Vikas Rana's Blog

Success Decoded

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:31:00 +0000

I am always fascinated by smart people. You get to learn so much from them, it makes work life so much enjoyable.

I have been fortunate enough to work with the best of people in a decade long career. While I landed at Trilogy by chance (I haven't had heard about it before, being the dot com burst era nobody else was really hiring at that time), I had the opportunity to choose my people at my startup. I think we have done a good job - everybody has been awesome.

Observing Top performers out of smart people is fascinating too. At both places, I found some unique qualities in the Top performers:

Talent
Some people are good at what they do - it's like they are born to do those things. They have a natural talent to succeed at their job. Think of people like Sachin Tendulkar, Roger Federer and Michael Schumacher. They are quick learners. Having the right abilities definitely is an advantage.

Motivation
People do unbelievable things when motivation level is high. They convert pain to pleasure to achieve their goals. I have found motivated people do better than the ones having natural talent - they work harder. Talent is meaningless without motivation.

Preparedness
Despite being talented and motivated, many people fail to deliver because they are not following the right "process". Somehow, the mental setup is not right, they just aren't ready.

Talent and motivation take you to only upto certain level. I have seen perfectly capable people underperform when the going gets tough, or when there are just too many different things, or it's a completely new situation. Ability to manage your time, prioritize your tasks, handle context switching, adaption, not burn out are equally valuable skills - the so called mental strength. Top performers deliver day after day. I believe this is the most important quality to be successful - the difference between a Tendulkar and a Sehwag.

3 Habits That Makes My Life Better

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:47:00 +0000

As an entrepreneur, 3 things that I've found very helpful:

Nice, long bath: Helps you plan the rest of the day, streamline your thoughts.
Good breakfast: Owing to meetings and fire-fighting at work, my lunch schedule is quite haphazard. Good breakfast ensures I've energy left!
No laptop at home: May not work for you, but I try not to carry my laptop at home. Not on weekdays, not on weekends. I check my emails on my phone though. Gives me two benefits. One - gives me some time with family. Startup life is hectic.Sometimes I am not able to take calls even from my wife. So, anything that give me some time at home is good. Two - gives me enough time to "think" about my startup, rather than keep "doing" things. My entire day gets spent in doing tons of things and hardly have any time to sit back and ponder over things. This gives me that time.

Been practicing these for some time now and very happy with the results.

The Thing called Mental Strength

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:47:00 +0000

I am not very happy about my mental performance this year because for moments I didn't believe really 100 percent in victory. That's the big problem. Because when that's happening, you have fewer chances than if you believe. If you believe, you are running more and you are putting one more ball inside. So that's what I'm going try to change.

That's Rafael Nadal, emphasizing the importance of confidence and mental strength. As anybody in a startup will tell you, self-belief is one of the most essential things to succeed. You may have all the talent in the world, but if you don't believe in yourself, you won't reach the top. We have seen so many players ready to take on the world, but somehow are never able to reach the very top.

So, if you want to change the world, believe that you can. Kill those demons in the mind. Be ready to be no. 1.

What We Did Right

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:38:00 +0000

One of my friends is just starting on a startup of his own and he asked me about marketing and other things we did in our early days for mustseeindia.com.

That got me started on what all things we did good in early stages. Here's a list of things I think helped us when we started - tips on starting-up from our own experience. Shortly, I'll also publish a list of things we could have done better.

1. Go full-time

This is perhaps the single best thing we did. My belief is once you have realized you are going to try out an idea, give it your best shot. And if something is as life-altering as a startup, it involves your full-time attention. Anything else just doesn't work.

We realised we all were not in a position to go full-time at once. So, I decided to take the plunge first. Karan and Sanjay joined few months after that.

2. Release early, Release often

Ever since the day we registered our domain, the site has been live every single day. Whatever development we did was visible on the website. We used to upload almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Whatever little feature we worked upon, we used to upload without a care in the world if it was perfect or not.

The biggest positive we got was the joy of seeing things live on the web. At that time, we were so small and uncertain that it took some time for the feeling to sink in that we are doing something big. Seeing it live on web and users coming in helped a lot in convincing ourselves.

Another positive side-effect was Google crawler. When your site is small, you keep tweaking the whole back-end architecture and end up making lots of changes. Testing every little change takes hell lot of time. As crazy as it may sound, we relied upon Google to discover errors on our site. This helped us crank up code at lightning speed and not bother about bugs.

Note that this strategy works only when you are small. When you become big and rank somewhere at top in Google for few keywords, every "404 Page Not Found" error costs in Google. We learned it the hard way when our server was dropping requests lately because of increased load.

3. SEO

We realised pretty early that Google is going to be main source of users. We started on Search Engine Optimization pretty early. Ever since that day, we had a full person working on it almost regularly. It paid us handsomly as we rose in Google soon for some of the long-ish keywords.

My suggestion is that if you are going to be a content site, focus on SEO as soon as possible. It takes time to rank in Google and the sooner you start, the better. Also, it is perhaps the most straight-forward of things to do for entrepreneurs. There are plenty of resources that'll help you in this.

4. Stay Focused

When you are small, there's always an urge to get featured in media. Don't bother too much. If you get featured, well and good. If not, move on. Your time is more important. If you are worth it, you'll get featured sooner or later.

When you start growing, lots of people contact you for deals and offers. Don't get distracted. Focus on your core thing. Whenever you get such offer, think if you'd have actively sought it had it not come to you. We got offers early on from biggest of booking sites to become affiliates. We applied the same metric - if they would not have approached us, would we want to become affiliates at this stage? The answer was no. (We started deals with other sites six months after we got the first offer, when we felt we were ready.)

5. No external funding

It was a pretty big, and bold decision. In retrospect, this is the second best thing we did (first was going full-time). Fund raising involves lots of time and effort. From fellow entrepreneurs, we were aware that it easily takes a full time person 6 months to follow up with VCs and close a deal. Moreover, we didn't really had any good contacts in VC circle and all were first time entrepreneurs. So we expected it to take even longer.

With our team of 3, it meant one-third resources gone, something a new startup can hardly afford. Instead, we focused on raising funds from family and friends which worked out reasonably well; especially since the amount required for a Web 2.0 startup like ours is pretty small for a real VC to be interested in.

6. Focus on Users, not Revenue

As a CEO, it's a daily battle for you to decide what to focus on - users or revenue. Sometime the goals for achieving both are aligned, many a times not. So you have to choose.

My experience says choose users in the beginning. Revenue will follow if you have the users. Don't put ads on day 1. Don't focus on bookings / conversions / leads in beginning. Focus on usability.

7. Keep Morale High

Working in a startup is tough. Working on your own startup is hell lot tougher. Many people underestimate this. We did too.

Our personal lives hit new lows in this period. We had financial difficulties. We've had fights in our team over vision and direction. Sometimes, we were simply disappointed because results didn't match our expectations. But we lived to tell the tale. I think it was the conviction that what we are doing is something special that made us sail through.

Conditions are going to be averse, but believe in your idea. More importantly, do not give up.

8. Always remember you are a small team

This helps you keep focused. Double-check the task if it demands too much of your time. See if it can be approached differently. Can it be done incrementally?

Value every second of your time. Spend as much time as you can working, maintaining your sanity. Even if you are busy on something else, try to finish some work related task, no matter how small. Forward progress every single day is important.

Look for efficiency. If you are doing something for the second time, you are probably wasting your time. Automate as much as you can. Some of the key things we did:

One click deployment on server. Since you are going to do it hundreds of time a month, have it fully automated.
Have all your reports e-mailed to you instead of you logging into multiple places and checking them out. Some of the examples are errors on production server, user activity on your site, server health stats, revenue reports.
Don't hesitate to spend little money on something if it saves your time (e.g. SVN repository, powerful laptops).
If you need a tool, search hard on google rather than develop in-house. Chances are, somebody else faced the same problem and developed a solution (and posted somewhere on internet!).
Skip unimportant events and meetings. If required, have very few members of your team attend it (unless it's super critical like presentation to a VC, or some training which will help entire team).

9. Choose RoR

Even though we were all working in Java all our life, we chose Ruby on Rails for this. Looking back, I think it was a very good decision. Development is very fast in RoR. Had we been doing it in Java, it would have easily taken us much more time.

Quick Tips for Startups and Future Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:59:00 +0000

Startups are hard. You go through tough situations, need to take lot of tough decisions. When we are in job at a well-established company, we don’t really realize how much comfortable position we are in.

Many people start out with the dream of making it big. You don’t make big unless you have the willingness to do it. And believe me, startups test all that willingness.

From my interview at startups.in

Also, I wanted to let you know that we are working on new look for our site mustseeindia.com. You can take a peek at our testing server. (Since it's a testing server, it's down sometime. Please check later if it is indeed down.)

We are seeking feedback on new UI before we deploy it next weekend. Please send in your comments to feedback@mustseeindia.com (or if you are feeling lazy, just leave a comment below).

In search of our own Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:09:00 +0000

India woke up to Obama's victory today. He has created history by becoming the first black president of USA. At a personal level, I am felling happy, though not exactly sure why.

What is significant in this case is not just the victory, but the way he mobilized people. Whether he's good for America, and the World, is to be seen in coming years, but what he has done is given people hope. Hope that he will get USA out of the troubled times. Hope that he will resurrect them out of the financial mess. Hope that he will change the way the world sees America. I don't recall any one leader in my lifetime generating so much of craze.

Photo Courtesy: Rediff

This news also makes me wonder if and when will we see an Obama in India. No doubt, this country desperately needs one. Politics in India has reached such low levels that it has stop mattering to the general public. In the last two decades, no party has got a clear majority. No leader after Rajiv Gandhi has had public's trust.

If one calls the current political situation bleak, the future is not bright either. We seem to be going downhill. People are dying on daily basis but nobody seem to be bothered. As if there were not enough differences already, even more are being created by the day and nobody seem to care. I am almost sure that the upcoming elections will go the same way as past so many with no strong government even this time.

We must find our own Obama. Maybe, it'll take us some more years. Till we find one, let's cheer for Americans for what they have. Someday, we'll have our own. Hope is a big thing!

Good Work, Bad Work

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:39:00 +0000

I joined my previous company, Trilogy, at an early stage. I guess I was the 22nd employee. One of the benefits was that I got to know half of the people personally. I value people and relationships a lot, and it felt nice to know so many smart people by their first name.

One thing I've realized out of that experience, and in general otherwise, is that smart people complain a lot. They don't get satisfied easily. Call it the curse of smartness!

And guess what was the most common grudge? Good work. Lots of them had the concern that they are not doing "good" work. If you ask them what a "good" work is, you'd hear words like challenging, new product, design, architecture, development, from scratch. On the contrary, "bad" work was synonymous maintaining an existing product, testing, scripting, bug fixing etc.

While getting promotion on the basis of so called good work was always at the back of their mind, the primary concern was of job satisfaction. If you don't like what you are doing, you are not satisfied, intellectually. You need to be doing something that you enjoy, and value. That is the secret of happiness in any job.

Strangely, the world is full of "bad" work. In any job, you end up doing more routine stuff than interesting one. Interesting work comes in patches, and you can't really be sure when you'll get a truly interesting work that you'll enjoy. More often than not, you have to live with the routine work and try to find interesting stuff within that. Software is no different.

I rarely managed to get "good" work in my job. For quite some time after I joined, all I got to do was testing, scripting, bug fixing. The product I was assigned was going into beta immediately after I started. I, being the junior-most guy, was handed all the "dirty" work.

And funnily, I enjoyed that work. Maybe it was the ignorance of a fresher, but I managed to see interesting stuff in my work. I used to like scripting. I liked testing. I liked automating things. Java development was probably what I hated the most. It seemed so straightforward. And boring. Many of the my teammates and juniors were surprised to find I had written almost no product code even though I worked on the same product for more than 5 years.

I found the non-development tasks more engaging. There were unique challenges there, new learnings every day. And I loved innovating in that space. I liked versatility in the tasks. I bet we had the most efficient and best testing process when I was involved.

I always had a different definition of "good" work. For me, any work that allows you to innovate and learn new things is good. Otherwise it's bad.

What matters is the learning of the task at hand, not the task itself. It's very unlikely that you'll get the exact same task in your life again. It's always going to be a variant of that. Similar, never the same. With even a few small parameters changed, you might have to approach the problem from a completely different perspective. That's why, cherish the learnings no matter what the task.

If you are willing to learn, there's lot of scope and opportunity for innovation in the routine tasks. If you stereotype the tasks and block your mind, you are never going to see that opportunity. Just complaining about it hasn't helped anybody. Most of the times, getting a task of your choice is out of your hands. Make the best of the situation and keep learning. That's how you'll grow and gain lessons.

Life in general, and startup life in particular, is full of routine, boring tasks. Until and unless you can see the positives of those tasks, you are not going to enjoy, and by that token, not do a good job at executing it. From a entrepreneur perspective, working on your product is probably going to be the most enjoying of all experiences. But strangely, you end up spending a good chunk of your time on the plumbing tasks. And many a times, these peripheral tasks end up being make-or-break for your company. So you better pay attention to these boring tasks.

That's what separates a good entrepreneur from a good techie. I have this conjecture that unless you can bear with these uninteresting tasks, you are not going to be a successful entrepreneur. The path to creating a successful company is rough, and you have to get used to it. Those who run away from it rarely manage to create a successful startup. Enjoy every task you do, and you'll reap benefits!

Dream and Passion

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:39:00 +0000

When talking about startups, Dream and Passion are two words used often. Sometimes I wonder how many people truly understand the meaning of these words.

I am following upcoming US elections keenly. Obama is sometimes compared with the great Martin Luther King. I never got a chance to hear any of them personally (unfortunately!), but that got me curious about King and I stumbled upon this video of King's famous "I have a dream" speech delivered on 28th August 1963. Watching him delivering this speech, one gets a feeling of what Dream and Passion actually mean, and I felt I have been almost misusing these words so far!

Truly inspiring stuff.

You can get the full text of this speech at http://usinfo.state.gov/infousa/government/overview/38.html
(scroll down a bit)

Trilogy Connection of Startups

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:52:00 +0000

Sometimes I wonder what are the skills one require to "take on the world"? Can there ever be a "school" that can prepare entrepreneurs? Can entrepreneurship be taught? Or is it something that is practiced? Or is it inborn?

Let me try answering these by asking a very different question - why is there a strong connection between (ex)Trilogians and startups? A significant chunk of people leaving Trilogy either join a startup, or start one of their own. There are so many of them now that they can start an OCC of their own!

Since a majority of the folks at Trilogy join straight out of college, this really is their first interaction with the startup world. What is it at Trilogy that inspires so many of them?

Being one of the people who is part of this connection, lemme see if I can unravel this. In some sense, I am the subject of this article too! Pardon me if this seems like a personal rant.

(In case you are wondering, Trilogy is a small enterprise software company started in 1989 in Austin, US. It opened its Bangalore office in 2000. I worked there from 2002 to 2007. Some of the startups started by ex-Trilogians are LifeBlob, Chakpak, ReviewGist, Via, LifeMojo and my own Must See India.)

1. Confidence
Very much like Microsoft and Google, Trilogy encourages its employees to take larger than life roles at a very early age. People grow very fast at Trilogy. You might be surprised to see people as young as 3-4 years of experience taking charge of multi-million dollar accounts. When I went on-site on my first consulting project, my counterpart was surprised to see a 25 yr old manager. In traditional software companies, it takes years to reach to this stage. Not so here.

Handling such a large responsibility so early boosts your confidence. This is one of the first things you'll notice when you talk to any Trilogian - no matter whom you are talking to, person oozes confidence. And this confidence is very vital to make you believe that you can take on the world. The first ingredient of a startup.

2. Learn at your own risk
At Trilogy, there's hardly any hierarchy. There are very few people above you and even less to guide you. Assigning you a task is like throwing somebody to a pool to let him/her learn swimming. That, in my opinion, is the best way anybody can learn the tricks of the trade. It may not be best for the company, sometimes people make mistakes leading to big mess, but a person learns best from experience, especially from their own failures.

Taking risks, making mistakes and learning from them is a crucial part of startup cycle. Only those who are able to embrace this, survive.

3. Master of all trades
Another hallmark of job at Trilogy is that there are no specialists. Every developer is supposed to write their own test cases, be it unit tests, integrated or performance tests. If there's something wrong with the database, go and fix it yourself. You are supposed to write customer documentation on your own for your feature. Everybody knows the full process of a deployment. We actually used to take turns. Every once in a while, we used to assign a person who to checkpointed the source code, fire the build, run all test cases, certify the release, and send release email.

This process produced people who were master at everything and didn't hesitate to get their hands dirty no matter what the task. And this skill is very valuable in startup context. You are your own admin, database specialist, marketing guy, tech guy.

4. Great People, Great Ideas
Trilogy recruitment process was termed as one of the toughest in the industry. In fact, when some of the bigger names (read Amazon, Google) started their operations in India, they used Trilogy as a hunting ground for their recruitment. "Great People" used to be one of the core philosophies at Trilogy.

What this strict recruitment process did was that it created a pool of very smart people. And when you have lots of smart people around you, you learn a lot - even if you are the smartest. Some of the toughest problems in the industry get discussed and ideas flow like water in a river. Solving tough problems becomes a habit. If somebody need any ideas for a startup, get your ears to those corridors.

Also, it was a small company. Revenue per employee at Trilogy was one of the highest in industry. Nobody can afford to sit idle. It had people who got things done - one of the essential traits for anybody involved in a startup.

5. Entrepreneur Spirit
Trilogy had this unique fresher training program called Trilogy University. It was a work-hard-party-hard kind of atmosphere. One of the hallmarks of this was the TU project, where freshers used to come up with ideas around running a new business. They had to think of an idea, pitch it to the CEO, and execute it in 6 weeks time. It was very much like a startup. The whole experience was like a startup school - you learned how to come up with new ideas, evaluate them, pitch it, get customers, make money out of them. Even if many of them didn't went on to become success, you got to learn what works and what not. Now if you pitch your idea to anybody out of this "university", be prepared to answer tough questions!

Successful People, not just Successful Company
In my small career, I got to work in only one company. I never got a reason to change. I loved my life back there, it was so much fun. And perhaps this is one of the reasons it took me so much time to come out and start something of my own! I am glad I did both - got skills that prepared me for my next assignment.

I am sure there are other companies out there which have similar environment. There are more startups coming out of India and they have equally good ideas around making people successful, not just the company. After all, a company can be successful only when its people are successful.

The "Coolness" of Beta Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:44:00 +0000

Many people ask me why MSI is an invite based site and not open for registration. After all, being a startup, shouldn't increasing user base be one of the goals?

Even more people mistake it as planned marketing strategy, citing Gmail as an example. The concept being that an invite only registration adds to the "mystery", making people curious and wanting for more.

While this concept worked for Gmail, with people auctioning the invites on eBay, I doubt it was meant to be this way. As a marketing strategy, I guess it's quite a risky one - you are trying to increase your user base by limiting it! Moreover, this concept can work only for a few products, products that are extremely good that can create a hugely positive word of mouth publicity. In that case, I am not sure why would any company whose product is that good would resort to this strategy. If it's good, it would anyway become popular. Also, after a few companies this out, the whole concept itself loses the novelty - quite a number of things look good only the first few time.

People tend to forget that the concept of beta is older than Gmail, or Google itself. And so is the concept of invites. I remember Netscape and Windows inviting people to try out their products before the final release. While Google is the one who made betas "cool", they are also the one who most misused the concept with betas running for years (Gmail is still in beta, after more than 4 years!)

So why are products invite only (or in beta)? While I can talk only about my startup, I think these concepts apply to others as well.

The main concept behind a closed beta is that the product is still in early stages and not ready for a full release. There can be bugs. Maybe the feature list is not complete for a good user experience. Perhaps the UI is not as nice as for a production ready product.

But if it's not ready, why release it at all? Why not wait a little longer for product to finish? Because for any product to be successful, you need feedback, from actual users for whom it is meant for. However, not all users are forgiving. If your product is not ready, they may get turned off. Worse, write a bad blog turning off even more users. So you release it to a limited set of users. You can always find a few users who are more tolerable. They can ignore a few blips here and there if they like the idea and see the potential. They are ready to invest their precious time to try and help you in your initiative.

When should you open up? Well, short answer is when it's ready. And readiness varies from product to product.

In case of MSI, I define readiness as user getting excited enough to "use" our site. When a user joins our site, we have an expectation as to the level of activity. We certainly do not expect users to log in daily - we are a travel portal and people don't think about travel everyday. But we do expect users to add their past trips, upload photographs, maybe write a review or two, send out mails to a few friends. When our users do that regularly, I would call ourselves successful and would signify time to open up. Till that time, we'll prefer to stay as beta and keep improving.

Where are we on that goal now? Not quite there. One of the feedbacks we got while we sent out the last few invites was that entering old trips was long process. Clicking "Enter past trip" button for each trip was not the easiest thing to do. We resolved that by upgrading Travel Map so that you can just click on the destinations you've been to and a trip would automatically get created thereby significantly reducing the time to load your past trips. And new users would automatically be sent to this page as part of registration. We'll observe user's behavior on this feature and see how it's going. If you are one of the users of our site, do let me know if it helped.

One another important thing that we are set out to do as part of beta is to encourage people to write about their travel experiences. While there are ways to do it currently, I feel they are not appropriate for a number of travelers. Not everybody wants to maintain a blog for writing travel experiences. Maintaining a blog is very intimidating and many people give up after a post or two. Travel is supposed to be fun and writing about it should not come with burden of maintaining a blog. We want to provide a comfortable setup for people to share experiences. While this is a long-term goal, I am happy to say that we have been seeing some success with it. Two of our users (Anshul and Shobhit) not really known for their writing in past have written about their experiences, for the first time - here and here. If we can do that on regular basis, it would be a great success for our site.

These are some of the tweaking we are doing to achieve the goals we have set out for ourselves to open up.

These days beta is synonymous of "cool". But one should be wary of misusing it. It should not be used as an excuse for inferior product. It is easy to get complacent on the beta tag. The earlier you get out of it, the better. You should set goals for your product to come out of the beta tag. That is best not only for your product but for your users as well.

How to Start-up

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:01:00 +0000

In India, very few people start a startup straight out of college. A few have been quite successful, but it has been almost a rarity. I don't know if it's the education system or the society, or both, but we have got to do better. Corporate experience is not really a must for a startup, and in reality, can prove to be a hindrance. However, we'll probably see more stories of college grads starting out in future. I see lot of enthusiastic youngsters in startup events and hoping that at least a few get inspired.

As of now, it is more common for people to think about startups while on their job. Though not always, but many a times, these are the people who have been successful at their jobs - getting fast promotions, having the highest paychecks among peers, collected a few awards. I guess that sort of gives the confidence you need to take on the world.

When you are thinking of starting something of your own, you get lots of ideas. There are a ton of things wrong in this world, and there's opportunity at every nook and corner. What you zero in on is upto you. Sometimes people choose the one where their interest lies. Sometimes it's where they see the biggest market opportunity. Other times it's the one that suits their skill-set. Many a times, it's a combination of all these.

No matter what idea you decide, you've got to be passionate about it. You are going to bet your life on it, so you better be as convinced about it as anyone can be. Bug bucks and fame will follow automatically, but these can't be the main drivers. These are extrinsic motivations. Intrinsic ones work much better, and last longer. And there's nothing that matches passion. You'll see lots of ups and downs in your startup life, and if it's not backed by strong conviction, chances are you'll give up too soon.

It helps a lot, actually highly recommended, to discuss your idea with others before taking the plunge. And discuss a lot. You'll get to hear different opinions. A few will be encouraging, but majority will likely be on the negative side. Partly because majority of the people are risk averse, and their opinion on something as risky as starting a startup is not going to be as per your liking. After all, if they think good about starting a startup, there are chances quite a few of them would have started on their own. And partly, you'll get the impression of negativeness because you might not crystal clear about your idea and may tend to take any questioning of your idea in a negative way. That happened with me a lot. It happens with everybody.

What kind of people should you talk to? I would say of as many type as you can. Talk to your family and friends first. They are likely to be the most negative, because they care about you the most and will do everything to prevent you from doing anything risky. If you survive, talk to a few people who have already started. They'll give out some good practical advice on how to proceed further, what all to consider, how to plan. And they are likely to be more encouraging. One of the advice they are going to give is to talk to your customers. They are your next destination. They'll give you the finer points on the product you are going to build and will help you understand your to-be-product better.

When you talk to people, be as specific as you can. It's fine if you are not super clear about your idea. That is one of your motives talking to people - get more clarity and feedback on your idea. People can give you better advice if you ask on specifics rather than a general notion.

One of the worries of would-be entrepreneurs at this stage is stealing of ideas. Many people don't talk in detail for the fear of somebody else starting out on a similar idea. This is one of the biggest fallacies. So far, you'd have realized that starting a startup is tough. To think that just by hearing your idea somebody else would get inspired to quit his/her job is ludicrous. It's tough to be passionate about an idea, it is almost impossible to be passionate about somebody else's idea. And say, for pure theoretical analysis, if somebody did do that, do you really think they'll be successful executing *your* idea? At best, they can pick on your idea and start on some version of it.

For a startup, somebody else executing similar idea should be least of their worries. Why? Because no matter what idea you think of, there'll always be somebody who would have thought of similar idea, and probably executing it right now. And even if you don't know who they are, you better believe there are smart people out these doing exactly the same thing as you and plan accordingly. You've got to think of it in terms of how you are going to execute yours rather than what others might be doing. You have got to learn to co-exist with your competitors. If you do not have any competitors, you are probably in the wrong field.

It's not a bad idea to do this thinking while on your job. Shaping an idea is not really a full time work. You can manage it with your current job. And it is probably advisable to do it with your current job so that you give yourself enough time for thinking. Quiting your job and then thinking about an idea will panic you and probably you'll start something out of desperation rather than conviction. And that is just not good. So, do justice to yourself and your idea by giving yourself sufficient time.

However, when you have locked down on a particular idea, do it full time. It is important for you to understand that it is almost impossible to develop something useful part time. There's a whole philosophy behind part time vs full time, but the gist is don't do it part time, it's not going to work.

Switching from part-time (shaping the idea) to full-time (developing the idea) is a tricky business. There are no fixed set of rules when to do it. What suits you is dependent totally onto you. It's an art so to say. Switch too soon without proper planning and you may be headed for a failure. Switch too late and market opportunity might be gone.

However, these are extreme cases. Don't get bogged down with timing it perfectly. Even if you did it on perfect time, you can't tell it until many years later. I can't tell whether mine was a perfect decision even after 9 months. What is important is that you do what you are comfortable with. Something that you don't have to regret. Planning helps in this. Have a plan for the best case, and a worst case, no matter how sure you are of its success. Have some criteria to measure your success. Have a cut-off time and a goal beyond which you'll just say it doesn't work and move onto better things in life. At MSI, we gave ourselves 1.5 years. We are into 9th month and are doing excellent!

Financial planning is one of the most important things you need to consider when jumping to full time. Make sure you have enough funds to sustain you through the period, at least till cut-off time. Look at your savings. Ask friends and family for support. If needed, look out for some Angel funding.

These are all good ways of acquiring funds. There are bad ways too. One of the most common is to do some part time consultation on the way to earn the extra buck. One of the stakeholders decide to get some external projects and work part time. This is even more dangerous than being on a day job and working part time on idea. In a day job, you have at least some stability and predictability in terms of effort gone outside startup. Any kind of consultation or part time work outside job would be going backwards. And one should avoid that for the sole reason - focus. You are better off focusing on your core idea. If you need finances, go for other routes. Don't do it at the cost of your startup. Anything that will cause you to devote less time and energy on your startup is a bad idea and will seriously jeopardize it.

Starting a startup is difficult enough. Wrong notions surrounding it make it even more tough. Make sure you get the right advice. Even if you disagree with the above concepts, make sure you consult people you trust. Don't go by the buzz-in-the-town kind of information, they are wrong more often than not. Startup ecosystem in India is a new one, and it is bound to take sometime before it matures into something which breeds success on regular basis. Till then, you have more responsibility to filter the noise and consume right things.

Happy starting-up!

Being Your Own Boss

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:48:00 +0000

One of the side effects of being an entrepreneur is that you are your own boss. Unlike some other side effects you might have come across, it is a good one to have. You get to do things your own way - own tasks, own deadlines, own work. You are your own manager. Basically, you have lot of flexibility.

This is vastly different from the corporate way of doing things, where you are assigned a project and you have to deliver tasks as per the project plan. For any project, there is a set pattern of things to be done. There is an order.

Not so in a startup. Things are more adhoc, sometimes haphazard. You can drive things as crazy as you want. Things change on a daily basis. You are playing god in your own startup.

As Spiderman was told by Uncle Ben - With great power comes great responsibility. By doing things your own way, you are entrusting yourself with great responsibility. Now your success or failure depend a whole lot on you. In a corporate world, you might have got seniors and managers above you who would point out your mistakes, who mentor you. You do not enjoy such luxury in a startup.

But then, isn't that one of the main reasons why startups are fun? In a big company, you have set rules and you play according to that. There is not a whole lot of deviation you are expected to make. In contrast, startups are all about breaking the rules. That is in the definition of a startup.

If the startup way of doing things would have only the fun in it, everybody would be following it. The reason not everybody follows it is that it has its own risks. Risks that can jeopardize the success of the initiative.

One of the potential pitfalls of nobody being above you is missing deadlines. Because you are your own boss, there's scope of you taking the deadlines lightly and thereby missing a few. This is probably the biggest misuse of such power.

You miss deadlines primarily because either at some level you do not want to work on the task at hand, or are distracted by other things despite wanting to work on it. The distraction is even more of an issue in a startup because there are a thousand things crying out for your attention. And this is something that you need to be careful of. Prioritization is one which would help you from distractions.

The second part of not wanting to work on the task probably doesn't apply in a startup. By definition, in a startup, you love what you do. Even if there's a task which you are not expert at, you'd do it happily. So, there is really no reason to believe that you'll falter on deadlines.

In fact, it's the other way round. Because you love what you do, there is a fear of you overworking, which may lead to burnout over long period of time. So, you might want to introduce deadlines to slow you down! I think that is a bigger risk than skipping deadlines, and probably more common observed phenomenon.

When working in a startup, it's easy for people to underestimate the importance of break. People work long hours continuously to get the product out as soon as possible. This can be dangerous over longer duration.

One has to realize that while shifting from corporate world to startup world, psychologically you are in a different zone, but physically, it's the same world. You body still needs rest. Your mind can understand your enthusiasm to work more, your body doesn't.

So, take breaks regularly. If not a full weekend, take at least a day off every week. That'll help you recharge your cells and keep you fresh for the following week. Remember, a tired mind can't come up with innovative ideas. Creativity too suffers in the process. You won't be able to focus properly. And you need all of these to get your startup going. You need to be at your best as many days of your startup life as possible for it to succeed.

Two of the biggest things that you learn while being your own boss is time management and prioritization. Both of these things are crucial for success of any individual in professional life, and a startup being highly dependent of a few individuals, it directly affects the success of a startup.

Being in a startup, you'll likely be handling a multitude of tasks, not just programming. You are the admin guy figuring out whether the servers are up or not. You are the customer support answering all the questions. You are the marketing manager making sure your startup is being covered at the startup events. You are the SEO specialist worrying about rank in Google. You are the chief evangelist making people excited about your startup.

How efficiently you handle all these tasks is important. For your startup to be successful, you have to be good at this juggling, switching context in matter of seconds. Worse, you might not be particularly good at some of these tasks. You'd invariably end up spending considerable amount of time learning the ropes. Sometimes, you'd make mistakes and loose valuable time.

And that's fine. You've got to be comfortable with the fact that making mistakes is fine. That is how you learn. If you'd never try, you are never going to find out if you can do it or not.

And because there are just so many things to do at any given time, and you are just one soul, and you do not want to burn out either, you would have to prioritize the tasks.

One funny thing when you are in love with what you do is that every small thing seems important. Even the color and font of that small little footer. How can it be not important?

In a startup, everything is important. However, you need to classify items into more important and less important ones. And then let go of the less important ones. Not because less important ones are not crucial for your startup, but because you are not Superman. You can do only that much. It better be more important ones that find your immediate attention. It's hard, but it's got to be done.

With effective time management, you'd realize that with time you are more satisfied and happier. Satisfied because you would know that you have given it your best shot. Happier because you would see results sooner than later.

Being at the helm of things is tough. Some people do it better than others. Good news is that this is something that can be learnt with time and experience. What is important is that you do not loose sight. That you last to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that is what matters.

Of Cities And Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:45:00 +0000

When I was at IIT this weekend for Proto, I felt very strange how little I remember of it. I struggled to remember how to reach balcony of Seminar hall! I was there for 4 full years. I walked those 7 storeyed stairs hundreds of times. I sat in classrooms for hours. I have roamed around those corridors literally every day. I should have known every corner of it. But I didn't.

When I walked past my hostel, I remembered almost everything. I could picture every nook and corner of the hostel. Those corridors we've debated in. Those balconies we've played cricket in. The doors of those very rooms we've banged on. The NC-6 room I stayed in. I remember everything.

Maybe I remember more about the hostel because I spent more time there? We started bunking classes from second year, and were literally in hostel in final year. That reflects in our grades as well!

After college, I moved to Bangalore. Been 6 years now. With time, memories of Delhi faded away pretty soon.

I've lived in Delhi most of my life. I was born and brought up here. 6 years of childhood, 12 years of school, and then 4 years of college. And still, I hardly remember anything about Delhi. I still remember my days at our first Trilogy office in Bangalore. That's a solid 6 years ago.

Why is it like that? Why don't I remember more about Delhi? Why are my memories limited to IIT hostel only?

Maybe the memories are not related to the amount of time we spent. I believe they are more related to the "happy time" you spent. The more happy you are at a particular place, the more you remember of it.

I was never happy to attend classes at IIT. They were so routine. I almost hated "insti". I was much more happy to stay at hostel. And it's not about learning vs having fun. Of course we had fun in hostel. But I believe that the best education I got from IIT was from hostel, not the classes. All the people around you were so smart that you learned a lot every single minute. It's the way in which you learned that made the difference. While talking to people in corridors. Over mess table. Discussions at 4 in morning. There was no pressure of learning. No grades to be scored. No quizzes. Plain fun.

I can say the same about Bangalore when I moved here. Delhi was like "insti". Bangalore more like hostel. I loved just being in Bangalore. I still do. I feel Bangalore is *my* city. The moment the plane lands at Bangalore, I feel I've arrived at home. I never got that feeling in Delhi.

What city suits you is highly individualistic. For my parents, it's probably Delhi. At the end of the day, you should be where your heart is. Mine is in Bangalore. You should choose to live in a city where you enjoy, where people makes you feel happy.

I'll quote a dialogue by Boman Irani from Bluffmaster. This I think is the best dialogue I've ever seen in a movie (after Tum kya Jano pyar kya hota hai by Ajay Devgan in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam).

Roy, tumhe apni zindagi mein aise kitne khoobsurat din yaad hain....first job, pehla shoot, pehli salary, jab tumne ladki ko pehli baar chuua....pehli baar chuma, jab pehli baar tumhara dil dhadka...Aise kitne din yaad hain, 15, 20, 25 din, 30? Bas 30....30 special days...30 saal ki zindagi, aur tumhe sirf 30 din yaad hain?

Watch the entire scene on YouTube -

Why NOT to take VC money

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:43:00 +0000

I was at Proto this weekend. It's one of quite a few events I attended this year; by far the best in terms of people who attended. Also got a chance to visit my alma mater - IITD, after a long time. Not many things have changed there!

After a few startup events, you start noticing patterns. People buzzing with energy. Organizors running around to make sure everything's ok. Bloggers typing in to give up-to-date information to their readers. And amongst all this, one of the familiar scenes is VCs being searched and hounded by entrepreneurs and wannabes. Many rush to introduce themselves, asking questions, pitching ideas, exchanging cards. A few keep reminding them of their previous meeting at another such event. Some refer about a mail they have written long time back (for which they didn't get any replies!). And VCs, like celebrities whom fans asking for autographs, oblige almost everybody with a minute or two of their precious time. VCs are rockstar at such events.

To a bystander, it'll appear like entrepreneurs are there because of VCs. Getting to a VC seem like their sole aim. It's almost as if if you don't get to VC, your day is wasted.

I wonder why isn't it the opposite? Why should not VCs hound entrepreneurs. Sure money is important, but aren't VCs there because of some folks who risk their professional life (and many a times even more) and start something new? Isn't it how it's "supposed" to work? Whose risk is greater, VC or entrepreneur?

To be fair, it does work like that, sometimes. VCs do initiate on their own when they see a bright startup. But it's so rare that you seldom hear such stories. And when it does happen, it becomes legend.

Why is it that this doesn't happen often enough? For one, their inbox are flooded with business plans. They don't need to. And, it's but obvious that for somebody with tons of money and lots of risk involved, it'll take an exceptional startup to get VC going after it. And certainly, extremely good startups happen less frequently. Although it doesn't have to be, at any point in time, there are only a few ideas that are life changing. And when VCs spot them, they take the initiative. No doubt, world would be a better place if we can have such startups more often.

Why, then, we don't see these brilliant startups that often? Is it lack of ideas? Or ideas?Any VC will tell you that they see tons of brilliant ideas every day. And it's not hard to believe. There are so many things wrong in this world that can be fixed. There are so many brilliant people who take up these problems and try to solve. Where they fail is execution.

And I think *one of the reasons* we don't see brilliant people execute successfully is because of our obsession with VCs - we overrate VC funding. In early stages, entrepreneurs are better off doing what they do best - executing ideas, solving problems, creating value. Not chasing VCs.

Mind you, it's *one* of the reasons, and an important one at that, it's not the sole reason. There are other reasons for startup failures - wrong strategy, wrong decisions, dispute between founders etc.

One has to realize that VC funding is difficult for a first time entrepreneur, anywhere in the world in general, and India in particular. By difficult I mean it not only is less frequent (i.e. less startups get the VC money), it also takes lots of time. Probably a minimum of 3-4 months, and an average of 6 months. Now that is detrimental for two reasons - it not only engages your precious manpower, it also shifts the focus of the startup away from their core business.

It would be foolish to say that you can get somebody to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars without adequate effort. To get VC money, you need a good chunk of your manpower focused on it. And manpower is a precious thing for any early stage startup - that's the most valuable resource you have. Rather than working on the product, you are now tied up with updating the business plan, creating forecast spreadsheets, preparing for anything and everything a VC can ask. Now that is some task. When you have limited number of people to work, it is almost impossible to do it without affecting your core business.

More importantly, the focus of the company can get affected. Now, the focus is not what customers want, but what VCs want. VCs are the new customer. Suddenly, you start working on features which will make you look good in front of VCs. It's not always a bad thing, but many a times, it can be. And it can be the make-or-break-bad. More often than not, the difference between a startup and it's well established competitors is the focus. The moment it's affected, it has the potential to setback the startup by a few months, if not close it down completely.

One other minor reason to not go for funding at early stages is equity dilution. The earlier you approach funding, the less chance you are giving yourself to implement the idea. That means less bargaining power with the VCs. Even if you are successful in raising money, you'll probably end up with little money for significant share to VC. Remember, most startups raise funding only twice, and in rare cases thrice. Each time, you'll have to shell out minimum 20%, likely more. In almost all cases, by the second round, you'd have lost control of your company.

However, the reason I mentioned the third reason as minor is because it's not going to close down the company, unless it has very bad effect on your motivation, which is less likely since by definition, entrepreneurs are strong willed. The only drawback here is that you'll probably be less rich. (Yes, as Paul Graham said in one of his articles, one of the first things you learn when you get rich is that there are different levels of richness.)

Many a times, entrepreneurs mistakes VC funding to be a success in itself. It's as if they have won a battle. They are wrong. VC funding is just an enabler for a larger good - your product. VCs are not the best judge of ideas, or people for that matter. If they reject your idea, it does *not* mean your idea is not worth pursuing. If you believe in your idea, you should continue on it, VC or no VC. On the other hand, if you get funding, that does not necessarily mean you'll be successful. We have numerous example where funded startups tanked. VCs themselves have an equation where out of every 10 startups, more than 5 just close down (2-3 giving moderate returns, 1-2 super successful). The best judge of your startup is your customers. They are the ones whom you should treat as barometer.

So, you shouldn't get VC funding at all? Is it bad to approach VCs?

No, not at all. When you need money for your startup, you should definitely approach VC. It can be a question of survival. With lack of funds, your shop can get shut down.

However, the key is to identify whether you need funding or not. Many of the startups don't realize how long they can go without funding. It's known as bootstrapping. Many don't even know what they'll do with the money they are raising. There should be a definite purpose to ask for funding. If you don't, continue working.

Before approaching a VC, you should ask yourself -

Have we analyzed thoroughly the need for funding? Can we not cut the costs and continue?
Have we explored all other avenues of money - savings, family, friends (in that order)?
If we need to approach VC at all, what are we going to spend the money on?

For many startups, especially the web startups, you don't need huge amount of money to run on. Try and see if you can find out ways to avoid funding at early stages. Maybe you can do with small amount from your family and friends. And seriously, "Marketing" is a bad answer to #3. As Mahesh Murthy pointed out yesterday at Proto, budget for marketing is inversely proportional to the brain size! If marketing is the primary reason for seeking funding, you are better off coming up with ideas to do it without huge investments.

Indian entrepreneurs live in a world dominated by VC-centric thinking. The earlier we come out of it, the better. Part of the problem is that we do not have any role models, any celebrated success stories from which we can learn on, take comfort from.

To close, I'll quote Mahesh once more -

Think of 5 entrepreneurs your really admire, and you'll realize that none of them took VC funding in early years.

If not from Indian context, maybe we can learn from US counterparts.