What really matters?

What is the most significant pillar of a successful entrepreneurial venture?
- The Idea?
- The Business Plan?
- The Revenue Model?
- Innovation?

What does Entrepreneurship really mean? It´s a frequently talked about concept nowadays with a bandwagon of b-schools and independent organizations coming out to find the “Entrepreneur” with Business Plan contests. Is it just about starting a venture or making a company and fighting the odds to make it successful.

A concept rarely discussed of few yeas back is now talk of the town. The network of entrepreneurs is slowly growing and making a large impact socially and economically. They are creating that dream in the minds of aspiring youth to become one of them. I have always wanted to become one, however I do not exactly know why. Entrepreneur actually means “the one who is willing to take up an endeavor”. The purpose of it can be either economic gain, better satisfaction in life, passion and so on. In a website, I stumbled upon recently found this interesting image called “Anatomy of Entrepreneur”

The jist of which is “Knowledge” in Brain, “Passion” in the heart and “Fire” in the belly!

Image courtesy: http://rebuildingmedia.corante.com/archives/2007_12.php

It actually means giving all you have to get “that” thing done. Its not always about getting successful in life and leading a more cushy life, but its more about living life passionately and being willing to give whatever it takes to make that dream come true. I could go on and on about this, about which thousands of people and most of them successful have already blogged about, instead I will just say my opinion on what according to me, is the most important thing to make a successful entrepreneur – Its NOT the product, NOT the idea, NOT the business plan and definitely NOT the revenue model. These are all very important aspects but are all things which we can work upon iteratively and improve over the period. But something which has to be perfect from the kick off time is the Team and synergy between the team members.

Get the best team first and give it everything you have for the team to excel and having people who share your dream with the same passion and intensity is the key.

Find the Team and Live the Dream.!!

Promoted Tweets

Yes, after four long years of agile development and rapid prototyping the micro blogging and social networking giant Twitter finally unveiled its much anticipated and discussed about revenue model.

“Promoted Tweets”

According to “About Us” at twitter:
Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.

Now, what best can a real-time information network actually provide you with? What started of as a simple idea of telling “What are you doing?” in less than 140 characters, has went onto to become a revolution merely because of the simplicity, growth and its capability of leverage the network power underneath. The best thing about Twitter was the openness in its platform with APIs thus allowing thousands of developers to build twitter clients which accounts to more than 75% of network traffic to its network.

At some level, we always knew it would be “advertising” that would be central to their revenue model. But they have gone one step ahead by planning not only display of adds on their website, but also enhanced features like ‘Purchase of keywords’, ‘Tiered Pricing Plans’, ‘Concept of Resonance of Tweets’.

‘Purchase of keywords’: Interested companies or parties can bid for ‘keywords’ and if successful with their bid, they can place their “advertisement tweets” whenever anyone searches with the particular keyword.

‘Tiered Pricing Plans’: Twitter has decided to charge their customers with a pricing plan of 1000 unique visits to their advertisement.

‘Resonance of Tweets’: A terminology thought of by an Indian employee at Twitter, according to which based on the “eventfulness” of Promoted Tweet it will be endorsed further. Say for e.g. you search for Burger, and say Burger King’s promoted tweet shows up as the first search result, but if for a significant amount of time if there is no click or activity on the tweet, the resonance of the tweet decreases and it merely fades off from the search ranking. And best part is the resonance function is tied to their pricing plans, so if the resonance value is low, one has to pay less. Now that is definitely interesting and motivating for new players to give it a shot.

Now, how will all this work is something we all need to wait and see. Lets hope Twitter is another ‘Google’ in the making, well hope not exactly like Google either

Some interesting statistics revealed at ‘Chirp’ include:

And, all of this in just 4 years !!

Last but not least, if you are a developer do check out Twitter’s new Development Platform, they have gone one more step ahead of mere APIs which help you create applications and integrate with twitter seamlessly.

Related Post: Twitter Twitter Everywhere, Not a Tweet to Read

Amazing Waffles..!!

Today was just another day, got up at the usual time and headed to office in my cycle. During the journey I realized there was much more sunlight than I had seen and experienced since many months. I even stopped and took away my gloves and felt very good , Wow I knew today was special.. those days of darkness and cold, are they really gone?? [I had a smile ]

After reaching office, I logged in twitter and tweeted:

“After 70 long days.. my hands are free.. No more wearing gloves.. I feel so relieved.. “

Soon I got a mail from our office receptionist saying “Its Waffle Day.. Please feel free to head to canteen and make your own Waffle.. the cream, ice cream, chocolate and all stuff is available in plenty.. Enjoy!! “. I din’t bother to worry about it. When we went out for lunch, we saw many people sitting near the canal which is usually fully frozen. They were just sitting there casually and enjoying the sunlight and hanging out. I even told Shailesh, “Guess this is beginning of Spring.. and now its going to be fun days ahead”.

Later during the day, our friends came and called for having waffles.. so we went made it and really enjoyed the taste of it.

Waffle preparation in progress

Sofia & Tobias making Waffles

Now I wanted to know more about waffles and waffle day in Sweden, hence started googling for it. And astonishingly this is what I read in a blog:

“International Waffle Day (March 25) originated in Sweden where it is called Våffeldagen. It occurs nine months to the day before Christmas – the day the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant. As the holiday progressed, it also began to commemorate the first day of spring. Waffles come into play because on March 25th the women of Sweden would set aside their winter tasks like chopping wood and knitting, and began their spring tasks… the most notable of which was preparing waffles.”

Source: http://www.mrbreakfast.com/article.asp?articleid=19

Now, that was really amazing to know, I had no clue whatsoever about this. But we still felt today like Spring was finally here, its really mind blowing to see how such historical anecdotes fall perfectly in place with nature. I mean, why exactly Mar 25.. the 1st day of season.. Why not Mar 26th or the 24th.. And interestingly its exactly 9 months before Christmas.

Yet another situation where “Nature” is in perfect synchronization..:) What started of as a very ordinary day, ended up in some amazing waffles and even amazing Spring season.

Mantra of Life

The movement is in the rhythm,
the desire to seek the elusive something is the song…
a wistful smile is carried in the tune…
of ancient thoughts and questions unanswered from time immemorial…
the lust for life,
the need to find out who and what i am
and my primal emotions are explored
in this ethereal, magical and mystical moment…
there are no answers here,
maybe I don’t need them…
just meanderings…
I found muzik… my mantra,
what’s yours?

Super Power – America

One of d best technologies v use so damn frequently is YouTube.! – d whole idea n concept was so huge that they even managed to convince s/w giants Google to buy d whole thing for a heavy price.. well wats good abt YouTube.. u effectively get evrythin up there.. n whn it came synch with orkut.. wat more do v need guys..!! well incidently i went thru a youtube video recently whch was abt Barack Obama’s visit to CMU(Carnegie Mellon Uty), he was there as part of a discussion abt “Changes that America must make to compete in global economy”. i found sum sections of it extremely interesting. thought i will share it wid u all.
Obama: For the last 3 weeks i have been travelling across the country, talking about how we can change our economy so that it works for the American people. And i have also been listening, I have talked to man in Missouri, whose wife works two jobs, because his arthiritis causes 1500 $ a week to treat. I have heard from a student in Minnesota, who is worried that she won’t be able to take her final exams cos she is maxed out on her student loans. We can hear lot of such stories, cos although many Americans are working hard, they still can’t keep pace. Its time for us to recognise these individual stories connect to a large American story. All of us have a stake in our common prosperity. We are failing to put overselves in a competitive position in global economy. Our country faces challenges to leadership in this young section. Our children will grow up facing competition from their counterparts in Bejing and Bangalore. If we dont change course, there is no doubt that the American dream will be there for my daughters or your sons, as it was there for us. America risks falling behind. If we cant give every child in America the chance of world class education, we will cripple their ability to make a living in a knowledge based economy and watch China and India move ahead in the race for 21st century.
Now thats soothing for any Indian, well you can catch the whole video here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTHmd6alnXQ&feature=user
Enjoy.!!