Teknatus Solutions

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-24T10:55:29-08:00

We wanted to wish all of you a very happy holiday season and a safe, healthy, prosperous 2011. See you in 2011!

Happy Holidays by http://dryicons.com

Happy Diwali and a Safe, Prosperous Year Ahead

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: “Point of Control: Finance”

2010-11-18T16:10:54-08:00

Here’s a great video from the Web 2.0 Summit 2010 of John Doerr and Fred Wilson discussing all things vc/angel/startup.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: \"Point of Control: Finance\"

Startup Weekend NYC Roundup

Happy Diwali and a Safe, Prosperous Year Ahead

2010-11-04T22:21:22-07:00

Diwali has a great deal of significance to Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. It is a national holiday in over 10 countries and is celebrated in many many more.

As I miss out on the festivities, fire crackers, family, friends, food, weather and, of course, the pollution in Delhi I look to the new year with optimism and hope. Here’s to a very Happy Diwali and a safe, healthy and prosperous year ahead to all.

Diwali Diyas Photo by Pankaj

Happy Holidays!

Startup Weekend NYC Roundup

2010-09-13T13:35:19-07:00

This past weekend was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had. It was a little over 50 hours of intense execution by 150 people dedicated to turning ideas into businesses by the end of the weekend. Taking something from the idea stage to launching it with a business model, an investor pitch, and a functioning product is no small feat. To have accomplished this in 50 hours, was truly amazing. In case you don’t know, Startup Weekend NYC is the event I’m referring to.

Below is a list of the teams that formulated an idea, built a revenue generating business model around it, launched it, and a few of them even got customers in less than 48 hours.

Game Builder Studio is a flash platform game editing suite that provides flash developers with the necessary tools to build the next generation of flash games. Games that are more immersive and interactive and visually stunning. It boasts the capabilities of being able to make a Mario Bros. style game, a Farmville style game, or a 3D immersive game. The simplicity of its user interface allows for inexperienced game developers to jump right in and start creating but provides more experienced flash game developers with the ability to add enhanced features as needed using the editors plugin API

SingSend

Dial-in, pick a song and sing along! The real cool thing about it is you can also send your track over to anyone by putting in their phone number. Try it out by calling Call 201-564-0921 to join the fun!

Disclaimer:I was a part of team Shumarks and personally own 1% of it.
Shumarks is the easiest way to bookmark and share articles you’re reading on the web with others and create a permanent store where anyone can always refer to them.

It’s the fastest, easiest, and potentially most fun way to find people you’d want to live with. After quickly creating an online profile describing your living habits and preferences, they’ll send you an invitation to a local meet-up in your area.You’ll only be mingling with those you might want to share a home with. So behave yourself.

VROOMmates had people registered and using their service even before they presented the business on Sunday evening.

This is an absolutely awesome service. Adopt A Hacker gives techies a place to crash when they want to visit NYC. They can stay with some great people for free, get connected immediately into the NYC tech scene and get hacking! Do check it out if you want to visit NYC and hack or if you’re in NYC and would love to adopt a hacker for a few days.

Main Street

In less than 60 seconds, you can have a super-simple and effective website that provides your visitors all the necessary information about your business. Main Street instantly pulls in content found on popular social websites including Twitter, Foursquare and Yelp. You, the small busines owner, has complete control in deciding which content to promote to visitors of your website.
The guys from Main Street hit the pavement hard and got customers onboard withing 36 hours of starting up. Completely awesome!

Another great idea launched this weekend was by a lawyer who wants to commoditize legal documents. For businesses, it’s a platform to access custom tailored legal documents and for lawyers, it’s a platform to discuss and create legal documents.

Do check out some of the company presnetations and also the #nycsw event stream on twitter.
For a full list of demos, take a look at the NYC Startup Weekend site.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: “Point of Control: Finance”

Five-ish Team Building Pitfalls Faced By Startups in India

2010-06-23T15:47:47-07:00

Picture by Carbon Tippy ToesSome rights reserved

Building a team under the best of circumstances is difficult at best. As technology entrepreneurs, we will look for co-founders or senior management team members that have experience in engineering, sales/marketing, biz dev, management, fund raising and so the list goes on. In places like New York or Silicon Valley or London, it’s a bit easier to connect with the appropriate people and convince them to join your crazy idea.

Management/Co-Founding Team

In India, specifically, New Delhi, it’s a completely different ballgame. Though the word “startup” has become en vogue for college grads and those early in their careers, it’s still not something that more experienced people are comfortable with. Cities like Pune or Bangalore may be a bit different but it is rare to find someone at a startup that has 10 or 15+ years of sales experience, for example. Out of all the startups that I have come across in Delhi, I can only think of one startup that had a solid co-founding team out of the door and was also hiring senior sales, engineering, and operations folks very soon after starting up.

Finding an experienced team for a startup is very difficult, mostly because successful fist timers either continue on with their venture for various reasons, they cash out and join a VC firm or they disappear for a few years on an extended vacation. Very few of them become serial entrepreneurs and not many of them take on mentoring first time entrepreneurs.

Already having a network of entrepreneurial folks is the ideal situation but since that’s not necessarily the case for those of us not living in India, you can also try a recruiter to help you find an experienced management team, though, recruiters weren’t very useful for me when trying to put together my co-founding team.

I would suggest using personal and professional networks, organizations such as TiE, HeadStart, and Proto to start building a network of potential co-founders and senior employees well before you’ve made the decision to startup in India. If you’re not in India, I would strongly advise creating a budget for traveling to India a few times prior to moving to spend time and meet with some of the people you’ve identified as potential co-founders/senior team members.

Obsession with Entrepreneurship

India truly is a land of entrepreneurs. Everyone ranging from the corner grocery “thela” or pushcart, to the founders of Reliance and Tata are entrepreneurs. What this means in the context of startup team building is that it’s very hard to find good people who want a job a for very long. Generally speaking, competent people in India are perpetually trying to figure out how they can go off on their own and be their own boss. Many times they will get a partner like a friend or relative but rarely will they join a startup where they aren’t at the top of the pyramid.

There are plenty of engineers, sales/marketing people that start up a business of their own on a daily basis, most typically a service oriented business because of the low capital requirements.

One of the ways you can use this entrepreneurial desire in Indians to build your own startup team is to seek out those you want to start their own business. Nurture them, mentor them, and give them equity in your business as well as look at the possibility of funding/incubating their business ideas. Though they may not be ready to be co-founders in your venture, they very well could be superstars in your startup and when the time is right, they may even be your first angel investment.

Being a No Name

Another stumbling block to hiring a strong team is the Indian obsession with brand names. Indian families place a great deal of stress on their kids to go work for a large brand name company. In technology, this means college grads looking for jobs at a foreign multinational corporations (“MNCs”) like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Nokia, Motorola, etc. or one of the Indian multinationals like Wipro, TCS, Infosys, HCL, etc. (referred to as The Axis of Evil by Vishal Gondal of IndiaGames). Startups obviously haven’t developed a brand name so recruiting good talent in India is much harder.

Because of the emphasis on brand names in India, what happens is that most of the great talent gets sucked up by the big MNCs and large Indian MNCs who hire 20,000+ engineers yearly. What’s left over goes to the second and third tier tech companies. Finally, whoever didn’t get a job anywhere else submits their resume to more or less every job opening on Monster India, Naukri, etc.

However, there’s no reason you can’t build a brand with a little bit of money and some time. Build your brand by blogging, engaging with people on Twitter and contributing useful, insightful comments in the appropriate Linkedin groups. You’ve all heard this stuff so let’s move onto the fun stuff. Give your time to an entrepreneurial organization like TiE, HeadStart or Proto. Organize events, speak at events, create presentations and if possible, get some press coverage. Traditional media in India still has the breadth and depth of distribution that new media hasn’t been able to achieve yet. Organize and hold BarCamps or similar unconferences and promote yourself and your startup accordingly. You probably won’t be able to build a nationwide household brand name in a few months or a year but you will be able to build a localized brand name for your target audience, potential co-founders and employees with an entrepreneurial bent for your startup.

You can also use the Indian job sites mentioned above but you’ll be buried under a deluge of resumes. Good luck sifting and sorting those few hundred resumes to find the diamond in the rough. It happens but the odds are totally against you finding a star amongst the flood of resumes you’ve received.

If you can find a decent head hunter (“Recruiting Consultant”) that is willing to work with a startup, then I highly recommend using one. They will sort thru the resumes for you and instead of getting two hundred resumes, you may get fifty. The other benefit to using a good recruiter is that they will make sure the candidate actually shows up for the interview.

Dealing with Recruiters

Recruiters will typically take a month’s salary for “freshers” or mid-level candidates and they can take up to twenty percent of the total package for a senior candidate. Everything is negotiable so don’t hesitate in negotiating these fees. One recruiter I worked with started with sixteen percent of the total package or CTC (“Cost to Company”) paid within one month of the person being hired and they finally settled on one month’s salary being paid every quarter over the first year of the candidate’s employment. Recruiters are notorious for placing a person and then recruiting them for another job within three months. This was my insurance policy against the recruiter farming my employees, at least for the first year of their employment.

The flip side to working out a deal so favorable to you is that many recruiters will weigh the opportunity cost of working with you under conditions like this and as the market picks up, they will instead focus on the companies that will give the recruiter more favorable terms like full payment within thirty days of the candidate being hired. If you’re doing a high volume of hires this problem can be mitigated. Unfortunately most startups don’t hire twenty or thirty people in their first year in India unless their a service company and have positive cash flow very quickly.

Miscellaneous Pitfalls

“I’m two hours late to the interview because of traffic”

I’ve had quite a few candidates either show up more than two hours late for an interview or not show up at all. Traffic being the most often used excuse. The truth is, Indians don’t really respect time and this shows in all aspects of day to day life. Don’t take it personally. It happens more often than not so it’s nothing about you or your startup. Forget about it and move onto the next one. One thing that may make you feel like you’re not wasting your time is to schedule two or three candidates to come in at the same time and interview them on a first come, first serve basis. I wouldn’t dream of doing this in the US but in India, it’s the most productive and completely acceptable way of working.

The Employee’s Blank Stare

I had hired a designer who talked the talk really well. I’m not a designer but he sounded good. I hired him and he started work on a Monday. Wednesday morning, his mother called in sick for him. The following Monday, I had to fire him for spending too much time on IM with his wife, looking for another job while sitting two feet away from me and also downloading other people’s designs and logos off the web and passing them on as his own ideas. In the hour and a half “discussion” we had, rather than apologizing for the things he was blatantly doing wrong, all I got was the blank stare. It was my first experience with this sort of thing. Had I gotten a “I’m sorry about that and my problem is …..”, I probably would have given him another chance, while keeping a very close eye on him. I’m still not quite sure what the blank stare is for but in hindsight, I’m assuming it’s an apology without admission of guilt. Much like most settlements with the SEC.

Asides

Design, image, graphic theft is a very common issue in India. Many “designers” are really just PhotoShop jocks taking other people’s work so keep an eye out for this and encourage fresh ideas.

Many new developers suffer from the copy and paste syndrome so try to encourage them to write their own code hence, developing their skills as programmers, and limiting any sort of legal and other liabilities.

Firing people in India isn’t so clean cut so, I’d advise you to look into some of the laws related to Hiring and Firing in India.

“I want my own startup but I don’t want your stinkin’ Equity”

Conserving cash and giving options or equity to employees in India can be tough. Very few 20-somethings will opt for more options than cash. The reason is pretty simple. A check every month going into their bank account that they can show to their parents, grandparents, extended family, significant others and potential marriage proposals goes a lot further than showing off a share certificate. Budget for paying salaries instead of very low salaries and some equity options (“ESOPS”). You may wind up giving the employee some options later on, if they stick around for some time or if you sell the company or go public but for various sociological reasons, “cash is king” so save the equity for those who really value it.

I would love to hear some of your stories and comments. What do you think? Drop in a comment below with your thoughts.

Seven Steps to Starting a Company in India

2010-05-17T04:38:10-07:00

Picture Copyright of claudiogennari

This is part I in a series of posts about issues faced by Teknatus Solutions Private Limited in India from 2007 – 2010. Being the first part, I’m going to look at the steps needed to get a business registered in India. I’ll examine the case of a foreign national/foreign company looking to setup an Indian subsidiary.

Rules in India for registering a company a quite onerous and time consuming. However, shutting down a company is even more difficult so make sure you need to register a Private Limited company or a LLP before going down this road.

Disclaimer: This is not legal or financial advice. Consider this nothing more than an explanation of what I did, and why I did it this way.

Find a Recommended Chartered Accountant (CA) and Lawyer

As with any country, when starting a business, it’s advisable to have a good accountant and lawyer working with you. In India, CAs provide a great deal of legal advice as well as accounting advice. I suggest finding a CA and lawyer in your city that is recommended by someone you know and trust. It took me some time to find a good one that fit into my budget but when I did, his firm took a great deal of burden off me in setting up the company and dealing with the various bureaucracies.

Apply for a PAN (Permanent Account Number) Card

The first thing required to do anything in India is to get a PAN Card if you don’t already have one. If you’re a foreigner or NRI, you probably don’t have one. If you’re a foreigner or NRI moving to India, apply for a PAN Card as soon as possible. The Indian government recently announced that they will begin accepting PAN card applications at embassies and consulates so please check with your local consulate/embassy first. If you’re in India already, the best thing would be to call the IT (Income Tax) Department Hotline and ask them where the closest PAN card processing center for foreigners and NRIs is. Some centers, do not accept applications from foreigners or NRIs. If you’ve already found a good CA or lawyer then they can probably take care of this for you. However, I found that Chartered Accountants, Agents, and Brokers in India were not very effective in obtaining a PAN Card for foreign nationals, though, they were always very confident that they could get it done quickly and easily. Instead, calling the IT Hotline and going in person to apply can be much cheaper and quicker.

Call the IT Hotline for the closest processing center
Go to the processing center with 2 passport photographs (Indian size passport photos, not US size passport photos), a proof of address such as an MTNL/BSNL phone bill, bank statement, or passport copy with your address on it.
Submit the application and if all is in order, you should have your PAN card within a week.

Apply for a DIN (Director Identification Number)

A DIN is required for any and all Director’s of an Indian company. The DIN number is used by a Director for various government and official correspondence as well as opening up bank accounts, etc. As soon as you receive your PAN Card, you should apply for a DIN if you are going to be a Director of the company.

Apply for a provisional DIN
Pay the DIN application fee as described
Print out and mail in the DIN Application within 60 days of applying for the provisional DIN. It should be noted here that foreign nationals will need to provide a copy of their passport with the application. The passport will need to be notarized by the local Indian Embassy or Consulate. Before they will notarize the passport, you will also need an apostile from your local city or state government. If you already in India, you will need to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the local FRO office and have them notarize your passport copy before it can be submitted. If you get the passport notarized by your country’s embassy, you have a 50% chance of being rejected and you’ll need to apply again.

Apply for a DSC (Digital Signature Certificate)

The Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs has a pretty good explanation of how to obtain the DSC and the approved issuers or certificate authorities from whom you may obtain a digital certificate.

Apply for a Company

This step is probably one of the more complicated ones and I do suggest having your CA handle this step. I found that having my CA get the DIN, DSC, and submit the application of incorporation to the RoC (Registrar of Companies) was fairly cost effective and saved me a great deal of time and aggravation. However, if you choose to go ahead and do it yourself, you should look into the MCA offices in your area and follow the steps necessary to form a Private Limited company in India.

In either case, you must do the following:

Find four possible names, in order of preference, that you would like to use for your company. The company names cannot be in use already and the company name must end in “Private Limited” for a privately held company.
Once a name has been approved by the RoC, submit the Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association. These two documents are critical and for the most part, they are fairly standardized. Your CA will provide these to you for filling in the blanks and then submit them to the RoC on your behalf. Your CA will also guide you in what other supporting documents are necessary.
If everything is in order, you will receive the Certificate of Incorporation

Apply for a Company PAN Card

Once you receive the Certificate of Incorporation, you will need to apply for a company PAN Card. You will not be able to open up a company bank account without a company PAN Card. Typically, you can apply at the place where you submitted the application for your personal PAN Card or your CA/lawyer can usually handle this for you.

Apply for a Company TAN (Tax Account Number)

The TAN will be used for collecting or depositing tax deducted at source (TDS). Like most forms in India, you can fill out the form online, print it out and send in a hardcopy. A list of processing centers can be found here. Consider having your CA or lawyer handle this along with the company PAN card.

The steps I’ve outlined here are pretty general and one thing to note is that the rules and requirements for many things in India change depending on who you speak to you or who’s got your file on their desk. For example, my DIN application was rejected because my passport copy was notarized by the embassy and NOT the Indian consulate or the Indian FRO office. However, the other Director’s DIN applications was successfully processed. Hence, you should know the requirements and know the process but it makes life much easier if you have a trusted resource to handle the bureaucracy for you. If you’re having trouble finding a lawyer or CA in India to handle things for you, post a comment and hopefully, we can get you the right person.

Resources

Namaste India

2010-05-13T12:51:53-07:00

Picture Copyright of Pankaj Jain

In early 2007, we made a commitment to open our office in New Delhi, India and begin building a platform to help connect India’s unskilled labor force with the Indian middle and upper class that had a requirement for unskilled labor like nannies, cooks, maids, drivers and other domestic services. We finally opened our office in January 2008, cutting through lots of red tape, hiring and firing a few unproductive legal and accounting “consultants”, borrowing office space and hiring a few college students as interns.

Some of the ups and downs that Teknatus faced have been documented on the Teknatus blog. However, the blog has been fairly silent for quite some time. I’ve finally been able to look back in a rear view mirror and talk about the journey, that eventually led to the closing of Teknatus’ New Delhi office, and my return to New York City.

This is the intro in a series of posts I’ll be doing on Teknatus’ journey in India and my decision to ultimately shut down Teknatus Solutions Private Limited. I hope other entrepreneurs in India and those considering a move to India get some valuable information from thus series of posts.

Stay tuned for Part I.

How to develop Technical Writing Skills

2010-02-09T07:28:21-08:00

Photo by Rob Ireton used under CC BY NC SA 2.0

Technical writing tends to baffle a lot of those who went to college for English or other Arts majors. There’s a lot of writers out there who want to get into technical writing but they don’t know where to start. This is especially true of those who had English majors in college and graduate to find that tech skills are in high demand. You have to be a bit technically inclined in order to get a job even as an entry level content writer. If you’re planning to get into technical writing or have a career, you should start reading before you jump in with both feet into a job you might end up really hating.

For technical writing skills specifically, you should read a lot of technical papers, instructions etc. and then write a lot. When it comes to writing skills, practice does make it perfect (no matter how clichÃ© it is). Ask yourself what niche market are you going to focus? Do you want to write software manuals? Manuals that come with electronics like cell phones, digital cameras and so on. Or are you interested in writing “how to” articles on using a particular system?

Find that niche first and start reading those articles, manuals etc. in that field so that you’re aware of the vernacular. I find WordPress Codex to have great information — the information is well organized and easy to follow, even for a non-technical person. They write stuff on how to use WordPress and things that you can do with it. It acts as an online manual for the masses. It is also a very popular blogging platform. For every great product, there is always a great support system. Technical writing IS first contact between the consumer and the product. Firefox support is another great support online. More and more people will be looking for support online in the coming years. Instead of calling customer support, consumers will be Googling and contacting other consumers. That’s why online written support is going to be really important for Web 2.0 products.

Once you’re familiar with the format, you should start writing your own manuals/technical articles, posts etc. You can do it on your own blog as tutorials. You can also join a community like Ubuntu and contribute to documentation. There’s a ton of open source projects that need help with documentation. What’s more, the open source community will support you as a writer, and as someone who is learning the ropes. Later on, you can even become an expert and you’ll be known for that.
Personally see technical writers as translators between geeks and the laymen. Geeks are great when it comes to developing new technologies but some of them don’t know how to communicate to the rest of the population who speak “English”. As a technical writer you need to understand geeks and translate that into English, breaking things down to the simplest level that everyone can understand. So, don’t forget to test it out on your mom after you’ve written something!

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Five most effective ways to use LinkedIn for your Business

2010-01-11T08:31:17-08:00

LinkedIn Smurfs Lunch

When people write and talk about LinkedIn, they usually focus on getting a job, connecting with the right network, and marketing your individual profile. All of this is career based and is focused on the individual. LinkedIn is a great platform for businesses, too, especially for startups, small and medium size businesses. LinkedIn can be a valuable business tool if you’re able to use it effectively. Here are five effective ways you can use LinkedIn for your business:

1. LinkedIn company profile
In order to have a brand presence on LinkedIn, you must have a company profile. Click here to start one now. It gives your company a face and the visitor an overview of what you’re all about without having to visit your website. Read more about setting up a LinkedIn company profile here. This gives your online presence a boost.

2. Network with thought leaders and potential strategic partners
LinkedIn groups are one of the best places to network with thought leaders in your industry and listen to what others are thinking and saying about in your industry. You’re allowed to join 50 groups on LinkedIn but don’t join all the groups in your industry. Pick and choose wisely because there’s a lot of messages that comes through active groups. You’ll have to test and see how it will work out for you and respond to discussions if they’re useful. This is a place where you can meet professionals who have the same interest and are on the same level as you are.

3. Do market research and get feedback
Depending on how active the people in your industry are on LinkedIn, you’ll be getting a lot of answers if you put your question out there. Ask a question in the LinkedIn Q&A Section it’s one of the best places that experts in your field will respond because they are listening. This is something that you can incorporate into your marketing research. Now you can even use LinkedIn Polls and get sample data from your professional network.

4. Become a LinkedIn expert
Just because you can ask questions doesn’t mean you can’t answer them. Make sure you’re monitoring questions that are related to your vertical, industry, or area of expertise. Depending on how often you answer and how you answer questions, it may take a while before someone marks you as an “Expert”. It’s worth your time if you can answer things the right way, and really think about the answers. If you’re an expert in your area already, you won’t have to think about it much. Besides, you’ll be getting good LinkedIn karma by helping someone out, and others will contact you if your answer is interesting enough.

5. Nurture and generate leads
eMarketer reports that online social spending happens because of marketing — not ads. While online ads still can’t be ignored, it’s the personal one-on-one connections that will make you network grow. In my experience, the contacts I get are usually people who are curious and have specific questions, or want to clarify things before they invest in online marketing. You might get different questions from different people but usually they all want to start a conversation. Now, it’s up to you to keep that conversation going and see if it leads to something else. [non-ad conversational online marketing spending rose from $650 million to $800 million between 2008 and 2009. It's expected to rise to $1080 million this year.] Small and medium size businesses might not have a big marketing budget, but spending the time to engage with your network can yield results, give you other sources of traffic, and get you leads. Engaging in conversations will get you prospects to look at you as an expert. If you have the right answers, they might even hire you, but first you need to put yourself and your business out there and market your expertise the right way.

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Photo by 99Zeros used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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7 Deadly Sins of A LinkedIn Profile

2010-01-08T09:37:22-08:00

A LinkedIn profile is like a CV or resume that you have online so that people can easily find you and know more about you if they choose to do so. In the last six months there has been an influx of “fake profiles” who are looking for connections, spamming groups, and sending out messages with just links back to their sites. A lot of us use LinkedIn to work and grow our business network. Throughout the past years that I’ve been on LinkedIn, I keep seeing a professional network growing and lapsing into just another social network. The number of users have increased from a little over 2000 unique visitors in November 2007 to a whopping 15 million plus by the end of 2009. Those who are serious about LinkedIn keep their profiles clean and network with a purpose. LinkedIn is there to build professional connections and growing your business network. So mistakes are a big no-no, epecially the following 7 unforgivable sins:

1. Your LinkedIn profile has no photograph
We live in a multimedia world, we like the Internet because it offers a personal touch. We like knowing what the person on the other end looks like. Make sure you have a professional smiling photo and not in some weird costume cap. Stock images or images that came with Windows are also easy to spot, it’s better to have no photo rather than looking at a photo that you might not have the license to displaying. Remember, this is your face, your photographic representation we’re talking about.

2. Spelling mistakes and typos galore
Having one or two typos is fine but there’s really no excuse when every other word is misspelled, especially on your profile. Would you have your resume with a bunch of spelling mistakes, letters without any cases, or worse, typed in like an SMS? Check your profile and make sure the formatting is right, don’t just put stuff in it. Even when you get recommendations from people, don’t put it up unless you’ve checked spelling and grammar. You can always politely point out the typos.

3. Your LinkedIn profile has no connections
Or what we call a “social media light weight” — it’s ok not to have a lot of connections if you just finished school, your profile would say that. But if you’re in a senior management position for an Internet company with little or no connections, it begs the question what your business is really all about. It also raise questions as to whether or not you’re even real, which gets us to our next point…

4. You’re using a fake LinkedIn profile
Fake profiles are easier to spot than you think. It’s also very hard to come up with a fake profile. It takes a lot of creativity and energy to make sure the person is who they really say they are. Using poser profiles that act as influencers, or part of your guerrilla marketing campaign but they just don’t work when it comes to LinkedIn. If you’re marketing on LinkedIn, it’s going to always be business-to-business. What’s the point of using a fake profile then? Once you’re found out, it’ll create not just mistrust but a bad reputation, too. Having a company’s profile or profiles with the name “Recruiter Company-X” doesn’t really make sense. If you want an official company profile, you should get your company a LinkedIn company profile. LinkedIn has different places for different things, use those to your advantage.

5. You haven’t updated your profile
The Internet operates on a real-time basis. It’s understandable that if you just joined a new job that your profile might not be updated but if your LinkedIn profile doesn’t match your resume, how can a company asses your Internet skills? A lot of people also have the habit of updating their profile right before an interview and start asking for recommendations, and start connecting again with people. Those people are just annoying. In the business world, you need to be connected with your key network and influencers no matter what.

6. You copied and pasted
Plagiarism is something that can get you expelled in school. In the professional world, it means that you have no credibility and if it’s a serious copy pasting job, it can get your company in a law suit. Write your own advice if you’re writing in group discussions or the LinkedIn Q&A section. The most common copy-pasting I’ve seen are on people’s recommendations. It’s ok if the person reciprocates recommendations but when both of them look the same, it looks a bit fishy. Write your own original recommendations by thinking about the person and what he or she did that was remarkable and outstanding. This is for their career as well as yours. What did you accomplish as a team? What were the challenges and how did you face them together? What did the person do that made all the difference? Don’t just write, “He is a very professional person,” we’re all ‘very professional’.

7. You don’t introduce yourself when you’re adding people
When you’re active in forums, discussion groups, and in the real world people get a lot of connection requests. If the person is a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) they’ll forgo the formalities and add you. For the rest of the people on LinkedIn, they don’t really have the time to add Tom, Dick and Harry. A personalized introduction makes all the difference. Otherwise you’ll not be connected and will be marked as “Do not know this person”. Ask yourself why you’re connecting to that person. Did you meet them? Did you read their blog? Are you interested in getting their expertise or offering them their services? Write that, make sure you have the person’s name right. Give them a reason to connect to you. What’s in it for them?

What are some of the things you’ve faced in LinkedIn that made you cringe? Can you think of more deadly sins that are big NO-NOs for a professional network? Leave your comments below.

You can always connect with me on LinkedIn (with an introduction of course) or follow my rants and raves on Twitter.

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