Category Archives: startup

startup

US Visa Interview – then and now

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Then – Year 2000. For Student Visa.

The visa tokens were given on first come first serve basis.

Me and my friend – Radhakrishnan – had a nice dinner in Anjappar I think – then around night 10 PM – dropped him in the line which started at the US consulate. The line had already reached Lloyds Road ( now called Avvai Shanmugham Road ). Lloyds Road is where my first project in TCS was – before we all moved to Sholinganallur.

There was a continuous supply of tea/coffee biscuits to the people in the queue. I then went back home after chatting for an hour. I would do the same waiting for him the next week.

Woke up at 4:00 AM and took an auto to the consulate. Relieved my friend around 5:00 AMish – and slowly saw the placeholder people being replaced with people like me.

Finally got my token and got my visa – now dont remember how much time it took – or who even interviewed me or what we spoke.

I did not carry any cell phone – oh wait I never had one that time – and just the folder with all my papers and some cash. Took an auto and went home.

Probably would have treated my friends that evening.

Now – Year 2022. Went for B1/B2 Visa

Had to book the appointment online. Got a confirmation for a Friday and Time – 8:30 AM slot.

This time I stayed in Ibis Chennai City Center – at 1000 Lights. I reached Wednesday night by train.

The interview was on Friday, but on Thursday had to go to a place in Nungambakkam for Biometrics and Photo – Chennai VAC center. It was well organised. They had multiple counters. The documents were checked and ten printed as they call – and took my photo.

While taking the finger print I had to use my right hand to put pressure on my left fingers – as I was not being able to give much force – thanks to my fall last week.

I had trouble when I had to put my 2 thumbs. My left thumb was not registering and the counter person asked me to put more force. I had to put some more force – to a point where it was hurting a bit – and it registered.

Close call. I dont know what would have happened if I had to put plaster etc. how would they have ten printed me.

It was all over within 10 minutes of me entering the premises.

Then got back to the hotel and worked on a very sloppy internet throughout the day.

Doze off by 10:00 PM reading Ponniyin Selvan Part 3. Friday morning, woke up at 5:00 AM. Do my morning meditation routine and even shaved – even though I will be wearing mask all the time – but being clean shaven makes me feel confident. I was ready by 7:50 AM.

I go to the lobby for the shuttle to the consulate – earlier the reception person said there is a shuttle every 30 minutes.

Till 8:10 AM the shuttle did not come. I considered walking – but walking in the Chennai weather would have made me all sweaty – or taking an auto. Did not want to haggle in the morning – since I cannot carry my phone ( or apple watch ) – I cannot book an Uber / Ola.

Finally the hotel shuttle arrived at 8:10 AM and dropped me by 8:13 AM. I got down in style. What a contrast – In 2000 I was sitting on the footpath on a newspaper on the same road. Few people were waiting – for the 9:00 AM slot.

They were allowing 8:30 AM slot candidates.

They checked my appointment letter and passport and let me in.

I didn’t carry my watch – so did not know how long it took. I had to stand in a meandering queue – before I was moved to the seats. There were 4 or 5 counters – and the ones who were seated were sent in round robin fashion.

I had my entertainment – could hear one side of the conversation – as they had speakers when the interviewer would ask questions. They spent a good amount of time with each interviewee. They were being thorough.

There were moms visiting their daughter in US, students going for their higher studies, a doctor, most were from the IT companies, and some one was going for a cultural program. Quite an interesting crowd.

I surveyed the crowd. Just one more guy and I were in Blazer.

We are the ambassadors of India and we should take extra care to present ourselves well. Of course there were some smartly dressed folks in regular formals – but wish the majority could have taken some extra effort to dress up well.

The Mom who was going to meet her daughter wore a nice Kanchipuram silk saree. That’s what I am talking about.

I was a bit disappointed on our crowd. Next time I will wear a dhoti and silk shirt.

One of the interviewers – was wearing jasmine flowers. She was such a sport. I decided if I go to her counter I will compliment her. But I was sent to another counter.

Finally my interview was done, the gentleman said my passport with visa will reach in a week.

I came out, avoided the auto guys offers, took the subway to the other side of the road and walked to Ibis. The time was around 9:50 AM after I reached the room.

The next adventure begins! Looking forward to reconnecting with US / LSU – and taking ADDA truly global.

Musings, startup

The High Valuation Loss makers

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This photo is circulating over linked in and Twitter since last week.

I was least surprised. I follow Entrackr and daily they send 3 startup’s news. One of them will be the financial breakdown of these heavily funded companies.

What surprised me was – the Aam junta were taken back by surprise. Many could not believe their eyes. They were asking for the poster for the source of this information – as if it was fake news.

Dunzo is a classic example. Many in Bangalore have used it and love dunzo. But they never think if it is a sustainable business. It will never be.

Uber – the one who started it all has publicly stated that they will never be profitable. I just checked – they listed at 42$ and now at 58$.

Perhaps the loss doesn’t matter anymore? Tomorrow Zomato is going IPO. Till now Indian stock markets rewarded profitable companies and punished loss making ones.

Perhaps the trend will change? Zomato’s stock price will go up and it will be kept there by punters and MF companies. The rest in the list will join – and they will just be played around via speculation – while these companies continue to make loses.

“Cred” being the first in list, got ridiculed a lot and Kunal Shah the founder of Cred got angry and posted this

That was yesterday. Today news was in news because they had raised $200 million at a valuation of $2.2Billion from $800 Million.

Now this wants me to ask a fundamental question – how much of this money is “theory” like bitcoin! If we add up all the money in the world – will it translate to the gold held in each country?

No?

If so – what is the multiple then? That is lets say – if US holds 100 Trillion Gold bars lets say – the total dollar money in the world = 10000 Trillion – so a multiple of 100.

What is the multiple if we add INR, Yen, Yuan etc.? Wouldn’t it be an astronomical number?

Anyway – there is too much paper money – in fact I don’t think there is paper money – it is all digital. Just like bitcoin. The $s are all digital.

The VC companies get their money from LPs.

The LPs get their money from other returns from VC investments

The returns from VC investments are obtained when VCs get an exit

And this has mushroomed bigger and bigger – perhaps the initial investment did start with some paper money.

I am just too brain fried right now. I am not an economist. I do not understand this angle of startups.

I believe in plain vanilla business. See a problem, create a solution, sell the solution, ask money for it, sell, support, rinse, repeat.

startup

An Identity Crisis!

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Whoosh… that is how the time went the last 3 years. Sep 18th, 2008 – the day the Lehman Brothers collapsed and the sub prime crisis erupted – I started my entrepreneurial journey.

3 years down the lane – I still feel young and wide eyed. And this brings us to an identity crisis I am having. How do I introduce myself to strangers? Earlier it was easy – I work for an IT company and the other party just imagines me walking in with a laptop bag, boarding a flight to US of A and bringing back lot of foreign chocolates – and of course living the high life and someone who can afford the high rents and bribes. [ honestly this is not true, and I am always frustrated when the non-ITians think that we are having an easy life ]

Now I honestly do not know how to introduce myself.  Here are the few attempts :

I run a startup. The problem is – it is now my 4th year. How long will i keep starting should I not have started up by now? Also it feels as if I am toying with an idea or a business model – and the other party might not take me seriously. Anyone else other than the entrepreneurial community will not even understand the term “startup” correctly. So I stopped using this.

I run a business. This I tell with the least confidence. Because to me a business man is one who wears a suit / dhoti ( I was b&bup from Coimbatore ) , chews paan, has a waddle of cash, is chauffeured around in a car, tips heavily,speaks loudly to everyone, and is on phone all the time. I am none of them – and I do not sound confident because something inside me is trying to shut my mouth when I use this introduction.

I am an entrepreneur. It took ages for me to get the spelling right. And I attended a french class for 2 weeks – not that it helped but at least I can tell it is a french word. Aside anything that sounds french is cool ( expose, creme-da-la-creme, fiancee ). I love this introduction – however the majority cannot identify this word.

I have my company. Lame.. Doesnt excite me one bit – how will the other party even talk to me after such a dead introduction.

Hopefully by next year I should have a good introduction. Till then I will shake hands and tell the first thing that comes to my mind and keep trying various options.

apple, entrepreneur, experience, startup

Why any product needs “Mac Users”

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First the Disclaimer : This is not a mac fanboy post. I am loosely stereotyping the 3 kinds of users based on the 3 OSes – Mac, Windows and Linux. This is mainly to drive home the point of how an “ideal user” will help your product become better and better. The “Mac User”, who I call – can also be a Windows, Linux,BeOs,OS 390…. user.  OS X has been successful mainly because of their Users – look at the amount of podcasts, fan sites, hints sites, magazines for this platform alone. Apple listens to these feedbacks – and incorporates some into every release of their OS.

I am tending to call these “ideal users” as “Mac Users”. Had linux/windows had the same level of success – will be labeling them likewise. Shall we move on? 🙂

Here are some reasons why you need Mac users.

1. They demand Perfection

This is from my personal experience. Some of the CxO users, ex-Entrepreneurs who use our product – just cannot stand mediocrity or minor bugs. As developers we gloss over things and we fail to cross the ‘t’s and dot the ‘i’s. But this irritates the hell out of these high achievers. When I look things through their eyes – it does make sense. Any aberrations – big or small – breaks the flow and harmony.

Switch to Linux Desktop. The flow gets broken everywhere. The applications are not consistent – each one I have to remember where I should go to do a certain thing. There are KDE apps, and Gnome Apps – and some apps who do not follow any school of UI philosophy. It kills me.  Linux as a Desktop has a very long way to go.

Windows 7 has come a long way from the Windows ME days. Still there are certain things that does not make sense – like exporting an Excel file as a CSV file – you have to put up with 3 dialog boxes – twice. This is sheer madness.

2. They improve your Product

The best part of working with the “Mac users” is they give great ideas. We built the initial product based on our knowledge / creativity. After that the product has grown from these inputs given by our users. They bring lot of expertise and cross-functional knowledge to the table. The earlier you identify them it is better for the product. Any prototypes you are building, or just want to bounce an idea about a feature – these are the users you should call first. They have a big picture view of your product – on functionality / usability / and even marketability.

Then there are the linux and windows users. Linux users will be bent on functionality without any respect to the marketability of the feature. Stay away. The Windows users might want a feature that is there in an X ( eg. in Tally or SAP ). They will not understand that building it will flush the usability down the drain – or how it does not fit with the overall design philosophy. Give them a hearing, explain why you might not incorporate – leave it at that.

3. The Best Part – They pay you


These demanding users also pay you – ungrudgingly. They do not haggle with you, they respect your business model, they do not ask you to sell Pizza online and give the product free, they do not ask you to do what X is doing and follow their model and hence give the product free. They respect what you have built – and pay because they see value. If they are not paying – then there is no value in the product. Loud and Clear.

Now going back to the 3 OSes – OS X, Linux and Windows – see the kind of users / followers each group has. Apple is lucky to have the kind of crowd following them ( Power users, artists, designers… ). All apple has to do now onwards is to listen – the best ideas come from their users – not from 1, Infinite Loop anymore.

So – have you identified your Mac Users?

startup

Business Card Title

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A startup has many challenges – market, cash flow, competition, support, hack attacks, attrition, power cut, hunt for the perfect coffee – add one more to the long list – Business Card Title.

Today, Sangeeta and I had a chat on IM ( yes we are in the same office – long story 🙂 ) regarding what will be the title. We cannot have traditional roles like CxO, X Manager etc. – as in a startup you have to specifically generalize.

When we started ApartmentAdda, I had a short title on my Business card – Chief. – with a period at the end. I was ragged for 15 minutes by one committee when I had gone for a demo. Also later Sachin who was our Product Innovation Lead – used to tease me – Chief What?

So when we went for a reprint had it printed as Chief, Technology. That explains one aspect of my job – the primary role. But there are lot other things I handle daily – support, IS, patching, backups, opening office, UPS rationing, analytics, accounting, server, domain renewals, organize team outings…

Over to Sangeeta. She does Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Support and lot other things like – hunting for the perfect coffee, head hunting, accounting, Weekly quicksters ( check our page on  http://facebook.com/apartmentadda ).

Taking all the factors into consideration – customers,partners,vendors,investors – we finally decided to have functional titles based on our primary roles.

This will be the 3rd reprint of my card and the Title is a little bigger than last years. Curious to know? Will do the handshake next time we meet and give my card 🙂

So – what are the titles in your startup/organization ?

Couple of tweets I received on this :

ulaar Vishy Kuruganti 

@ 

@venkat2 Hmm.. The business card STILL lives on in this day and age? 😉

vivekshukla Vivek Shukla 

You can use “Vision Manager” RT @venkat2: Finding a designation for the Business card is not easy. #startup



books, startup

Viral Loop

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It has been a while since I finished reading Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg – which traces the story of Internet companies right from Netscape to Facebook and Twitter.

The book is sinking in slowly. Being in the .com business it was exciting and scary to read the history of various startups.

The book covers the journey of the following startups.

Netscape
Hotmail
Ebay
Paypal
Amazon
Hot or not
MySpace
Flickr
Bebo
Ning
Twitter
Facebook

And there is a recurring pattern in all of them

1. The founder is invariably a developer


All these are essentially Web applications – and having the founder-developer part of the nucleus is ideal . Things change at the speed of light – and the founder being at the helm can immediately sense the course corrections that are needed – and correct them himself – instead of having outsourced the core work, or giving instructions to a team of techies and waiting for them to create magic.

3 Cheers to Developers – we are the makers of the world!

Free Tip Warning 🙂 :  If you are a developer and evaluating whether to take a Project Management position – turn it down if you have startup aspirations – instead  focus on becoming a better developer – some day you can run your own startup.

2. Scaling


Finding the right idea is not enough; finding customers to come to your site is not enough – the site has to scale. This is the single biggest problem faced by all of the above startups. This is a good problem to have – and you should be happy when scaling pains hit you.

It is a tough decision. Should you spend enough resources and build a complex architecture that can scale  VS build your product as fast as possible and handle scaling when the time comes.  Honestly I do not know the answer. There are pros and cons for both.

The universal answer “Depends” is, as always, the right answer 🙂

3. Viral co-efficient


And they have formed a mathematical equation to explain the Viral phenomenon – why some ideas spread like wild fire. The magic is in the viral co-efficient. As long as it is above a certain number the idea will succeed. This is what Malcolm Gladwell calls it as the Tipping Point.

The book is full of interesting anecdotes. Ebay bought Bill Point and tried to kill Paypal ( which refused to be bought out by Ebay ). In order to promote Bill Point, Ebay made its banner big, had a easy sign up process. Whereas for Paypal – Ebay had a 2 step signup – and made Paypal’s banner smaller and towards the bottom of the page. The community revolted and brought back Paypal.

Once an idea catches up – the community will make sure it stays on the right track.

On the downside – this book glorifies Ning. Perhaps it was written before the downward spiral started for Ning.

Ning had rounds of funding ( Mr.Sharad Sharma joked in one of his speeches that Ning has got more funding than what it took Chandrayaan to be sent to the moon  ) – and still Ning is struggling. They recently turned off their free communities and made the entire site a paid one. As an idea Ning is great – but as a business model – they could not sustain. It will be interesting to watch if Ning can turn things around.

We are exactly in the middle of a huge flux. So many questions are yet to  be answered :

What is a successful business model for a Web product?
Is Freemium the right model?
Is Banner Ad-Revenue sustainable in the long run?
Is 37 signals / DHH philosophy the right one for a Web Startup?

Perhaps a few years down the lane we will know better. Till then let us keep guessing and keep updating our status and tweeting inane things!

startup

Release elsewhere vs Release in a Startup

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In August we had 4 Major Releases and 8 Minor releases. I was  thinking how the Releases were in my previous life ( few in a year ) and how it is now ( few in a month ).

Things are much more demanding in a startup – the developer’s job is not done by just pushing things to Prod and making sure things are fine. He has to do lot of follow up work. Looks like lot of fun isn’t it! 🙂

inspiration, occ, startup

Sharad Sharma’s talk in Bangalore OCC – Mar 21

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Today I attended the Bangalore Open Coffee Club’s meeting in an interesting venue called Jaaga. Before I  jump into Mr.Sharad Sharma’s speech / adrenaline shot – will talk a little about Jaaga. It is spear headed by Freeman Murray and Archana Prasad. They have identified an unused piece of land – and has built this structure with minimal and eco-friendly materials. This space can be used by NGOs or communities who want a place to get together, startups can come and plug in etc.  They call it the Urban Community Art Architecutre Experiment – http://jaaga.wikidot.com/start. Brilliant concept and I am sure you will be visiting this place sometime in future – it is going to take off well. 
Now to the Orbit Change Catalyst’s lecture ( thats his twitter bio  http://twitter.com/sharads ) 
Mr.Sharad Sharma took us through his entrepreneurial journey and kept giving his insights and his learning peppered with lot of interesting anecdotes.
1. Innovation Blow back

Innovations are happening right now in India; a few being cataract surgeries, cardiac operations at low cost and better success rates, bio technology startups, products on cloud computing, and so on. These technologies / businesses will now start out of the emerging markets like India and will become global. This is the innovation blow back.
He also asked the crowd to look out for the “Inflexion points” – Oil crisis is one, Systems biology is one ( where probability / mathematics is needed to take Biology to the next level ), Cloud computing being another. He advised to identify the inflexion point that excites you – “pick the one that tickles you to death”.
Some interesting anecdotes:
* CDMA technology – first showed up in Korea ( because they could not penetrate US, Europe market where GSM was entrenched ) – and now it is percolating to the other regions.
* Airtel is having a return of 38% ARPU – Additional Revenue Per User. Whereas Verizon’s return is only 12%. IBM, who consulted Airtel,  is now taking this business model outside India.
* AT&T approached Infosys in 1993 for a buy out. Mr.Narayanan Murthy politely declined – and today Infosys has 3 times market cap than AT&T.
*It took $89 Million to launch Chandrayaan. Ning has so far obtained $140 Million as investment.
He also touched upon Early Adopters Vs Pragmatic Adopters and how today with the recession – the market is left with only Pragmatic Adopters ( who make the purchase decision only after they are convinced of the ROI and expect a whole product unlike the early adopter who makes quick decision after a view of the part product itself) – and Indian market always had only Pragmatic Adopters. He hit it right on the head; if you have sold to Indian customers you will know this first hand. 
He credited Guy Kawasaki for starting this “Bootstrap movement” – where the startup has to think of making money from day 1 – unlike the startups during the dot com boom.
2. Essence of Entrepreneurship

It’s a state of mind and there are a few important things
Be comfortable to be the underdog
Hold a contrarian point of view
Ability to influence without control
Ability to tell stories.
3. Rules for personal conduct

He said 7, but I missed one of them 🙂
Give more than what you take
Set up people for success
Say what you mean. Do what you say
Share good news and bad news
Cultivate a learning mindset.
Cultivate internal drive for excellence 
Some books he suggested during his lecture that I will be adding to my reading list.
1. Getting to Plan B by Randy Komisar and John Mullins 
2. Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey A Moore
3. Whole new mind – Daniel Pink
Towards the end he conducted a role play of how VC money, Investor (LP) and Startup funding works and why it is essential to pitch for only the amount a Startup really needs. 
This post is definitely not a complete record of the speech. Please add more if you were also at the event.
Finally it was great networking with lot of enthusiastic people – the next google / apple is brewing somewhere in them! Thanks to Amarinder, Ramjee, Vaibav and other organizers of the OCC for this event. 
startup

Specialization is for insects

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There is this age old debate – should you specialize on a skill, or generalize and become a jack of all trades?

Heres a quote that answers the question :
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
– Robert A. Heinlein — from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
There are exceptions – but as a generalization – the above quote is spot on. In any career you will have your main stream ( BA, Developer, QA, Architect etc. ) – but to become really kickass in your stream – you have to develop other surrounding skills.
Where I am coming at is – as an entrepreneur you will be forced to don many hats. I have met a few entrepreneurs who will dig through their card holder to give me their appropriate business card. They actually have multiple business cards with various designations like VP, Architect, CTO, Business development manager etc. Perhaps they might not be the best in all the roles – but overall they trump the specialists.
So go ahead. If you are a developer talk to your QA, BA, PM, HR, RM, BDM, MD – on what they do, how they do, problems they face, how they tackle – whenever you get a chance – these chats will help you in your career and will help you some day when you run a startup – where you have to be a little of everything.
So become the jack of all trades and a master of one or two.