A common question I get from non-techies is “Is ecommerce for real? Do people really buy online?”

My line of argument is that the future is digital, and hence buying online is a natural consequence of that.

However, just saying that was not convincing enough. So I gathered some statistics as proof and to wow them:

• Apple iTunes is the largest music retailer in USA and has sold more than 10 billion legal songs as of Feb 2010
• Amazon is one of the largest book selling websites in the world and it now sells 105 ebooks for every 100 printed books it sells
• Netflix is a movie streaming company and accounts for 25% of North American Internet traffic
• Facebook is actually the largest photo sharing website in the world where the average user creates 90 pieces of content each month and 100 million photos uploaded per day / 6 billion photos uploaded each month

Closer to home:

• 55 million hits in 48 hours for Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara via mobile phones, facebook and youtube only, the killer part is that no TV ads were done as a deliberate marketing strategy
• Gujarat just voted via the Internet
• 20 million people watched IPL online
• Despite the super high costs, India has 9 million 3G users already
• Update: Less than 1% of India’s population uses 3G service. 0% used 3G a year ago and 30% will use it 4 years from now → 400 million new smartphones.
• Update 2: According to a McKinsey report titled ‘Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity’, released at the e-G8 Forum held in Paris on May 24-25, 2011, internet contributed 5 per cent to the total gross domestic product (GDP) growth of India in the past five years compared with the average 3 per cent for BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies. According to the report, companies are able to keep costs down, target customers better and bring goods and services to markets around the world much more easily. — AlooTechie

Then there always is the trump card of how ubiquitous online ticketing has become…

As you can see, digital is happening in India and with RBI reporting that 35% of transactions (and 88% of the total amount) were electronic and Cash on Delivery slowly happening, how far will ecommerce be behind?

How would you convince someone that the future is digital and that ecommerce will be big in India?

Everyday I get emails from readers of my books that makes me wonder: Am I continuing to make an impact everyday? Can I have the same impact again through my work? Maybe, let’s see.

But still, it’s difficult to top this:

I’m a 16-year-old boy from Guangxi,China.

Thanks for the book named A Byte of Python of yours.I learnt lots of things from it.

And this:

Dear Sir,

I have never been able to program before but with your byte of python I actually managed to not only write the small programs but even understand. For me this is good because I am 57 years old and I always gave up any programming I attempted to learn before no matter how desirable a goal it seemed. The real problem I run into is what the words mean. I consider myself fairly literate but when I run into a special word I do not know the meaning of, it frustrates me, especially when I cannot find a definition, and there goes the understanding. Also, there are gradients of knowledge that are skipped. One minute you’re riding along nicely and the next minute you’re behind the 8 ball. Along the way, one quits. You, on the other hand, seem to have undercut this better than anyone I have encountered before. Your explanations are clear and concise and you define words well so I understood more of python than I have of any other language including Basic which I tried and gave up on years ago and the understanding flows very well. And you’re giving hope to an older person who really wants to learn to program!

Thanks so much

These emails are enormously humbling and reminds me to continue to focus on the impact of what I do.

The Goal

I ran the Kaveri Trail Marathon two Sundays ago (Sep 19, 2010). It was a marathon worth remembering – the preparation, the anticipation, the great set of friends I made, the beautiful trail that we ran in, and the D-day performance.

My personal target was to finish 21KM under 3 hours. It was looking tough because I was completely out of fitness and I hadn’t run that much distance in years.

I did end up finishing strongly in 2:49 hrs and I was very very happy, but this was just an ambitious goal four months ago and seemed unlikely that I’d achieve it!

The Preparation

As I mentioned, I have done this target distance and timing before, but it has been nearly 2 years since I last did this distance, so it was a big challenge for me to get back to the same level of fitness.

On top of that, I have been avoiding KTM all these years because of the horror stories I’ve heard about the heat and humidity, so I decided that KTM was the perfect next challenge for me to take up and look forward to.

Since I had not been running in the past two years, my body had completely forgotten what it is capable of. That was the motivation for me to travel all the way to Auroville to do just a 10K run. Luckily, I had met the Runners High group in that trip. I liked the group so much that I decided to join their training for the KTM. And boy, am I glad I took that decision!

I have been part of other formal running groups before but I was put off by the elitist atmosphere. Runners High was different. Due to the coaches’ personalities and their design of the schedule, they have managed to create a *community* feeling in the group. Personally, I think the “Wednesday workouts in each local area” is a simple-yet-effective psychological trick to get people to know each other and eventually imbibe a team spirit that encourages them to push each other to achieve their targets. The training schedule should not be about showing up on a weekend morning and being told “You have to run 11KM today. Go!”

At the start of the training course, the coaches conducted a 2 mile time trial and informed each of us on what is the target timing we should expect based on our level of fitness. I was told that I could finish the half-marathon (21 km) in 3:07 hrs ⇒ 8:55 min/km. The race day performance, as I mentioned, was 2:49 hrs ⇒ 8:05 min/km. 18 minutes is a really big deal for a runner – it’s the difference between a ~8 min/km run and a ~9 min/km run!. It may sound trivial but probably a non-runner can never internalize the significance of 18 minutes – just one of the life lessons that I have learned in the past few months. More on that later.

Our gruelling training schedule began around four months behind the race day. The schedule was similar to what you would expect of a marathon training chart. One of the tricks that the coaches employed is to do a long run on Saturday and an even longer run on Sunday. I didn’t think much of it at the start, but in hindsight, it’s a brilliant idea – it built up our stamina because you’re doing a run on Sunday when you’re already tired because of the previous day’s run. I could feel the impact of that on the race day because I felt I had so much more energy and stamina than I normally did on the regular weekend runs, because I had not run on the day before the race day (a Sunday). Although they’re switching back to the traditional “long run on Saturday, short run on Sunday” from now on.

The Roadblock

I was sufficiently occupied with worries about my fitness and managing the KTM heat when something new started affecting me.

After the first Agara lake run, I threw up after the run was over. I thought this was a one-off thing, but it happened again after the next Sunday long run.

I was even more worried now.

I called up Santhosh and asked for advice, he said “Eat one hour before the run.” Coach Murthy also advised the same. I had never eaten before runs before, so this was something new I had to get used to.

After that, the next 12 km run I did great because I had oats an hour before the run.

Eating is the easy part, getting used to running with a full stomach was something else! But nutrition is as important as physical fitness, so I stuck on with it.

Eventually, this was my nutrition plan for the long runs:

• Eat oats or muesli one hour before the run. Use milk and honey liberally.
• Carry a fuel belt and drink electral water every 20 min. “If you’re feeling thirsty, you’re already late in drinking water.”
• Eat figs and badam (kept in sachets in the fuel belt) every 40 min. They release energy slowly, just the right kind of food during a run.

Phew! Sounds like a lot of work? It was, but it helped me run strongly, and I would do anything to run strongly.

What foods to eat is specific to each person. For example, bananas have adverse effect on me because I start getting cramps, compared to bananas being the staple diet of almost every runner!

Special thanks to “Vibram” Ramkumar, a fellow runner, for all his advice to me on which foods to try, and for the words of encouragement!

The Community

I would be wrong to not make special mention of the community of Runners High. Yes, we are paying to be part of this programme, but sharing that camaraderie is a privilege.

We have discussed everything from race strategies (yes, strategies) to perspectives on life to startups. Your motivation to run increases when you can look forward to meeting new people, and more importantly, meeting new interesting and positive-minded people.

Race Day

Finally, the anticipated race day (Sep 19, 2010) came near. After a rigorous training schedule that we were enjoying, being forced to not run in that last week before the race day seemed more torturous than the runs themselves!

The most enticing part of KTM is the trail that we run. The beauty of that trail cannot be expressed enough ¹. The trail starts right near the gate of the Ranganathitu Bird Sanctuary in Srirangapatna (near Mysore, Karnataka, India).

The race started, I put on my headphones, switched on the RunKeeper app on my iPhone and my specially crafted music playlist and I got started. Everything was smooth sailing afterwards. There was intense heat, but we have had sufficient heat training and we were geared for it.

I was surprised to find myself at the 10.5KM mark within 1:15 hours. You know you’re having a good run when you’re just “gliding” and you’re racking up kilometres without even noticing.

One of the highlights of running on the race day is that runners spur each other to keep on going and have a good run. The smiles and clapping and words of encouragement for each other, it is a great feeling.

Towards the end of the run, I saw a familiar face, Ajay Gupta, encouraging me to sprint the last few hundred metres. I would have never imagined I would have had energy for that, but his encouragement egged me on, and I actually did sprint and finished strongly.

A great run, a beautiful green (paddy fields), blue (Kaveri river canal) and brown (mud) trail, a wonderful set of friends, and achieving a personal ambition to boot. I had a smile on my face for weeks, and I proudly hung the “KTM Finisher” medal on my wall.

I had tracked the entire run using RunKeeper app, which kept me regularly informed on how my pace and how much distance I had covered:

On the same note, congratulations to Gopal for doing his first full marathon!

I keep saying that “running is more mental than physical” and as a testament to that, I thought I’d share some of my “life lessons learned” during this journey:

Nervous Energy

I have a theory that people are in a default state of “nervous energy”. You are experiencing this when you are multitasking or when you’re fidgeting or you’re compulsively checking your Facebook stream.

If you shake off your “nervous energy”, that is when your “productive energy” is unleashed. You are experiencing “productive energy” when you’re fully focused on an activity, when you’re experiencing “the flow” or you’re in a very creative frame of mind and you have output to show.

My hypothesis is that the most practical and easiest way of shaking off your “nervous energy” is by doing a physical activity like a walk or running or sports or even a simple mechanical act as cleaning your room/work environment. High productivity isn’t about doing, it’s about being.

Deep enjoyment

The first thing that running helped me internalize was “crossing the valley” or “the dip” (in Seth Godin’s words).

For example, consider one of my weekend runs: First 20 min, I start slow and enjoy my run. 20-30 min is the low phase where I want to stop and take a break but I know that the break will actually break my rhythm and I won’t continue. After 30 min, I get back into the groove where I really start to enjoy the run and I have that familiar “gliding” feeling w.r.t. my pace and my knees.

It’s amazing how much this applies to life in general as well – most of the times, we don’t cross “the dip” and don’t ever get to really enjoy something deeply.

Running helped me internalize that there exists something as deep enjoyment, and how to get to it.

Deep enjoyment includes obsessing over figuring out how something works (which I used to give up if I didn’t figure it out in 10 min) – which is important for a programmer. It even includes things like taking the time to understand a news article which is not even close to my spheres of interest. As your knowledge and understanding increases breadth-wise, your life will become interesting!

Fitness

Equally important is to note that running itself has made me fitter (although, sadly, not thinner) and my energy to do things has greatly increased. This has been noted well in this Hacker News discussion.

Being fit means you have more energy in general. But to be fit, you need to follow the basic health principles religiously. For example, I had an awesome run on July 25th – I ran 10.5 km in 1 hr 19 min. Without a single break. And I ran my 6th km faster than my 2nd km, and I even sprinted the last 500m. This kind of energy hasn’t happened in years, literally. All because I ate in the morning, thanks to following the coach’s advice. I was again reminded of the value of elders’ advice, which I have often not heeded as much as I should have.

Being Driven

Being part of Runners High, I am astounded on how many fellow runners are the “driven” kind – more than half of the people are in three categories – startuppers (including incubation at IIMB), wannabe-startuppers and CEOs / MBAs-from-prestigious-school.

So does that HN comment on how having fitness gives you more energy to do things apply here? Or is it the people who are already driven, naturally, the kind of people who take up running? I don’t know the cause, but there is a big correlation there for sure.

Your Thoughts?

This was my simple journey to a simple 21KM run. This journey is the best thing about sports.

If you are into sports, especially running, I am curious to know what are the life lessons that you have learned?

---

Dedicated to the song “Fear is the Mind Killer” by Adam Freeland.

¹ I wish I had taken more photos, but here are some photos from previous KTM editions that will give you an idea of how serene the place is.

Cal Newport, one of my favorite bloggers ever, wrote about the upside of deep procrastination last week. I had a few thoughts on the subject.

So what is deep procrastination? You know you’re in it when “No matter how dire the stakes, starting work becomes an insurmountable prospect.”

I remember this starkly happen to me when I transitioned from 2nd PUC to B.E.

I had the fortune of studying in a school which exposed us to computers very early. I remember playing a lot with Logo and fascinated that you can draw circles and rectangles on a screen. I knew back then that I wanted to study computers.

So in PUC, I had chosen to study computer science (PCMCs) and not choose biology at all, compared to most of my peers who wanted to “keep their options open”. No sirree, computers was for me.

I couldn’t wait to get to “B.E. in Computer Science” so that all I would do was learn about computers.

Uh oh.

I found myself studying about “strength of materials”, about the different materials used in construction of a building, about the calculation of the weight that a pillar has to support, blah blah. WTF.

I was disgusted. I was very demotivated. I was in deep procrastination. I had stopped studying. And I didn’t care.

I have usually stood in the top 2-3 ranks of my class throughout my school and pre-university days (well, geeky was the word used to describe me…). In engineering days, I was given a rap for having attendance shortage.

But something happened. I soon started to enjoy it.

I explored a lot in those days – from lots of trekking (which meant travelling outside the city with friends! Whoa!) to reading tons about technology.

Because I studied well in PUC and got a good rank in CET (463, out of lakhs of people), my grandpa surprised me with a gift of 5000 rupees (don’t remember the exact amount). I had never seen so much money in my life (back then).

I blew it all up by sitting in a cybercafe. I used to download web pages, put it in floppy disks, come back home and read them on the home computer. I fondly remember reading about a lot of open source projects and a lot of Tim O’Reilly’s essays.

Those were amazing days. And legend has it, that it all began with a few good seniors who taught us Linux and open source, and I eventually ended up writing a book (stop yawning alright!).

Fast forward by 5 years… As a good friend likes to say: “There are only two times you innovate in your life – 1. when you’re in college 2. when you retire.” True enough, I don’t think I have ever read deep tech stuff since then. Nowadays, reading the LLVM Blog makes my brain hurt. Sigh.

The point of my story is this: Since I stopped focusing on studies in college, I let my curiosity guide me. All that curiosity has led me places and I’m forever grateful for that.

My Advice: The key to get out of deep procrastination is to have a constant balancing act between hard focus and curiosity. Leaning towards either for an extended period of time can be completely demotivating.

I believe that working on projects that will have long-lasting impact and simultaneously priming your curiosity, and engaging with the unlimited number of topics to explore out there, will keep you on an even keel and a good frame of mind. Maybe even a happy frame of mind.

A question to all wannabes, startuppers and entrepreneurs: Does taste drive ambition or ambition drive taste for you?

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.

- Work -

Resolutions

Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans. I got sidetracked by struggling to make a business. But don’t regret it for even a moment. Learned a lot about the real world. Changed from being a meek guy who liked to hide behind email to someone who has now learned to “work the room.”

Business

Reinforced, the hard way, that “you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.” — JWZ

Job

Ironically, after a startup experience, I think I will be a far more cooperative person in a corporate environment, because now I realize the problems and hardships faced in each role in a company.

Psychology

Realizing that it all boils down to psychology. Understand the other person’s psychology and only then you can navigate through life.

Rationality

My new law: “Never ever assume that people have made their decisions rationally.”. People take decisions for all sorts of reasons, just don’t assume that the reason was rationale.

Confidence

Realizing that self-confidence comes from within. Everybody has their own talents. So what if I can’t code like geniuses? When I work with intensity, I can get the job done. Good enough, I think.

- Life -

Decisions

You don’t make decisions, decisions make you.

What Matters

What matters to me is force and family.

Friends

(Drawing by Jessica Hagy)

Realizing how often you lose friends that you care about. Good friendships last ~2 years only.

Real Troubles

Don’t worry about the future.
Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective
as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.
The real troubles in your life
are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind,
the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

– Baz Luhrmann

Pursuit

As humans, we will always be in the pursuit of something.

At the end of the day, all we want is to be missed and to know that we have made a difference.

Yesterday was my last day at IonLab, the company that I built with a few friends. It has been a wild ride but I could continue no longer. I am leaving due to internal differences on the progress and transparency in the company.

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.

Update on January 15, 2010: I joined Infibeam.
Update on July 04, 2011: Interestingly, Splitterbug is a YCombinator 2011 Summer Batch startup that is pursuing the very same idea. Just goes to show that the idea had and still has potential.

The irony in this world is that “To get somewhere, you already have to be there.”

From an individual perspective:

• If you want to make money, you need to already have money.
• To get a job, you need to be one-year experienced and not a fresher.
• If you’re experienced and want to apply for a job that you really want to work on, you should already have the background of working in that area, and you should already know how to do all that the job entails.
• If you want to write a book, publisher expects you to have already written a book before.
• To be listened to, you need to be an expert, not an amateur, but how do you eventually become an expert if you’re never listened to?

From a startup perspective:

• If you want to get funding, your startup should be in a position to not need funding.
• If you want to stock your product in ezone, you should not be a 1-product company, but a 5-product company.

And on and on.

To get somewhere, you already have to be there.

P.S. I’m not condemning, condoning or approving of the situation. Just making an observation.

The world is no place for a logical/rational person.

— Swaroop C H

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.

— Albert Einstein

A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends.

— Arabian Proverb

Question for you: How do you distinguish incompetence, laziness and unprofessionalism?

“People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.”

– Craig Newmark (of CraigsList fame)

So what are there real needs?

I’m trying to (naively?) boil down all the successful software, websites and web applications out there and see if it can be mapped into as few categories as possible:

1. Communication (Social networks, Basecamp, etc.)
2. Organization (Google Docs, Flickr, Backpack, etc.)
3. Information (Content websites, News websites, Search engines, etc.)
4. Entertainment (YouTube, Nautanki.tv, Blogs/Journals/Twitter, etc.)
5. E-Commerce (Amazon, Paypal, etc.) (Category added thanks to Ankesh)

Note that the website that you use may fit into different categories in different circumstances.

The idea is to not search for a comprehensive or accurate classification.

The idea is: If you brainstorm an idea or come across someone else’s idea, can you trace it back to one of these categories? If yes, what does it mean? If no, what does it mean?

Is this a useful angle to evaluate an idea, or not?