts involved. A mind map format makes it easier for you to break the product apart from various perspectives ( customer, internal, stakeholder, partner, segments etc ) and define use cases without putting too many constraints upfront.

You know that a disruptive change has happened when your default choice changes. And today we can safely say that print media has been totally disrupted by online media.

As a testimonial, take a look at this newspaper clip on the left. This is not just an instance of careless copy-paste, but a reflection of the fact that the content is being produced for the online world by default, not the print media.

The default has changed.

The decline of print media has been very prominent in US and Europe for a couple of years now, leading to bankruptcy of several newspapers, the phenomenon now seems to be gathering steam in India, perhaps the only market where people still enjoy their morning cup of tea with a newspaper in hand.

Another sign of the impending change that is happening is the new generation that has been born post 2000. These folks have started in a world where internet exists, a cellphone is a given and they learn to use iPad even before they learn to walk. These kids are born in the age of digital information and as they grow up, they may never have a space for print media in their lives.

Watch this entertaining video of a kid, who thinks that a magazine is an iPad that does not work .

Steve Jobs has always been my idol in building great products. Lately, I have been reading a lot about his past and what I am going to share in this post are some startling patterns that became evident in the process. There are some great lessons to be learnt here.

Lets rewind back to 1980s when Apple was selling the Macintosh – it was a complete stack with the microprocessor, hardware, software and applications being built by Apple and sold as one big package. In contrast, the competition was going the horizontal with Intel building the microprocessors, IBM and several others building the hardware and Microsoft building the software. In this round, the consortium of Intel – Microsoft – Hardware vendors won hands down because of their open approach.

Jobs then moved on to Next and went to task again in building the entire computing stack, both hardware and software included. Jobs again made losses here and the company was finally acquired by Apple giving Jobs his second chance at Apple.

At Apple, Jobs again moved on to build the iPod, including all of hardware, software and middleware (iTunes) and its as if he was third time lucky. The iPod was an instant hit and rest is history.

If you notice, in all these stints, Jobs went about building the entire stack where conventional wisdom would suggest being the market leader in one part of the stack while partnering with other companies for the rest. And he did that not once, or twice, but three times, even after getting beaten twice by the Intel / Microsoft partnership. So how do you explain this?

The answer, as counterintuitive as it may sound lies in “Belief”. It seems like deep down, Jobs always believed that the user should not need to understand the intricacies of the device to use it and every time he went about building a product, this belief led him to take ownership of the entire stack. For his first two attempts, the market conditions did not let him realize his dreams, but finally it was his belief that led the move into consumer products market where it worked like a charm.

Its amazing that he stuck to his belief for 20+ years, isn’t it? Building a product is hard work and it seems like strong belief and perseverance to see it through is the only way to make it happen!

What do you guys think?

Today is a sad day as the world lost one of the most respected visionary and creative genius – Steve Jobs. Not only is he the guru for all folks who aspire to build great products, the impact that his innovations have had on the world is such that its hard to imagine what the world would have been without him.

I have always been fascinated by how simplicity can create magic and even define new markets that never existed before. Here are a few things that I have learnt over the years by watching Steve:

1. Less Is More

Steve was a master of the art of “minimal design” and this is something that is unique about all Apple products from the beginning. The first calculator they built did not have an “Off” button and that is a tradition that has been carried on to the iPod / iPhone / iPad series of products.

The underlying reason behind why this works is fairly simple – you need to understand your customer really well to identify a minimal set of features for your product. And since most people don’t want to go through the pain of understanding their consumers, they cram all sorts of features in the product in the “hope” that some of those will work.

2. Solve A Real Problem

One of the things that has always amazed me is how Apple has been able to launch new products where there was no “perceived need” and new markets emerged around each of these products.

Think iPod for a moment – who ever thought in 2001 that there would be such a huge market for a digital music player. And who would have thought in 2007 that you could get people to purchase a phone that has no keypad. I’m sure that if you did a customer survey asking users of mobile phones whether they would like to have a phone without buttons, the overwhelming response would have been “No”.

And yet he created these products and they not only succeeded but created new markets around them. But how?

If you look closely enough, you will realize that this is based on deep understanding of real problems. In 2001, Steve realized that people were sharing digital music through Napster, but did not have a way to play it outside of the desktops and he created the iPod. Similarly, in 2007, people had started watching rich media and videos on their desktops, but there was no mobile device capable of doing the same and he created the iPhone.

3. The Last Mile

Most companies specialize in one aspect of the business. Hardware companies are great at building hardware and usually partner with someone else for the software, and vice versa. Apple is unique in this aspect as it does the Hardware, the Software and the Middleware too.

The real reason for business success of the iPod, in addition to its great design was also the fact that you could easily load music on it through iTunes. Contrast this with other portable music players like Sony where the device is agnostic to how the music is loaded on to it. By making it so easy to load music, Steve created a real money spinner in a vertical that is struggling to make money because of rampant piracy.

But this is a line between focus and “I’ll do it all” that you should tread carefully here.

4. Think Big

One basic quality of an innovator is the ability to take a bet on future and then prove it right. Steve didn’t do that once or twice but several times during his lifetime.

Infact, from the time he audaciously declared that a computer should be able to perform all its duties with a mouse, to redefining animation with Pixar to changing the face of consumer electronics as we know it today, Steve has always made really BIG bets. This is why we so fondly remember him, don’t we?

Yes, some of them did not pay off, but that’s the law of averages.

5. Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

This one is my favorite and does not need much explanation. You will continue to move forward as long as you have fire in your belly and willingness to learn!

Photo Credit: Joe Poon

One rule that applies to almost every aspect of your life is the 80 – 20 rule. I am almost beginning to be a fan of its universal applicability.

Take the issue of why most businesses fail even after doing a lot of things right – because they did not execute the final 20% of the solution ( that would take 80% of the effort ) with the same rigor. I like to call it the “Last Mile Issue”.

Last month, I relocated to Gurgaon and one thing that I have heard consistent praise for in the NCR area is the Metro. So last weekend, I decided leave my car home and hop on to the Metro to check it out. While the journey from one Metro station to another was flawless and praiseworthy, what stuck out like a sore thumb was the last mile connectivity of most of the stations. Only if that had been taken care of as well as the rest of the Metro, Delhi would have half the number of cars it has floating on the roads today.

Now think about Apple and the launch of its first device coming out of hibernation, the iPod. As with all Apple products, Steve Jobs not only built a superior product, but also took care of the last mile problem ( how do you get your songs on iPod ) by hooking it up with iTunes. And rest is history! I can bet that iPod would not have been half as successful had Apple not linked it with iTunes.

And sometimes, the lack of a good last mile implementation by one company can open up opportunities for others. Way back in 2000, when the first set of broadband companies setup their shop in India, they did invest a lot of money in building fiber optic backends, but did not invest in the last mile connectivity to deliver that bandwidth to the end user. The result – a lot of fiber optic companies went bankrupt in the 2001 bust and the opportunity was seized by the mobile phone operators. Today, India is No. 2 worldwide in usage of internet over mobile devices, a really commendable feat.

So what can you do to make your business succeed? The answers will vary depending on the kind of business, but one thing is very clear – ignore the last mile issues at your own peril. Or get better at it than your competitors and reap the benefits.

What is your take? Any example from your startup / business where you faced issues with the last mile or used it to your benefit?

Since the announcement of acquisition of Lifeblob by Printo, there has been a sudden surge of interest in the photo sharing service. Infact, so many people asked me about why we are shutting down the photo sharing services that I decided to write my answer in this post.

The answer is a single word: FOCUS

The mission of lifeblob was to be a photo sharing that allows people to explore photos through relations in a visually engaging format. For the first two years, we were solely focussed on growing the photo sharing service, but since we were finding it very hard to monetize it, we decided to extend the service to include merchandising of personalized photo gifts. By then we had over 4 Million photos and the plan of acquiring users through the photo sharing service and then monetizing them by selling personalized gifts made perfect sense.

However, as we started executing on our plans, the reality dawned on us – “People who use our photo sharing services are not necessarily the ones who would purchase personalized gifts from us”. Infact, pretty soon, we realized that there is very little overlap between the two segments and we ended up splitting our marketing effort into two parts, one targeted towards growing the photo sharing service ( contests, events etc ) and the other targeted towards increasing transactions ( adwords, SEO, coupons, mailers etc ) in our personalized gifting store. The segments were so dramatically different in all respects that we simply couldn’t leverage a user acquired from one segment to the other.

Despite this realization, we decided to continue running both the services under Lifeblob because in our minds, discovery of photos through relations was our primary service with merchandising being necessary for revenue generation. However, the scenario changes when you combine Lifeblob with Printo.

Printo’s mission is to provide excellent printing services to their customers and Lifeblob’s simple and elegant personalization platform perfectly fits the bill. However, that doesn’t rule out an interest in photo sharing service because it was growing at a good pace and common sense suggests that photo sharing + printing service is a good combination.

Over the past few weeks, Manish and I have had several discussions regarding the photo sharing service and based on our experiences over the past year, it has been my recommendation that the photo sharing service be shut down so that the combined entity retains FOCUS on its mission and not divide its efforts.

As much as it pains me to make a recommendation that will put an end to three years of hard work, I feel it is my responsibility to suggest what is right – the final decision still rests with Printo though.

A few months ago, I and one of my colleagues were on a business visit to Chennai. By the end of the day, we were really exhausted and were desperately looking for a decent place to have our dinner before we caught our bus back to Bangalore. Apply Murphy’s Law on top of the situation and you have a heavy downpour to make the situation worse.

Amid this downpour, with luggage in both our hands, we somehow hopped, skipped and jumped around the broken pavement to the best looking restaurant in sight and managed to reach there relatively dry. The restaurant was empty and we felt happy that we will get a chance to talk in peace. As soon as we entered the restaurant, a strong smell of phenyl entered our nostrils and made us feel as if we had entered the ward of a general hospital.

And despite the great ambience and the gravity of our situation, we turned around and immediately exited without saying a word to the manager. As we were faced with the rain again and forced to wait to seek an alternative, my colleague turned around and said:

I bet this guy has no f***ing clue of why customers come in and then walk out!

And that was true – the restaurant was empty and despite being the best looking restaurant in the area, I’m sure several customers were walking out without giving them business. And while I am sure the restaurant manager had good intentions in keeping the restaurant clean ( using phenyl ), he had no way of deciphering that as the cause of customers turning back unless someone told him.

We were going through a similar phase where we had just turned on our merchandising store and were trying to figure out how to convert visitors into sales. We were getting people to spend a lot of time configuring personalized photo products, but at the end of the day, not many people were transacting. And no one was telling us why they were not purchasing the product either.

Over the next couple of months, we tried several things to elicit, decipher and make decisions based on customer feedback and the rest of the post is a gist of what we learnt:

Make it easy for customer to give feedback

When you are so deeply involved in building something, everything about it seems obvious. Sometimes, it is very hard to see how something that may be so obvious to you is so hard for another person to understand. And while that goes for all features of the product, one of the things that escapes attention most of the time is how easy is it for your user to give you feedback.

Remember that users have little time and patience and unless you get them to talk while you have their attention, you are never going to understand what they had in mind. Simple tips for website owners:

a) Sign up for Get Satisfaction and add their feedback button on each page. However, this option requires the user to sign up for a get satisfaction account before they give you feedback.

b) Have an open text field that says something like “Having trouble, tell us about it!” with a submit button. Simple and very effective if you can get it above the fold.

c) If most of your flow is fine and you only want feedback on a small part of it, you may want to add a trigger at the end of that part to popup a simple question “How can we improve this for you?”.

You will be surprised that while most people will not volunteer to give you feedback, they would do it gladly if / when asked for it.

But do not take customer feedback at face value / Beware of extremely vocal users

The world would be a much better place if only the customers knew what they wanted! Alas, everyone seems to think they know what they want, when they really don’t. And there are plenty of people who will give you advice on how-to-do-it-the-right-way when they themselves haven’t done it ever.

While you should elicit all the feedback you can get, you need to be very careful of which ones to pay attention to. If a person walking into a Chinese Restaurant asks for Indian Cuisine, that does not mean the restaurant should start serving Indian Cuisine.

That said, it is hard for me to give very specific advice on this one except that you should:

a) Trust your gut feel.

b) Discard the feedback that is not relevant to the business you are in or that suggests you to do line extensions.

c) And finally, normalize the feedback you get from vocal users. In most cases, these are people who are very opinionated and like to express their opinions, but that does not mean that their opinion will be endorsed by the masses.

Proactive Measures / Conversations With Customers

Think about how many times you have given feedback to another company for their bad service? Think about how many times you have given feedback to someone for good service?

Most customers are passive and you wouldn’t hear from them unless your service resulted in a disastrous result for them. The best way to get feedback from the customer is during the time they are using your service, because then they can give you very specific and actionable feedback. Plus you can counter-question them to gain a better understanding of their perspective.

a) Proactively reach out to customers who you think were interested in your product but did not purchase. At lifeblob, we have an automated script that generates a list of users who went through more than a couple of steps in personalizing some product, but did not purchase. We have another script that generates a list of users who have personalized and added stuff to their shopping cart but not made a purchase. Every hour, we go through the list and send a “May I help you” mail to them so that we can have a conversation with them and help them complete the transaction.

b) As an extension to the previous step, we also added live chat on the site to assist users while they are using the service. Olark is a really nice real-time chat service that you can easily embed in your site. In addition to users initiating the chat session, you can also initiate it if you like.

We found conversations with customers to be always much more rewarding than a few lines of dormant feedback.

Get Outsider Perspective From Experts

How many times have you looked at another service and pointed out more than a few things they are doing wrong? How many times have you been able to do it for your own service?

When you are building a service, you are taking the most critical decisions and putting your faith behind them. Very often, this causes some very simple but important things to go off your radar. While feedback from your users still needs you to filter out the noise to get to the core, seeking pointed advice from someone who is an expert in your area of business can give you a lot more value, much quicker.

The key here is to find someone who is an expert in the relevant area and whose advice you will trust. Asking your friends or just anyone may not yield the desired result.

Data Driven Approach

Finally, there is a whole dimension of data driven approach which involves A/B testing, Analytics Data, Log Analysis, Surveys / Polls, Dummy Page Testing etc. I will perhaps cover these in a separate post later.

Hope you found this post valuable. If you would like me to write about a specific topic related to entrepreneurship, please leave your suggestions in the comments.

I am a cyclist and an entrepreneur. It was 6 months back, on this very day that I started cycling and its been slightly over 3 years that I ventured into the world of entrepreneurship.

And every time I mount on the saddle and gently push the paddles, somehow I can’t ignore the unmistakable similarity between cycling and entrepreneurship. This thought has occurred to me so many times that I finally decided to sit down and write about it.

So what is the similarity, you may ask? And I’ll say there is not one, but several of them. Lets start by listing them down here:

1 ) Its a state of mind

You can’t teach people to become entrepreneurs. Similarly, you can’t ask people to start cycling. Yes, you may get influenced by others and you may get inspired by hearing stories of others, but both of these activities require you to overcome a lot of inertia before you dive in.

One fine day, you hear an inner voice calling and you leave everything else and get started. And yes, cyclists and entrepreneurs are eternal optimists and you need all the positive energy you can amass just to get started.

2 ) The going is tough, especially when you start

The first few days are really hard. When you move out of the comfort of your AC car and mount on a cycle for the first time, the reality and magnitude of your decision dawns upon you. Its seems like you are a rebel and everyone around has their eyes on you. For the first few kilometers of your ride, you enjoy the breeze and the freedom, but soon you start getting tired and you are wondering if you made the right decision.

With entrepreneurship, its more so because the day you leave your fat pay-check, you know you have to figure out a way to survive.

3 ) Follow the uncharted territory, sometimes the forbidden path

One thing about cycling that you do not get to know until you start, is the joy of discovering new trails and taking roads that others do not ( or can not by virtue of their huge vehicles ) take. This is very akin to a startup where you can quickly go and experiment in areas where big companies would take months to venture. This joy, that you get out of exploring the uncharted territory is the hallmark of entrepreneurship and cycling.

And sometimes, you do get adventurous and try out something crazy that you would dare not think of in a big organization. That ability to take the forbidden path is what forms the basis of innovation.

4 ) The resources are scarce

You can’t carry a ton of stuff on a cycle. Every time I go on a long trip, I have to make a hard call on what is absolutely essential to carry and what is not. And once you get on the road, you are the guy who owns it, the guy who runs it and the guy who fixes the puncture. Similarly, in a startup, you are everything from the owner, the marketing guy and the janitor.

5 ) There climb is steep, with several hurdles on the way

One thing you notice the moment you get on a cycle is that the roads that earlier seemed flat now seem to have a gradient. Infact, you wonder if there is any road in this city that has been built straight. Every time there is a uphill climb, your progress slows down and then, as if magically, you get a stretch that goes downhill and you rejoice.

Similarly, as an entrepreneur, most of the things that you try to do seem very hard. The harder you try, the harder they seem to get over. But sometimes, luck is in your favor and you may land a deal that you weren’t even thinking about.

6 ) Its not about how fast you can go, but how long you can last

This beats my common sense, but until I started riding a cycle, I did not ever think that the primary purpose of gears could be to help you save energy, rather than go fast. When you are out for a long ride, your goal is not to get there fast, but to finish the ride. And if you push too hard in the beginning, you lose your energy and risk cramping up before your ride is finished. So your goal is to save as much energy as you can and last as long as possible.

As a startup, the counterpart of energy is the cash you have in the bank. You need to be very miserly in spending the cash because that is your biggest asset. If you burn your cash too fast, your startup may not live long enough to complete the journey you set it for.

7 ) Discipline is paramount to success

One thing that I hear from good cyclists is the importance of cadence in cycling. For the uninitiated, cadence is the number of cycles your feet make every minute as you cycle and once you have a discipline built around it, your body gets accustomed to riding a long way at that cadence without getting tired. Ideally, you should maintain the same cadence throughout the route, but its often very tempting to let the cycle coast on downhills thereby losing the discipline of the cadence.

Similarly in a startup, you are the boss and you do not have a boss who is sitting on your head and setting goals for you. It is extremely important to have a disciplined way of approaching those goals otherwise procrastination sets in and before you realize, you are way behind where you wanted to be.

8 ) You have to be prepared for the worst

When you get on a cycle for a long ride, you need to prepare for the worst. What if you run out of water? What if there is a puncture? What if you meet with an accident? There are several things that could go wrong and you need adequate preparation to address all of these. However, even with all the preparation, things do go wrong all the time, leaving you stranded on the side of the road with no help in sight. You just have to be prepared to deal with situations like this and drag yourself to a place where you can find some help.

In a startup too, things seldom go as planned. As you get into the business, you learn more about the market and your B-Plan literally changes every 6 months ( if not every quarter ). You just need to keep an open mind, take things as they come, take your best decision with the available information at that point in time and move on.

9 ) You ride with your team

When you think of a long trip, the first thought that comes to mind is the fellows you will be riding with. You do make short rides in the city alone, but it is hard to contemplate a full day ride without other people around you. Going out together as a team not only inspires you to do better, it also provides the necessary support system when something goes wrong.

Similarly in a startup, it is very important to have a good team that is with you in good and bad times. The true test of a team is when the chips are down, everything seems to be going against the startup and the team sticks together and sees it through.

10 ) When you finish your ride, its very satisfying

It doesn’t matter how hard it is, but when you finish a long ride, you have accomplished something and you are a very satisfied person. All the hard work, all the effort that went into it was properly channeled towards achieving a goal and finally you achieved it. You had to go through numerous hurdles, at several points you were tempted to turn back, but your will power made you go on and on to achieve it.

Its a tremendous feeling and its the same feeling you get when you have seen your startup through the hard times and turned it into a revenue generating business. The story doesn’t end there, there are new goals to meet, new mountains to cross, but the feeling of having met a milestone that previously looked momentous is certainly exhilarating and extremely satisfying.

That was my experience, what about yours?

I hope that this post inspires more entrepreneurs to start cycling and more cyclists to become entrepreneurs . If you have had similar experiences about cycling or entrepreneurship or both, please do share them in the comments for the benefit of everyone.