Startup Business

Google Browser Chrome: Is Internet Explorer under Threat?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:47:00 +0000

Google has launched its browser Chrome this week. Though it is a beta release and is released for windows platform only, it is an interesting development and the Google-Microsoft war is hotting up. Microsoft has been the dominant player in the market and controls more than 70% market share. In recent times, Mozilla has done well and now enjoys a market share of around 20+%. How will Chrome change the market scenario or will it be able to do so?

Whether Chrome will be able to spoil Microsoft's party or not, it will certainly force Microsoft to allocate more resources towards IE. It will not be easy for Microsoft to kill Chrome as it did in the case of Netscape with offering free browser. Google's offering is anyways free. There are couple of areas, where Chrome can certainly score over IE. If you use IE, you will notice that it is resource hungry and that's a big negative for me. On my laptop using Vista, IE 7 with 3 tabs open, consumes approx 140 MB of memory. Whereas Chrome with 3 tabs, consumes appox. 25 MB of memory, wow, that's pretty cool. Secondly, Google will definitely offer Chrome on all platforms like Mozilla and that is going to be a killer. Microsoft, it seems, will be watching Chrome's journey more closely than any one of us.

Very interesting space to watch for!!!!

Cheers

Abhishek

We are Hiring now

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:09:00 +0000

.NET Technical Manager
Position: Microsoft.net Technical Manager
Location: Pune
Experience: 5+ Years on Microsoft.NET platform
Key Skills: C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server

The Technical Manager will assume the responsibility of leading the product development team. The person must have excellent grasp of .NET technology and its deployment aspects in different scenarios. The person will be the owner of the product right from the requirement to packaging stage.
The technical manager will also be working closely with the sales team in AP and the USA. We look at this role as one of the key roles in the organization. The person can grow up to at least Director (Engineering).
Responsibilities:
—Architecting the product and deciding the technology road map
—Guiding the team on all technology aspects.
—Interfacing with the customer on technology presentations and consulting.

We are in process of starting the development of the product which will initially be targeted towards customers in Asia Pacific and the USA. This product is being developed to cater to corporates, educational institutions and schools and is into e-learning 2.0 space. We will be offering a package comprising of sustenance salary, profit sharing in product and services sales and equity.You can contact me at +91 98212 15890 or srivasaa2000@yahoo.com

Cheers
Abhishek

Recruiting for Startup: My first impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:54:00 +0000

It is a known fact that putting together the right talent for your start up is critical for your success. Startups face a lot of problems in attracting right talent for key positions primarily owing to inability to pay high salaries. This is because cashflow is always a constraint. For a product based startup, it is even more difficult as the revenues from product starting flowing in once it is ready for the market. So how do you go about finding the right talent. I would highlight 2 points which I feel are important to get the right set of people:

Selecting right channel for recruitment: How would you let know others that you are hiring keeping in mind the constraint in terms of time and money. You don't want to be sitting on a pile of CVs shortlisting and spending time with each one of them. There are are lot of things which needs your time. In my corporate experience, the selection ratio has gone down from 5:1 to 20:1 or even higher, through the normal channels. Basically, you need channels which give you best fit profiles so that you can spend more time in understanding the compatbility. For me, it is very very important. I have been using venturewoods, pluggd.in, genportal etc to advertise my jobs. The response has been encouraging as I receive profiles which are extremely good fits with desire to work for the start up. And the bonus is that the numbers are very limited.

Right Package- This section is more relevant for startups which are bootstrapped (read it as limited funding). Let us understand, why do people want to join your startup, even if they have the option of joining an established brand and earn comfortable salary. As I understand after talking to many people, these people are ambitious and want to make a difference. They want to enjoy the feeling of building an organization with their effort, which is rewarding both in tangible and intangible terms. These rewards, if defined correctly, will attract good people to your startup. So what should constitute the right package, well it can be a mixture of sustenance salary (not full salary), equity (spread over a period of years and target linked) and profit sharing. Share your wealth with the key people as that's the way you can taste success.

If you are interested to know what kind of packages we are offering, do get in touch with me. Will be happy to share it with you.

Cheers

Abhishek

Learnings: Startup Story Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:46:00 +0000

It’s been a long hiatus from the blog because of various reasons. I have missed out on one hand but have become wiser as well. The last few months have taught me some important lessons. I thought to share it.
Around November 2007, my idea of starting a venture was taking some shape and I was getting ready for a March 2008 launch. I had couple of partners with me in this venture. It all started when I got in touch with two gentlemen during ideation phase. We started to brainstorm the idea and brought it to execution stage and that's when things took a turn for the worse and at the end of it, the idea was shelved. Well, I feel it was for a good reason that it did not work out else it would have given us more pains.

As our idea was taking shape, our interactions also increased and inspite of being in Mumbai and Bangalore, we made sure to meet up once in a month at a place. Otherwise we were always on Skype and emails. Once the idea got developed, we reached a stage where we started to invest in office space, business cards etc. Everybody sounded so upbeat. Suddenly one day, one of my partners said he is not interested. It was the shock of my life and took me some time to recover from it. I thought, ok, let us forget about it and move ahead. One of the partners, Mr Y, had couple of concepts and we started to work on that. Anyways, what happened next, was even more appalling for me. Mr. Y suddenly stopped responding to our calls and SMSs. There was absolutely no response. It took me at least two months to recover from it and start afresh. Interestingly, I came to know that Mr. Y has started his own venture during the same time meaning he was parallely working on the same. That's the part I of the story with sad ending.
Now if I look back, I think I made couple of mistakes:
· Associating idea of the venture with partners: An idea or a concept must be seen as an independent entity. When we carried out the feasibility, it looked good from the market size and state perspective. That’s the reason we decided to go ahead with it.
· Lack of confidence in myself: In the back of my mind, I always felt that I cannot do it on my own or cannot carry it forward if these people are not with me. That’s made me pull out as soon as one of the partners pulled out. I could have continued with the other but I could not. I just did not have the courage the do so.

Will write about part II of the story with a happy ending.
~Cheers

Festival of Light in India

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:55:00 +0000

I wish everyone, who is visiting my page, a very very happy and prosperous Diwali, the Festival of Lights in India.

Cheers

Dimdim enters Webmeeting Software Space with Free Offering

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:40:00 +0000

There is a new entrant into the Webmeeting Software space, Dimdim. Well, it is entering into the market which already has names like Cisco and Microsoft. Cisco owned WebEx is the market leader in this space. Microsoft’s LiveMeeting and GoToMeeting are the other Webmeeting softwares. So what is different in Dimdim. To start with it is free. Secondly, participants’ do not need to download any software, unlike other products in the market which is a big irritant. I have to still check how does this work, but it is cool.

The webmeeting software allows you to host meetings on the Internet using your office presentations. You can share your desktop and also allow participants to access applications running on your desktop. Webcam will enable you to even have video chat using these softwares. I have been using WebEx for the past three years and it has served me well except on couple of occasions where I found the performance wanting.

Dimdim has started a new model and we will have to wait and watch how this strategy unfolds.

Cheers

SAP: SaaS bandwagon

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:20:00 +0000

Facing severe pressure from its peers and dwindling profits, SAP, the largest ERP solution provider, has launched its ERP solution as a service for small enterprises with 100 to 500 users. The pricing is US$ 54 for 5 user licenses, which is competitive. It is called business byDemand.

It must be noted that SalesForce and OnDemand Oracle has created a serious threat to SAP and it had to launch the ERP as a service.The race is becoming interesting.

Cheers
Abhishek

Entrepreneur of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:17:00 +0000

Inc.com is inviting nominations for the Entrepreneur of the year. The nominations can be done here:

http://www.inc.com/entrepreneur/2007/submit.php

What is the date Today?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:30:00 +0000

Today is 18th September, 2007. Look at the 3 parts of the date, 18 = 1+8 = 9. The month is also 9 i.e. September. The year is 2007 = 2 +0 +0+7 =9. Interesting. Numerologist might be interested.

Innvotive Startup: Technology for Masses

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:12:00 +0000

"Meraki is bringing Internet Access to the next Billion People"

Meraki networks has leveraged the existing wireless network mechanism to create wireless mesh networks which allows you to extend your broadband connection to hundreds of people in your neighbourhood. It is a kind of intelligent mesh network which keeps the signal transmission efficient and strong and travels much longer. The key to this solution is Meraki router and it comes in two versions: Meraki Mini Outdoor and Meraki Mini costing US $ 99 to US $ 49 respectively. I don't know if these routers are available in India and what will be the price here, if imported. But definitely Meraki Routers are cheaper than the normal routers in the US.

The website further states:

"Tens of thousands of users worldwide are connecting to the Internet with Meraki mesh networks. From university students in Slovakia, to children in villages in rural Ecuador, to low-income housing in the United States. And the best part, everyday people are making it happen without the help of IT experts. This is the opportunity to free the net wherever you are."

Kudos to the young Entrepreneur Sanjit Biswas!!!!!

Cheers
Abhishek

Web 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:56:00 +0000

Web 3.0 is one of the buzz words these days and many authors have written in details about it. But recently I read Sramana Mitra's posts on his blog. He has done excellent research on the topic and provided an in-depth analysis of web 3.0 with a framework that sounds pretty realistic. He has been writing on this article for quite some time and his latest post is a consolidation of his thoughts. He has also analyzed a number of verticals with Web 3.0 framework and that is very well written.

It is an interesting article and is a must read.

Cheers
Abhishek

Verticalization of Non-SN Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 06:18:00 +0000

Verticalization of Social networking sites is a well written subject. Many bloggers have spent considerable time in reasearching. But I want to draw attention towards verticalization happening in other online space as well. In last couple of years, there have been plethora of online travel portals like Makemytrip, Yaatra, IndiaTimes Travel and many more. Now, Swapnil Kamat started Trip2Goa which is concentrating on Goa with travel packages, hotel deals and festival bonanzas. This is interesting and I am sure many more such efforts will be made in other business spaces as well as predicted by many fellow bloggers.

Read an interview with Swapnil Kamat here.

Startups, Process automation and Open Source

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:58:00 +0000

Open Source Community is doing a great service by consistently coming out with new products and upgrading the existing products. I have been a user of Open Source Softwares (OSS) for a long time and have used OSS for Project Management, Expense management, Software Development, Relational Database and even Office suite. So as a natural choice, I have decided to use OSSs for my startup for each and every function. So lately I have been doing a bit of research to figure out OSSs for various functions. While compiling the list, I realized there are plenty of them and I thought it will be useful if I post them as reference.

Office Suite: Typically an office suite includes Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation tools (Like Microsoft Office Suite). The best product in this category is by Microsoft, by far. Anyways, I was discussing about OSSs. The OSSs come in two flavors:

Office Suites as SaaS (Software as a service): Google Docs and Zoho Virtual Office are two of the better products in this category. Though they offer more than just office suite. Zoho, for instance, offer webmail, Contact management, News and Announcements, Tasks management etc.

Conventional Office Suites: Openoffice.org (It is now named as such because of trademark issues with Open Office) is the best alternative to MS Office. It has now a much improved interoperability with MS Office i.e. you can create and share documents compatible with MS Office.

Financial Accounting System: You have to take care of your finances, right so you need some tool to handle this function. Excel is an excellent tool (so is Openoffice.org) to start with, but you need to quickly move to a sophisticated tool because of process efficiency as well as compliance. Here is to name a few:

Adaptive Planning
osFinancials Planning
OpenBravo – This is a comprehensive ERP suite meant for SME.

Communication: Skype is one of the best communication tools to handle text and voice chat at a low cost. For emailing, I don’t need to say anything.

Servers & Other Resources: Sun Microsystems started an alliance program for Startups for companies in India, China and the US. It was launched on August 8th, 2007 for India. It is a great way of offering support to people like us. Under this scheme they propose to provide discounted pricing for servers and licensed software. However, There is a qualifying and joining formality.

Website Design Resources: Web presence is essential for any startup nowadays. Open Source web site design and Open Web Design will help you in that. Additionally there are content management websites which helps you in developing and managing complete website e.g. OpenCMS and Umbraco .

Disclaimer: The references given above are by no means complete. These are indicative at the best. In case you need to explore further, I have given below names of the two most prominent OSS repositories.

The most prominent open source software repositories are: Sourceforge and Code Plex .

Cheers
Abhishek

Most Disruptive Startups

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:10:00 +0000

The Business 2.0 (a Business Magazine by CNN Money) has published a list of most disruptive startups for the year. These companies are chosen on the basis of the simple words “Big Ideas that will change everything (May be the World)” . Erick Schonfeld is the brain behind this brilliant list and this is the second year when he has published this list. Needless to say, these companies are innovative. The last year list included Applied Location (a GPS based traffic assistance system), SalesForce ( Sales Force Management System), BlueLithium (Google’c competitor), Zopa ( a peer-to-peer banking system) etc. This year’s list includes 3 indian origin entrepreneurs as well.

The Distruptive Startups list is posted here.

Cheers
Abhishek

Startup Growth and Success: A Research

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 05:42:00 +0000

The success of a startup depends on many factors including location, talent, timing etc. Well, this is what I thought. But I came across a research done by Mukti Khaire, who is an assistant professor in the Entrepreneurial Management unit at Harvard Business School, which says that key to success for a startup might be some other factors. An E-mail interview "How Can Start Ups Grow?" is published by HBS Working Knowledge, which provides insights into the study conducted and success factors identified.

"For new ventures a lack of resources makes growth difficult to come by—just ask those nine out of ten fledgling firms that fail. Professor Mukti Khaire says the key may be in acquiring intangible resources such as legitimacy, status, and reputation."

Cheers

Loan for Startups

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:20:00 +0000

As our startup has reached a critical phase, it is getting difficult for me to manage time juggling between Job and the startup. As far as Job is concerned, it is as usual. For my coming venture, Our current focus is to arrange for finance. We are looking at two options:

Bank/FI loans
Small Loans from Friends/Any Interested Investor

So we are searching for Financial Institutions which can extend loans for our startup. Not surprisingly, the response has not been good. We shortlisted 4 Banks who we believed could be of help. Most of them are from Public sector and as per the Government's SSI charter, it is a priority sector. We first went to a large private sector bank which is advertising SMEs as one of its focus areas. We were told that the loan is only for SMEs which are one year old. Bad...... Then we went to a public sector bank which is setup to finance small sector industries. We met a senior manager there and were pleasantly surprised. He was a professional manager. Though he was very outspoken but was articulate and provided us with lot of informations we needed to apply for the loan. So now we are working on the business report and Expected Cost of the Project (ECOP) to submit.

We have yet to meet the other two banks and hope to get surprised there.

In one of my posts I will explain how to calculate ECOP.

Cheers
Abhishek

Friends2Support:Blood Donation Web Site

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:51:00 +0000

A bunch of entrepreneurs, all IT professionals from multiple countries, have got together and started friends2support. This website is started with the vision of providing information on Blood donation and supporting child donation. You can search for blood donors and related information in any city and area. It is a really noble and wonderful effort on part of the promoters. People can get information, when in real crisis.
The website has a nice and simple interface with all the services clearly visible. Currently you can register:
1) Your services as a blood donor
2) Your request for blood
3) As F2S volunteer
One of the nicest things is telephone number they have provided. In case of emergency, it can prove real handy to get information of blood donors.

Kudos to the creators of this site!!!

Cheers
Abhishek

Extending Single sign-on: from my earlier post

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:27:00 +0000

In one of my previous posts, I had mentioned about the need for a single sign-on service for the internet. It is exceedingly getting difficult to maintain access credentials to the multiple web sites, people use.

Well, let me tell you that some of the software companies have taken giant steps towards it but for proprietary use only. Microsoft has CardSpace to share identity across its own services be it e-mails or applications. Similar initiatives have been taken by Liberty Alliance and Open ID. All of these are concrete steps towards achieving Single Sign-on on the Internet but the problem so far has been that they can’t interoperate. They are meant for their own world.

But the good news now is that there is a concerted effort to achieve the feat. The interested parties, under the banner Concordia group, met in San Francisco recently to take it further. GM, Boeing, AOL, the U.S. General Services Administration, and the government of the Canadian province of British Columbia participated as Customers to explain how they intend to use this universal single sign-on concept in their organizations. Well started though it will be a while before it turns into a reality but I am waiting!!!

Micro-credit to Entrepreneurs:Kiva

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:14:00 +0000

Kiva has provided a platform for all small entrepreneurs to get financial support from people around the world. I appreciate the noble effort and the vision of Mr. Prem pal. This has benefited a lot of people around the world and will be doing a lot.

Thought to join this noble cause. I am putting up a couple of entrepreneurs from Kiva who need support. Once their loans are raised 100%, new ones will be featured automatically.

Abhishek

Hiring for your startup

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:09:00 +0000

It is always a challenge to hire the right people for your startup because there is no margin of error for a startup. Which attribute in a resume makes someone right for your company? Is it working with great companies or working on great projects/assignments? What is it that one should look for?
I guess the most important attributes of the right person for the job are the abilities to learn and adapt to new challenges and work hard to develop the skills required for it (of course with time. A startup poses new challenges every day and requires more than great experience to handle it.
How to find such people in the market place which is getting extremely difficult these days? Well, this is the million dollar question.
Read this story how Toyota found and developed the right people?

Out of Action

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:35:00 +0000

I was not able to write anything for the last two weeks as I was extremely busy with my parents who visited us after two years. We visited a few places in and around Mumbai.

My Dad and Mom are now done with their responsibilities of bringing us up and want to catch up with all they could not do because of various reasons.

Will start soon.

Cheers

Success Story of a young Entrepreneur

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 08:19:00 +0000

Alex Tew, a college bound student, came up with a business idea and executed it perfectly to generate revenues of more than $ 1million against an expense of $ 40,000 in quick time. The most brilliant aspect of this success story is the quick thinking and the brilliance in using the various channels to quickly mop up the revenues.
Read Alex Tew storyStartup

New Computing Platform on Coffee Table Surface

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:26:00 +0000

Microsoft has recently launched a new age computing platform called Microsoft Surface(codenamed Milan Project). This new platform is in the form of a coffee table and has the potential to change the way we look at the current computing platform i.e. PCs and Notebooks, especially how we interact with them.

This new coffee table like device will use MS Surface to present a totally new kind of interface. You just need to touch and use your two fingers to work unlike your normal platform where you need to use mouse (or mouse pointer) and a key board at the least.

What can you do with this?
1) You put your cell phone containing images on the coffee table and the table will show you all the pictures of the cell phone. Use your two fingers on the table surface to re size the image and transfer it to the coffee table storage.
2) Put your Zune on the top and drag its files to your cell phone and it will be transferred or listen to the song or watch video on the table.
3) Use Maps and its various features to store data and transfer data and effortlessly and navigate through it. Use all actions using your finger tip or two fingers which you now do using mouse.
4) Multiple users can sit around the table and use it together to achieve the above.
Wonderful, isn't it? This is like working with virtual contents and physical objects interchangeably. I am amazed by the technology to say the least looking at the possibility of it making the interaction with digital medium so simple.
How does it work?

There are 3 core components to this new computing platform - Multi-touch screen, DLP light Engine as Projector, Machine-vision

Multi-Touch screen is the Coffee table surface which identifies multiple input signals from multiple users. This technology has been into research since 80s.It can also identify objects by its shape or coded 'Domino tags'.

Then there is machine vision which uses near infrared spectrum to identify physical objects like cell phone, PDAs, Zune using the reflected rays.

The third core component is the DLP projector for projection. The communication between the objects and the system is handled using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

The operating system for MS Surface is an updated version of Windows Vista.

Universality

I am not aware if it is going to support devices from other vendors like Apple iPod. Looking at Microsoft, it is not thereby reducing the universal appeal. But whatever said and done, this is an amazing innovation.

Cheers
Abhishek

Business Plan Competition 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:56:00 +0000

A business plan competition by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs got completed on April 24, 2007. This competition was founded in 1998.

As the published article on knowledge@wharton reveals that only two of the 8 finalists were from computer technology category as opposed to previous two years when it was dominated by computer tech ventures. Out of the 8 finalists, the winner was NP solutions which is from Biotechnology field and has a solution to treat lower back pain. It is going to start the tests on Animals.

Read the full article "Business Plan Competition 2007"

Knowledge of Finance for Entrepreneurs

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek) — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:54:00 +0000

It is quite obvious that knowledge of Finance is required to understand the financial status and performance of their enterprise. Over the last couple of months, I am trying to learn the basics as my dabba is gole in this subject. Googling is the verb which best describes "finding useful reference materials" and I have collected some good resources over the period. I am sharing some of the resources on the net, hopefully it will be useful for people like me. The list given here is by no means complete but they are sufficient enough to get the basic knowledge of finance.

Net MBA

Damodaran online(Professor of Finance at Stern School of Business of New York University)

University of Arizona Finance Study

Wachowicz's Web World

Accounting Coach

Bean Counter

Stanford Audi Video lectures

If anybody would like to explore more resources, do write in to me. I would also welcome if somebody suggests to me the best way to learn it. I might invite that person to be a guest at my blog.

~Cheers

Abhishek