I recently had a great opportunity to write something about startups at pluggd.in, and which I had to accept (I mean who lets such great opps to pass by :) ).

So I wrote about some of the points that I realized one should ideally do a reality check about, before joining a startup. And as it turns out, and as I had imagined before starting off, this really pissed off some of the startup janta (to say, the employers..a.k.a founders, co-founders).

It actually is a very debatable topic, and as an employee, I could probably argue till death with all those startup guys who thought the post was “misleading”. Actually it’s funny how these guys call it “misleading”. Aahhh…so much for the buzzword “startups, entrepreneurship and the eco-system” where employers always want it their way…huh..!

Read the whole story here at pluggd.in

After a little more than 100 days, and the loss of google pagerank from 3 to 1, I’m finally back to blogging. Not that it made any difference to anyone (nor to the 2 subscribers that I have, out of which admittedly I, myself am the first one), but more out of an eagerness to write, to speak out my mind, and to just write some random stuff, as always.

This time though, I thought I’ll probably market my new venture that I started a few weeks back. It’s a simple web application design and development studio, titled randomly as Popbugs.com, and when I say simple, I mean to stress on the word - SIMPLE (more on the simple story in later posts). And fortunately, in just our first week, we have managed to find 2 good projects and client - with whom we hope to build a strong and lasting relationship.

In any case, if you happen to visit the popbugs website, you’ll be delightfully greeted by some random chick, who we thought of naming as Pop. Beyond that there is not much that you can do right now, but in case you are looking for some web application design / development / deployment on Rails / JAVA, then shoot me a mail asap at sanjay AT bishtblogs DOT net, and I’ll get back to you in a jiffy.

popbugs.com logo

popbugs.com

Anyways, next few articles will probably brief on why the name of Popbugs, or why even we call it SIMPLE, or why the chick is too loud, or why the logo is made of eggs :)

P.S - I’ve actually started to understand why my managers at TCS (some time back I was in this s**t-hole), used to talk the way they did - the way I do now. Aah…crap

I’m not really a great blogger - i’m not even a good writer. There are tons of blogs coming up daily, and truly 99% are crap (in the sense of the writing style, and how the ideas and facts are laid out…totally random…highly illogical..etc), and the rest 1% are like this (which I just totally adore because of the way Rahul puts his ideas…logical..humorous…sarcastic..superb).

Just one of the reason (that I personally feel) is the inability of people to jot down their thoughts exactly as they have in their head, on paper. It’s no surprise then, why a SOP is mandatory in a lot of B-Schools.

With google coming out with it’s speech-to-text app for iPhone, there is something there for not-so-great bloggers too. Something that they should be really happy about.

Simply imagine a blogging platform, where you log in to the admin section, click on the new post tab, and just start speaking what you have in your head. This approach has atleast 2 benefits

• Firstly, for this you will not have to keep track of your ideas on a paper, before making a post about those. What you think, is what is blogged. Great.
• Secondly, the time to write a blog post (which is undoubtedly pretty damn long for a meaningful and good post - I nearly quit twice before completing this useless and directionless post) decreases to a minimum - equivalent to the time you spend thinking over it. The jotting down the points, then a rough draft and finally the proper post is gone forever. Great again

While this is something very difficult, because since eternity, speech-to-text has been one of the toughest problem of Artificial Intelligence and self-learning algorithms, this is certainly not impossible. So while Google may think about it in the future, but till they do so, if you are a great dreamer, an aggressive entrepreneur, and most importantly have lots of moolah and courage to stand against failure also, this may turn out to be one of those killer ideas to change the world (i.e. what google and youtube did :D )

I am a Technologist. I am a blogger. I am a kid (though not quite anymore :( ) growing up in the internet age. My niece will probably start typing on an iphone before she gets to the notebook. She will probably blog by the time she hits 4 (3 years, 12 months and 350 days from now), or maybe not. But she will be smart and tech-savvy and know how to get things easily and comfortably from the simple click of a mouse button.

I actually went a little too far in the future. The same story holds for my immediate juniors.

The fact that internet penetration has grown, and the web scene in India has really started to heat up, I still do not understand why job portals do not catch up with the trend. It’s not a new thing in the western countries. You can probably find tons of such, if you do a simple google search on job boards.

What is the feasibility of such a job board in India ?? Can we build a system which aims only at a specific vertical (say IT or Technology in general) and takes a different route to push the jobs to the seeker, rather than wait for the seeker to come across the opening. Why I say this is simply because I had the pleasure of hearing a talk of a marketing genius, where he said a few words like :

There are only two ways to market your product. Either you build a product that is so brilliant that it PULLS the customers; or you build a strategy to PUSH your product to the masses.

Now, traditional job boards have been here for a long time, and neither is there product any longer anywhere near to brilliant, nor are they building new products that are technologically more sound and meant for the coming generation (which is, by large, going to be very tech-savvy and very smart). The main revenue model for them now, is more or less, selling lakhs of resumes that they have collected over time to prospective employers. I can link to two such companies, that I personally know well, who had a rough time with these job portals…..here and here

Alternatively, these job portals also carry-on recruitment drives for larger companies, which are very indirect and lack any transparency. If I had to summarize, I would probably write down these negatives in these job portals :

• Lack of transparency - As a job-seeker, I am not kept in the loop, or probably a direct feedback is not available in most of the cases. I hate the fact that I cannot know as to what is the status of my application.
• What with the privacy policy and all these “New jobs matching your profile” or selling my resume ?? Was that mentioned anywhere that they will be selling my resumes, and I will be getting 10-15 spam mail daily to fill my ever-growing mailbox ??!!
• What happened to the job that I was actually looking for ?? It came and it went. It was not really pushed to me (remember unobtrusive ways only)
• For the employer - it’s more like spending enough money and not getting good resumes. Literally. I knew it in my college, that 99% of the population did not care to go to these job portals or submit their resumes. Or maybe, if and once out of desperation they did (and that too, with all the pain of filling up those lengthy forms, which is also one of the major problems) signup for the service, they never looked back to it. Which obviously, brings in the quality concern.
• The number of resumes maybe high, but as an employer, I need people who are currently actively looking for jobs. It’s like saying the same thing as any desi social networking site would - we have the numbers, but not the active ones.

I could probably go on blabbering about these job portals, and how they are really not upto the mark, for a country like India, where IT has become the second religion (after cricket obviously), but I am looking for some feedback on this first.

• Do you really thing job boards can change the system ??
• And maybe we can go a step ahead of traditional job boards and have a much better system in terms of ROI for both, the employer as well as the seeker (the I in ROI here can be anything, not just monetary value…take for example time for both of the parties to reach their goals) ??
• How can we really push the job openings to the right seeker and at the right time ?? Blogosphere, an advanced job-board-ad system ??
• How to pull the seeker instantly after pushing the job opening to him ?? Technically yes it’s possible. But how otherwise ??
• How to enable transparency for the seeker ?? Should the job board act as an intermediary, or just a third person watching from the sidelines (but with enough power to moderate any talk between the employer and the employee) ??

I know some of these questions might sound vague. But to a young mind, with ample energy, nothing seems to be trivial :)

It’s like a new baby has born inside me :)

Yes, good news folks - and when I say folks I mean the budding entrepreneurs. Eureka is back and it’s back for good.

If you haven’t heard of Eureka, then as an entrepreneur you are really missing out on something very important that may change your career path entirely in the other direction. Yes, Eureka has had a good past of mentoring and funding young / seed stage startups, and has a good track record of producing some quality startups. (check out the eureka site for further details)

Eureka is a IIT-Bombay entrepreneurship cell effort, which has been organizing this b-plan event for more than the last 10 years, and has been a strong pillar in fostering entrepreneurship in India. My friend, and my boss at Picsquare, Kartik Jain, was an integral part of e-cell at IIT Bombay during his college days, and he always has a lot to talk about e-cell and Eureka.

So, get ready with your business plans asap, as the registrations close on the 4th of October.
BTW, I was just wondering whether Eureka is the Indian equivalent of YCombinator ???

Yeah, you heard it. Finally, orkut has launched a few selected apps for the general public. It’s been said that the apps are currently available to a few selected users only (maybe developers only, or GOD knows who are the chosen ones), and Orkut needs to first test the stability of the OpenSocial API on their container.

Earlier, Orkut had stated that they plan to roll out the applications in phases, so that they may be able to test and figure out their API, and other issues. Right now there are only a few handpicked apps (and some of them are really addictive I tell you !!), and when the next slot of apps will be available for users is not known as of now.

It’s actually good to be developer, you get all the inside scoop beforehand, and get to use the apps before anyone else on the sandbox :)

Do check out some apps, and let them know your feedback, and if possible me also. The app that we are developing will get you rolling when it comes out in the next slot.

Happy social apping till then :)

I was over at Rashmi Sinha’s (of the slideshare.net fame) weblog and there is a very interesting article that she has written about the possibility of wordpress becoming a social networking platform, and comparable to Facebook.

It’s a must read really. Go checkout the blog entry, and also do some more reading at further links in the article itself. It’s worth spending time lurking on the internet.

I happened to reach Sita’s blog over at Binary Day, and fortunately (or unfortunately) to this article about Seed Funding over there.

It’s such a pity that there aren’t enough VCs or firms that are ready to fund ideas, judging only by the ideas, the people and the motivation. Why the need of business plans ?? I really can’t write a BP, nor can I face the disappointment on my partner’s face (as well as mine) after getting rejected for not really having a good business plan. Did I get rejected because I had no business plan, or I could not write one efficiently ?? The latter is a more appropriate reason.

I had written about it in my earlier post as well that Web-2.0 has not reached India as yet. You can read that post here (about the talent crunch that startups talk about in India right now).

Till the time web-3.0 comes in, and India just about catches up with web-2.0 till then, I guess the best places for Seed Funding or mentoring (or for that fact anything related to a young startup) remain the GenPortal (www.genportal.org) and NEN (nenonline.org).

This one’s good…really good I say. Try and think of the major driving force behind entrepreneurship - as to why you want to be an entrepreneur. Is it the money, fame, freedom, or anything else. What comes to my mind is what I can relate to with this quote.

“There is only one way to live life, and that’s my way”

Web 2.0 is not just a version of the web anymore. It has become a platform for quick-money-on-the-go. Have an idea, will earn millions.

The amount of money in a web-2.0 venture can be made out by these quick facts - Facebook is worth $15 billion, Feedburner a $100 million, Youtube a cool $1.65 billion, and so on with a lot of other web-2.0 startups(all information from the Richer Scales “Another bubble” video).

Let’s just try to get behind the scenes and see where the money is. I haven’t been lucky enough like some of these people, so I’m just curious to know as to where is the money. Or is there any money in reality.

In essence, in the consumer internet space, there are notably 3 parties to anything. First, the publisher of the content, second, the advertiser for that content, and third, the community driving that content. On more occasions than not, one always finds himself in the third category - the community driving the content. The chain of flow of money is as easy to figure out as this:

The publisher, publishes content. The advertiser buys ad space surrounding (not in literal terms) that content. Publisher gets the money. Advertiser gets the leads/ clicks / new users/ etc. (in other words, he gets what he wanted). The end. But, the people who actually generated that content, do not even exist in the whole process. They sit comfortably sleeping around somewhere.

The fact that YouTube now shares the profits that it generates from the content, with the contents’ originators, is not simply Google’s morals or values. Probably, there was a lot of happening over this issue when people (the content creators) came to know the amount of profits YouTube was making from their content, and finally after a long battle Google decide to share the profits with their users (I’m not exactly sure of the details, so if anybody could update me with the actual proceedings, would be great). Something similar to what we(content creators) get at TechDispenser. Fine. Perfect you say. End of story.

But, however, there are a number of cases, when such sharing of revenue becomes a lot of problem. For example, techcrunch. Now, in my view, TechCrunch is a little better than ReadWriteWeb, just because it has a very active community with a lot of comments and interaction amongst the community as well as Michael Arrington. So, does it not make sense to actually, have the community (which may or may not be the actual content producers, but definitely they enhance the content) be given some share of the earnings ??

For a simple scenario, we have systems where comments are rated by the community / readers / other commentators, on the comments’ usefulness/ importance/ relevance et all. So, maybe on similar lines, we can create a system (which can be easily integrated into any blogging engine) which makes use of some sort of rating algorithm (I bet this has to be complex) such that at the end of the month, the system tells us as to who all people have been the most active on the community. And no, this should not be as simple a rating system as 9rules uses, but much more complex with a lot more ifs and buts, since we have to deal with money. So, at the end of the month, the deserving people, who have actually done the most useful work, get their rewards.

Or alternatively, maybe along every comment that a reader writes, we can have a small button that says “Payme a penny”. Yes, and then if I really like the comment what the person made, I simply click onto it and give him a penny from my account (some online system like PayPal). Obviously, this requires setting up of an online system, much larger than PayPal, with a lot more smoother / easier transfer of money from one place to another, and a host of other features. but, as I said, this is just an idea. And maybe if this does not seem feasible right now, in the future it might be prevalent everywhere. Who knows !!

And lastly, I have limited my talk on blogging, and commenting only throughout this post (as I feel bloggers are the one who desperately need money, with so many of “money by blogging” sites coming up a dime-a-dozen), but this is actually a topic that has to be addressed at every level in the web-2.0, till the people get the answer to the question “Where is the money in web-2.0 ??”