"I read your blog entry with interest. I have been thinking off and on about the kinds of things you write about. I understand where you're coming from. You want to look at old problems with a fresh set of eyes. That is admirable. However, when I read your blog (and other views like it), what I find is an attempt to replace the human mind at really simple tasks which are often not a big deal.

Take the jumping alarm clock with the wheels - while the idea is interesting and the clocks are cute, I consider it as good entertainment at best, something my kids would have a blast with. Exponentially enhance the user experience? I think not. I go with the simple solution of placing the alarm clock out of reach across the room. Similarly, who really minds hitting a few buttons on the microwave? Why incur the cost (not the least of which is environmental) of an RFID on every pop tart? If you make a mistake, you'll learn - that is what human brains are good at. If you think about it, the truly revolutionary technology here is that which enables us to use microwaves to heat or cook our food, not how we give commands to it. How many times do we leave wallets in our jeans? Have we become so undisciplined that we cannot empty out our pockets prior to undressing? I would be quite wary about having my fridge do my shopping for me. Part of it is the social aspect of shopping - going to your neighborhood grocery store, watching people, finding out what's in season, etc. If you've ever been to an outdoor market in the "lesser" developed countries, or even a farmers' market here, you'll know what I mean.

I categorize these as "solution-bloat". They are faddish and rarely move the needle in a meaningful way. I do agree with your views on Priceline. I have rarely found it satisfactory to use. There is always some information that is hidden (ah, the irony) and which prevents one from making an informed decision. For this, I think the "invisible" hand of the market works well. An airline names it fare. People will bite or not, competitors may offer a better deal, etc. The bidding really happens - it's just that it is not obvious. A service like Kayak is what is really useful. It brings everyone's prices in the open for the consumer to compare. And probably the tightest bidding happens in those outdoor markets - all without the aid of technology!

Don't get me wrong - I think what you are advocating for is great. But perhaps these principles should be applied to problems which would truly impact people and make a difference in their lives. An alarm clock which prevents you from hitting snooze does not quite meet that bar."

I've kept the author anonymous, but would like to thank him for participating in the conversations through these years. Let's continue the conversation!

-Kintan

Photo used under Creative Commons from http://www.flickr.com/photos/toma01/2171010315/

Many objects and systems around us suck. Let's attempt to reimagine them. Why can't we bid on flight tickets? Priceline attempts to handwave at the problem by simulating a close-door bidding, but fails gloriously at it. Why can't the microwave oven know how long to run for, based on what's kept on the heating tray inside? Can't my pack of pop-tarts come with a QR code/RFID that can be read by  standard microwave ovens such that the oven knows to run for 30 seconds as soon as I put a pop-tart in the oven? Can't my jeans beep, if I forget my wallet? If I put eggs and milk at the same place in the fridge, can't the fridge order them automatically from Amazon Fresh, as soon as they're about to deplete?

I'm attempting to reimagine the way in which movie showtimes are displayed on mobile devices. All major apps IMDb, Fandango, Flixster, Moviefone, etc. display them in the same old vertical grid. That sucks and can be remaimagined.

What are you attempting to reimagine?

-Kintan

ps: interesting opinion from a reader on this post

This beautiful image is used under creative commons. Original at http://www.flickr.com/photos/psstminnie/3661409376/

I learned time management while preparing for the dreaded college entrance exams - SAT. I quickly realized the power of elimination while trying to guess answers to those esoteric vocabulary questions on SAT. It worked, so I started applying them to life in general.

Life is too short to waste on doing things which you don't love to do, tasks where you don't have an expertise, and things which won't help you grow and move forward on the critical path to success towards achieving your goals. Entities around us have a tendency to inundate us with things which fall in each of those categories.

I've also realized that at any given time, my mind cannot really focus on more than a few tasks (and those tasks are obvious.) Regardless of their interestingness, some tasks need to get done. The highest order bit is to identify the tasks which absolutely require my involvement (coincidentally these are also the tasks, which I enjoy). Then delegate those remaining tasks to someone who is competent, who would enjoy and who would be willing to do the tasks, which don't require my involvement.

The easiest way to do so is to hire a personal assistant (or even a virtual assistant.) Ideally the best folks suited for such tasks tend to be college students (they're smart, educated, affordable and fun to work with).

When I refer to the tasks, which absolutely don't require my involvement, I don't mean mundane redundant tasks which can be automated. For instance, buying groceries, making bill payments, etc. Most such tasks can be and should be automated. There is a class of tasks which may be boring for me, but really interesting and challenging for some folks. For instance, doing preliminary market research, organizing events, prioritizing reading lists, filling in expense reports, etc.

Here's how I manage my time.

• Make a list of all tasks which I need to do.
• Divide the list into two: To Do and Not To Do
• Delegate the tasks from the Not To Do list to folks best suited for those tasks. Follow up diligently until the task is done.
• Focus all my mindshare on the To Do list, which doesn't contain more than five tasks at any given time. In fact I don't even need to look at the list to remember which those five items, as they're often obvious.

I try to make sure that the tasks are delegated to a person who would enjoy doing the delegated task and I'm genuinely express my gratitude as well as appreciation to that person for agreeing to finish those tasks.

My Not To Do list contains:

• Get the car repaired.
• Organize an event for a non-profit organization.
• Research about three industry trends.
• Submit four expense reports
• ..and a few other..

What's on your Not To Do list?

Kintan

Photo used under Creative Commons from flickr.com. Photo taken by Patrick Hocker.

Most interesting people I know subscribe to at least five to ten magazines (often in areas outside their primary occupation.) Most magazines have beautifully designed websites (often available for free), but I prefer to subscribe to the paper copies of at least a few interesting magazines. I've been subscribing to magazines for over a decade and I've learned immensely through them.

Blogs and magazines serve different purposes and are not mutually exclusive. I read magazines for three main reasons:

1. Keep up with the trends:

I often find myself reading three-four back issues of magazines at a time. For instance, it is not uncommon to sit on a Sunday morning and read last three issues of Fortune and the last two issues of GQ and compare the trends in content, editorial tone, advertisements, magazine cover designs, fonts, photos and color palettes used in various articles and many more attributes. Magazines couldn't be seen as distribution channels for news. Blogs, tweets and news websites are much more efficient at that. However magazines often reflect the zeitgeist in a particular industry. In fact certain magazines serve as tastemakers for some industries (especially in fashion).

One of the key traits of entrepreneurs is "vision" - ability to visualize how their product/service will solve a problem in a durable, visible and obvious way over years. Vision can be curated through observing and anticipating trends across various industries and geographies. Magazines facilitate just that.

2. Keep up with the ads:

Some print ads are just beautiful. More importantly they indicate what the big brands are focusing on currently. For instance, while reading the issues of Fortune and Forbes from September 2009 to February 2010, the ads indicated a trend that Android was picking up at a much faster rate. More and more ads for the Motorola Droid started to show up in November and December. That's an obvious trend, which I would have known even without looking at those ads, but you get the point.

3. Experience the "magazine":

Reading my favorite magazine - Wallpaper - just on its website and not on the printed version would be unfair for the reader. Some of these magazines are carefully crafted to provide the readers with an authentic experience of the content. The layout on the page, typography, quality of the paper, etc. convey a deeper story, which must not be missed for some magazines.

Which magazines to subscribe to?

In addition to subscribing to the usual suspects - magazines related to technology, design and entrepreneurship, I force myself to subscribe to a new magazine (which I normally wouldn't subscribe to), just to get an introduction to a new industry.

Here's the list of magazines that I've enjoyed reading:

Technology:

• MIT Technology Review
• Popular Science
• Wired

Entrepreneurship:

• Harvard Business Review
• Fast Company
• Fortune
• Forbes
• Inc
• Strategy+Business by Booz Allen Hamilton

Design:

• Wallpaper
• ID
• How
• Architectural Digest

Lifestyle:

• GQ
• Esquire
• Entertainment Weekly
• Dwell
• New Yorker
• The Economist

Experiments to learn about trends in new territories/industries (at least for me):

• Make - hobbyists
• Real Simple - house wives
• Digital Photography
• Boating Magazine
• Golf Magazine
• Parenting

Magazine subscriptions don't cost too much. One year subscription to FastCompany costs less than $10!

Start reading a magazine today.

Kintan

ps: Photo is used from flickr.com under Creative Commons

I didn't start out on day one with an intention of looking for joy, action and imagination in everything I did. In fact one of my biggest motivators has always been "the impact made by the product". After my team shipped the beautiful IMDb app for iPad in April under extremely tight constraints, I asked myself -

"What kept/keeps us going as individuals and as a team?"

"What made a team member create a custom video player from scratch on the day of launch, when we discovered a bug in the default video player provided by the iPad SDK? All other apps launched with that bug, except ours. What led us push the envelope?"

"What kept a new dad of a one month infant code furiously (of course by choice)?"

Joy, action and imagination surfaced as obvious themes.  We realized that we truly enjoyed working on the products which we were working on. I enjoyed some of it so much that I would even pay someone to let me work on it. When "What's in it for me?" is measured in terms of joy, the equation becomes more so interesting.

Action is an overloaded term. In a product manager's language, action = shipping. There is something innately magical about shipping products. Projects with in-built inertia in the form of unrealistically long product cycles and fluid ship dates tend to suck the magic out of shipping. Our approach of being shipping-oriented (action-oriented) assures us that we'll continue to experience the sheer joy of shipping on an ongoing basis.

Nobody likes to work on unimaginative and bland products. In an ideal world, all unimaginative tasks could be automated and delegated to machines. We ensure that we stretch our imagination and be creative in our approaches as well as products. Imagination is often considered our biggest asset as humans. We make sure that we ruthlessly leverage this asset. Whether it is designing the user interface for an iPad app (which could be visibly imaginative) or it is optimizing the backend caching so that the app is shockingly responsive, we ensure that imagination is the highest order bit in our approach.

Joy, action and imagination continue to motivate me and my team members. Your motivators could be completely different. The highest order bit is to identify your motivators, communicate them to your team members and leverage them to continue to do great things.

What motivates you?

Kintan

ps 1: On a related note, the 37Signals guys have listed passion, pride and craftsmanship as key tools to optimize a person's happiness and thus productivity in their latest book - Getting Real. http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch10_Optimize_for_Happiness.php

ps 2: I realized that I had first heard about joy, action and imagination from Subroto Bagchi in his book - High Performance Entrepreneur.

ps 3: The beautiful photo used in this post is from flickr.com and is used under Creative Commons

The buyers are able to instantly search and discover desired products and sellers are able to target their services to buyers who are most likely to search/discover their products. While location is critical for the success of a store in a brick and mortar mall, it doesn't have any significant impact for sellers in an online marketplace.

The appstore is more similar to a brick and mortar store than it is to an online marketplace. Discovering apps is painful for users and making the apps more discoverable is even worse for app developers. iPhone users don't typically search for apps (search in appstore is not the best either). Users install the apps which are either listed as the top 25 apps in a particular category in the appstore or the ones which are featured by appstore's editors.

Ranking:

There are several interesting blog posts out there, which talk in detail about increasing the appstore rankings. These rankings are based on the number of downloads in the last few days (with today's downloads given the highest weight). Many app developers use in-app advertisements from companies like TapJoy and AdMob to boost their downloads. faberNovel from France has explained "how rankings work" in detail here: http://www.slideshare.net/misteroo/how-to-market-your-app

Getting featured by Apple:

There is no secret sauce here, except to make an app really "interesting". If the app is unique and interesting, the editorial teams at Apple are always on the lookout to highlight those apps for the users.

Brick and mortar approach:

I want to highlight that app developers can take lessons from old school marketing to succeed in the appstore. Imagine you're are a retailer and are deciding to open a store in a new shopping mall near your home. The highest order bit in that decision would be the location of the store. Location also decides the price a retailer would pay because there are fixed number of stores in the mall.

In a mall there are three types of stores:

1. Large department stores like Macy's (Nordstrom, JC Penney, etc.) open a large prominent store either near one of the entrances of the mall. These stores depend on both location and their advertisements for bringing the buyers to their store.
2. Other retail brands like Gap, Abercrombie and Fitch, etc. which have one flagship store in some section of the mall. These stores depend primarily on their advertisements (their brand) to bring buyers to their store.
3. Coffee shops like Starbucks often decide to open multiple coffee shops throughout the mall (say one near each entrance of the mall.) These stores depend primarily on their location in the mall, to bring buyers to their store.

The app store is not much different from a mall. Each of the categories (Entertainment, Lifestyle, Games, Navigation, Reference, etc.) serve as individual sections of a mall. Users typically browse only a few categories on the appstore, when they're browsing for new apps. If your app is not a top app (overall) or is not present in a category browsed by a particular user, then that user is unlikely to discover your app.The ideal approach could be to launch a portfolio of apps (often in different categories) and try to cross-sell the apps. Pick three or four primary categories where your apps could fit (say Games, lifestyle and entertainment) and develop three apps instead of focusing on just one app.

Most app developers often don't have an established brand or large advertisement budgets, so the most optimal strategy for them would be akin to #3 above. Larger established brands often take approach #1, where they launch a high profile app (say NY Times) and promote it on their website. That app could become the #1 app in one category (say News) and users who browse the "News" category on the app store would discover the app. However, they'll still miss out on millions of users, who never browse the "News" category. The key would be to choosse two or three categories in addition to news and launch apps in those categories. For instance, NY Times could launch a politics trivia game under the Games category and  a "What happened on this day in the past?" app in the Reference category in the app store.

Sometimes launching multiple apps in the same category could be effective as well. Several game developers launch multiple apps either under Games or Entertainment categories and cross-sell them heavily to drive downloads. It is important to note that real estate is limited to top 25 slots (most users only browse for the top 25 apps), so having two or three apps in the top 25 means that your competitors would have to fight for a slot from the remaining 23 slots.

Net net, taking the "Starbucks" approach of launching multiple apps is likely to generate more awareness and downloads for apps instead of taking a Macy's approach and focusing on just one flagship app (at least until the "discoverability" problems are fixed in the appstore.)

Kintan

ps: Thanks Mike Schneider from www.hivebrainsoftware.com for sharing some of these observations earlier this year.

ps: photos are used under Creative Commons from flickr.com   

While I've known myself choosing "fight" in more situations, "flee" could proven to be an equally effective approach in certain situations. My intention is not to "preach" here, but share a quick summary of my approaches to address challenging situations.

Fight:

Fight is synonymous to persistence. It is the most common trait in everyone whom I admire. It defines entrepreneurs. In fact, it gives birth to entrepreneurs. Most successful products/ideas have been born, when someone fought the status quo and created a company/organization to manifest that fight. Think "Dyson" vacuum cleaners, think "Apple" computers, think "facebook", think "Kindle" and thousands of other entrepreneurial stories. Most people get this, so I'm not saying anything new here.

Flee:

Fleeing means accepting that fighting may not be the most optimal approach for you, so giving up the fight (and hopefully start a new fight). It is considered a taboo to give up, especially in the entrepreneurial circles. Quitting is often not an option. "Finish what you started" is often the advice young entrepreneurs receive. Most importantly, the spirit of "fighting" is so strong, that even a thought of "fleeing" away from the situation is traumatic for the entrepreneur.

Yesterday I caught up with Peter (an old friend and the co-founder of my first startup - Securamed) over dinner. It was one of those classic "catching up" meetings and the obvious topic of discussion was - "where we were in our entrepreneurial quests." After gobling loads of fried tofu at Thai Tom in the U-district of Seattle, we asked to ourselves - "What would we have done differently at Securamed, if we were starting it today?" We discussed the interns we had hired, tens of conferences we had attended, business plan pitches we had made and hundreds of rejected sales calls, we had experienced as student entrepreneurs.

The over-arching theme of the discussion was - "We should have accepted that our product was not fit for the market conditions at the time and should have started working on another idea sooner. We could have realized the opportunity cost of pursuing the idea further at that point to pick up another fight sooner."

To set the context, we were trying to create a reverse-auction-based marketplace for health insurance by converging health insurance and personal health management. We eventually realized that despite winning five student business plan competitions and a brilliantly designed product, the market was not just ready for it. In some ways the market isn't ready yet for some of the advances in the "business of healthcare". It is apparent from the not-so-successful attempts in the healthcare realm by effective companies like Google and Microsoft. We eventually realized the opportunity cost, reduced the scope of the product and continued a very small portion of the product offering.

The highest order bit is to realize when to fight and when to flee. I'm not a huge fan of putting "stop loss" orders on my investments, but as entrepreneurs the opportunity cost of not doing so could be high.

Let's flee a dud and start a new fight.

Kintan

ps: Don't just flow. It is immoral to abandon your own judgement, so either fight or flee, but don't flow.

One of my favorite website is www.picnik.com , which never ceases to surprise and delight me. The first time I had met Picnik's co-founder Jonathan Sposato at a panel discussion, he asserted that what differentiates Picnik from its competitors is a little magic, which is hard to define. Over the next few "Picnik" experiences, I was amazed by that magic and got hooked.

Users experience magic from the very first experience. Upon clicking "Get started" on a simple landing page of Picnik, the user is taken to a "loading" screen, where Picnik delights the user by using metaphors of a real picnic to set the tone. It could have easily chosen to display the text "loading" next to the progress bar, but instead Picnic uses one of the following -

Painting sky, Laying blanket, Buttering sandwiches, Coloring flowers...... 

The personality of the software reflects the personality of its creators and is often not guided directly by user feedback. For instance, creators of picnik were not told by their users to use "laying blanket" instead of "loading". Even if they had used the term "loading", users would have used their software, because it is a useful software. However, users will spread the word and convert into raving fans, only when they see a unique delight factor.

Similarly Amazon has done a terrific job with the classic screensavers in the Kindle. The screensavers are simple and display a portrait of a popular author or a poet. What else could bring more delight to a reader? 

There is no end to the subtleties used by Apple throughout their experiences. Most users of MacBook would know that a small light on the front of a Macbook pulsates, when the computer is on standby/sleep mode. Apple took this one step further by designing their storefronts to mimic the sleeping laptop. The Apple store on University Avenue in Palo Alto (small, but one of my favorites) pulsates after the store closes at 9 PM to indicate that the store is sleeping.Here's a video.

Does Apple do it at the expense of core functionality?

Did Apple's customers complain that the store is not sleeping?

How do we add delight to our software? In addition to offering the best utilitarian user experience, the product must appeal to the senses of the users by adding unexpected subtleties throughout the experience.

Let's make delightful experiences!

Kintan

1. Direct access to highly scalable markets

2. Alignment of required skills in an entrepreneur

3. Transparent accountability

During my current visit to India, I got a chance to explore both rural and urban poverty and share my thoughts on poverty with several leading individuals and institutions. During these visits and conversations, I focused on finding consistent themes in finding examples of optimal micro-enterprises. After visiting a few rural areas, it has been apparent that "milk production" is clearly a micro-enterprise with the most direct access to the markets, due to the well-established dairy cooperative system in India.    Direct access to highly scalable markets : It is safe to say that there is seemingly infinite demand for milk by the milk processors, a sophisticated distribution channel to collect milk from every village daily at a standardized rate and a well-understood payment channel which enables the milk producers to get paid thrice a week (every ten days).

If a poor person is empowered to purchase a water buffalo or a cow through a microloan, he/she can immediately become an entrepreneur and start leveraging the established distribution channels to sell the milk produced by that buffalo/cow.

Alignment of required skills in an entrepreneur: Maintaining water buffaloes is common in most rural areas in India and most rural poor are familiar with the tasks involved in maintaining water buffaloes.

Transparent accountability: Since the entrepreneur will get paid only by the milk processor (which is part of the national dairy cooperative system - Amul),all monetary transactions can be easily tracked, thus adding transparency and accountability.

There are several open questions and I'm working on finding answers to them by visiting more villages and talking with both the poor and thought leaders in poverty alleviation. But, from a variety of micro enterprises I've looked at/thought of so far, "milk production" seems to be the most optimal. 

Thoughts?

Let's eliminate rural poverty, one buffalo at a time!

Kintan