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.

Twitter Twitter Everywhere, Not a Tweet to Read!!

Hmmmm, why this blog? Random thoughts of mind triggers few amazing discussions. I hope this is going to be an attempt from my end on starting off a good discussion on what people think it will do and what eventually it ends up doing. Confused.? Well thats the whole point

Twitter, a micro blogging platform intended to keep us connected by simply answering the question of “What are you doing?”. The modes of communication mainly on the internet platform dint let us communicate very simple things which were of course interesting to a set of users connected to us. And one such very important question was “What are you doing?. Such things couldn’t be communicated using emails or phone calls. For e.g. we wouldn’t send an email to a friend to tell that “You are enjoying Bangalore climate and having a cup of hot coffee and reading some book”. But its an important message to some person who wishes to be connected to your life. Blogs, phone calls, social networking sites all were possible alternatives, but nothing would actually serve this purpose. Our real world and things we do daily mainly happen between emails, and blog posts. We dint have a platform to share. And hence the concept of micro blogging came, twitter was born and 140 char was the best feature to it. Twitter is sweet cos its short. How many of us like to read tweets which span across 2-3 tweets, we just ignore them. The 140 char limit not only provided “just enough information” but also helps in making a decision if we need to know more about it or not and there by solving a huge problem of the internet of “Information Overload”. Why do we have abstracts in technical publications, nobody is going to read the whole paper to know what it is about, but a handler like an abstract helps us in drawing lines between what we want to know and what we don’t.

The “@” concept was mainly to enrich the power of micro blogging to next level by bringing in collaboration. They dint want to limit it to a one way communication of broadcast of information. Again here the feed wasn’t simply populated in the network, people had the choice to follow or not to follow. It acted on the receiving end, emails and phone calls on the other hand works the other way, where the source decides where these information packets are to be send to, which according to me, was a huge success factor of twitter. It was a well thought after concept which had spread like wild fire in the internet jungle. People instantly liked it cos it was simple, addictive and above all acted as “an handler to information”. But time and again, historical analogies have proved it that technologies are shaped keeping something in mind, but its the way the society interprets it and uses the technology that it shapes its life. Its not the designer nor the coder who decides how it evolves, but its the user of the technology.

I have been using twitter for almost an year now, I would say I am thoroughly addicted to it and enjoy using it. The concept really impressed me, but ironically the very success factor of it is sowing its seeds of destruction. The purpose is lost, we see a lot many more @ responses which are purely one-to-one basis which again puts the user in an information overload and irrelevant nature increases. I need not know what two people want to communicate on a personal basis, emails and even direct messages on twitter serve that purpose, but again nobody controls on how to use the technology.

These are merely my personal views based on the evolution I witnessed within 1 year of my tweeting experience, though the concept has gone in a unanticipated direction, with the amazing rate of growth twitter is definitely going places and new usage pattern esp in business applications and marketing gimmicks are gonna happen out there. Only time and way the people use it will determine where it goes. Lets wait and see this transformation from micro blogging to public chat client to marketing platform to broadcast of information to God knows what.

P.S – It will be great if you could throw some light on what you feel is wrong in my interpretation or even enrich my point of argument. Then again as Srinath sir says – Attack the idea and not the person [:P]

Endorsements on the Web

Web Information Retrieval is a fairly new science and identifying models and behaviors in Web is still a very much an open question. The amount of active research in the domain of Information Retrieval and effort to analyze data just proves the fact that the hidden semantics in the unstructured network of data, if harnessed properly can lead to amazing results and conclusions. But, this is far easy said than done. The very term “Unstructured Information” can lead to a mathematically exploding count of possibilities of potential problems in analysis.

Last semester’s course of Web IR did actually put some light into some issues and motivated us to look into some of them, but the main problem lies with the fact that “we don’t know what we don’t know”

Google is synonyms with search for any internet user now, people don’t search anymore they just “Google It”. Now what would it take for a company to establish such a branding? So how does it all work after all ? This is itself an open question. Anyways I don’t intend this post to be a guide to how search engine works? Probably somebody trying to figure that out will not even land up on this very page. So how does one land on a web page? Is it mere hyper links – which form the structure and edges of the network of WWW. Or is it something way beyond that. The presence of a link to Page B on Page A is not just random, it is being put up on purpose. Now if look deeper, we realize whether it be positive or negative endorsement the occurrence of a link of Page A to Page B, irrespective of nature in a way increases the probability of the user landing on Page B. Now if “hits” is the way to identify popularity of a web page, Page B ends up right on top.

This is true and a well established fact. I am sure all people aware of the field of IR would more or less agree with me on this. Incidentally today morning I met my faculty who had taught me the course on Web IR, and a very interesting discussion came up. The endorsement model on a social network like Twitter. Hmmm, so what’s the big deal, its again the same underlying concept, that’s what I suggested. However he suggested otherwise, he proposed in a model like Twitter the fact whether an endorsement is positive or negative has more relevance. Thinking more, I actually was surprised.

Consider a situation where I receive a tweet from my friend @abc – “What the heck? I can’t adjust with anybody in the world”. Now if I am re tweeting this, am I actually endorsing him? Probably not, the message has tight coupling with the user and his social image. Now giving away such an endorsement is not going to guarantee any value addition for user @abc. In fact, it would adversely affect the user with a recommendation. Isn’t that opposite to our conventional knowledge and assumption. Now that’s yet another open question

The very thought process that let me motivate to write this blog is the discussion I had today with Mandar. Thanks to him , he has always been kind enough to share such wonderful insights with me. Now I “knowingly” insert a hyper link to his page. This was not at all random Was it?

Mandar’s Blog
Mandar on Twitter

D Clock Ticks On.!!

well v guys never really realise the significance of time, n how precious it is around d year.. we keep doin this n that.. we even keep sayin.. “oh its so boring out here… have nothin to do to kill time..” n all that…

but thr cums a time whn v do realise… “Examz..” Yeah man.. each n every second matters now.. whether it b 4 last minute rushin thru notes, or if it b for a few minutes of cherished sleep.. it really matters then.. v r havin our mid-term exams from tomoro.. am i excited? am i tensed? am i totally cool.? or confident..? wel its all mixed feelin jst like all d topics whch r totally in a messd up n mixed up form in hard drive of ur brain.. d prev day of exams r nly supposed to b d time whn v shud ideally run a defragmentation of our brain n organise everythn.. so tat the indexing n search operation durin exam takes minimal amt of time.. but unfortunately v never do that.. instead v keep loading so much of data into d disk tht.. most of d times.. “It Crashes”.!!

perhaps i indeed am cool, or else y wud i take minutes off my very precious prev exam day time to post a blog.. or am i jst tryin to get in2 my mind n make it realise tht am cool.. or watever..!! it doesnt really matter..!! 

as v all hav done in sum point or other of our lives… “I have studied this much, let me do 1 thng, i wil sleep for jst 15 minutes, i wil keep alarm n get up in 15 mints.. i will feel so much better n fresh” .. .ths thought process mite hav gone thru ur mind for sure.. n’ for surely u succumb to tat temptation for a sleep for 15 minutes… n by d piegeonhole principle.. atleast 7 out of 10 times.. ur alarm doesnt work man..!!!!!!!! thts it u r done… u r doomed.. those 15 minutes turned out to b 2 hours… n extremely costly… bt atleast u managed to get in time to write exams… inspite of all this..exam wil b cool.. thr s sum very intelligent part of ur brain.. whch works xtremely well during xamz n make u write many stuff u dint hav much idea abt.. all v need to ensure s that v listen well to dat part atleast durin exmz… 

i think i hav spit out enuf crap… hopefully i dont spit same kind of crap 4 2mrws examz… he he.. IIIT is rocking man.. u spit out crap.. they very well make ur answer paper more crappier.. all u need 2 write in papers is “D Stuff”.. nothin else matters.. 

let me get back 2 d precious time…. its askin me to take a quick nap for 15 mnts.. but i dont wanna end up sleepin 2 hrs nw…!!!

Sleep or Study????????????????

d quest remains unresolved………………………………..

Destiny

Well.. life is always so strange.. it def puts u in d most difficult positions most of d times, n the probs it poses r very diff to solve, (wud b better knwn as of “NP – Hard”) in d language of a sw guy.. I was faced wid such an Np – Hard problem sum days back… 

I jst like most of us have always been in situations in whch i keep on sayin that “why god, why me.? ” and also lik.. “y dint i get that “?? thes qns kept on echoing up n down for a long time.. d story goes back a long way.. 1997 – i was in class 8… first day of class 8th i guess, v had a new admission in our class that..Aj.. a very smart guy(atleast by looks)… v slowly went n talked to him, n’ b4 long, he was 1 among good friend of us.. i still have very good memories of many interesting stuff v used to do together, he was a very friendly guy n definitely an above average guy in class(if not the topper)… his best quality was he used to very friendly with all .. no gang or nythin,.. xtremly polite with almost all in clas.. all ppl had nly good to tell abt him…!! he very soon bcam 1 of d most popular guys in school… now years went on.. we were in same class till 10th.. now 10th results come n all of a sudden a big shock.. it seems he flunked in a Maths in 10th boards.. omg!! tht was big shock..cos tht was never expected of him… n thts it, v never heard of him again.. all v knew was that he wrote boards again n then went into some odr school n joined.. never really met him ever again… v used to think abt him many a times.. but no1 had ne clue.. he had also changed phone no n all.. so not really any way to contact him..

then years ltr.. i think in sumtime in 2004.. whle i was doin my b.tech.. 1 day i incidently met him in a bus stop.. i was really happy to see him, bt sumhow i dint feel any such excitement in his face.. he was very uneasy.. i askd him abt hs whereabts.. n his reply was jst this n that.. quite disturbed abt how he behaved… n unable 2 knw d reason y he treated like that.. i left.. then again aftr years.. sumtime in 2008.. i again met him.. i was actually tryin to figure out a place wher i cud get black filming done on my helmet.. i went to some local workshop, n to my biggest shock, i saw him in dat workshop, wid a welding tool.. i really dint expect that.. i felt so sad for him.. but this time he was very happy to see me, he came n talked to me… i jst asked him.. wat hpnd ? he jst replied.. “no worries bro, i am doin very good, so good to see u aftr such a long time”.. he gave me his no n said to be in touch.. n i left back………………………

wat to say… again i was feeling the uneasiness, but neverthless the happiness whch he showed made me feel good……….. this s wat ppl mte call destiny. …. or fate……!! Very strange isnt it.??

P.S. – Next time b4 u tell. “Oh God, Why Me?” Think again……………..

Personalised System of Education

Well.. Jul 16, ’08- i landed in Bengalooru with lots of stuff, to realise n live my dream.. I was heading to a place, where i really wanted to be, wher i thought i can re-live my college.. wher i thought i can learn all things whch i wanted to.. wher i can perhaps get solutions to all my unanswered ques.. abov all, wher i get to meet the best of the best. d next 2 days were to b enjoyed b4 jumpin in2 d world of buks, i dint wanna miss d chance. Caught up wid few old skool buddies, had an amazing time wid them.. perhaps i already re-lived my school with them.. most amazing i had in my life was definitely in school – KV Pattom was heaven.!! I wish i cud get back ther, in thos classrooms, in my fav place – football ground(popularly known as Top Ground). I dont knw y it was called so, but its was indeed a TOP Place.. he he.. i wanted to play another game of football.. Well all those mite remain dreams forever, lets get back to d dream, whch i was goin to fulfill.

I can make a difference

Well.. can i make a difference ? i def was never in a position 2 answer ds qn, cos i have never given ds a thought myself..!!
i had no idea wat was in store 4 me, when Malini(my HR @ SunTec) sent me invitation for “I can make a difference” sessoin by Vijay Memon. i never thought ds session wud b so mesmerising
The ME b4 n aftr session were quite different.!!
___________________________________________________________________
From: Learning Responses
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 1:50 PM
To: Sandeep Bhaskar
Cc: ‘Vijay Menon’
Subject: Feedback on “I can make a difference”
Dear Sandeep
I value your participation and the experiences that you shared in the session “I can make a difference”. As a facilitator, the real high is in knowing how or if the effort has in any small or big way impacted you in your work, life, relationships, self concept etc.If you would be kind enough to mail me about it, I would consider it to be gratifying. If it has not had any impact, I would humbly respect that as well. So feel free to afford yourselves a full factual expression.The greatest point of expression that we talked in that session throughout would give me the reassurance and better cognition of the path forward.
Awaiting your esteemed reply.
Regards,
Vijay Menon
___________________________________________________________________
From: “Sandeep Bhaskar” <sandeepb@suntecgroup.com
To: “Vijay Menon” <menon_vijay@hotmail.com
CC: “Learning Responses” <LearningResponses@suntecgroup.com
Subject: RE: Feedback on “I can make a difference”
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:53:11 +0530
Hi Vijay,
I would like to thank you for the most effective and most amazing session I ever had in my life till date. I am carrying an ever lasting and very strong impression about all the aspects we discussed>today.
The session started as expected and as always with a bit of hindrance, in the sense you really don’t know wats gonna happen next.You are worried/busy with a preoccupied mind which keeps on pestering you about the deadlines and work assignments ought to be finished by eod. Its difficult to get your mind away from all such distractions,and get it into a full swing, where I believe the mind can roam free, and creativity is at its maximum level, I would term such a mental condition as nothin less than a ‘EUPHORIA’. But unlike most sessions, the very initial few minutes were more than enough to get me into full swing,get me into a state of EUPHORIA. The rest of the session was mesmirising, I cherish every single thing we discussed today.
It did make me realise the ‘YOU’ factor. When I was speaking, with each and every word I was realising the potential I had within, the mindset I started speaking in, and the mindset when I finished was entirely different, I was able to feel the ‘I’ factor. Yes I can definitely make a difference. It may be small, but still I did it. As u correctly quoted, YOU ARE BEST TO YOURSELF, WHEN YOU ARE BEST TO OTHERS. I have decided to be best to others, I will surely try and reduce the problems in the world, the main cause to which is LOST BALANCE. Oh all these are echoing in my mind. I could listen to all my colleagues today, I knew all of them since long time, but never got an insight to their life in this perspective. I will definitely respect them more after today, Iwas so happy to hear how Syama planned for a wonderful treat for herparents on a very special day of their life, I cud feel how happy they would have been, I respect Divya for helping that small little girl out with such a bright future. Hats off to Raji, for going and talking to her teammate, and making him develop a much better professional. I respect all of them, all of them have been very significant in making a difference. Then there are so many people, to whom I havent listened this way, I am sure they also would have done something equally or maybe more for making a difference in somebody’s life. I am happy to realise all these things. I walked out a better human being.
And as u rightly pointed out, a thing planned, decided to be done, is half work done. So I decided to create an action item list. I am going to follow these strictly as a starter
1. I will respect all others much much more than I used to do, I don’t mean the technical or intellectual intelligence they possess.
2. Will find out time, for going out and enjoying the beautiful nature
Thank you so much Vijay, you have a made a difference in my life
Thanks
Sandeep Bhaskar

Dream Big

July 19, 2006 – First Day @ SunTec.. As any fresher joining an organisation, i too joined with lot of dreams n career plans.
June 30, 2008 – Last Day @ SunTec.. Working there was full of fun, professionally challenging, hectic and enjoyable. Its really a big decision, bt its for somthing bigger.
Now its gonna b 2 weeks of preparation, i already have received 2 books from insti.. So its gonna b Analysis n Design of IS & Discrete Mathematics..
So starting to realise my BIG DREAM…..