February 2012
2 posts
3 tags
My daily digital morning routine
By doing the same tasks daily I have unknowingly built a daily morning routine which helps me clear things out before I reach the office. I used to write in the morning but with a growing baby girl in the house I have switched to doing things that won’t be affected much if I am distracted. Writing is now moved to either in the afternoons or at night (once she is asleep).
Checking mail and...
January 2012
8 posts
4 tags
Why the Summify shutdown pissed me off?
Before I left on my trip last week TechCrunch reported that Summify announced that it was being bought by Twitter. I had started using Summify for a few weeks now and it was my goto place in the mornings to catch up on popular news. Earlier, I used to weed through my Twitter feed but having a service that filters and curates content is wonderful. So, while going through the TechCrunch story I...
On traveling and being offline
My wife and I are huge travel buffs (we usually try to take off every 4 months). Traveling is our passion - we catch ourselves planning a trip while we are on our current trip. It is just our way to make sure we lead a well-balanced, exciting life - especially since we live in one of the world’s busiest cities, Mumbai. After every few months, the city and the Internet (since I run a web...
2 tags
3 tags
Why I moved from Posterous to Tumblr...
This blog was with posterous for 2 years now. They are a great publishing platform and the DeskAway blog is still hosted there. Over the weekend I was reading Joel’s blog (BufferApp founder) and started looking at all the stuff that he had on his blog - Social widgets, disqus comments, the slide etc. At first I thought he was on WP. I DM’ed him and he told me that he was on Tumblr.
...
“Software is important stuff; it keeps the world moving. No car, no television...”
– The Economist
What Startup To Build?
What are your problems? That’s what you should be working on. Businesses are solutions to problems. Solutions come from ideas. Ideas are hypotheses. These hypotheses need to come from a defined problem. Humans have problems.
via techcrunch.com
4 tags
Software should be like Zite
Last week, my friend Manish referred me Zite. He told me to go meet her once. I told him that I am currently with someone named Flipboard - she is extremely good looking and I love the way she turns. He still insisted that I go meet Zite atleast once.
By now you already know that I am talking about the two hot social magazines - Flipboard and Zite :)
Today, I am a convert. Zite is truly very...
2 tags
Consuming vs. Producing
2012 is going to be a year where we fight information overload. There are too many things floating around on the Web to consume - articles, blog posts, videos, tweets, pictures, slideshows, etc. I have decided that I am going to make ONE big change this coming year:
Drastically minimize the amount of stuff that I read online.
I have realized:
1. Most of the stuff I read just gives me short...
December 2011
5 posts
3 tags
Putting on my Video Production hat on
I like to try out new apps on Saturday mornings. So, last week I decided to create a Happy Holidays video for DeskAway on Animoto.com. I have a Plus Plan so I could choose some already created holiday themes. Next, I went through all the blog posts for 2011 on blog.deskaway.com (there were tons!) and picked out the ones that I wanted to feature into the video. Animoto is great as it lets you...
6 tags
Before you splurge VC money on marketing watch...
One of the best Inbound Marketing videos I have seen by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz (see, they posted awesome content and I gave them a link!). If you are a startup then this is a must watch - every minute of it!
My takeway: you don’t need to spend 1000’s of dollars on marketing and even raise VC funding to get your startup/company/business off the ground. Build great content that people...
3 tags
Random thoughts on business, remote working,...
I was having a conversation today with a friend and this person mentioned that “I need to build a big business with lots of people”. Earlier, this might be true. Today, with the Internet, a small team can build a very successful (profitable) business. Look at Wordpress, 37Signals, Craiglist etc.
In the afternoon I came back to DeskAway HQ and started jotting down some points that...
4 tags
Breakfast Brainstorming: Opportunities in SaaS in...
(A few takeaways by Anand Lunia from Seedfund)
The TiE Mumbai group and Seedfund got together to host a breakfast brainstorming session on Software As A Service today at Mocha Mojo, Bandra. BTW, great location for meetups of up to about 45 people. For evening meetups: This place serves booze too :)
Thanks Anand for inviting me and allowing me to share my thoughts and experience on growing and...
6 tags
Are LinkedIn Ads good for B2B Sales #SaaS #SEM...
B2B SaaS businesses work along the conversion funnel. The more topped up they are the better chance of converting more people to paid conversions. If traffic decreases, so do conversions. So, the game is in keeping the traffic coming and being topped up. Always.
Besides Organic Search, Social Media and our Affiliate Program, we also try out paid SEM from time to time to see what CTR and...
November 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Mind-F***ing Pricing Page
3 hour work day
Today, I got a butt-load of work done. In just 3 hours (including having lunch at my desk). Both my emails accounts have reached Inbox Zero, work has been delegated, participated in some social media activities, did some finances and took control of things.
This is because I am leaving the DeskAway HQ at 1:45pm. Enter Parkinsons Law:
Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in...
3 tags
Is your business a feature?
I am amazed by some of the funding news making the rounds. Are Angels/VCs funding apps or businesses? Maybe the team has a glorified future plan that impressed the VC’s. Lucky and good for them. Though, merely having a feature is not going to cut it. Are we in a bubble?
I am secretly hoping that the entrepreneur is not stoping at the feature. A feature will take you to the first 100...
October 2011
4 posts
Simplifying
I have about 50+ apps on my iPhone. Today, I decided to get rid of almost all of them and clear the clutter. My general rules of thumb:
1. Keep an app if I have used it in the last week. This excludes reference apps. 2. Keep only 1 or 2 reading app. Expunge the rest. 3. I realistically don’t read news on the iPhone (mostly done on the iPad) so all news apps go. 4. Games go. Don’t...
1 tag
Family trumps work, any day!
I have been under the weather for the last 3 days and spent most of my time home with my family. I would never ever trade that for anything. It got me thinking…
Work is just a way to exercise, experiment and indulge in your passion. Having a set time for work during the day is good enough. There is nothing wrong about being madely passionate about work. But, too much of it and you are a...
4 tags
Kindle, iPad and Instapaper
My wife just got an Amazon Kindle eBook Reader as a gift so I have been setting it up and poking around it this Saturday afternoon. Love the e-ink - it is so much easier on my eyes. I normally get a ton of reading done on my iPad (with the backlit screen) but it stresses my eyes out. For purchasing and reading books, the Kindle seems so much more soothing and much like actual paper.
I sent an...
6 tags
Making Technology Beautiful. My tribute to Steve...
Clicked on an iPhone. Designed on an iMac. Uploaded via Safari.
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Email to my team yesterday
“Required Reading” reminded me of school but I had to let the team know (I know some of them have already heard of Startup Lessons) that this resource has a wealth of information. In India, product people don’t come easy (we have been a service industry for too long) and hence it is my duty to educate and help each one to learn what it takes to compete in the product...
4 tags
How to get your SaaS business its first 100...
I’ll take you back to 2007. We spent almost a year developing our Software As A Service (SaaS) project collaboration product, DeskAway. It was ready to go live but the uphill climb of getting our first 100 customers had just begun. We wanted to be profitable while bootstrapping.
Luckily, I realized early on (after being burnt a few times trying to do offline sales for an online product)...
August 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Should a startup CEO participate in customer...
Intially, absolutely. As the company grows this needs to be delegated out.
Back in 2008 I used to handle all incoming support and customer service mails. Today, our Support Ninja handles all tickets on Zendesk. Sometimes I feel I should jump back into answering support queries. A part of me says that I have more important things to take care of and getting email notifications for support...
5 tags
Churn Rate for SaaS Companies
I like talking to VC’s when I am not raising money :) The conversation is open, tension-free and we both have our guards down. The other day I had an interesting conversation with a team member of a top notch VC firm and learnt that Churn Rate is one of the most important metric they look at to gauge performance of a SaaS company. Even before monthly recurring revenue (mrr) and the...
“It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the...”
– Steve Jobs
Random thoughts on the SaaS business
Back in 2006 I thought running a SaaS business would be easy. You build the software, market it online and drive people to the site and then sit back and earn the juicy recurring income. This sounded so much more interesting than the on-premise model. Don’t get me wrong, it still does today - I don’t see myself doing anything else besides running a SaaS business. Though, it’s...
July 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Small world. Better apps.
I have been learning a lot by trying out and using other apps - their design, user experience, signup form details and the general look and feel when I am deep inside the app. It is a way of seeing what is out there and a chance to learn from others. Going through their blogs is also helpful as I get to learn about technical, scaling issues and their marketing speak. Sometimes I am amazed that...
3 tags
Being resourceful - thoughts on being a developer
There is much more to programmers than just knowing how to develop code. This skill can be acquired over time. Though, what should come naturally to the dude is problem solving and resourcefulness cause time in money. The faster he searches and finds a solution the faster you roll.
Lets say we have a problem using a third-party php script that uploads to amazon s3. Here is how I would expect to...
June 2011
6 posts
2 tags
Build niche apps
Recently read Jonathan Rochelle’s (the guy who sold his web spreadsheet company to Google in 2005) interview where one point jumped out really well. He was asked what business opportunities does he see for would-be software entrepreneurs?
Niche apps. Business software is going through a platform shift to the Web. As that happens, all prior software can be re-questioned. So there are...
3 tags
Spirit of Entrepreneurship: Featured in Times of...
Times of India is India’s national newspaper and has the largest circulation among all English-language newspapers in the world. It was simply stellar getting featured on the business page on Wednesday. I sprung out of bed when I read Manish’s tweet in the morning and went straight for the papers. Website traffic, signups, emails from potential recruits, and partnership requests...
Success
Moving into a bigger office meant you were successful. Driving a bigger car meant you were successful. Having more employees meant you were successful. You could earn a lot but still be a slave to your work.
Today, the currency of a success is having free time. Time to take a trip. Time to spend time with family and friends. Time to take a nap in the afternoon. Time todo whatever you desire and...
4 tags
Code of Conduct for SaaS Companies
SaaS companies sell to the invisible. Hence, it becomes even more challenging to create an exceptional experience for their website visitors and customers. The vision for this Code of Conduct (CoC) is for companies to play by a set of standards so that they can delight their prospects/ customers and create a better conversion rate to grow their business.
Instant Signup You should be able to come...
3 tags
Firebelly logo is here. A newsletter for web...
Last Friday, I decided that I was going to start a newsletter for web entrepreneurs. I recently have been interacting with other web people and it was interesting to know what they were working on and what does a typical day in the life look like. It is another way for us to learn, grow and get inspired by others.
After a first few initial tweets on Saturday and then again on Monday there are...
5 tags
My work-style: Goodbye RSS. Welcome Twitter.
My RSS Reader (Google Reader) has been bugging me for quite some time now. I had subscribed to a lot of sites and realized that I just couldn’t keep up with everything. If I didn’t have to run a company, I could possibly sit at home and read all day/week. Plus, seeing the unread count on Reeder (an amazing iPhone and iPad app) would make me feel that this was one huge task that I had...
May 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Please, just please add this one more feature...
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” - Bill Cosby
An interesting observation came up while having dinner with my wife’s family this evening.
They had made Italian. The spaghetti came out on the dining table and we plated up. I tasted it and found it pretty good - nice touch of a little bit of spice. But, my father...
3 tags
Experience Marketing for Web Startups
I would advice Internet startups to not spend money on marketing (banner ads, Adwords, startup events etc.) when they are starting. In fact, spend more time in building a great experience (story, site, product, support - all touch points) for your users. This might take time but could be worth it in the long-term.
If the experience is good they will share their experience with other people -...
4 tags
Why DeskAway Chucked the Rolodex
This article originally appeared on StartupCentral.in
In the second half of 2007, I would wake up every morning and immediately check our DeskAway dashboard to see if anyone had signed up. People were signing up in a trickle. We were getting a measly 3-5 sign-ups a week, probably because we had added the the site to directories or maybe a friend told a friend who told a friend. None of these...
2 tags
Key Takeaways: The Angry Birds Story
I just completed reading a rather long article on ‘How Rovio made Angry Birds a Winner’. Amazing story! If you have the time then do go through it. For the busy, here are key takeaways…
Disney 2.0
It went straight to the top of the new Mac App Store in January, selling 150,000 copies in its first week. Sixty thousand Angry Birds soft toys have been sold. In January, the...
April 2011
6 posts
6 tags
Push Email is Overrated
SILENCE by jopetsy.
I had noticed myself checking my email rather frequently and it wasn’t increasing my productivity. Instead, it made be distract away from the things I was working on or thinking about. I kept tell myself to “turn that damn push notifications off” and “if something earth-shattering were to happen I would get a call or a text message”.
This week...
2 tags
Thoughts on the Amazon Cloud downtime - one step...
Today, what happened with Amazon Cloud was I would say a big hiccup. “Amazon Cloud Failure” doesn’t happen often and incidents like these should not mean the “death of the cloud” or “the Cloud is not ready for the enterprise”. These events are learning to a successful Cloud future. We won’t learn if we don’t fail every now and then.
This...
2 tags
How I explained Cloud Computing to the non-tech...
A couple of days back, I was a guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Bombay Mid-Town held at The Taj Mahal Palace. I was addressing a group of people who were mostly 40+ years of age and non-technical. My presentation (below) is on Cloud Computing for dummies, maybe, even simpler. I wanted to just touch upon the basics, give some examples and show them how the Cloud is going to change everything -...
7 tags
Cloud Opportunities in Emerging Markets [Speaker]
As part of the R&D Globalization Council (3.0) initiative, Zinnov hosted a networking Meet in Bangalore last week @ The Chancery Pavilion.
I was happy to be a part of a panel discussion on “Cloud Opportunities in Emerging Markets” with Karthik Anand (Director, Zinnov), Rahul Kulkarni (Product Manager, Google) and Anand Ramakrishnan (General Manager & Head - Cloud Computing Services,...
3 tags
Startup Dad
I have a 4.5 month-old daughter and she has taught me a few thing over the last few months. A lots changed after her arrival but the best part is that I feel I am being much more productive as well as spending time with the family.
Her schedule is still a bit erratic so waking up once or twice a night is normal for now. Though, I finally roll out of bed around 6:30am and spend time with her...
March 2011
15 posts
3 tags
5 reasons you will see killer web startups from...
We put the baby to sleep after her morning feed and my brain went back to thinking about all things web. My wife and me had a brief discussion on how soon before we see a wave of killer web startups from India. Some of the things that came to our mind were…
1. It’s just the beginning
The U.S. has always been 3-5 years ahead of us when it comes to the Internet. We are just beginning...
2 tags
Before Social Media
The other day I was having a conversation with a gentlemen at a nearby coffee shop and it led to him asking me as to how companies marketed their services/product before ‘social media’ kicked in. Was it harder or longer to get the message across?
I told him of a company I know that started at my university in 2002, has just 1 web product and now is a plus $20 million company. I...