1. Brain Audit - Sean D'Souza
2. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word - Joe Sugarman
2,014 karma · joined September 29, 2008
Interested in Strategizing, Marketing, Psychology, Cognitive and Neuro Science, History, Trending and Patterning. Totally intrigued by the question: what makes us humans tick.
Email: ankeshk AT ankeshkothari.com
2. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word - Joe Sugarman
The Lokpal bill was initially introduced in the Indian parliament in 1968. 43 years ago. Many attempts were made to make it into a law - always unsuccessfully. Until Anna Hazare whipped the people into a frenzy, went on a fast and essentially blackmailed the parliament. That is why he is called a modern day Gandhi. He successfully used Gandhian techniques to achieve an impossible feat. Not because of some checkered instance from his past.
(Also, Gandhi recruited Indians to become soldiers during WW1 and fight for the British - going against his doctrine of non violence. No one is pure and nothing is black and white.)
Entry period ends on Oct 2.
The problem of why ycombinator model has not worked in India is the same as why other ycombinator copycats in other parts of the world have failed too. (Besides TechStars, I can't think of very many successful ycombinators in other parts of the world - including Canada and Europe and Australia.)
The reason is: these copy cats have not cracked the code of attracting and accepting awesome startups. The success of ycombinator is mainly based on the success of its startup selection.
You need someone like Paul Graham to attract a lot of startups. You then need to be good at filtering out and select only the startups that show promise. And you then need to help these startups with huge demo days.
Who else has managed to crack this? No one. If you see the Indian and other ycombinator copy cats, you will still see such a high degree of crappy startup acceptance rate. Fix that, and you will have a successful ycombinator copy cat.
Because the market is global.
A lot of people complain about traffic. You know the salary of a driver on a monthly basis? About $100-250 (depending on the car you drive).
Bureaucracy is killing. Takes 3 months to incorporate. But do you know how much accountants charge in India to take care of all your business details? A startup probably won't have to pay more than $150 a month on an accountants fees.
Things are so cheap in India that you can live an extremely shiny life on the same budget at which an entrepreneur struggles to feed his family in USA.
But yes - a lot of the things are broken in India if you don't have the little bit of money required to throw at it to fix it. On the bright side: the pace of improvement is staggering (I mean - Indian literacy rate went from 65% to 75% in 10 years. Thats 650 million literates in 2001 to 900 literates in 2011! Still not awesome. And college education is still lacking in many places. But the speed of improvement is staggering.)
Disclosure: I'm a glass-half-full kind of an Indian who studied in USA but is now living in Bombay working on a startup.
The 2011 census just came out. What is the literacy rate? 75% only. That means 25% Indians can't read or write. Thats 300 million Indians that can't read and write. 300 million. Thats a big number. If you focus on that number, you will think that India is in a bad state. Doing pathetic. No hope.
But you need to go back a bit. In the last 10 years alone (from 2001 to 2011), the number of literate people in India has risen from 650 million to 900 million. That is a huge jump. A shift of 250 million people to literacy in 10 years.
That is India. Statistically - when compared to other countries - seems to be in the dumps. But improving at a rate that is crazy to comprehend.
India is like that dorky adolescent kid with warts and pimples popping up all over the face. Give her 20-30 more years.
This allows you and the mods to set the tone for comments.
Of course, the weak point is - moderators bias may show up. And a worthy comment may be marked as not useful occasionally. So depending on the number of moderators you have, you could make it so that the minimum criteria is x number of moderators have to mark a comment as not useful.
2. The 2 problems you are facing right now is: the code need major revamping. A dedicated sales person is needed.
Because of your background, you seem to be putting emphasis on fixing the code first. Forget that. Make sales the priority. Join as a salesman and try drumming up new sales for the next 3 months. Without putting effort in revamping the code. This will show you:
i. If the demand is actually there in the market
ii. What features are essential and what are not
iii. And if you can drum up new sales, this will give you the money that can be used to fix the code.
3. One client is invoiced about half a million $ a year. This client is an awesome company to bring on board as a partner. Get this client to fund future expansions. Either by pre-paying you for getting discount in price for the next year or 3. Or by giving you a loan. Or by taking an equity stake in the company itself.
There are companies that sell special reports on trending to other companies for $10,000. Of course, they don't sell more than 40-50 copies. But thats still a decent revenue. The point is: charge according to what you think the solution is worth.
Unless ofcourse your strategy is not to make money off the ebook. But to build your credibility. So total revenue is not the goal, but total number of copies sold is. In which case, price it at under $10.
And yes - if you're unsure about the pricing - then start low. And continuously increase prices by 10% every other week. Until you see a drop in conversion rates.
Reminds me of the story behind my favorite Rockefeller quote. "Everything that is watched - improves." - John D. Rockefeller.
John D. Rockefeller had a rule that he passed down to his kids: donate exactly 10% of all your income to charitable causes. Not 9%. Or 11%. But exactly 10%.
What this did is made sure that the Rockefellers kept "track" of each and every penny that came in. Because they watched over their money, it grew.
(Yes, it would make sense to pay attention to the unsubscription rate if the author shares the historical data of those unsubscribers. Did they make a lot of purchases in the past and the long salesletter is just bugging them off - which is reducing the "life time value" per subscriber?
But I don't think that data has been collected. (Or the author would have shared it with us in my opinion...) So - this to me feels like a decision made keeping the wrong metric in mind.
Nano is designed in a way that it uses less steel than other cars - making it lighter and cheaper.
Also, the wheel placement is done in a way that allows the car to be very small - yet the seating space be a lot more than other compact cars like Hyundai's Santro etc.
And also - Tata Nano innovated on the assembly line model. The car is designed in a way that the car parts can be built separately and assembled in various locations. Thus, smaller plants are needed. (Sure, computers are built the same way too. But cars are not built that way by other companies. Tata replicated the computer manufacturing model and made cars available in "assembly kits.")
I agree with you that the cheap labour helped in keeping costs down. But that was not the only thing. There is some really good innovation behind the car too.
Other innovations from India:
Generating electricity from rice husk: http://www.huskpowersystems.com/
Vertical axis windmill: http://tepp-innovators.blogspot.com/2008/01/wind-turbines-on...
Microsoft, IBM, Cisco all have huge R&D labs in India. And the number of patents coming from them is not insignificant.
Of course, the number of innovations per capita coming out of India is a lot lower vs those coming out of USA or Israel or someone. But India is not a laggard in innovation.
You've listed down 3 risks.
- Risk of no one watching.
- Risk of going over budget.
- Risk of actors or directors having a fall out. (Or something else occurring that makes episodes not coming out on time if at all.)
And you make a good point that thats why Netflix is trying with 1 show and not 10.
But aren't all these risks you listed further minimized by experimenting with a $10 million show than a $100 million show?
My thinking is: Netflix does not care about risk at all. If they wanted to minimize risk, they would have gone with lower priced shows. Or they would have gone with a lot more shows. The only reason they have gone after a high priced mainstream show is as a negotiation tactic. To make a stand against studios and cable companies. "Play ball with us. Because if we can't play together, we will compete together."
Upto 211 degrees, nothing happens. At 212 degrees, water boils.
Similarly, will 1 good show make a lot of people subscribe to Netflix? Even if the show is orgasmic - I doubt it. There is no momentum here. No tipping point. 2 shows won't do it either.
I don't know what the minimum number of new shows is that would get a lot of folks to subscribe. But for myself, I would put it near 12 or so.
If Netflix wanted to reduce their risk, they should have targeted niches that are not so expensive. Mainstream entertainment is not a good idea to start with. Something like History channel or World Travel is.
But going with low risk niches, would not generate so much publicity for them. Would not make the studios and cable companies take notice. Netflix is in a fight with them - and so this is a strategic move to get noticed. Not a risk reduction move.
Downside: they only work with INR based transactions. No global currency or even just US$ supported.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement
2. Meet a lot of new folks. Find meetups happening that have nothing to do with your field. Buy lunch to one new person everyday and have long conversations. Go on a road trip maybe to meet and connect with all your old college friends.
3. Read good fiction. Read magazines that have nothing to do with your interests.
4. Travel. But without fix leaving dates. Slow leisure travel.
5. Eat healthy. Exercise. Sleep well.
Inspiration for this post taken from the quote:
"There are four ways to know much: live for many years; travel through many lands; read many good books; and converse with wise friends." - Baltasar Gracián
1. See what is new and working in other industries. And replicate them for your industry. Youtube's success gave rise to all the xtubes. The first few people to ride that bandwagon made it big.
2. Select a niche and focus on it. Dominate it. Then use the cash flow from one niche to venture into other niches. Then earn even more cashflow and start buying people out. This picture is an awesome example of parlaying to domination: http://images.nymag.com/news/features/sextube110207_2_560.jp...
3. When faced with a threat - brainstorm on what dilutes that threat value. "Unlike recorded porn, live cams are immune to piracy..." (But live cams can't be scaled up either. You can only have so many people watching you live.)
4. Being a platform is always better than being a player. People doing live cam shows earn $1200 or so a month. The website where these live cam shows are streamed earn that much too - per person. But they have thousands of such people participating... so $1200*thousands. (Apple will always make more money than a single developer. Facebook will make more money than Zynga.)
[1] I've moderated private invite only forums with 20 members that generated 12-15 threads everyday! And yes - these threads were busy. 20 people were easily spending a total of more than 10 hours on the forum everyday.
Action Summary:
- Find 20 people who like your concept and invite them to participate before you launch. Make them your beta testers and ask them for their input. Give them non-monetary rewards (tshirts etc is a good idea). Let these folks populate your site and make it look busy.
- Then on launch day, have a strategy in place that does generate 500-1000 visitors per day. Thats probably about $50-100 in ad expense per day if you don't have a viral aspect to your social website and your users don't drive traffic.
The reasoning about "everybody happens to be born into their designated places" is not true however. India had the caste system. Not anymore. Sure you'll find a few pockets of exceptions - a few villages that still think they are living in the 16th century. But by and large, this is not true.
If you can hustle, you can succeed in India.
Case in point:
Dhirubhai Ambani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhirubhai_Ambani Made his money in textiles and oil, gas, energy.
Gautam Adani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautam_Adani Made his money in shipping.
Both of them were very poor once. Their stories outshine Horatio Alger stories.
Teach him about managing money. Get him into the habit of saving from a very early age. And writing down all the expenses.
(Rockefeller had a rule for his kids. He gave them money for all the chores they did. And they had to donate 10% to the Church. And save 10%. But because they had to donate exactly 10% to the Church - and not 9.5% or 10.5%, they were required to keep an account of every penny they received. This: keeping track of money from an early age is the trick to making sure you never end up poor.)
2.
Teach him confidence. Elocution and public speaking and drama classes.
3.
Make him love reading. Dr. Seuss. Comics.
4.
Teach him how to delay gratification. The trick is to focus on other things.
5.
Teach him discipline in exercising early on. And healthy eating. Sports.
6.
Play all the wonderful board games besides the popular ones like Monopoly. Excellent for math and logic building skills. And figuring out the winning strategy.
These above are the building blocks. Its ok if he learns to code a bit late in life too.
1. Hire a good lawyer and get good advice. The best defense is a good offense and all that.
Make sure he has no ability to use company funds. Cancel his company debit / credit card if he received one as a director of sales. Send an official letter by registered post letting him know that he does not have the ability to authorize expenses above $100 or so.
Then follow your lawyer's advice on firing him from the sales position.
Make sure your lawyer communicates the non-compete part with him properly - so that he realizes that if he leaves now, he won't be able to profit from the idea at all - and its better to stay with you and earn 22% of the pie than go for 100% and get a big fight on his hands that he will most likely lose.
2. > The person had a large rolodex in a segment of our market.
This tells us that the person's reputation can be adversely affected. Threat of bad press could maybe get him in line.
Also, it would be a good idea to find at least one or two common connections and try making them mediators.
3. This is the stick. You need to offer him a carrot too.
Make him an offer: he does not work with you. He retains his shares and plays a role as an investor. He gives up the board seat - and remains a silent investor. He gives you a connection / letter of referral for all the contacts he is sitting on - for a flat fee. No vesting of shares.
Position this "getting a fee for writing a letter of introduction to his connections" - as the carrot. A lot depends on how you phrase it.
4. Start contacting other investors who could maybe buy this person's share out. I doubt if you can find and close someone in 7 days, but the sooner you start looking, the better.
As you correctly identified - you need a goal. And a thesis - a topic you can center your blog around. What can you offer that helps others? What are you an expert at?
1. Thats fine.
2. Not a good idea. A long scroll bar will overwhelm people and turn them off. Unless you want to follow the cult strategy: have barriers in place to retain fewer people but the most loyal people - you should limit the posts to 10 or 20.
3. Tags = subtopics. People can click on a tag and read all the posts that share the same tag. So if you use the post title as the tag too - no 2 posts will share the same tag. And tags end up being meaningless on your blog.
4. I didn't know what Shlepp means. Had to Google it. And Google says that Shlep is a word. Shlepp is not. Shlepp will also lead to a lot of spelling errors. Ideally, your blog name should be something simple, memorable, and something that people search for / identify with. If you can't come up with a good name for the blog, or have a lot of topics to talk about - then do what Seth Godin did. Start your blog with your own name.
5. Keep a schedule of writing. Buddy up with someone. Because most bloggers don't last more than 3 months. Especially when they are not clear with their goals.
Spend as much time you do on writing on promoting the blog too. Without readers, writing is not much fun.
Make your posts easy on the eye. Use images. If thats not your thing, at least use subheads or strong tags. So that people don't tire their eyes out.
Give away your product for free to a couple of your prospects - hopefully well known in the industry. In return, feature a case study on them. How they used your product. And how it helped them save time / money etc.
Try getting these case studies published in industry trade journals.
Otherwise, just create a white paper with these case studies in it. And mail them to your prospects. And then follow up.
1. Invest in integration. The dream Bill Gates achieved was a computer on every desk. The next dream should be: everything computerized. And connected and manageable with one device. Create a wearable app which would allow me to turn on / off any electrical device in my home. Which shows me statistics of how much electricity I used. Connect all the electrical devices - don't just focus on the home theater / multimedia part. Let me set the temperature of the room with that one device. Let me set music with that device. Let me run the kitchen equipment with that device.
2. Buy http://www.emotiv.com/ - that or something similar to that is going to be the future. Where folks don't have to type on a keyboard. Or even use hand motions to work the computer. Just thought will do. So buy the company, put massive resources behind it - and bring the technology to the market a couple of years earlier than it otherwise would take.
3. Invest in a network of satellites. So you can connect all the devices all over the world together.
Some prefer one off fee. Some prefer paying in installments. You should offer both if you can.
Monthly payments is better for long term cash flow management of your startup. But it comes with some admin hassle.
Single large payments are better for the short term growth of your startup. And it has no admin hassle.
So why not offer both?
3 month trial is a long time. Only offer such long duration trials if you know your service is very sticky but has a long learning curve. If the learning curve is short, don't offer more than 1 month trial. If your service is not sticky, don't offer a free trial at all. A demo will do.