Archive for August, 2006|Monthly archive page
Lessons for an aspiring entrepreneur – Part 1
Comments (1)As an aspiring entrepreneur, my mind is usually plagued with hundreds of doubts. These are issues that any other aspiring entrepreneurs can easily relate to. It’s as if the decision to turn towards entrepreneurship, as opposed to a regular corporate life, wasn’t hard enough; we now bear the burden of a million harder decisions. Sometimes, questions like what to start, when to start and how to start, can get so overwhelming that we begin to question our initial decision to start something in the first place!
These doubts had kept my mind whirling until I had a chance to meet Gokul Rajaram a few days back at a mentorship session organized by NUSEA. Gokul is the Product Development Director for Google Adsense and also a mentor for NUSEA (refer below for further details on Gokul Rajaram). The points that Gokul mentioned over the course of our discussion seemed to instantly clear my cloudy vision of the future and put things in place. These are some of the things he spoke about:
Choose a space
Gokul said that the first step for an aspiring entrepreneur to take is to choose a space. A space is a broad industry or technology area. Mobile phone software, for example, is a space. Gokul emphasized that it is essential to focus your efforts to a particular area, even before the brainstorming stage. This would help the aspiring entrepreneur focus on understanding the market trends and customer needs of a particular area and thus avoid being overwhelmed with information about other areas. This made a lot of sense to me. I have been trying to brainstorm on a number of ideas for a startup lately and all these ideas are from diverse fields. And what I have realized is that, while evaluating these ideas, there are too many factors in the equation and these can keep you from approaching a single idea in a decisive manner. Factors like your interest and proficiency in the area come into the picture. On the other hand, if you chose a space based on your passion and expertise, you can begin to concentrate on other aspects like technology, market demands and customer needs.
Passion over fashion
Another point that is closely related to the previous one is the importance of passion. Gokul recalled his experience as soon as he graduated from MIT. He noted that ‘optical networks’ was the ‘hottest’ field in those days and he decided to work at an optical networking company solely for that reason. Within a few months, he realized that this was clearly not his passion. While he was able to do his job proficiently and smartly, he was perhaps not performing up to his potential. He decided to quit and go into computer software, which was his forte. And he never regretted that decision. Gokul simplified this idea to one single question that everyone must ask themselves before starting a company or taking up a job – ‘Every morning, as I get up, will I be excited to head off to work and do that particular job?’ If not, Gokul said, don’t do it. Even as we spoke, Gokul had a number of offers from VC firms to join them as a venture capitalist. “But I just can’t imagine going to work everyday to read business plans!” Gokul said.
Mohan, one of Gokul’s mentees, had this to say after meeting him:
Many a times, we reach crossroads in life where important decisions have to be made as they will affect what we do in future and in turn, shape who we are. I believe most of the time, these decisions are made based on market trends, potential gain factors and even parental and peer pressure. When was the last time you were advised to follow your heart and take the unorthodox path? When was the last time you actually took it?
Meeting Gokul Rajaram, product management director for Google Adsense, and being advised to follow your heart was a refreshing change. He inspired us to live our lives by following our hearts and making decisions based on what we truly feel passionate about. Passion is the fuel for the mind.
Following this, Gokul highlighted some of the key issues that an aspiring entrepreneur has to keep in mind once he/she gets the ball rolling and actually starts a company. These include staying lean, choosing and building a key differentiator, time to market and the equally important art of accepting defeat. I will cover these in detail in the next part of this series. So stay tuned!
Prashant Sarkar.
GOKUL RAJARAM
As Product Development Director of Google Adsense, Gokul Rajaram designs and implements the product strategy for Adsense, the heart of Google’s revenue model. In this role, Gokul defines new features and then works with the Google engineers to implement them. Prior to this, Gokul has taken up various software engineering as well as product management roles at Juno Online, Sun Microsystems and Onetta. As a mentor for NUSEA, Gokul meets up regularly with the NUSEA students to speak on a wide variety of topics ranging from entrepreneurship to advertising.
Tech Tags: entrepreneurship NUSEA mentorship Gokul+Rajaram adsense google
Google CEO joins Apple’s Board of Directors!
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Eric Schmidt has just joined the Apple board of directors according to an announcement made by Apple today.
Could this possibly spell trouble for Microsoft?
Especially in the wake of its Zune effort?
Are we going to see a Google-Apple collaboration in the Digital Media segment? A Google-backed iTunes maybe?
The media (both traditional as well as online) is giving a lot of attention to this issue. The Newsweek is proclaiming that this could be a move towards the toppling of the other Silicon Valley software giant, Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal says that this board member appointment ‘unites two of the most high-profile executives in the business — Mr. Schmidt and Apple CEO Steve Jobs — prompting speculation that the move could lead to a deeper alliance between the companies at some point’.
This could mean a number of different things. Or it could mean nothing. In any case, this is going to generate a lot of interest. Well we’ll just have to wait n watch.
Prashant.
Tech Tags: apple eric+schmidt google microsoft board+of+directors
Tea Partay – advertising redefined
Leave a CommentI met Gokul Rajaram (Product Development Director, Google Adsense) today to have a chat. A few minutes into our chat, he began talking about his take on the future of the online advertising industry (Trust me, his views matter. He is the strategy guy behind Google’s Adsense!)
One of the things he stressed upon was the need to deliver advertising that is deeply embedded into content. The thing about content, he said, is that good/interesting/whacky content has an intrinsic nature to spread virally – more efficiently than a carefully planned buzz advertising campaign. I think that makes a lot of sense. And companies today are trying to explore different ways in which they can use content to deliver their messages.
Gokul gave me one example of such advertising… It’s a rap video on YouTube called ‘Tea Partay’. The song is pretty crappy by most standards. But it is one of those videos that you might share with your friends. And that’s what’s important. The interesting part is that it is actually an ad by Smirnoff. Nowhere in the video do they mention that it is an ad. However, there are some cleverly placed references to the brand – enough to create a few impressions on the viewer’s mind. Check out the video here:
While emphasizing that this is the direction that advertising might take in the near future, Gokul also raised the issue of scalability. The key is to find a way to make a scalable model that allows advertisers to advertise using videos and content. Videos with rich-clickable content could be around the corner too. Google is doing some interesting stuff with video advertising, but obviously, Gokul wasn’t going to delve into the details of that.
I think there might be a lot of potential for startups to explore this emerging area. A new generation of smart online advertising is just waiting to take off.
Prashant.
Youtube to release new features
The Youtube website is down right now. The homepage has this message:
We are releasing a couple of new things and doing some maintenance. We’ll be back in a bit.
Wonder what those new features might be…
Prashant.
Google Music Trends
I just received an update notification in Google talk asking me if I wanted to automatically send my music listening history to Google’s new Music Trends service. I obviously clicked No and proceeded to check out this new service.
Google Music Trends lists the most popular music that Google Talk users are listening to. According to Google:
Music Trends is a snapshot of the music that’s popular right now among Google Talk listeners. Every Talk user who has opted in to Music Trends will cast their vote automatically, each time they listen to music on their computer. We’ll gather this information and display the trends by country and by genre, listing the favorite songs of the most musically-active locations around the world.
Firstly, who uses Google Talk anyway?! (I do, but that’s not the point 
) According to research done by ComScore, Google Talk is a distant 4th in the IM market after MSN, Yahoo and AIM and has a pitiful 1% market share. This article in the New York Times suggests that GTalk had only 44,000 unique visitors in June.
With such crappy adoption levels, I think the Google Talk team should be concentrating its efforts on improving on the client itself. Lots of work needs to be done. Compatibility with MSN and AIM would be awesome. Video chat and conferencing could be added too. There’s a lot of work to be done on that front. And once that’s done, i think more people will start adopting Google Talk. Until then, these guys shouldn’t be wasting time creating stuff that relies on the existence of a large userbase.
Prashant.
Tech Tags: Google+Talk Google+Music+Trends
Google – do a lil evil
It looks like Google’s starting to drift away from its famous ‘Do No Evil’ motto. In it’s latest version of the Google IE toolbar, Google has added a new ‘feature’ that ensures that Google remains the default search engine in IE’s search bar. And this feature is enabled by default.
An exe called GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe is made to run at startup and it monitors any changes to the default search settings in IE. Every time an attempt is made to change the search engine (from Google), the attempt is blocked and the following message is displayed in the system tray.
According to this post in the Google Operating System blog, Google says this is a bug and that they are working on removing it.
A bug that prevents you from changing your search engine to anything but Google?! Haha!
Prashant.
Tech Tags: google toolbar internet+explorer do+no+evil GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe search
Apologies
As soon as I published my post about Windows Live Writer using Live Writer, I tried to view it in Firefox. To my horror, my blog refused to load! I tried the link in IE and it showed up just fine.
After a few tries, I was quite pissed that my blog was not viewable on Firefox. So, I immediately posted another entry proclaiming that Live Writer sucks and it screws up your blog. Well, what was I supposed to do when my bloody blog wasn’t loading in Firefox and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Following this I went to the MS blog where Live Writer had been released and posted this comment:
Windows Live Writer has totally screwed up my Blogger blog – http://prashantsarkar.blogspot.com.
The blog is not viewable on Firefox anymore. It only displays in IE. This stupid software has ruined my blog. Please tell me how I can correct this problem.
One good thing about Live Writer is the Web Layout view where I can write a post using my blog template itself. It is very useful when I am trying to get the alignment of photos and text right.
However, I am back to using Performancing because of the fact that Windows Live Writer has made my blog unviewable on Firefox.
After about half an hour of fiddling around with Live Writer, my blog suddenly showed up fine on Firefox! Around the same time, I got a mail from a guy at Microsoft asking me what exactly was wrong! I was surprised at the promptness of this reply. It’s 11.12 on a Sunday night, and this guy at Microsoft is actually taking the pains to tend to the problems of the beta users. I’m impressed!
Now that everything is working fine, I’ve removed my blog entry titled “UPDATE: Windows Live Writer – disappointing”. I’ve also replied to the developer from MS who emailed me.
Well, I don’t think I’m going to switch back to Performancing after all. I’m posting from Live Writer right now and I guess I’ll continue to do so. I just have one more request – support for Technorati tags. Until that gets added, I don’t mind taking the trouble to add the tags manually.
Prashant.
Windows Live Writer – pretty good!
I’ve been looking for a good blog editor for a while now. Until now, I’ve been using Performancing for Firefox. I’ve also tried out Qumana, w.bloggar, MS Word 2007’s built in blog editor and many more. While all of these came quite close to meeting my blogging needs, each of them had some problem or the other. For eg, Qumana had WYSIWYG editing, tagging, image publishing and many other features. But it ate up too much RAM while residing in the system tray. Performancing, on the other hand, did not have a very good interface and always screwed up when I tried to edit existing posts with it. Here are my reviews of Qumana and MS Word 2007 Blog editor.
I just installed the new Windows Live Writer (beta). After checking it out, I think this thing just might solve all my blogging woes! I’m not exactly a Microsoft fan as is obvious from my post on Word 2007’s blog editor. But this little piece of software might have changed my views a bit!
First Impressions:
As soon as I set up my blog on the Live Writer, I was stunned to see my blog template right inside my editor! Most blog editors have WYSIWYG these days. But Live Writer takes it to a whole new level! It actually puts the template in directly from your blog. Instead of one, Live Writer offers 3 different WYSIWYG modes – Normal, Web Layout and Web Preview.
Normal is the mode that is available in most editors – the one with the plain white background. The problem with this view is that, in some blogs like this one, where the text layout is narrow, you don’t really get to see how the post will actually look when you publish it. In Live Writer, however, the Web Layout mode makes the editor screen look exactly like the blog. The width and the colors are the same as that on your blog. Now I don’t have to keep publishing and checking the blog out to see if the layout of the post is fine.
The Web Preview mode is equally awesome. In less than a second, this mode actually pulls up your blog and shows you how the post would look in your blog if you published it!
Other cool features:
Another problem that I’ve had with other editors is that they don’t let you upload your photos to the blogger.com servers. I had to upload the file to photobucket and insert the photo URL into the blog editor to get the photo inside. And even after that, some editors like Performancing don’t let you change the layout of the image easily. Live Writer on the other hand, works perfect. You can upload images right from your desktop and arrange it like you would in Word, for example. You can also add effects like shadows for your images. Nice!
UPDATE: I just realized that you still need to upload the photos to a server before they can appear on your blog. Live Writer will do it for you if you enter the details of your FTP server in the options. I use ripway.com for free FTP file hosting.
Another interesting feature is Map Publishing where you can directly add a map of any US address directly into your blog. This is great when you want to describe a tour or vacation in your post. Redmond is actually beginning to innovate again… hmmm… Very interesting!
Live Writer also comes with a bunch of features that are common among blog editors. You can save your drafts both locally and on the blog server itself. There is a built in spell checker too. You can view and edit your previous posts.
They’ve also released their SDK (very unusual for MS products) so that people can create and submit plugins. I haven’t yet found out how to add Technorati tags and how to ping various blog search engines yet. But I’m sure these will be there somewhere.
Live Writer is a great product and it is compatible with most blogging platforms. I think I’m gonna stick to this. Well done, Microsoft!
Prashant.
Corn flakes without milk
Corn flakes without milk sucks. And right now, I’m eating just that. Here’s why…
Excelics, the company where I work, just threw away all my food. Food that I had kept in the fridge. The fridge that was provided by the company for its employees. And this is the fourth time this has happened. I’m pissed… Really really pissed.
About 3 months back, the Excelics management started a practice whereby the fridge would be cleaned every Friday and so we needed to clear our stuff from the fridge before that happens. A couple of weeks after that, I went to the fridge coolly, one Friday afternoon, only to find all my stuff gone! After enquiring around, I learnt that they had actually thrown away everything. Everything! I had spent atleast 35 bucks the previous day stocking up on my food. I had bought milk, frozen food (that’s what I eat), juice, butter, yoghurt, etc. And they had just thrown it all away! I was obviously bloody pissed.
Who throws away food like that?! And more importantly, who throws away their own employees’ food?! First of all, being a silicon valley startup, you’d normally expect the company to provide you with some sort of food and snacks. But, Excelics, was redefining convention out here! They were, in fact, taking away what the employees had brought! Outrageous…
I would be more understanding if it was an absolute necessity to throw away my stuff. But, in this case, all they had to do is leave it on the dining table. Better still, they could’ve removed the stuff, cleaned the fridge and put back the stuff inside. What’s the big deal?! Why throw away good food?
I literally live in this company. I stay in office till very late every night. I even spend my weekends in this hell-hole. And obviously, I need to keep my food here in the fridge. I eat my lunches, my dinners and everything in between at my company. And that’s why, when something like this happens to me, it is twice as demoralizing as it would normally be. It’s like they don’t give a shit about what I do or what I go through.
I asked Nestor, our janitor, about this and figured that the upper management had directly instructed him to do this. I was amused actually, when I heard this. If this isn’t micro-management, I dont know what is.
Such practices will be very damaging to employee attitude and company culture in the long run. In a startup, it is essential that every employee is a die-hard fan of the company, its policies and its practices. In this company, I dont think that will ever be the case. This is perhaps one of the reasons that this company hasn’t managed to do well after 11 years of operation. Where can you find motivation amongst your employees if you resort to such cheap practices against them?!
From my perspective, throwing away the employees’ food is totally unecessary and avoidable. But, this was a company run by an East Asian management team. I guess they brought over the Chinese management practices to Silicon Valley, thus resulting in this – a situation where the authorities wield their power unecessarily and engage in micro management and anti-employee practices.
I was considering going and talking to the management about this and giving them my 2 cents. But, I decided against it because I dont see anything positive coming out of it.
So, I’ve decided to do this. Firstly, I will come to work exactly at 9 in the morning and leave at exactly 6 in the evening everyday. That instantly reduces 3-4 hours of productivity per day from my side. Secondly, I will go out for exactly 1 hour during lunch everyday and eat outside or at home. I will never ever eat in my cubicle while punching away code again. There goes another 30-45 mins of productivity. In addition, I will calculate, in hours, the value of all the food that they threw away, and make sure I spend those many hours doing absolutely nothing at work.
There! That’s what happens when you mess around with an employee. When you demoralize an employee. When you behave as if you’re an enemy of your employee. There goes my patriotism towards my company – down the drain.
Well, on the positive side, I’ve at least learnt how NOT to treat my employees when I start my own company.
Prashant.
Tags: anger, anti-employee, micro management, Excelics
This is broken!
The description of ‘This is Broken’, according to it’s author, Mark Hurst:
“A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it.”
Thisisbroken.com has a nice long list of all things broken. From bad product design to poorly designed websites to misleading signs. And lots of people have been talking about this site – including the New York Times!
Here are some of the good posts I found there:
- A computer mouse box with an interesting seal – here.
- A Dell computer with poorly designed USB ports – here.
- an amusing bungalow sign – here.
Technorati Tags: Seth Godin, broken, thisisbroken.com, Mark hurst
Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC 06
I just finished watching the video of Steve Jobs’ keynote address at Apple’s WWDC 06. I was looking forward to this and in fact I followed the live text updates of the keynote from my office on Monday.
But after checking out the video, I’m a bit disappointed. Maybe because they really didn’t release any significant new consumer products. Before the keynote, rumors about an iPhone release and other crazy stuff were all over the internet. There was nothing of that sort in the keynote.
Instead, Steve started off by introducing the new Intel-based Mac Pro workstation. The configuration and performance of this machine is pretty good – with a quad Xeon processor. It is roughly 2x faster than the G5. And all this for only 2500 bucks. Good stuff.
He also introduced the new XServe server.
An unusual thing about this keynote was that Steve actually shared the stage with 2 other Apple employees. He was perhaps training new guys to do this presentation thing since he seems to be getting older. The other thing is that Steve did not perform as well as he did at previous Mac keynotes. He seemed a little less enthusiastic and a bit tired. Perhaps this dampened the effectiveness of the presentation.
After this, they introduced the new features in the upcoming OS X Leopard. The OS is slated for release in Spring 07. They started this part of the presentation with a little bit of Redmond bashing. They showed a screen-by-screen comparison of various OS X features and the copied versions on the Vista Beta. In fact, Steve mentioned that he will not be mentioning some of the Leopard OS’s features because he doesn’t want Redmond copying any of the stuff before they release their OS!
Most of the Leopard OS features were pretty standard stuff and nothing too great. Stuff like to-dos and notes linked to your email, Spaces (a virtual desktop application), etc. Although all these mundane features got applause from the Mac-crazy audience, they failed to impress me. However, there were two features that did manage to excite me.
The first is Time Machine - an automatic backup software. This is more like an automatic versioning system for all your files. Every little change is recorded and ready for backup/restoration. Microsoft is introducing something like this too in the Vista. A file versioning system of sorts. And so, I wasn’t that excited until the presenter actually showed the demo of Time Machine at work. Man, the UI was awesome! This is exactly what Apple is good at! He started by showing a folder view with 4 files. A fifth one was supposed to be there, but was missing. So, he clicks on the Time Machine icon in the dock. And instantly, everything but the folder fades to black and you can see many copies of the folder behind this one… going towards infinity on a dimension that was going inside the screen. It was breathtaking – so seemless and intuitive. You’ve gotta check out this stuff on the video.
The other thing was the new iChat. They had managed to put a few nifty, but mostly useless features into it. Features of the type that were demoed for iPhoto in the last MacWorld (or the one before that). Now, you can do all those nice iPhoto tricks in iChat. These include visual effects like pinch, pull, mirror, etc for video. Another cool feature is that you can replace the background with a photo or a video (!) of your choice while video chatting on iChat. No blue screens or green screens required. So, for example, iChat could show you in front of a bustling Times Square, when in fact, you were sitting in the comfort of your bedroom. Another good feature is screen sharing. You can share the desktop as well as presentations or slide shows while video chatting on iChat.
The reason I am disappointed is because Apple did not have any truly amazing innovation to showcase here. I understand that the engineers have been busy porting their Mac OS over to the Intel architecture. They have now completed that and they took only 210 days to do it – an amazing feat. But still, the kind of stuff they showcased at WWDC 06 isn’t something Apple should be boasting about at their WWDC. I don’t see anything great in todo lists and stationary for your email or in adding WebDaV support for iCal. Hopefully, the secret features that they didn’t mention this time are something really cool. I’m already waiting for the next MacWorld.
Prashant.
Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC 06, iChat, Mac Pro, Steve Jobs, Microsoft, Vista, Xserve, keynote, Time Machine, iCal
New Apple products!
Check out the Apple online store here. The website is down! They are busy updating. My guess is they are adding new products to the store!
Today, Steve is going to make his keynote speech at the WWDC06. There is a lot of speculation on the internet about new Apple products that might be announced today. These include iPhones, a touchscreen video iPod, new Macbooks and so on.
Check out this page for live text updates on WWDC!
It’s gonna get exciting!
psycho.
Technorati Tags: apple, wwdc, iphone, macbook, ipod, apple store
NUSEA’s The Road Less Travelled series
We started a new series of events called The Road Less Travelled at NUSEA a few weeks back. We basically get one of our friends or mentors down to the NUSEA office at Mountain View and they speak to the NOC students about their experiences. We have had one of these until now where Desmond Tan (President, SEA) and Jasmin Ong came to speak about their personal experiences as Singaporean expatriates in the US. It was an interesting talk followed by a nice discussion.
There are a number of objectives behind the Road Less Travelled series. Firstly, the exposure to the experiences and perspectives of these individuals would be highly beneficial to the NOC students. Another goal is to encourage the NOC students to open up and network with these individuals. It would perhaps improve their networking skills too.
So, how is this series different from the other programs that we organize (Mentorship Unplugged, RainMakers Live). Well, this brings us to the 3rd objective…
Due to a geographical separation between some NOC students, we have found that there is a dearth of communication between them. We also understand that if there’s one network that the NOC students can hope to capitalize on after the program, it would be the NOC alumni network. Over the period of one year, these students literally live with one another. They form extraordinary bonds during the course of their stay in the US. Some of these students are well on their way towards becoming successful entrepreneurs.
During the Road Less Travelled talks we hope to encourage the students to discuss and debate amongst themselves. This would help them to learn together and, in the process, understand each other better. Ultimately, this would strengthen the bonds between the students and form a strong network of NOC students who can reach out to each other long after the completion of the program.
This is a pilot project by the NUSEA committee and we will monitor the progress to see the results of this effort. We hope it turns out to be a success and achieves all of the above mentioned objectives.
Prashant.
Technorati Tags: NUSEA, Road Less Travelled, NOC, Desmond Tan, Jasmin Ong, SEA, Mentorship Unplugged, RainMakers Live, NOC Alumni
408 Reviews for a gallon of milk!
Check this out… A gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk put up on Amazon.com received 408 reviews! Unbelievable! Here are some of the amusing reviews:
“One Gallon Whole Milk
It does a body very good
Now the chicks dig me”
“One cannot merely sip or drink this full-bodied bovine nectar; it must be thrust at great force into one’s mouth to appreciate it. Few things in life reach such perfection – the gleeful laughter of children; the strong but vulnerable movies of Ang Lee, and the lactastic, liquid ectasy of Tuscan Whole Milk. For our own protection, it can only be sold in 128 ounce portions, lest we lose ourselves in autogestive insanity.”
“This is the richest, creamiest milk that has slid down my windpipe in ages. I can’t believe this came out of a cow’s teat, held lonesome in some old barn, flies around. And yet, that old world flavor! I don my tuscan breeches and hed for the sea. It’s olive harvest time and my sister’s friend is looking ripe.”
Haha! and many more… all this for a carton of milk…
psycho.
