Sushrut Bidwai

Few times I have observed that people tend to barge into decision making process where there are not supposed to. One of such important domain in technology budget.

Agreed that startups will have tight budgets and have to optimize the budget. But that does not mean Mr CEO that you should decide who will call shots related to it. Just give your budget to CTO/VP Engineering and let him make calls. That is HIS job not yours.

There are numerous other reasons why such decision making powers should be given and later respected. One of the more important reason is that - Only a tech person will understand the continuous importance of having good programmers/developers in the team.

When a non-tech person starts making decisions which are related to technology like hiring of programmer, partnership with outsourcing vendor, then such decisions are more likely to go wrong. This person may not have understanding on cost of losing out relationship with a good programmer, development partner. As it is not his direct responsibility to deliver next release.

So all such decisions, communication should be always and always handled by a person who’s direct responsibilities and ability to deliver can be compromised.

Sure you are CEO of the company but that does not mean you are in charge or even capable of doing everything your company requires. So focus on things you are truly good at and let others take decisions and manage relationships in there focus areas.

Process, Startup CTO, decision making, Startup

Been long long time since updated my blog. But as you know, I write only about things which really moves me to write and unfortunately I havent come across any thing in last few months that did the same. As an update - things are progressing well on my side and all is well. Very excited about the next weekends first company outing, hope to understand my team better in the process. Anyways, here are something I want to share my views on.

1. Often I come across various views on Indian startups and lot of BS about it. One thing in particular - Why cant Indian startups build global product companies? This one question is posted by many writers, advisors, mentors and VCs. What I ask is - why should we focus on building global products? Whats wrong in working on local products. Off course if we see an opportunity for global product like dimdim, slideshare, zoho we will work on that. But that does not mean if I am building product from local Indian enterprises or consumers then I am not competent. I just dont have opportunity in sight and hence focusing on something which is in sight irrespective of target market. So if you are a wanna-be-entrepreneur and some one says to you, why you are focused on India market - just ignore them. Its their job to sell you global dreams. They have vested interest for you to dream global.

2. Dream a billion dollar market - well thats good to have. But should I just let go of opportunities which are lets say 10-15 million dollar market? NO. HELL NO. If I can sustain a business with big enough profit margin then isnt that good enough. I think so. Most of the VCs and advisors will tell you otherwise. VCs because they dont need to invest in such business. Advisors typically will also think similar to what VCs think.

Only thing matters while taking decision to pursue an opportunity - do you feel passionate about solving the problem? And if successful can you do that most of your adult life? If yes, go ahead and just ignore this big, global, kick-ass etc BC.

Startup, philosophy entrepreneurship, Startup

There has been lot of buzz about ZooZoo advertisements by Vodafone during recently concluded IPL 2009. Now I have no experience what so ever in advertising and branding. But something like this made me think that which advertisements/campaigns produce great branding and sales push?

So I started thinking about all advertisements that I liked, which made me at least remember the company when I was looking to buy something they sell. 

Common thread among these all?

They don’t leverage the medium, they add value to it. 

Now I may be completely wrong, or very accurate. But this is just a personal observation. I don’t have tonnes of data to prove it.

But here is what I observed -

TV - Most of the advertisements on TV will entertain you. Be it Zoozoo, or some dental care gum with people’s teeth used for lighting tennis court, or some guy using a adhesive stick to catch fish. They will entertain you, make you laugh. Almost each time. My mom, who is cooking in the kitchen, would come out to see the zoozoo ad and not when Gilchrist was going berserk hitting everything over the fence. TV is mainly entertainment focused and hence if you can entertain people through your ads then you can win them over. Throwing lot of information about your product in their face for 20secs is money not so well spent. This is why I think, ads which are shown on news channels (their hardly news channels any more, but gross entertainment channels) don’t make that big a impact on me. Because I take it as roadblock in consuming information. May be its just me though. But if it was me I will roll out different campaigns for news, sports and entertainment channels.

Newspaper - Well most of the newspapers are meant to provide information, news, analysis. So if you can add value to this then that will be great way to utilize your marketing budget. For example, if you are a training institute which is geared towards providing IT related training. Instead of providing information about you and your products, provide information about your domain. Like jobs created in industry for last couple of years in technologies that you train in. This may add more confidence about your brand to your consumers.

Online - Online is very different in this aspect. Because for online media, there is no categorization at high level. So roll out ads based on the properties that you are buying here. I was engaged in a good discussion with Mahesh other day on twitter. And point he mentioned about performance based branding is, finding out right set of properties to target and rolling out your campaign for it. I would like to add that, choose right set of properties, based on USP of these properties, roll out campaigns geared to add value to their USP.

Whats your take on this?

Ideas, Startup advertising, branding, marketing, performance, zoozoo

There are lot of people out there who wants to be entrepreneur.

A large percentage of these people only want to be entrepreneur to become rich!

That is not the motivation for entrepreneurship.

Most of the times these people will try to piggyback with some one else who is true entrepreneur. Who believes in his ideas, concepts. Who has commitment and passion required to lead those ideas to success. 

But lot of people just have apetite to take up financial risks. They dont have entrepreneurial drive.

Beware of people who want to piggyback you. And if you have someone like that in your team, get rid off that person.

Startup Startup, startup advice, startups

Since the resurrection of dot com phenomenon and with astounding success of youtube likes, many entrepreneurs dream of making it big.

There is no problem in such dreams.

But problem is entrepreneurs think that making it big in very quick time with not much efforts is very possible.

They dont realize, youtube like financial success is very rare and almost fluke.

It is not a repeatable success story.

You can never know if your venture will turn out to be a next youtube story.

So stop daydreaming.

People who always keep thinking that some Google will come and buy us out, all we need to do is have the product out there, are just kidding themselves.

People who think, even if we fail in dot com venture, some company will buy out our user base and hence we turn investors, are kidding themselves.

If you are thinking about what to do with your success or with your failure when you are running a company, then stop running the company.

You are not meant for entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is also not for retirement minded people, who wants to just make few lacks or couple of crore rupees and live the rest of life without doing anything, are the worst kind of entrepreneurs. In fact such people should join bureaucracy, as they dont even deserve to be in corporate life style.

Startup, philosophy philosophy, startup adivce, startups

The post which will bring some very very interesting discussions/debates/fights. Here it is.

(Before starting flames on this post, do read the last line note.)

When I co-founded this company and decided to work with early stage startups, I was faced with technology choices. Ruby was (is) getting mainstream momentum. Many startups were using it. PHP, no matter how much I dislike it, was still used widely. Python with Django was also started getting some ground. .Net and Java being as important as ever. Choices were there, all looking good on surface. Features were all there. We decided to evaluate all these technologies. We both come from deep roots in Java and object oriented technologies and do have some bias towards it. But still we tried to do our best. We listed down all pros and cons for all these technologies. Investigated all of them. Build sample projects/apps in all of them. Talked to experts, technology mentors.

Also while making the choices we had some limitations on ourselves and this choice should be evaluated against these limitations.

Limitations - 

• We are not building one single product. We will be building many products, for diversified set of applications. For mobile, for web, for enterprises, for embedded devices and may be even for space crafts.
• Talent acquisition, training and retaining costs. Though we build cutting edge products, we still are a services company.
• We use our services arm to groom engineers. So finding projects on same/similar technology which can be executed by services division was also essentially, but this was more of an nice to have feature rather than limitation.
• We will be working for many startups in next few years. We want technology to support creation of off-shelf components and using them with multiple startups where ever possible.
• Knowledge transfer for code/design and technology should be minimal. Again nice to have but not exactly a limitation.

Design Methodology, Startup, Technology django, GWT, java, Perl, PHP, product, python, ruby, What not

In last few months or so, I have had debates, diplomatic way to say I had fights, with fellow geeks about how to choose technology for a product. These parameters are not necessarily for startups, but in general. In the next post, I am going to write about how these parameters gives clear advantage to Java and GWT when it comes to Web applications.

Feature Set - 

   Most of the technologies, or the eco system around them, provide enough features to build any application. True, this wont be the case if you are developing an embedded application or application for space craft etc. But most of the enterprise, web application can be built using any of the technologies. Python, Ruby, Perl, Smalltalk, .Net, PHP, Java and Flex provide everything that is required to build an application. From language point of view, these technologies will differ significantly. Features they offer to developers and geeks are not considered. A true geek develops kick ass application, which creates wealth for the stake holders. I never believed that geeks who say “I wont work on a Windows machine”, are essentially good for the company and its success.  But bottom line is feature set is pretty much common in all the important technologies and no single technology is at advantage here.

Performance -

  Very selective call. If you are building a next SSN (Stupid Social Network ) then you will have to consider serving million users. If you are building a banking system, you will have to consider serving million transactions. If you are an Ajax heavy application, you will have to think of Javascript caching and issues it presents. Performance of the complex business algorithms is essential to the over all performance of the system. Can technology take advantage of multi-core CPUs? Does it support good distributed session management? Does it have strong security features? Can it scale? How big is the footprint of application? CPU Vs Database Vs Memory Vs Bandwidth tradeoffs. One of the most important thing in performance evaluation is, you cant generalize it. In my experience, the only theory which has hold true, is the last statement when it comes to performance evaluation.

   But again, Java obvisouly holds and edge over all other technology. Java deployed on a Linux machine with Sun RISC servers to back up, makes up the highest performance you can get. Although other technologies may not be that far behind. So for a reasonably high throughput requirement system, most of the technologies will provide you support to tune them and make sure you achieve your numbers. If you use Java, then you have to worry a little less about such tweaks that are available. One of the reason is, sheer number of high performing Java apps around and availability of quality Java performance consultation.

Maintainability -

  This is point I consider the most while choosing a technology. All other points does not give clear advantage to any particular technology. But maintainability of any particular technology is so inherent to the technology itself that this becomes a very important criteria for selecting it. A product has to be supported, enhanced, maintained for a long long period of time. Successful products tend to out live the creators. Technologies will change very fast. Product will have to adapt as per changes. Code written by you will need to be maintained by some other, may be less talented person. The code will under go lot of changes as time goes by. Does technologies you are choosing help you in keeping code maintainable? Does it provide clear constructs and architectural/design patterns which are self explanatory? Can you look at your own code written in that technology one year down the line, and explain it to some one else? Is data flow and control flow clearly depicted by the technology? 

Talent Acquisition -

   A product typically wont require more than few dozen people to develop. But as the product becomes successful, you are going to need 100s of developers to maintain it, support it, enhance it and keep it improving and delivering value to your customers. Can you acquire such talent which is required to maintain product you have developed using the technology you have chosen? I know a team of 4-5 python programmers who developed a product (not so good product) and when they wanted to expand their team to add few more programmers, it took them 8-9 months to find 2 programmers who fit the bill. If the product was developed using Java/.Net it would have taken less than 1 month, if the product would have been developed using Smalltalk, they never would have found those programmers. 

   But that does not mean you cant use other technologies at all. But you will have to know that, you cant rely on the outside to get you talent. In India, no recruiting agency will even understand how to shortlist Python or Smalltalk programmers! So you will have to come up with a contigency plan to cope up with situation. You will have to hire talent which is good in some other similar technology and train them. You will have to hire ahead of the curve and spend money on training. If you can do that, then you can choose such technologies, else not.

Distributed team work -

  Now lot of experienced folks are going to be pissed off with this, but these are my views from my experience. No matter which product you are building, how big or small it is, at some point in time you will be working in a distributed environment. Some programmers working from home, some from other continent and other timezone. So can technology be so efficient to make sure you can support such distributed team structures. Can multiple programmers work on same module/file without having to spend a lot of time on resolving check-in conflicts? Does technology provide good patterns to support separation of concern, so that you can work in horizontal or vertical team structures with out creating lot of issues? Does the technology at least comes up with a really good Diff tool? .

Eco-system -

  Your product is going to live long long time if it is successful. True, having a successful product means you can spend money on porting it to whole different technology if required. But such porting rarely happens. We are still bridging with applications which run on mainframes. Businsess will very rarely do such porting. Its risky, expensive. Also are you going to fire all programmers who worked with you in making the product successful? No! So re-training costs. 

  So what you need to consider is, how good is the eco-system around my technologies. Will the eco-system evolve as per changes in other tangential technologies? Are the technologies supported by a community which is strong, vibrant and evoling? Is this community lead by a company which makes heaps of money from the technology? Can I find a consultant in particular area, like performance management or memory management,  quickly? Are their enough companies out there who make support product for this technology? Are developer tools and environment available off the shelf? Are there any outsourcing vendors available who are competent in these technologies?

Time to market - 

   People say in todays world time to market is reducing very fast and we need technologies which accelarate the same. I say, time to market was always an essential factor in considering technologies. Today we have large choices of technologies to choose from which provide very different time-to-market and hence the big discussion.

   Again lot of people will say its so easier to build application in a particular technology, that time to market is 50% lesser than other technologies. I say, okay, may be that is possible. But what is time to market? From product concept to first public release of the product is time to market. This includes time for team building too. If it is going to take me 6 months to find good programmers I can work with for a particular technology then how is that going to reduce my time to market? But I will discuss few more things on this issue in the next post, where I talk exclusively about Java+GWT combo and how we are reducing time to market using it.

Why?

  Last but not the least parameter. Why I am choosing this particular technology? Is it a status quo to work in these technologies? Am I a true if only I work on products which are written in this language? Are my customers well versed with this technology? Is the cost of building a product much lesser than other available technologies? There can be numerous such Whys, but you need to be clear about this.

Implementing Concepts, Process, Startup .Net, java, Perl, PHP, product, python, ruby, Smalltalk, Technology

Startup Proto, Startup, startup ideas

Many times techno-preneurs, specially those who are not looking to raise money do not write a good business plan. With good I don’t mean a jargon friendly, marketing pitch business plan. But rather a business plan which can actually help you in execution. Various arguments presented are “Business plans will change”, “It takes me 3 months to build the product and take it to market, lets just do that first”, “Its boring”. Thing is business plan is probably the most important tool you can have at your disposal. Unfortunately like most of the things I know now are through my own mistakes and realization about importance of business plan is one of those.

Important parts of business plan:

Note that I am not talking about how to write business plan to attract investors, but how to write a business plan to help you put together your thoughts and research.

1. Vision:

  Vision has to be presentable in one or maximum two lines. If it takes more than that to tell your vision, you are not very clear about it. Do your homework find out what is the most important thing you want to convey and generally that is your vision. Now once you have that one line, print it out on a paper and stick on top of your monitor. If after reading for a week continuously you feel its still worth a goal to take all the required risk, then you are on right track. If at end of one week you feel the one sentence does not motivate you any more, time to check things. (Making tons of money is generally assumed so try put in something other than that. Kidding.)

2. Executive Summary:

  One pager giving away information which gets readers like partner, customer, new hire, investor (in order of importance again!) interested in reading further. This one page document essentially, when you read it after a gap of several weeks, will give you everything you wanted to know about your own venture. Problem you are solving, solution overview, competition, market and structure of your team.

3. Team:

   This is the most important part. And the part where most of the entrepreneurs make mistake. All focus on plus point, which is good to sell the team to VCs. But to really understand yourself put down all plus and minus points about every one involved. Right from socially awkward to technology genius are all important attributes. What you need to find out is who is best in doing what. There are several responsibilities a team has to take care of in a venture. All things are not as big as designing state of the art banking system or pitching to Fortune 500 client. There are lot of small things like who is better person to talk to a local electricity related person in case of any problem, who can handle low level operational things like writing invoices and cash-memos. Found out these thing about your team and put them together. Sure, while presenting this to VCs you may want to remove some things from the list, but internally maintain entire list. And make sure everyone involved is working on improving on some basic set of skills, if they are lacking in any.

   Also note down skills missing from the group and how you are going to acquire them. If you are going to recruit a marketing head, what you have so that best marketing person available will be ready to work with you? How are you going to find these missing people. Your team structure and roles various people involved are going to play.

4. Competition Analysis:

  This again is really important piece of information for any stake holder. Keep this part updated regularly. You have to know your competition. Right from how much money they have raised, from whom, for how much valuation to who are the core non-founding team members. You have to know everything about your competition. Their marketing strategies, strategic partnerships, investors, customers, outsourcing partners and every other person who has a tangent with them. Find out about what your competition is strong in and what are its weak points. What differentiation your are offering. Overlap of features. Your unique selling point/s. All this is very important when you start marketing your product/service. Never look at competition negatively. Competition always helps you, at least most of the times. Frankly if you could not find single competitor to your offering, I think you are understanding the term competition in itself.  Also one quote I always remember is “There is always enough room at the top”.

5. Market opportunity:

   Never lie about market opportunity. At least not to yourself. Yes, VCs will look for billion or at least few hundred million dollar market size. But if you do not have that kind of market, does not mean you can put up your fantasies here. Specially for dot com startups I have found people really struggling with how to evaluate market opportunity. If you have done competition analysis thoroughly then that will help to some extent. Important thing is how much money your customer is going to make or save using your product. Typically some ratio (1/10th I think) is the price customer willing to pay for your product. This can be a good way of finding true valuation. Though I am not very good at this myself .

Exit options:

   There are good times exit options and bad times too. Good time options include merger and acquisitions, going public. who will be your potential buyers. Which companies will be looking to merge with you to gain strategic advantage. Is your market size big enough for you to go public at some point? Can you keep running the company with good return on investment for lifetime with out reaching any of the exit milestones. 

   Bad time options include selling off your technology, user base, marketing channels. Are you creating any patents or technology that you can sell off? If yes then to which companies? Why would they buy? Are your creating marketing channels which a particular company will be interesting in acquiring? If you are a dot com startup, then what user base you minimum need to reach to at least cash-in some part of investment if things dont work out? Have you acquired a domain name which might be very lucrative for your competitor?

There is more to business plans and will be in second part of this post.

Startup business plan, entrepreneurship, startup advice, startups

Many times in entrepreneurship you have to say no to certain things. Be it in hiring process, in some project negotiation or while selecting a particular vendor. Also many times you are also someone who is being analyzed and rejected with out even a formal no.

Question is if you are an entrepreneur, would you like to read an email saying “Thanks for your interest, but we have decided to go with other provider” or would you prefer hitting reload on your Thunderbird and awaiting response from the client?

I would prefer having to read a rejection letter. Also not only that, but I would love to work with a client who knows how to say no. For example we fail to get a contract which we worked really hard to get. The client not only wrote a good email saying - “You are equally competent and in case things don’t work out with provider I have selected, you are definitely next in line. I am making this decision not on what you presented but more on my instinct as both of you look equally capable of providing said services.” Later on when the client was looking for partner for another project he wrote me and email and we did work for some time together on it with much more respect we had for each other than before.

If the client has remained quiet and has not conveyed selection of other provider, it would have made it difficult for me to work with with him in future. Yes, ego is there but more than ego pressure is the problem. Because of the splendid letter he had written previously, I was under no pressure while negotiating for next project and working on the project. It lead to a very good understanding in working relationship which is giving both us excellent benefits.

So what do you think should someone say no formally or just keep quiet?

Startup, philosophy entrepreneurship, philosophy, startup advice