Have been out here in bay area for past few days, and visibly out of action on venturewoods. Everytime I come here a couple of things hit me: 1. The infrastructure for startups to get going is great — right from office space onwards. There are literally hundreds of easy to move in/low lockin options […]
Why do Indian outsourcing majors not pursue open source ?
This question baffles me. After all, selling services around open source seems to be the future for a lot of the software world. Oracle made 70% of their revenues last year based on services. There are clear arguments to be made in capturing a large mindshare by introducing quality open source products and monetizing it […]
Guy Kawasaki on VCs
Some food for thought, for You keep saying free-credits-report.com is money but the lady has a deposit without a loan. VCs and entrepreneurs alike. 0
Is it already ending?
Just read this article in Businessweek.I believe media always picks up a trend a little late, and whenever they write about a boom or a bust both phenomenon are already over, i.e. the best plays are gone- both on the upcycle or the downcycle. What do you folks think? is Web 2.0 picking up or […]
Writing for the attention starved world
From the Financial Express comes this interesting data point: The average time spent on the internet is on a rise. From 58 minutes on weekdays in the Indian Readership Survey (which tracks media consumption) July-December 2003, it increased to 63 in IRS July-December 2005. [Printer Friendly Version] While 63 minutes sounds like a lot, email […]
Critical Mass
In India what would be some good ways to get lets say 1 million members signed up. What you are becoming a member for is important but lets assume that the value proposition makes sense. Initially if say for the first 10000 members sign up is free. Then membership costs Rs 99/-. A member gets […]
What is your dangerous idea?
John Brockman is a literary agent, which is like saying that Sachin Tendulkar is a batsman. Brockman also runs one of the most thought-provoking and important salons around today – Edge. Basically, the idea is this – gather together the smartest people around (scientists, authors and other kinds of thinkers) and have them dialogue with […]
JobsAhead Life Graph
Here is an attempt to encapsulate the life of a startup in one picture. Let me know your feedback, and I can then request other entrepreneurs to kindly contribute the same. The format I have chosen is to represent the optimism or happiness of a company (not just promoters, but the team) on a time […]
New Seed Funds: Right time, Right Place, Right Model
On Monday (Dec 19), I attended the soft launch of Mentor Partners, a unique technology-focused seed fund, in Bangalore. The firm plans to initially invest $1 million each in 10 product-focused companies in the IT and telecom space: around $500,000 as seed investment or “bridge loan” and the remaining as part of the first round […]
Online businesses waiting to happen in India
Looks like the winter chill is catching up with Venturewoods. Was at the contentsutra mixer couple of days back, and the participation seemed to be good. One thing that I have been thinking about is the set of online businesses that are ripe for indian market. In 1999-2000 the dotcom boom lasted only 3 months […]
BOA Clarification
I thought it might be useful to post this excerpt from a reply I sent to one person who contacted me as it may help entrepreneurs understand when it makes sense to approach the Band of Angels “Please note that I do not sign NDA’s. The Band of Angels requires executive summaries in a particular […]
TiECon – 15.Dec – My story Live!
Morning today was a new experiment for TiECon – we realized that besides high profile keynotes, we need to bring in success stories than entrepreneurs can relate to. Great session which managed to bring out both the logic and the passion behind startups! Deep Kalra (Makemytrip) moderated a great discussion with Avnish (ebay), Vishal (Indiagames), […]