Revolution Blog

Chatting away on iGoogle & Browsing JobeeHive.com

2009-03-10T13:26:00.000+05:30

Today I am using the chatting facility on iGoogle. Check the below post:

Official Google Blog: Chatting away on iGoogle...

And also browsing new employer reviews on JobeeHive.com.

2 great tools to use on the internet.

The Fountainhead - my all time favorite book

2009-03-06T19:16:00.002+05:30

The Fountainhead is my all time favorite book. I have read and studied it atleast 3 times. And everytime I read the book, I get more inspired by the protagonist, Howard Roark.

The novel was written in 1943 by Ayn Rand. It shows that she was light years ahead of her generation. According to wikipedia, it was Rand's first major literary success and its royalties and movie rights brought her fame and financial security. The book's title is a reference to Rand's statement that "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress".

If you haven't read it yet, do read it now. Check more about it here.

Also, I just finished reading Shantaram, which I totally loved - a great book.

Boss versus Me

2009-03-04T16:52:00.002+05:30

JobeeHive.com's marketing analyst Sneh came up with this poem almost instantly the other day... it's a nice read.. read along...

When I Take a long time to finish,

I am slow,

When my Boss takes a long time,

he is thorough.

When I don't do it,

I am lazy,

When my Boss does not do it,

he is busy,

When I do something without being told,

I am trying to be smart,

When my Boss does the same,

he takes the initiative,

When I please my Boss,

I am apple polishing,

When my Boss pleases his Boss,

he is cooperating,

When I make a mistake,

you're an idiot.

When my Boss makes a mistake,

he's only human.

When I am out of the office,

I am wandering around.

When my Boss is out of the office,

he's on business.

When I am on a day off sick,

I am always sick.

When my Boss is a day off sick,

he must be very ill..

When I apply for leave,

I must be going for an interview

When my Boss applies for leave,

it's because he's overworked

When I do good,

my Boss never remembers,

When I do wrong,

he never forgets.

This is Kahani (story).. office office ki.....Is the same kahani going on in your office too??? Then Poll Khol, without getting into any jhol :)

Now you have an unique opportunity to review your employer anonymously, Just log on to www.jobeehive.com and get started.

You can follow Sneh here on twitter.

Startups versus Big Companies - an interesting story

2009-03-04T16:42:00.002+05:30

I came across this article "David and Gooliath: How a Philly Startup took on Google and lived to tell about it." Talks about how understanding the market better has helped one startup fight a

bigger and better equipped well-funded company. Read it here.

What to do if your startup is about fail?

2009-03-03T16:33:00.002+05:30

You can contact the author at http://twitter.com/jasoncalacanis

Read the article:

A lot of CEOs with less than 12 months of capital left have been

asking me for advice about what to do, given the massive economic
turmoil we're facing. I thought I would take the time put these
various conversations into one email to help those who are "up against
it," as we say in Brooklyn.

Now, sprinting to the startup precipice is one of the most horrible
and exhilarating experiences you can have as an entrepreneur.

The exhaustion sinks in as you slam on the brakes. You dig in your
heels and watch the dirt and pebbles fly off the cliff as your left
foot dangles down in the ravine, with your right foot desperately
trying to save you. Your momentum could--if the wind kicks in--send
you straight down to your death. Heck, even the two inches of earth
under your right foot could give way and send you to your death. Or,
you could slip and fall on a magic carpet that will take you to the
Promised Land.

OK, that last part is made up. You're probably screwed and you know it.

This email is intended for startup companies with less than 12 months
of cash in the bank, who know in their hearts that their VCs have lost
faith, and that Google, Yahoo or Microsoft aren't going to pick them
up on a magic M&A carpet ride.

This is the email I'd like you to forward to your friends who are
running startups that could go under in 2009.

Some background
-------------------------
I've been to the precipice and faced the fall a couple of times. I've
learned a couple of things from the experience. I can tell you that
the first time it happens, you're terrified, because everything you've
done--all the effort and dreams--will probably be lost (like tears in
the rain).

The second time it happens, you're deeply concerned, but know it ain't
over until you're splattered on the boulders below.

The third time it happens, you smile and say "let's get it on!"

You see, there are two types of entrepreneurs in this world: real ones
and the folks who play entrepreneurs for some portion of their lives.
>From a distance, most folks can't tell who's who. In up times, when
the market is flush with cheap money and unexplained exits (Bebo,
anyone?), everyone looks brilliant.

It's only when the tide goes out that you know who's naked. (Who said
that? I hear it on CNBC every other week now).

The differences between the two types of entrepreneurs become clear
when the fan and the manure meet. The faux entrepreneurs run for cover
rather than dealing with the storm. They go back to their plush,
somewhat mindless jobs as VPs at mega-companies, while the real
entrepreneurs suit up and clean up the mess.

We're going to find out who the real entrepreneurs are in 2009 because
they are going to spend another 12 months, on top of the last six,
cleaning up the mess. It will be two years of total pain, so before we
go any further you gotta make the decision if you're in or you're out.

In or out?
-------------------------
Here is a really easy way to figure out if you can deal with the mess
in front of you. How many of the following can you deal with:

1. Laying off half your staff.
2. Laying off half your staff again three months later.
3. Spending 20 hours a week on the phone being yelled at and
threatened while trying to renegotiate a dozen contracts--like your
T1, phone system, rent, equipment leases, etc.
4. Having an investor scream at you and tell you that they will ruin
you, your career and that "you'll never raise money again, you mother
f-er."
5. Laying off half your staff for a third time.
6. Getting served a half-dozen lawsuits, courtesy of the folks who you
tried to renegotiate with in point number three who wouldn't deal.
7. Having one of the people you're renegotiating with come to your
office every week and ask for their check in person.
8. Having the same media outlet that once claimed you were the next
Barry Diller write that you're a fraud.
9. Not getting a good night's sleep for six months.
10. Having dozens of paying clients default on their bills.
11. Having staffers who you really need to double down and focus walk
out the door after you helped make their careers.
12. Have the people who begged you for a meeting at the peak not even
return your emails or phone calls.

If you can't deal with these 12 situations, then you're out. It's time
to refresh your resume, tell your board you resign, sublet your place
and go to Thailand. Go sit on the beach and lick your wounds for $40 a
day (all-in) like the fauxtrepreneur you are. You suck. I hate you.
You're smart enough to cut your loses in a way I could never
understand.

If you think you can handle most of the horror above, well, then you're in.

How do I know this?

Those 12 things--and more--happened to me for over a year when Silicon
Alley Reporter, my first business, got whipsawed by the dotcom bust.
We went from $11.6m in revenue one year to $600k the next. From 70
full-time people to 12. From a 20,000 square foot office to subletting
ten desks at a PR firm.

Personally, I went from being on top of the world, with appearances on
Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes, CNN, and Fox News, to being savaged in the
press as a fraud who got lucky and who no one would ever hear from
again.

My office used to get 100-200 phone calls a day and I had two
assistants. Six months later, I answered my own phone--on the rare
occasions it would ring. When it did, it was either my mom calling to
check in on me or a vendor calling to yell at me.

It was the worst year of my life, but it made me who I am today. I've
never talked about the tailspin that my business went into, and how I
barely managed to land the plane, but I get the sense that there are a
lot of twenty-somethings about to experience the same thing, and
perhaps my lessons could help.

I'm not going to tell the story. (That would take 80,000 words, a hard
cover and the right publisher), but I'm gonna share some of the
lessons.

Let's get to work.

The Good News
-------------------------
If you're a real entrepreneur, you're still reading. If you're a faux
entrepreneur, you're writing your resignation letter, considering
which beach to surf and how long to grow your beard. God bless you
fauxtrepreneurs, because you're gonna have a much nicer 2009 than the
real entrepreneurs who are "up against it."

Of course, a year from now, the real entrepreneurs will be
battle-scarred beasts who are capable of taking big bold risks, and
you'll still be crying about what could have been with your last
business while attending back-to-back meetings about nothing at BigCo.
Not that I'm judgmental of fauxtrepreneurs who create noise, distract
investors from the real workhorses, suck at their jobs and take no
real risk in their lives.

No, on the contrary, I love you fauxtrepreneurs, because you create
the foundation upon which real entrepreneurs stand. At the start of my
career, it wasn't east to stand out, but by the time I'd done two or
three businesses and become a fixture in the technology industry, I
had figured it out: Longevity is a big part of credibility. I met
Esther Dyson, Fred Wilson, John Brockman, Jerry Colonna, Mark Cuban,
Ted Leonsis, Seth Godin and countless other luminaries between 1994
and 1997.

Well, it's a dozen years later and they still take my calls and
respond to my emails.

Longevity is credibility.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the good news: People's reputations are made
in the bad times more than the good times.

Even if you're 100% sure your company is going to crash in the next
six months, you'll learn more from staying on board than you will from
running. You'll also earn the respect of your peers and you'll learn
exactly how people break down and lose their cool. You'll see how
certain VCs screw entrepreneurs, you'll see entrepreneurs screw VCS
and you'll watch the lawyers and landlords collect their vig the
entire time.

Most of all, you'll realize who you are and who your real friends are.

So what's the sitch?
-------------------------
You need to figure out your runway immediately. This is really easy to
calculate: you look at how much cash you burn every month and divide
that into how much cash you have in the bank. Your accountant can do
this for you or you can simply look at your P&L and bank statement.

Once you know how many months you've got left, you've got to do the
hard work of trying to extend it by at least 1/4. This means cutting
staff, negotiating with your landlord and cutting any and all
recurring bills. You then need to look at your revenue streams and
figure out if you can double them. In most cases, if you do these two
simple things, you will have increased your runway by 50-100%. If you
double your runway, your chances of figuring out what your business
actually is will go up exponentially.

You also need to do a monthly P&L review with your management team.
Look at every single recurring cost you have and figure out how to cut
it. In an up market, this level of obsessiveness is often wasteful,
because you're in a race to take market-share. In the case of MySpace
vs. Friendster vs. Facebook all having unlimited funds for a period of
time, this makes total sense. Why worry about $100,000 in server costs
if you're racing to see who gets bought for a billion dollars first?
However, this is not that time. You have to change your style. There
are times to hit the gas and there are times to conserve your gas.

Look at it this way: Getting the most market-share and running out of
cash is the equivalent of getting to the moon first without the
ability to get back to Earth. Congratulations, you won the race... and
now you're dead!

My primary business right now, Mahalo.com, is lucky to have raise a
large amount of capital and is going to fairly easily make it to
profitability based on our growth curve, runway, modest spend and
significant traffic (we're at 5.6m unique visitors over the last 30
days).

We couldn't be in a stronger position.

However, even we recently did a deep review at Mahalo and were able to
cut 30% of our costs in under 60 days. The company is still growing
just as fast, and in fact we're actually more efficient. There is
something strange about that: 25-person companies seem to get more
done than 40-person companies in my experience (other CEOs have told
me the same thing).

Perhaps it's because after you trim down you have the most efficient
folks left, or maybe we're all more focused because we don't have to
communicate what's going on to as many people? Does anyone know if
there is any research on optimal team size for startups? I'd be
interested to hear what the studies say. Anyway, we made the hard
decisions and that extended our runway by a year. That means Mahalo
will be here in 2013 if we make every single wrong decision and we're
asleep at the wheel. Of course, we're focused like lasers on getting
to profitability and developing a really helpful service. If we can't
figure this business out by 2013 or 2014 then, well, either we really
suck or there is no solution to combining search and knowledge
exchange (of course we know search and knowledge exchanges can and
have worked--so we're bullish).

Also, when your company goes through this kind of economic boot camp,
I think you get stronger. You understand which parts of your business
are working the best and which ones are, well, not working at all. We
had one area of our business that was two percent of our spending
making 30% of our revenue. You figure these things out when you start
cutting. It's a sick and sad process to be sure, but Darwin is your
friend at a startup.

Put your VCs to the test
-------------------------
If you're running out of money, you've got three choices: cut costs,
make money or raise capital. We're going to get into cutting costs and
making money below in a minute, but I'm a big fan of testing your
investors. When the market is crushed, most VCs get realistic, greedy
or paralyzed. You've got to figure out where you stand with your
current investors as quickly as possible, and the quickest way to do
that is to ask them for more money.

Let's say you're burning $200k a month and you have a million dollars
in the bank. Go to your VCs and say something like the following:

"John, we're going to run out of cash in five months. I've developed a
cost-cutting and revenue-generating plan that I believe will extend
our runway to 10 months. I'd like to present it to you and your
partners tomorrow for a half-hour with the goal of doing an 'A+ round'
of one million dollars. I truly believe in this business and I'm
willing to do a flat-round, bust my ass for the next two years and
come out of this recession on top."

Now your VC is probably going to start asking questions--as they
should. They may try and push off the discussion of the "A+ round."
Your job is to stand firm and say something to the effect of:

"Well, we're both vested in this business and I'd like to take the
time to present to you guys this week and get a response from you
either way within five days. I know it's a compressed time frame, but
we're living in extraordinary times, and if you guys don't believe in
the business the way I do, I can accept that and make other
arrangements."

At that point, you say nothing. Silence is the greatest negotiating
tactic ever created--use it. Your VC right now will be thinking the
following:

a) "This guy/gal's a real killer and I wish all my CEOs were this
focused. At the very least, I should hear them out."
b) "This guy/gal has another opportunity, so I'm gonna have to deal
with this train wreck myself--that will suck."
c) "This business is a dog and I shouldn't have invested in it. Since
they're asking for the truth, I might as well give it to them."
d) "I'm an idiot and I can't make decisions. Let me push this out a
couple of weeks and make this person's life hell while I
procrastinate."

That last part is not what the person would actually say, but that's
basically the translation of "let me think about it."

Now, in cases a, b, and c you're in good shape. You're gonna either
get your meeting and money or you're gonna get told you're not getting
any more funding. Situation D is what you don't want. If you're
running out of provisions in the middle of the Atlantic, your best bet
is to go either East or West--not in a circle.

VCs and investors will sometimes send entrepreneurs in circles, either
inadvertently or as leverage. Sometimes VCs are juggling a lot of
balls and can't focus. Sometimes they're inexperienced and/or they
have issues that don't concern your business, like their limited
partners, their partners or their divorce settlements. Sometimes
they're cutthroat and know that, when you're down to your last two or
three payrolls, they can extract a 2-3x liquidation preference out of
you.

It's your job to force the issue now--don't wait.

Heck, even if you have a year's worth of runway, you should probably
do this kind of thing so your VCs know you're the real deal and so you
know where you stand with them.

Put your staff to the test
-------------------------
If you're down to six months of cash, you're gonna have to cut the
bottom 1/3rd of your staff, if not half. This sucks, but there is no
choice. You're gonna also have to cut salaries. So, here are some
suggestions on how to do this:

1. Get rid of the non-core staff. Look in places like PR, marketing,
and admin to cut. See if you can put some of these folks on part-time.

2. Look at the salaries of your current staff vs. market and look for
ways to cut the high-priced ones who you can get cheaper at the
current market. I know this sounds cutthroat, but remember, this is
advice for folks going out of business in six months. Another way to
run this test is to ask yourself "Would I hire this person for this
amount today?"

3. Go to each member of the team who is over-paid by today's market
rate and tell them that you're probably going to be cutting their
salary and that you're increasing their options. Ask them how they
feel about it. Some people can take a pay cut, others can't--you don't
know until you ask.

I'm really against cutting people's pay above cutting position because
you want the people remaining in your organization to be happy. Of
course, sometimes that's just not realistic. Many CEOs overpay in a
hot market because they feel they have to, and those folks are the
ones who really need to take this hard action now.

Put your landlord to the test
-------------------------
Call your landlord and ask them to get a cup of coffee. Do this in
person. Let them know that it's 50-50 you're going out of business and
that you need their help in the form of four months free rent,
starting today, the ability to sublet some space (if you don't have
that right already) and to keep the rent at the same rate you already
have. Tell them you feel horrible about this, and you wouldn't ask
them to do this if it wasn't urgent, but you didn't want to drop the
bomb on them five months from now when there were no more options.

Remember, silence is your friend. Tell your story and see what they
say. I did this at one point and not only got free rent, I got 50% of
our letter of credit freed up. It was a win-win. Trust me, your
landlord is probably facing a LOT of fallout right now... better to
get half than nothing.

Put your vendors to the test
-------------------------
Since you've probably got webhosting, CDNs, equipment leases, and
other recurring charges on your credit cards, cancel those cards
immediately. Call up each vendor and tell them you need six months
free while you figure out your status, and if they can't do it, ask
for suggestions. Then call each of their competitors and let them know
that you are willing to switch over for the first six months free. If
you get one of four vendors to do this you just saved 25%--I bet you
can get two or three.

Vendors would rather eat some profits for six months than lose your
business. If they can't support you in your time of need, then you
should find someone who will. There is a LOT of competition out there
and you can negotiate harder than you probably think you can. Tell
vendors you're willing to switch if they give you six months free and
see what they say. We've had folks offer us a *year* of free service
to switch (of course, that's an exception, not the rule).

Put yourself to the test
-------------------------
If you're going to ask so much of your staff, investors and vendors,
you obviously have to take a hit yourself. Go to your VCs and ask them
to participate in the next round--the A+ round. Tell them you know
it's not a lot but you want to put in $5 or $10k in the round as a
show of support. This will result in them saying it's not necessary.
After that, tell them you'll sell your car and take a bike to work and
put $20k into the business if you can get that for your car. Make sure
your staff doesn't take a bigger cut than you do in salary if you're
doing salary cuts.

Even if it's just ceremonial, it means a lot to make cuts. I've
stopped traveling as much to conferences even though they cost me
little to nothing (normally people pay me to speak or at least pay for
my travel). Of course, don't cut traveling if you're going to
conferences where you might find clients or investors (which is why I
travel half the time!)

Put your product to the test
-------------------------
As Mark Cuban told me over and over again, "Sales solves everything."
If you can't sell your product, it's not a product--it's a hobby. Take
your consumer service and sell it as a software package to someone. Go
on the sales calls yourself. During the final year of Silicon Alley
Reporter I made cold calls and set up lunches to sell folks on our new
product, Venture Reporter (the rebranded Silicon Alley Reporter). It
works. When people see the CEO making sales calls, they respect the
company and take it seriously. When the VCs and staffers see you doing
this, they get inspired.

Put a whiteboard up and count any stat you can: sales calls made,
meetings scheduled, contracts sent and sales closed. Give your team
something to think about other than just the bottom line, because you
might have to celebrate the little victories before getting the check
in the door. Celebrate getting the meeting. Celebrate sending a pitch
out.

What to do if it's over
-------------------------
If you're going to hit the wall, you should do so with three or four
months of capital left in the bank. You should cut down to your core
staff and tell them "we have 120 days of cash left and we're going to
try to land the plane safely. If you want to leave at any point during
the 120 days you'll get the reference of a lifetime from me. If you
help us land the plane safely I think we'll all be better off because
of it."

Then make a plan to do one of the following:

a) sell the business
b) close the business
c) sell the assets of the business

There's a little bit of overlap up there, since sometimes you close
the business and sell the assets, or you sell the assets and leave a
shell behind. The point is, don't wait until you have a month left. Do
it when you have 120 days left. If you signal to everyone it's over,
you'll have done the honorable thing for your employees, by giving
them the maximum time to have a safe landing, and for your investors,
by allowing them to roll the business or its assets into another
company.

The worst thing to do is to delay this process. I've gotten down to
this point exactly, but when I was at break-even at my first business,
we looked for a buyer, because I didn't think we had much chance of
making it on our own in the 2001-2002 market. I could have been wrong
about that in retrospect, but either way, I'm glad I got out because
it set me up for Weblogs, Inc.

And that is the final lesson: when one door closes, three more open
up. When you shut down your business properly, you will have a clean
slate and renewed energy to take on your next project. You might even
get the investors to give you the company with the 90 days worth of
capital left to start your next project with a recapitalized
structure.

Remember that there is no shame in failure but there are honorable and
dishonorable failures. If you're going to lose the game, remember that
it's just that: a game. There will be another and another and another
yet to play. Don't lose your cool and don't get depressed. Just get
yourself back up, dust yourself off and get back in the game. The
precursor to success is almost always failure.

You can contact the author at http://twitter.com/jasoncalacanis

Rate your employer: JobeeHive.com Employees' Choice Awards 2008

2009-01-06T18:53:00.002+05:30

Rate your employer for JobeeHive.com Employees' Choice Awards 2008

A new year, a new hope and now JobeeHive.com is introducing a new trend!

Employees' Choice Awards

JobeeHive.com is beginning this year with JobeeHive Employer Awards 2008 chosen by employees (rated and reviewed during 2008 on JobeeHive.com). This is for the first time in India that employees are coming together to rate the best and worst employers of 2008.

Retrospect and rate/ appraise your company for 2008. It only takes 2 minutes but will have a great impact to change our workplaces. We will make sure that employers hear your voices. Get Started Here: http://www.jobeehive.com/survey/get_started

Ratings & reviews submitted till 11th January 2009 will be considered. Contribute your review now and forward this mail to your colleagues/ friends to get more reviews for your employer.

JobeeHive.com - A Popular Research Platform

2008 was a great year at JobeeHive. Traffic has increased by 1900% since September 2008 and today it has reviews for nearly 2000 companies. And according to Alexa Ranking, it is a top player in its niche employer review segment in India.

Where do you wanna go next? Visit JobeeHive.com

Entrepreneur Blues

2008-07-22T19:40:00.002+05:30

Entrepreneurship is being talked about a lot now-a-days. Many books, courses, coaching and online help are available for the young enthusiastic minds. But still bunch of young Indian population is weak when it comes to taking risk in life, which happens to be the foundation of opening a venture.

People say a picture is worth thousand words. So a group of talented techies in Bangalore have decided to make a documentary film on the life of an entrepreneur. This movie will not only help the young entrepreneurs answer most of their doubts about startups but would also make it clear what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Read more here.

Check trailer of the full documentary that is set to release on 15th August. JobeeHive founders Vishwas Mudagal and Sandeep Gudibanda were interviewed.

What's your virtual footprint?

2008-06-24T16:38:00.002+05:30

Social Networking on the internet is not just a pastime of the young, there are good reasons why it is more than just that says Hriday Ram Shenoy in Swagat, the in-flight magazine of Air India. While analyzing the influence of social networking, he quotes Vishwas Mudagal and Sandeep Gudibanda, the founders of JobeeHive - "Indian corporate success story is set to continue. Professionals would look for platforms to connect to people, manage their professional network and build what we call 'social capital.' JobeeHive helps them."

Check the article snapshots at JobeeHive official blog here.

iPhone gets stronger

2008-03-07T12:27:00.002+05:30

The iPhone is getting stronger, becoming an industry in itself. It's no longer just a really fun phone/Internet device. It now supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, meaning it can hold its own against any other business device out there.

Also, Apple gave more details on its previously announced software development kit that will allow third parties to get their software onto the iPhone. Read more on CruchGear.

JobeeHive opens ALPHA for sneak peek

2008-02-06T17:39:00.000+05:30

JobeeHive, a Web 2.0 platform that brings career networking together with career information on companies and industries, launched a private ALPHA version in September 2007. Since, JobeeHive has shown great growth, bringing career information across tens of companies and getting over 750 viewpoints of employees from these companies.

They have now made a few parts of JobeeHive public. Check an official announcement on JobeeHive Blog. You can voice your opinion on your company of choice through Employer Buzz. Take a sneak peek at Employer Buzz listing. Leave your email id to get your JobeeHive login.

JobeeHive Employer Buzz is a call for transperancy in the corporate world, where career decisions are all the more important. Professionals in USA spend considerable efforts to understand their employers before they join them. The same trend is getting stronger in India now. JobeeHive's mission is to help professionals take better career decisions. Bringing their users/ readers insider information on companies is a first step towards this endeavor.

JobeeHive also has announced prizes for people who could write detailed accounts of their professional stint with any employer. iPods and gift vouchers as of now. Buzz your opinion here - Employer Buzz.

Recruitment moving towards Social Networking

2008-02-05T12:27:00.000+05:30

A BusinessWeek artcile talks about the impact of social and professional networks on recruitments around the world. Check

Also, I found interesting statistics on the internet. It says in a survey done by Vault.com, in USA: 44 percent of employers use social networking web sites like MySpace and Facebook to examine the profiles of job candidates, and 39 percent have looked up the profile of a current employee.

Recruitment is surely going 2.0!

Motorola Extinction?

2008-02-01T11:24:00.000+05:30

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/motorola-may-spin-off-mobile-devices-unit-iphones-first-casualty/

Bangalore Survival Kit

2008-01-16T11:21:00.000+05:30

This is the only way to survive in Bangalore at present!

Steve Jobs keynote speech

2008-01-15T23:11:00.000+05:30

It's getting blogged live. Catch it on: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/live-from-macworld-2008-steve-jobs-keynote/ Update: I read it live on Engadget and TechCrunch (TechCrunch was not up to the mark, Engadget did great reporting)

Few pictures here:

- 4M iPhones sold in till date. Steve says: "I've got some great news. Today happens to be exactly the 200th day since the iPhone went on sale. It's been shipping exactly 200 days. I'm extraordinarily pleased to report that we've sold 4m to date." Daaamn, Steve! Applause. "That's 20k iPhones per day, on avg. We're really pleased with this.""What's this mean in terms of the overall market?" Chart time! It's first Q shipping it garnered 19% market share, Palm 9.8%, RIM 39%, other 20%, Nokia 7%...Palm, Moto, Nokia together -- "We equaled all them in the first 90 days..."

Today we're introducing -- The MacBook Air.""What is the MacBook Air? In a sentence, it's the world's thinnest notebook."

Pictures courtesy: Engadget

Top 100 websites in India

2008-01-03T17:35:00.000+05:30

Yahoo.com is bigger than Google.com in both India and US, in terms of traffic, as reported by Alexa. Although Google.com and Google.co.in are ranked 2 and 3, they may be bigger when combined.

Facebook is slowly catching up in India; it's currently at No.11. The fact that it's a far advanced social network than Orkut makes it a possible contender for No.1 Social Network in India in the next decade. Orkut had an early market entry advantage, and when compared to features it has a lot of work to do to catch up with Facebook. But I hope that OpenSocial will do the trick for Orkut.

Another interesting trend is that out of Top 20 sites in India, only 4 are Indian sites (in the sense, started and headquartered in India). Rest are foreign sites like google.com or yahoo.com.

Also, 5 out of Top 10 sites in India belong to Google - Google.com, Google.co.in, Orkut.com, YouTube.com and Blogger.com

Here is the Top 20 list:
1. Yahoo!
Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.

2. Google India
Indian version of this popular search engine. Search the whole web or only webpages from India. Interfaces offered in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil.

3. Google
Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company's focus is developing search technology.

4. Orkut
Social networking and discussion site operated by Google.

5. Rediff.com India Ltd.
Online portal with free e-mail and many other services.

6. YouTube
YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!

7. Blogger.com
Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.

8. Windows Live
Search engine from Microsoft.

9. Rapidshare.com

10. Wikipedia
An online collaborative encyclopedia.

11. Facebook
A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.

12. Microsoft Network (MSN)
Dialup access and content provider.

13. MoneyControl.com
MoneyControl.com is India s leading financial information source. It s the official site for CNBC TV18, and provides news, views, and analysis on equity / stock markets, commodities, personal finance, mutual funds, insurance and loans.

14. Naukri.com
India's No. 1 job site.

15. Cricinfo
International cricket news, live scores, photos, columns and player profiles. Provides archive scorecards, statistics database, ratings and email newsletter. Part of ESPN International. UK.

16. Microsoft Corporation
Main site for product information, support, and news.

17. Indiatimes
Portal site; includes news stories under subject headings, and links to other information sources.
18. Megaupload
Megaupload is a "leading website of the world" for transferring files easily, with complete security and free of charge.

19. Xboard.us

20. Debonairblog.com

Here is the dynamic Top 100 list.

Tech predictions for 2008

2008-01-02T18:29:00.000+05:30

Happy new year folks! Have a great tech year ahead....

This is my first post in 2008, I am feeling lazy because of hectic partying! ;)
So, for now..I will just give you an interesting article to read.

Ten disruptive technologies for 2008. Check it out...! What's your take on 2008 tech scenario??

Happy blogging 2008!
Cheers!
Vanquisher

Web 2.0 online spends in India

2007-12-18T17:23:00.000+05:30

According to Dr. T R Madan Mohan, Director-Consulting, Information Communication & Technology Practice-Frost & Sullivan, India, out of the $ 27.4 million annual online ad spend in India, only USD four million to $ 4.5 million came from outside major media houses. Even experts don't understand why online ad spend in India should be so low. Check.

Bangalore: the mobile startup hub

2007-12-18T10:22:00.000+05:30

India's tech entrepreneurial hub Bangalore is also the country's mobile phone based startup hub. Almost every week a new startup rises in stealth mode. The exposure, talent access and resources are a plenty in Bangalore. For instance, Mobile Monday Bangalore chapter is a great forum for mobile startups and enthusiasts. The forum arranges demos every month that gives a great platform to showcase your ideas and get valuable feedback from experts. Barcamp Bangalore is another such forum but with a larger agenda encompassing all kinds of businesses.

Researcher Kamla Bhatt has some interesting stuff on Bangalore startup fever and mobile numbers in India. Check.

Jim Collins: Level 5 Leadership

2007-12-15T12:46:00.000+05:30

Jim Collins is by far the best know teacher of enduring great companies - how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. When I read about the Level 5 leadership model that he has evolved, I was impressed with the deep reality in it. Not many 'non-management' folks would have read about him or his works. Below I have presented a report by Jim Collins. It is worth a read and find out that we can indeed become Level 5 leaders, as he unfolds in his reports.

The Misguided Mix-Up of Celebrity and Leadership
Conference Board Annual Report, Annual Feature Essay by Jim Collins

Virtually everything our modern culture believes about the type of leadership required to transform our institutions is wrong. It is also dangerous. There is perhaps no more corrosive trend to the health of our organizations than the rise of the celebrity CEO, the rock-star leader whose deepest ambition is first and foremost self-centric.

In 1996, my research team and I began to wrestle with a simple question: Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how? If we could find organizations that had made the leap from good to great and isolate the factors that distinguished these examples from carefully selected comparison companies that failed to make the leap (or if they did, failed to sustain it), we would shed light on the key variables that separate great from good. We embarked on a five-year study to answer this one deceptively simple question, examining merely good performers that had somehow transformed themselves to achieve truly great results. (We defined “great results” as cumulative stock returns at least 3.0 times better than the general stock market over fifteen years, a performance superior to most widely admired companies. For perspective, General Electric from 1985 to 2000 beat the market only 2.8 to 1.)

We uncovered a number of key requirements and underlying variables for turning a good company into a great one. But perhaps the most intriguing—and certainly the most surprising—is the type of leadership that turns good into great.

Consider Darwin E. Smith. In 1971, this seemingly ordinary man became chief executive of Kimberly-Clark. He inherited a company that for one hundred years had been merely good, never great. A mediocre player in the middling paper industry, Kimberly-Clark returns to investors had fallen 36 percent behind the general stock market over the twenty years prior to Darwin Smith’s ascension to CEO. Over the next twenty years, Smith led a stunning turnabout, generating returns to investors that beat the general stock market by over four times, easily outperforming such companies as Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, and Coca-Cola.

Have you ever heard of Darwin Smith? Despite being one of the greatest CEOs of the twentieth century, he remains largely unknown. A shy and reserved man, Smith shunned any attempt to shine the spotlight on him, preferring instead to direct attention to the company and its people. He showed none of the swagger that characterizes many of today’s high-profile CEOs, and he never viewed himself as a great hero. Early in Smith’s tenure as CEO, a director pulled Smith aside to remind him that he lacked some of the qualifications for the position (he had been corporate counsel and had never run a major division). Smith, a man who never entirely erased his own self-doubts, later summed up his tenure by saying simply, “I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.”

Yet despite his shy and self-effacing nature, Smith was anything but weak. When it came time to make the big decisions required to make the company great, he made them. Early in his tenure, he unflinchingly decided to sell all the traditional paper mills, which accounted for the majority of Kimberly-Clark’s business—sell even the namesake mill in Kimberly, Wisconsin—and throw all the money into the consumer business, investing in brands like Huggies and Kleenex. It was a huge and painful step. Coming home from work during this particularly difficult period, a wearied Smith said to his wife, “It’s really tough. But if you have a cancer in your arm, then you’ve got to have the guts to cut off your arm.”

Wall Street derided him, the business media called the move stupid, and the analysts wrote merciless commentary. After all, how on earth could such a mediocre paper company take on the giants of the consumer business? But in the end, Smith’s stoic resolve paid off. Kimberly-Clark became the number one paper-based consumer products company in the world, eventually beating Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories and owning outright its previous main competitor, Scott Paper. I think we can safely say that Darwin Smith did indeed become qualified for the job.

Level 5 leadership: The antithesis of egocentric celebrity

If you want to grasp the essence of the type of leader who turns good into great, just keep in mind Darwin Smith. It turns out that every good-to-great company in our study had a leader from the Darwin Smith school of management at the helm during the pivotal years.

We eventually came to call these remarkable people “Level 5 leaders.” The term “Level 5” refers to a five-level hierarchy. Level 1 relates to individual capability, Level 2 to team skills, Level 3 to managerial competence, and Level 4 to leadership as traditionally conceived. Level 5 leaders possess the skills of levels 1 to 4 but also have an “extra dimension”: a paradoxical blend of personal humility (“I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job”) and professional will (“sell the mills”). They are somewhat self-effacing individuals who deflect adulation, yet who have an almost stoic resolve to do absolutely whatever it takes to make the company great, channeling their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution and its greatness, not for themselves.

David Maxwell, the good-to-great CEO at Fannie Mae in the 1980s and early 1990s, was another such leader. He took over a bureaucratic, quasi-governmental entity losing $1 million every single business day and turned it into one of the smartest, best-run financial institutions in the world, earning $4 million every business day. Fannie Mae cumulative stock returns beat the general stock market by nearly four times under Maxwell, and he set the stage for the next generation to continue the momentum, eventually outperforming the market by over seven times.

When his nearly $20 million retirement package became a point of controversy in Congress (Fannie Mae is subject to congressional oversight due to its government charter), Maxwell became concerned that the controversy might damage the company’s future. So he instructed his successor to not pay him the remaining third of his package and to donate it instead to the Fannie Mae foundation for low-income housing.

Like all Level 5 leaders, Maxwell wanted to see the company become even more successful in the next generation than in his own. Preferring to be clock builders rather than time tellers, Level 5 leaders are comfortable with the idea that their companies will tick on without them, reaching even greater heights due to the foundations they laid down. The fact that most people will not know that the roots of that success trace back to them is not an overriding concern. As one Level 5 leader put it, “I want to look out from my porch at one of the great companies of the world and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.’”

It is not surprising, then, that some of the greatest CEOs of the last forty years—those few extraordinary executives who led companies from good to great using our tough benchmarks—are relatively unknown. In addition to Darwin Smith and David Maxwell, they include such obscure figures as George Cain, Alan Wurtzel, Colman Mockler, Lyle Everingham, Fred Allen, Joe Cullman, Carl Reichardt and Charles Walgreen III. These and other leaders in our study quietly went about building greatness step by step, without much fanfare or hoopla, while generating results that are extraordinary by any standard. If you had had an opportunity to invest in each of the good-to-great companies at the point of upward inflection created by these leaders and held your investments to 2000, your total returns would have exceeded those of a comparable investment in a mutual fund of the general stock market by well over eight times. Yet despite these remarkable results, almost no one has ever remarked about these leaders. The media paid scant attention, and you’ll find very few articles ever written about them.

In contrast, the comparison leaders in our study—people like Al Dunlap of Scott Paper (the comparison company to Kimberly-Clark) ), Lee Iacocca of Chrysler (a company that failed to make a sustained shift from good to great) and Stanley Gault of Rubbermaid (a company that imploded after Gault departed)—garnered vastly more attention. Some of the comparison CEOs became wealthy celebrities—covers of magazines, bestselling autobiographies, massive compensation packages—despite the fact that their long-term results failed to measure up to the quiet, unknown Level 5s. In over two-thirds of the comparison companies, we noted the presence of a gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company. These leaders were ambitious for themselves, and they succeeded admirably on this score, but they failed utterly in the task of creating an enduring great company.

Looking for Level 5 leaders

The implications are obvious. Boards of directors and executives planning for succession would do well to search for the type of leadership— Level 5 leadership—correlated with the best and most enduring results. To do otherwise is to sacrifice long-term effectiveness for short-term expedience, which is tantamount to an act of irresponsibility on behalf of a company’s constituents, including its shareholders. To be clear, Level 5 leadership is not the only requirement for taking a company from good to great and for sustaining greatness once it is attained, but it does appear to be essential.

So, how should we go about identifying Level 5 leaders?

The key step is to stop looking for outsized personalities and egocentric celebrities, and instead to scrutinize for results. Look inside for some part of the organization where extraordinary results have been produced but where there is no person standing forth to take excessive credit for those results. Look there and you will likely find a Level 5 leader. And if you feel you must look to the outside (which the good-to-great companies almost never did), then look for people who show the following traits.

Two sides of the Level 5 leader

On the one hand… Creates—and is a clear catalyst in creating—superb results. Yet on the other hand… Demonstrates a compelling modesty, shunning public adulation and never boastful.

On the one hand… Demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult. Yet on the other hand… Acts with quiet, calm determination and relies principally on inspired standards—not an inspiring personality—to motivate.

On the one hand… Sets the standard of building an enduring great organization and will settle for nothing less. Yet on the other hand… Channels ambition into the organization and its work, not the self, setting up successors for even greater success in the next generation.

On the one hand… Looks in the mirror, not out the window, to apportion responsibility for poor results, never blaming other people, external factors, or bad luck. Yet on the other hand… Looks out the window, not in the mirror, to apportion credit for the success of the company—to other people, external factors, and good luck.

I used to think of these leaders as rare birds, almost freaks of nature. But then a funny thing happened after a seminar where I shared the Level 5 finding and bemoaned the lack of Level 5 leaders. After the session, a number of people stopped by to give examples of Level 5 leaders they’d observed or worked with. Then again, at another seminar, the same thing happened. Then again, at a third seminar—and a pattern began to emerge.

It turns out that many people have experienced Level 5 leadership somewhere in their development—a Level 5 sports coach, a Level 5 platoon commander, a Level 5 boss, a Level 5 entrepreneur, a Level 5 CEO. There is a common refrain: “I couldn’t understand or put my finger on what made him so effective, but now I understand: he was a Level 5.” People began to clip articles and send e-mails with examples of people they think of as Level 5 leaders, past or present: Orin Smith of Starbucks Coffee, Joe Torre of the New York Yankees, Kristine McDivitt of Patagonia, John Whitehead of Goldman Sachs, Frances Hesselbein of The Drucker Foundation, Jack Brennan of Vanguard, John Morgridge of Cisco Systems, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and so on. My list of Level 5 leaders began to grow exponentially.

Then it dawned on me: Our problem is not a shortage of Level 5 leaders. They exist all around us. Like the drawing of two faces that transforms itself into a vase, depending on how you look at the picture, Level 5 leadership jumps out at us as soon as we change how we look at the world and alter our assumptions about how it best works.

No, our problem lies in the fact that our culture has fallen in love with the idea of the celebrity CEO. Charismatic egotists who swoop in to save companies grace the covers of major magazines because they are much more interesting to read and write about than people like Darwin Smith and David Maxwell. This fuels the mistaken belief held by many directors that a high-profile, larger-than-life leader is required to make a company great. We keep putting people into positions of power who lack the inclination to become Level 5 leaders, and that is one key reason why so few companies ever make a sustained and verifiable shift from good to great.

The fact that our culture has evolved away from Level 5 leadership, however, does not mean that the culture is right or that we should accept it. After all, our culture in the 1990s also embraced the idea of irrational exuberance and infused people with the idea that they could—indeed should—get rich quick by creating companies that were Built to Flip rather than Built to Last. The culture was neither right nor healthy, and we would have done better to reject that culture and hold to fundamental tenets of creation and value that we knew in our guts to be eternally true. The same holds for our current misguided confusion of celebrity and leadership; it is neither right nor healthy. If we allow the celebrity rock-star model of leadership to triumph, we will see the decline of corporations and institutions of all types. The twentieth century was a century of greatness, but we face the very real prospect that the next century will see very few enduring great institutions. If good is the enemy of great—and I believe it is—the current trends in leadership give the decided edge to the enemy.

Yet I remain optimistic. For one thing, I sense an increasing societal unease with the emergence of celebrity leaders who care more about themselves than they do about the institutions for which they are responsible. Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions—whether in the corporate or social sectors—to advance their own interests. For another, we now have hard empirical evidence that shows such leaders to be negatively correlated with sustained great results, and this evidence should bolster courageous boards of directors. Finally, and perhaps most important, I am absolutely convinced that the seed of Level 5 leadership is widely dispersed throughout society. It can be identified. It can be cultivated. It can be developed. Given encouragement and the right tools, it can flourish. And if it does, so will our institutions.

Source: http://www.jimcollins.com/lib/articles/10_01_a.html

For more about Jim Collins and his works, visit: http://www.jimcollins.com

Simplicity Challenge

2007-12-13T22:14:00.000+05:30

Quite a few innovative yet simple ideas at the Simplicity Challenge organized by Philips and CNBZ-TV18. Check the site: http://www.thinksimple.moneycontrol.com/

Ideas addressed one of the three domains: (1) Environment(2) Education(3) Healthy

The guidelines said..."Living Every idea, project, or product at Philips is evaluated on 3 basic parameters, and so will yours.
These are:
1) Is the idea simple….easy to Understand?
2) Is it designed with user or people in mind?
3) Is it original?
4) Does the idea make business sense…meaning can you build a business on this idea?
5) Is the idea sustainable?

Let's see who wins from the 19 finalists chosen from among 8000 ideas!

Rails 2.0

2007-12-11T21:04:00.000+05:30

Rails creator, David Heinemeier Hansson, has announced the release of Rails 2.0. A great milestone to Ruby on Rails! Kudos to the Rails team!

Check out the official blog announcement here. Loads of info!

Strategies for Viral Videos

2007-11-23T11:33:00.000+05:30

Few secrets have been revealed on....how to get those millions of views for your video on YouTube?? Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group and lead TA for the Stanford Facebook Class discusses a few secret strategies for viral videos on TechCrunch.

It's interesting to know to what level people go to get those clicks/ hits on the web.
check it here: The Secret Strategies Behind Many "Viral" Videos

Barcamp Bangalore 5

2007-11-15T11:45:00.000+05:30

Barcamp Bangalore 5 is scheduled on 17th and 18th November at IIM Bangalore. Registrations are still open. Click here to register.

This will be my first Barcamp. I am looking forward to it!

Orkut: Diwali Flavor

2007-11-10T10:28:00.000+05:30

Keeping up the Google tradition of changing logos, user interface, skins, etc. of their websites on special occasions and festivals, Orkut added a festive flavor/ theme on Diwali.

Here is Orkut founder's page in the new Happy Diwali skin:

If you happened to miss it: you need to click the link Happy Diwali in the top bar next to log out link.

Happy Diwali!

Wipro Campus Blog

2007-11-06T10:42:00.000+05:30

Wipro is taking the right initiatives in engaging its prospective employees. First it was an entry into Second Life and now with its Campus Arena Blog. “Through Campusarena, we would like to facilitate one-to-one interaction with the Campus Hiring Team and Wiproites so that students get a sneak preview of what everyday life, work environment & culture @ Wipro is all about,” said Ms Priti Rajora, General Manager - Strategic Resourcing, Wipro Ltd, in a release.

But here is the downside - It is badly executed!!! I am not impressed at all with the blog. The design, layout, look and feel have been compromised. We don't expect this sort of an execution fiasco from a giant like Wipro. Hope they understand this and take some corrective measures!