That’s a hard question. Especially because I’m always wary of using such an ambiguous term. And more so, when there are far more qualified people to answer out there.

Since I have been asked the question, I am jotting down my thoughts on the subject here (the usual disclaimers apply):

I think the question really is about how impactful can a person be, rather than this nebulous word called “innovative.” In fact, I hate the word “innovation”, because the focus should be about problem solving.

Innovation (regardless of its definition) is almost always the by-product of a successfully executed product. You don’t start by wanting to be innovative. You start by looking at interesting hard problems. You only end up being innovative. So, Solve the Problem first.

For example, I always find it amusing to see the feedback on isbn.net.in – people have said “It’s awesome! It’s wonderful!” I replied “It’s just a bunch of regexes!” … But it just goes to show that what matters is how much the user values it, not how it is implemented.

Now, back to topic: If you want to be able to attack interesting hard problems, then my honest opinion is that you need to keep this equation in mind:

Creativity x Organization = Impact – Scott Belsky at the 99% Conference

Regarding Creativity / Ideas:

1. “If you think you don’t have any good ideas, that’s because you don’t really have bad ideas. You get one good idea only after you get a hundred bad ideas.” — paraphrasing Seth Godin in his latest book Linchpin.
2. Frequent Inspiration helps. A lot. Keep reading Springwise, Yanko Design, Quirky everyday and you’ll be inspired to “innovate” as well.
3. Observe. “If you’re looking for problems to solve, you’re better off to be around real people whose problems can be solved via your trade (such as software).” — RWW article
4. Follow the Trends, such as Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012 and 10 Tech Trends for 2010 — Time , and more importantly the kinds of technology and products that are being created, follow those “cutting edge” technologies that we love to adore and wonder “Wow, how did they come up with this stuff?“

But you have to be careful when ideating, because it is very easy to get into “analysis paralysis”:

Another important thing is to not get so carried away by the shiny new things that you forget the basics:

Regarding Organization / Discipline

1. There is this guy in Adobe Bangalore office who is a “patent machine.” He files for a patent every two weeks. No kidding. And these weren’t only trivial ones either. What was his trick? He spent a dedicated half hour every single day on thinking up new ideas or solving problems. It’s as simple as that. This is called the Seinfeld “Unbroken Chain” philosophy.
2. Body and Mind need a predictable routine and that’s when it’s optimal. And once it has a routine, it is hard for the body and mind to accept any other way. That’s why smokers find it so hard to get out of their addiction, because body and mind is used to it and is craving for it. Same goes for coffee, same goes for writing code, same goes for creating new ideas. It is so ironic that discipline breeds creativity. It’s a truth that we don’t want to accept, because it makes us sound less “human”.
3. Don’t judge an idea to be good or bad until you have tried to manually solve it yourself once or prototyped it. After your first attempt at solving the problem, if you still feel good about it and feel that some pain point has been relieved, then it is a good idea. Take Jack Dorsey’s simple approach to creating as an example: draw out the idea, gauge the right timing, and iterate like mad.

To summarize:

1. Focus on the problem, not the solution. As Dave McClure says: “problem, not solution. customer, not technology. UX, not code. distribution, not PR. acq cost, not revenue projections.”
2. As Seth Godin would say, “Artists who ship” have the most impact. Read Linchpin to internalize it.
3. What is your impact? Can you qualify it? Can you quantify it? Measure it every month – Within 6 months, you will know whether you are “innovative.”

Update #1: Related Reading, as pointed out by Srikanth in the comments: The Discipline of Innovation by Peter Drucker. Looks like I keep reinventing what Drucker has already said.

Update #2: See 10 Laws of Productivity by Behance team.

The background is that they are working to improve the quality of education in the IS / CS departments. One of the ideas they identified was to work with in-industry programmers who can answer questions from students on the innumerable topics out there, from a practical point of view. Of course, GIYF would be your first response, but students who are just starting out need face time and guidance to make them comfortable, even if the answer is going to be “Check this URL.” Some of the kinds of questions you can expect are:

• How can I use the vi editor to edit my file?
• What is CouchDB?
• How can I compile my program better than typing javac myProgram.java?
• How can I use the Facebook OpenGraph API?

The only way for PESIT to make this happen is to get motivated in-industry programmers to spare some of their time to mentor students. And what better way is there than offer office space to startups who can work out of the PESIT campus and mentor students face-to-face right there!

Startups can also get access to clusters of hundreds of machines in the computer labs and even get interested students to work as interns with you!

If this sounds like an opportunity for your startup and an opportunity for you to improve the quality of CS education, then go ahead and write to Mr. Harihara Vinayakaram (visiting lecturer at PESIT) at nextgenerationbangalore [at] gmail.com with “Startup Student Mentor” in the subject line.

The truth is that my diction and hold of vocabulary of Kannada is at such a nadir now (thanks to never having the need to read Kannada), that I don’t think I’ll be going back for the books. I will definitely be going back for the good old Kannada movies though.

I’m just waiting for my copy of Venkata in Sankata, which was sold out at the store. That is one good Kannada comedy movie, thanks to Ramesh of course.

Heartfelt thanks to Thejesh for letting me know that such a store exists.

What I admire about places such as Total Kannada and The Egg Factory is that they’re not just enterprises, they are a result of labour of love (of Kannada and eggs respectively). And it shows.

I converted the content I had prepared into for-web-only slides for your perusal:

A founder has to do only two things right: invention and marketing. For the rest, he can attract/find people to fill the gaps.

Now, don’t jump the gun and start attacking me. Think about it for a minute (and then attack).

By invention, I mean making new things happen – whether it is product or process. Doing things differently to make new useful things. In the experimentation, eventually, there will be one idea that can go big.

By marketing, I actually mean “customer development” (as Manu pointed out in the comments). I mean the founder has to know how to sell. This means he/she should be eager to talk to customers, understand the real problems, understand whether his/her solution actually solves their problems or not, and simultaneously improve/talk/market/make happen whatever it takes to sell that product or service. ^[1]

When someone who can do these two things well, they eventually stumble upon a good useful idea, and it can take off.

Case in point, the cliched examples – Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They all started as something interesting and eventually found or will find business models. The point is that the founders of Google knew they had something good, but they brought in Eric Schmidt as CEO because he knows how to run a tech company, i.e., they found someone who can help them fill in the missing parts.

On the extreme side, Airtel outsources most of its operations, but retains the core of maintaining a good network, and (1) coming up with new products and (2) marketing them.

Again, this is just a theory that has been developing in my head. Don’t know if it holds true. Thoughts?

^[1] I am also looking at this as a proxy for a person who understands that the business side of things is far more overwhelming than the technical side of things. As Manu would say quotes, don’t use coding as a procrastination tool.

In other words, Do you have a passion for Ferrari and hence want to become rich, or do you want to become rich and then perhaps buy something like a Ferrari? [1]

On a related note, a friend of mine told me about his theory about the generations of entrepreneurs:

• The first generation entrepreneur works hard and has no time or is not interested in other things – they just want to prove themselves.
• The second generation entrepreneur has the best of both worlds – having money to enjoy as well as being inculcated with the learnings of the first generation.
• The third generation onwards, it goes downhill – because they are too pampered and they don’t need to earn any money since their ancestors have made enough money for next five generations.

Do you think this is a valid hypothesis?

[1] Don’t take Ferrari literally. You can substitute it with money to travel around the world, money to buy all the books that you ever wanted to read, etc.

Update (on Feb 23): After 51 votes, there is an equal split between the poll choices! So I guess my question could not lead me to any kind of answer. Nonetheless, it was an interesting discussion. Sometimes the question is more important than the answer.

First and foremost, thanks to all who encouraged me, and offered support and help when I wrote about leaving my own company. Many people, without any personal benefit in mind, connected me to very interesting opportunities. And this is exactly how I got my next gig.[1]

What was specifically amazing to me was that folks were connecting me to opportunities that I would not have heard of otherwise, and enthusiastically vouching for me. Now that was really humbling. Within two weeks of my blog post, I had a job! And I didn’t even have to look for it, so thank you guys. As Seth Godin put it, who needs a resume indeed!

InfiBeam

So where am I joining? InfiBeam – which I can best describe as “Amazon of India.”[2]

So why am I excited about InfiBeam?

In my previous startup, I experienced the phase of starting from scratch till creating a product. Unfortunately, I did not get to see the second part, the business side of things, including the hard part of selling, the act of knowing the customer, the logistics and operations, etc. I was still yearning for that.

At the same time, getting to see this second phase a few years later would not have made sense because I would’ve lost the enthusiasm and momentum that I have at this point in time. So, in that sense, I’m really excited about InfiBeam because I’ll get to be part of this second phase.

Second, I was specifically looking for companies in “core” areas, in the sense, someone who makes consumer products and services in India for India, and specifically, either ecommerce or mobile. And, voila, the universe conspired.

Third, I was being cautious and really looking to understand the people in the company and not only what the company makes. After all, it’s only the people aspect which makes or breaks your experience and enthusiasm. And I spent quite a bit of time interacting with the people I would potentially work with, and I came out of the discussions very happy.

Fourth, what I especially liked most about the company was their customer focus as well as the focus of building the right culture inside the company. It’s very hard for startups to focus on these soft aspects, because it easily gets sidelined compared to the hectic everyday.

There were quite a few opportunities that I explored, but I intuitively felt that InfiBeam was the place to be. And I went ahead with that gut instinct.

Both Business and Tech

And, as an example of a great fit for me, my job description says that I have to take up any product or strategy and deliver it end-to-end from the business model to the technical implementation.

I had thoughts of shifting back to pure coding at first, but then decided a business focus is indeed a good thing, and something I wish I had taken seriously right at the start of my career (better late than never!). For example, quoting from a recent Deccan Herald article: > It cites Nasscom study which states that India faces IT talent shortfall of between 8,00,000 and 1.2 million workers by 2012. It observes that, though many producers continue to work with universities, government and other firms to improve the quality of technology education, and Asian countries continue to produce large numbers of IT employees, they, however, lag in comparison with North America and Europe in providing well-rounded technology education. Among Asian economies, the concern is that education systems puts too much focus on pure IT skills and not enough on IT in the business context. Likewise, top schools in the US and Europe, which do better in this area, face long-term challenges in cultivating science and technical engineering skills of its younger students. Thus, globally, the study posits that investment in skills development remains long-term imperative.

If it feels scary…

I am positive about this gig because I will be forced to become good at what I do because of the quality of people I work with, and knowing that you’re in a good environment when you consider yourself the dumbest guy in the room.

In such situations, I keep quoting Jeff Atwood:

If it feels scary, it’s the right choice.

Wish me luck!

[1] Specifically, a shout of thanks to Nimish Adani of Workosaur.

[2] Yes, this was a way of skipping the topic that, yes, InfiBeam’s current web design looks similar to that of Amazon.com design. Yes, I don’t like it too. It is a distraction which prevents potential users to proceed to the next step of appreciating the amazing services provided by InfiBeam.

Update on Jan 31, 2010: InfiBeam has launched the first Indian ebook store and the first Indian ebook reader.

Getting people to use the staircase than the escalator

Getting people to throw into the garbage bin

Getting people to iron their clothes

“Ironing clothes can be a boring task and getting the creases removed from your clothes perfectly is next to impossible. Now all you need to do is place your shirt on a customized iron board with sensors. You need to define the task. What is to be ironed? Shirt, trouser etc. The board defines your play area with lights depending on your selection. Creases are highlighted. Place the mini road roller iron on the shirt, sit back and let the fun begin. With a remote control you need to guide the road roller around the highlighted creases. If you move out of your play area, you lose points. If you get all the creases sorted in quick time you gain points.”

Getting children to clean their rooms

So what?

I hope to keep this inspiration in mind whenever I’m building products for others to use.

P.S. Go vote for the best entries before January 15, 2010!

There was this guy who had come in for interviews for a technical role. He passed all the tech interviews with flying colors, the team liked his personality and felt he would fit in well, and the manager was all smiles. In the last HR-style round with the group head, he was informed that the team works on products that are completely owned by the Bangalore-based group and that there won’t be any travel to USA. The guy was taken aback. He told the group head “Sir, please let me go to USA for just one day. If I have a USA stamp in my passport, I will get one crore dowry.”

Needless to say, the guy was not offered a job.

I’m sure you can draw your own lessons and observations from this incident, because it will come into context below, about a discussion we’ve been having on Twitter. It all started with @debabrata who read my previous blog post on the magic of foss.in and asked:

why this ’5 years limit’ applies to Indian software pro ? In other countries people are happy being programmer after 20 years .

I asked the tweeps for their opinions, and it got very interesting.

@cruisemaniac said: society defined age to get married and settle down = ~27 = 22+5 failing which u’re an outcast! and: also, post that age, ur risk apetite goes down due to family and other commitments…

to which:

@HJ91 said: True. Very true. Outcast is the right word, and its sad. Outcast. Insulting, hurting and pathetic.

Wow, this feeling runs deep.

so I asked:

You mean risk appetite or time commitment? … how does risk appetite relate to interest in coding?

And the replies came pouring in:

@mixdev: One of the reasons why brilliant people end up being (just) tell-me-whatto-do-n-leave-me-alone software engineers

@cruisemaniac: I’d say both… U cant risk a new tech and venture 4 fear of financial security… U want tat cozy safe zone and pay packet.

@cruisemaniac: time is a big costly commodity 4 us… we indians cant afford to spend it at our will with spouses and children at home…

@mallipeddi: It’s very hard to keep getting bigger paychecks yr after yr if you’re a 30 yr old coder. You’re expected to become a mgr/MBA

@abhinav: I believe the reason is our society. We tie success to degrees, and later, more ppl you manage more successful you are.

@abhinav: Where in western societies your idea fails, here it is you who have failed! Our society doesnt appreciate risk takers

@abhinav: Yes, more money, higher status, easy life. And most importantly, more dowry!

@mixdev: Because our goals are set by the society & achieving them also in their control. You get bored faster.

@debabrata: I guess to the great extent our society dictates us what we want to be unlike the west

I found it surprising that the situation why people cannot remain coders in India is almost the same as why people want to become entrepreneurs! It’s like this: The passion for coding will remain only when you’re doing cool and interesting stuff. But big companies (at least in India) want only stability which implies boring tedious jobs with standard languages and libraries. There is no room for experimentation. So the coder will have to move to a smaller company or a startup if he/she wants to continue to like coding (I’m ignoring the case of research laboratories for obvious reasons of numbers).

But moving to a smaller company or startup is, by definition, not encouraged. As @abhinav mentioned, there is societal pressure for more money, higher status, fancier cars and bigger houses. There is nothing wrong with wanting this, but don’t force it on other people! Alas, it is hard to reason regarding this. I remember having a long argument with an uncle of mine, he was, hmm, “strongly” suggesting that I buy a car and I reasoned out why it makes no sense (after all, most peers of mine use the car only for weekend drives, not for everyday commute) but it fell on deaf ears.

So I’m conflicted here: Are there not enough people who are actually interested in coding, or is it that the interested people are being peer-pressurized into “moving up” into managerial roles and hence lose touch with coding? Or are we completely off the mark here?

Update 1: As suggested by Peter, read this entry tited “Stuck in Code” by Ravi Mohan for his tale on this topic.

Update 2: A related article in NYTimes recently titled “In India, Anxiety Over the Slow Pace of Innovation”

We have been well-supported in our experience, right from a Govt. of India grant to being one of the few to be selected as a TiE Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program mentee. We owe special gratitude for the people who made that happen and supported us.

But as any been-there-done-that startupper would expect, we delivered on technology, but we sorely lacked in maturity of management skills.

Simply put:

“Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.” — JWZ

I can’t explain more because it would then amount to washing dirty linen in public.

Anyway, time to move on. Hopefully second time will be better!

I have been reflecting on many of the experiences I’ve had. So I thought I’d jot down the biggest lessons I learned as a startupper:

Stop reading. Start doing.

For every hour that you read, you must gain 3 hours of experience.

I read so much about entrepreneurship, although only after jumping into the startup. One and a half year later, we had made all the mistakes that those articles warned us about. The problem is not in the reading or understanding, the problem is in internalizing what you read. Wannabe startuppers read all the Paul Graham essays and say “Nah, that’s not going to happen to me, I’m going to be awesome and successful”, but when I read his latest essay What Startups Are Really Like, it felt like he crept into my head at night, stole my experiences and wrote a letter to me. Yes, really, it felt like that. But, of course, you won’t believe me. Until it happens to you.

What was the most common response from the YCombinator startups to Paul Graham?

When I look at the responses, the common theme is that starting a startup was like I said, but way more so.

Read those last few words repeatedly 6 times.

And I repeat, my warning to you is that simply reading A-Z of books and essays is not important, you have to internalize the learnings by testing it out on the field and realizing the value for yourself instead of saying “that makes sense” and forgetting about it a few minutes later.

Empathy matters

It is funny how most people will discourage you from doing a startup, and, today, perhaps because things have changed now because of all the media hype, most of my friends were discouraging me from leaving it now!

There are two aspects to this. First, read The Dip and you will know why I decided to quit. As Seth Godin says in the book, “The old saying is wrong – winners do quit, and quitters do win. Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt – until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons.”

Second, as one of my friends observed, I talked to about 7 people (both acquaintances and friends) whose judgment I trusted. 3 of them sympathized and agreed with my decision and 4 of them admonished me and asked me to “hang in there.” You know what was the clincher? The first 3 had done startups themselves and the latter 4 had not. The latter 4 did not really understand the context, even though they meant well and are intelligent folks.

Imagine that a decision like this was so hard for friends-who-know-you to understand. Imagine how much empathy you should have for the motivations and work life of your customers!

Business is not a big deal, it’s only a mindset

The day I realized that I had started to think in terms of business was this conversation:

Friend: Hey, I wanted to talk to you about a gadget idea. Most phones have large storage space and bluetooth facility. Most cameras have small storage space. I have both of them on trips. I usually run out of space on the camera. So can there be a gadget similar to a bluetooth dongle that can move photos from the camera to the phone?

Me: Interesting… there is much to evaluate there (for example, I want to understand how much battery power it would eat up, which is the major concern when on a trip). But if you’re thinking about such a product, I think we should skip bluetooth and talk about peer to peer WiFi^*.

Friend: What? Bluetooth is there on every freakin’ phone out there!

Me: Yes, but by the time you build this new gadget, all the devices would have moved to p2p wifi because it means supporting only one standard. Right now, phones have to support two standards – both wifi and bluetooth which is additional hardware and headache for the manufacturers. Since p2p wifi builds on top of the existing wifi standard, it makes business sense for them to standardize on that. Comparatively, the only advantage of bluetooth, AFAIK, is low power consumption, and that factor will reduce with increasing battery life. So, in 1 or 2 years, bluetooth won’t be the in-thing, and that is when the product will be ready if you start now.

Friend: stunned silence

Me: Did I say something wrong??

Friend: You really are a businessman now.

Me: Heh

See? It’s not a big deal, you just have to learn the right mindset. Note that I didn’t say it was easy, I’m simply pointing out it’s simply a different mode of thinking, and it is doable.

I realized that doing a tech business means you should know both tech and business really well (duh). And since I’m not there yet w.r.t. tech, I’m going to stick to that as my core for the next decade. Or at least, that’s the plan. Coding is still my first love. Update: After some thought and discussions with close friends, perhaps I can contribute in additional responsibilities such as product manager-type responsibilities as well.

^* Also see What’s next for Wi-Fi?

Focus matters

A great advice I got from Muki, an entrepreneur was: “Start focusing on three things from day one – relationships, cash flow, balance sheet. You already know how to handle the rest.”

Notice he doesn’t talk about innovation, technology or all those other things. On the same note, the best explanation I’ve seen is that “Innovation is the by-product of a well-executed product”, which brings me to my next point.

“Focus” in the context of startups can be interpreted as good product management skills, which I strongly referred to in my StartupDunia guest post on the recent NASSCOM Product Conclave.

Maintain good relationships with partners, vendors, mentors, and all other folks that you meet in the course of your business. Don’t look at these relationships as opportunistic, look at it as an opportunity to co-create and learn.

Track your cash flow. Yes, you will earn millions later, but if you don’t have money now, you’ll die. You may not realize that the single highest factor why startups die is because of bad cash flow.

Don’t trivialize any aspect

Anything that is not managed will deteriorate, said Bob Parsons.

And it’s very true in this case, whether it is your legal company paperwork (yes, those stuff that you don’t want to be bothered with) or your project timelines (yes, tracking what’s on the critical path is very important, but you already knew that, didn’t you?) or thinking long-term as well as short-term, or networking with similar folks.

We, as tech people, think technology is everything and other people have it easy. I was like that. I learned it the hard way that “Easy is a term you use to define other people’s jobs.” I have a lot of respect for marketing and sales folks now. They have a really tough job, because it is about tenacity and psychology, compared to tech work which is write-once and scalable. Pop quiz: Did you really understand the signifance of that last sentence? If not, go back to my first point.

Have a sense of urgency

For every decision (and you will have a lot more of them than you realize), make sure that you do due diligence but at the same time, have a sense of urgency.

As Tecumseh Sherman said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

Bottom-up always wins

This is the single most important learning, if I had to pick one.

Time and again, I’ve observed that bottom-up always beats top-down approach to problems. Note that I’m not discouraging you from planning, but I’m discouraging you from focusing purely on the plan. The plan is a guide to your actions, you should not spend more time on the plan vs. the actions and results!

And you can observe the power of bottom-up thinking time and again, whether it is in terms of societal change or productivity paradigms like GTD or the reason why Wikipedia and open source software are successful. As Linus Torvalds says “Software is grown, not built.” Mull that!

How does this apply to startups? Let us take one specific example: You have a new idea to solve a problem and you want to test if your idea works. If the prototype takes a couple of weeks, then you should go for the prototype. If it will take longer, how do you know that it is worth investing the time? Simple, use Adwords to assess demand for your new product/service. Same thing for doing market research.

Notice that in this example, we first start top-down by ideating and brainstorming, but then switch to bottom-up thinking once the initial plan is done – immediately jump to action by a real evaluation about the need that you are trying to solve. Then decide the second action based on the results of the first action.

How to define failure

This is how I explained failure to a friend: You walk into a new restaurant, and try the food. It can be good or bad. But you still have to pay the bill! You don’t know whether your effort is going to succeed or not, but you still have to put in the effort.

And the friend replied: The problem with most people is, they don’t want to risk eating bad food, that’s why they keep going to the same restaurant, even if they are bored of it!

When to call yourself an entrepreneur

I have this personal demarcation that I will call myself an entrepreneur when I have (1) created something new (2) made money. Until then, I’m a startupper (someone who has done or been in a startup).

This is the End

Hope these reflections are useful for future startuppers and entrepreneurs. All the best! (also see 10 things I wish I was serious about before starting a startup)

As for me, I’m cash-strapped (Didn’t I say lessons learned?), and hence looking for a job (product manager or senior technical role). Do let me know if there are any interesting opportunities out there.