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Some Humor

Published by Jaspreet on May 7, 2008 in Humor.
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A bit of Humor. I am writing coz i have some time, and this site has a humor section … and i don’t own a blog (yet) to backlink.

You are reading, possibly because you also have some time. Nice, but then don’t complain. Even VCs read humor section these days (yes, i have heard).

Because of extensive traveling i  don’t own a house anymore, and currently putting up with a close friend. The maid of the house was asked by my friend’s mother to start cleaning the my room (which was vacant for some time now), and which she always used to “forget”. And if reminded, used to give lousy excuses like … someone died or so_and_so in close relation getting married.

We both were quite annoyed, and suddenly Geni.com came to my mind. I asked my aunt to casually ask the maid for her entire family tree, and we sat down and added all the details to Geni. Now, whenever someone got married or died, we just used to update the tree.

The fun started couple of days back, when an old chacha(uncle) who had expired peacefully two weeks back, suddenly got excited to get married on sunday. And old aunt of age 60 gave birth to kid today. Crazy.

Moral of the story: I find it quite amazing how tools like twitter/geni are being used.

Introducing eHealthopinion.com

Published by Devendra on May 6, 2008 in Ideas & Companies.
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One of the most common reasons for people to go online is to search for health information. 55% of those with Internet access have used the Web to get health or medical information – reference survey by Pew Internet Survey. Said so the present form of web information is limited to learn about diseases, obtain information about health care providers etc. There are very few tools available online to help individual with specific to his current condition to interact with doctor.  

But now the prospect of healthcare IT is transforming quickly. Recently Microsoft launched healthvault.com which allows people of US to store their medical data and share with their doctor. Googlehealth is fast moving in field recently tested its application with the Cleveland clinic.  

www.ehealthopinion.com is our effort to take healthcare IT to masses. eHealthopinion is the platform to connect (like ebay for product) patient; referring doctor and expert doctor. Using our application patient can able to prepare his case profile and send it to doctor for second opinion, line of treatment or follow up. Patient’s file consist medical data like ECG, x-ray, history, lab report etc. The application consist step by step information and tools to acquire patient’s data scientifically. Patient selects doctor and sends data to him. Doctor view and interpret patient’s data and write and send his opinion / prescription back to patient.   

eHealthopinion is launched on 24th July 2007. 175 doctors from 28 courtiers and 250 patients are registered with us till date. At present the service for patient is completely free of cost.  

Anticipating feedback. Thanks.  

Devendra Patel

Startups Exploited: An Open Letter.

Published by Vijay Anand on May 6, 2008 in Ecosystem.
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This might be very personal, but I doubt it can be avoided. For the past two years, there has been a lot of time, commitment, travel, stress, energy, and personal money that has gone into a really ridiculous goal - one of creating a culture of oneness, open communication and one where startups stand a chance to win. The mission does go on, and I strongly believe that the journey lies ahead for a few more years, before we can step back and let things slide on its own.

But this is not about what I am doing. This is about what is happening.

They say, that what is nice from far is far from nice. Once you get into the ground, roll up your sleeves and start digging, you start to smell the intentions of a lot of well-to-do people, which kinda make you wonder a lot of things. This post is one of warning for the startup community to take heed from, so that you don’t allow yourself to be exploited mercilessly, by any means.
Continue reading ‘Startups Exploited: An Open Letter.’

Top management recruiting

Published by Alok Mittal on May 5, 2008 in General.
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Businessweek has a nice refresher on recruiting top management. While it primarily seems to be written for large companies, the lessons are equally relevant to startups. Of course, there are some additional points one needs to keep in mind when recruiting for startups:

  • Sell a personal vision - not just of where the company wants to be, but also why the prospective candidate should get involved. Money? Significance? Career advancement? Broad-skilling?
  • Build credibility - let others speak for you. Customers? Investors? Advisors?
  • Prepare well - have a detailed view on why you need this person - is he going to feel overqualified once he comes in?
  • Hire the best - this is a motherhood statement, but one which cant be emphasized enough, especially for startups.

Any others that have been useful in your experience?

Meeting Online this Saturday [Today] @ 3PM

Published by Vijay Anand on May 3, 2008 in Ecosystem.
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Compared to how things were a few years back, the Startup Community has come together in such a fabulous way. We have OpenCoffee Club meets, Startup Lunches, Startup Saturdays, Mobile Mondays, Barcamps, Ideacamps etc, etc, and the plethora of other activities that organizations such as TiE, NEN, NASSCOM, etc are providing to benefit this same target audience.

All that said, we understand that most of these benefits are enjoyed by those who live in the major cities, and in most cases in the cities down south. There hasnt been much activities going on in cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad or any where in Kerala to bring the community together and to share, ask questions, and receive support from one another.

In an attempt to bridge that, we are hosting an online meet this Saturday [today] at 3pm at http://chat.proto.in. Most of you would know how to login, and the process is quite simple. Visit the URL, enter a nickname and you could join in.

If you would be participating, do post a comment to this post, and feel free to ask any questions if you do have any. You are also more than welcome to invite your friends, should they be interested, and ask them to join.

I look forward to seeing you there, if Possible.

PS: The Client is tested to work on an Iphone, and quite beautifully. Also if your phone as an IRC client, you could participate, on the move.

Agri Commodities

Published by Navin on May 2, 2008 in Ideas & Companies and Musings.
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Food prices are at an all time high in most places around the globe. We have been reading news on Wheat, Edible Oil, Corn etc reaching their multi year highs.  A report on the same topic reads

“Rising Food prices can be good news for the food companies who are attempting to pass along those higher food input prices to the consumer.  They are maintaining or expanding margins and they are hopeful that the constraints on food supply and the changing and expanding global demand for food products will continue to put upward pressure on prices. “

Doesn’t this provide an obvious opportunity to invest in Food Companies & Farming ? 

plugHR proves concept

Published by Prashant on May 2, 2008 in Ecosystem, General and Ideas & Companies.
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plugHROne year down the launch of commercial model of plugHR in April 2007, chasing a million dollar first year dream, plugHR proved the concept by reaching almost half of targetted numbers.

So HR can be delivered through autoserve platform, is what some two dozen CEOs experienced with plugHR managers driving their HR strategies in a highly motivated manner. Ofcourse, we faced all sorts of things along the way. But with renewals happening now, plugHR is targetting 100 companies on its platform by March 2009.

Idea is simple, we set up and run HR department for companies. 15 days and a simple sign up is all it takes to get HR department up and running with standard delivery model, professional manager on site and sharp Project manager bringing in supervision. We cleared some serious bandwidth for CEOs last year.

Not to miss, cost of running HR department crashes to half. Quite naturally then, all our clients came in through client references only & we remained geography independant. We did Mumbai, Delhi, Nasik, Singapore, attempting New Jersey, Bangalore now.

plugHR product portfolio ensures that there’s a suitable format for every size of company. Our smallest client is 7 people :)

I can be reached on 9870257257.

TiE Canaan Challenge | Funding and Cash Award

Published by Mukul on May 1, 2008 in General.
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Since we have announced the launch of TiE Canaan second edition; I have received multiple queries on: Why no cash awards? and Why no funding for winners? Funding issue is more loud and clear. I thought to share what we thought while deciding for awards:

1.) We should understand that a platform as open as TiE Canaan Challenge can’t be a funding platform. Parameters of winning this award are defined by a respected Jury. However; funding decision is very propriety to a firm and its partnership. Parameters can be different and usually are.

2.) Second and most important in my view: A company (or a team) might be good (and good is a relative judgment) but still not ready for venture funding. Does it mean that we should shy away from that company in all other ways? Probably not. There are enough examples when companies were able to close funding after 2-3 years of operations with modifications & iterations in their business models, approach etc

3.) Regarding Cash - I think we can certainly give cash rewards to winners. The examples of cash awards quoted to me are not big amounts in any way. However; we think that cash in an award form is not utilized properly and even can’t meet most of the requirements in a start up. We have consciously opted out from Cash rewards and are putting efforts in giving better and tangible awards.

Finally, I would like to impress that one should take this opportunity as a starting point for building a network and get good feedback. I understand many of us are well networked but I know lot of new entrepreneurs are not. If you hear my experience most of us are not: When I thought of starting my own entrepreneurial journey (that was just before i joined Canaan); I hardly knew ppl in the industry. From somewhere i got Alok’s mail id and requested for the time. It took me two return flight tickets (20,000/- in 2006) to get two hours of Alok. Imagine, if I have to meet 5 VCs - 1 lakh rupees gone. Here at least you can meet many VCs in one day and one shot.

I could elaborate more on Benefits and Awards since within the team we have spent lot of time thinking on this. I understand I might have scratched a wrong surface but willing to hear.

Introducing ReviewGist.in

Published by Nishant on April 30, 2008 in General and Ideas & Companies.
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ReviewGist

I would like to introduce the Venturewoods community to ReviewGist.in.

ReviewGist.in is a product discovery and research tool for consumer electronics powered by online expert reviews.

Essentially, we analyze expert reviews to figure out what aspect/part of the product is the reviewer rating good or bad. We then use this information to create simple yet powerful comparison and recommendation interfaces to enable a more informed online shopping experience.

We also provide specification and pricing information from some of the leading online retailers.

I am Nishant Soni and am the founder at ReviewGist.in. We are a small angel-funded startup based out of Gurgaon.

Hoping for some active criticism/feedback from the venturewoods community.

Pradeep Khosla: The Entrepreneurial Dean of Carnegie Mellon University

Published by Kamla Bhatt on April 30, 2008 in Ideas & Companies and Interviews.
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How does Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a renowned research US university foster research and a spirit of innovation among its students and faculty? How does CMU do tech transfer? What is unique about the US university system that helps in creating startups and companies?

Is there something that India can learn from the US University system? How can India establish a US style research institute and create an ecosystem for entrepreneurship? Can India learn to leverage research conducted at universities at an economic level? These are some of the questions that Pradeep Knosla, Dean of School of Enginering Carnegie Mellon University talks about in this audio interview.

As Pradeep points out there is no major Indian company that can trace its inception to university research. India has to figure out how to leverage the research money it spends to bring about economic development.

Pradeep is an entrepreneurial dean, who combines his passion of being in a university environment and also pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams. He helped found two companies, one of which succeeded and the other did not. In this candid interview Pradeep shares his thoughts on what he learned from the failure of their company, which was in the hot new space of virtualization and received seed funding from Silicon Valley’s Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.