Thursday, December 4, 2008

Shai Agassi @ MIT, 12.12.2008

I am blogging live from Shai Agassi's talk @ MIT on December 4, 2008. The Wong auditorium is overflowing and Shai Agassi is a very engaging speaker and a great evangelist. He talks about doing the right moral thing and doing right by coming generations by ridding ourselves of oil dependence.

He offered a lot of statistics on the cost benefits. Two particularly stood out - the cost of the entire infrastructure for electric cars in Israel (when it's all complete) will be $100 billion. This is the cost of oil imports for Israel for 2 months. The cost to implement electric car stations on the freeways between the SF Bay Area and LA on all 3 of the connectors - 101, 5 and Hwy 1 is only $25 million! I am scratching my head - so why are we not doing this?!

Shai is now taking questions.

Someone asked him this question: the electricity Shai wants to power cars with is generated from coal anyway, so why the evangelizing? Agassi responds they are replacing oil, not coal, which only costs 5 cents a hour, with electric technology that costs 6 cents a hour.

Another person asked him why car manufacturers would allow him to offer the option of an exchangeable battery since this is an important source of revenue for car manufacturers? His response is his model solves the mainstream economics problem. This allows the car to be sold for $20,000 instead of $35,000 and therefore wider adoption. Interesting approach.

He was asked how his model accounts for the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources used to charge the car batteries. His response was that the grid controls how many cars can be charged at any given time, and this ensures that energy generated is optimally used. The grid also has capacity to store excess energy. Both better place and utility operators can control the grid to achieve optimal performance.

Someone asked a question that I am sure is on a lot of people's minds. He wanted to know how to join betterplace. Shai's answer was to email jodi.shah@betterplace.com, but not to expect a response right away because they have over 7000 unsolicited emails to get to!

He next got asked about the critical mass aspect of this problem. Whats' the time to payback for this infrastructure investment? Shai splits the problem into 2 parts: charge spots (parking spots with charging facilities) - every 1 of 10 spots roughly needs to be electrified before people think of this as being ubiquitous. Part 2 is the switch station. For Israel, there needs to be 250 to 300 stations. The ratio is 10x of capital expenditure for viability. He didn't quite answer the question, but interesting numbers nonetheless.

Next question was whether better place had any plans for airplanes. Answer is no, not at the moment, since it's hard to switch batteries midair!

The talk just ended to a big round of applause. It was 1 hour well spent this evening!

Friday, November 28, 2008

The entrepreneurial culture in Silicon Valley

I was reading "Closing the innovation gap" by Judy Estrin and came across this gem that describes brilliantly why being an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley is different:

An acceptance of failure as a necessary stepping-stone to success is an integral part of the culture of Silicon Valley. As a partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of the Valley’s major VC firms, Kevin Compton met with industry leaders from other countries who were visiting the Valley in hopes of learning the secrets of its entrepreneurial magic. He would try to communicate the Valley gestalt with a story. “You’re getting ready for your country’s version of Thanksgiving dinner with the family. You’re 32 years old, you have kids, and you’re going to your in-laws’ for dinner,” says Compton. “After working at your version of IBM for ten years, everything was going great. But all of a sudden you left that job to go to a high-profile start-up that raised a whole bunch of money, and completely flamed out 18 months later. I would ask these guys, ‘Do you go to the family dinner?’ They would usually say no. And I would tell them that in Silicon Valley, not only do you go to dinner, but your brother-in-law comes up and gives you a high-five saying, ‘I wish I had the courage to do that.’ As a risk-taker, you got his attention. That’s in our DNA.”

Having been an entrepreneur in the valley, I can vouch for the accuracy of this assertion. I will go one step further and say my brother-in-law will likely follow up with a question about what were the biggest lessons I learned, and I will respond with here's what I am doing differently with my next start-up as a result of what I learned from my mistakes... the real failure is only when I don't pick myself up to move on and make NEW mistakes.

Friday, November 14, 2008

CSAIL @ MIT

I was in geek paradise this afternoon, and reveled in it. I visited CSAIL and the coolness of the cutting edge research that's going on at building 34 (I am @ MIT after all, of course I share a love for numbers with my fellow engineers :) took my breath away. The CSAIL lab is my Mecca - I became an engineer because I wanted to build robots and intelligent machines. It was good to be in my element after a long time, and it struck me how much I missed engineering and building cool things. The last time I built something really cool was when I designed a Lego Mindstorms robot to collect the dirty coffee mugs my room mate would leave strewn around our apartment. My co-bot (coffee-robot) would collect all the dirty mugs and move them to a spot I'd marked on the kitchen floor with reflective tape. Seems like a lifetime ago.


We visited Russ Tedrake's lab and saw autonomous flying robots and little dog. Robot locomotion has come such a long way since I was in grad school in 1998. I was incredibly impressed with Little Dog's obstacle detection and circumvention mechanisms. It left me longing to pursue a PhD @ CSAIL after the MBA.. I suspect I would be very happy if I became a lifer at MIT, the place just inspires me.

How any of this relates to entrepreneurship - I wonder if there are formal channels available to commercialize the research that comes out of CSAIL. I intend to find out. Stay tuned for the answer.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

MIT 100K Elevator Pitch Competition results

Some good news: I placed second in the Mobile Track at the MIT 100K Elevator Pitch Competition last week with my start-up "MoJoe"! My brain was completely fried by Saturday AM thanks to the midterms that preceded the event, so the results were a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, only the first place winner was allowed to proceed to the finals from the Mobile track and the BioTech track owing to the fewer number of contestants, so I was unable to pitch in the finals.

Looking forward to doing better at the upcoming Executive Summary Competition!

A huge shout-out and "Thank you!" to all my classmates and friends who encouraged me to pitch, and not give up!
Last week, several of us at MIT Sloan had the opportunity to hear about the cool research done at MIT about founding technology based enterprises from Professor Edward Roberts, the Founder and Chair of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. We were offered a glimpse of the results of many years of research spanning hundreds of Technology companies, and the findings were fascinating.

Successful founders had the following traits:

- They became successful over their lifetime. Genetic predisposition had nothing to do with it. In other words, successful entrepreneurs are made, not born.

- They typically have a high need to achieve, and a moderate need for power. Professor Roberts made the point that people with a high need for power do not succeed in enabling and benefiting from the talents and insights of those around them, effectively holding the organization back and sometimes driving it into the ground.

- They partner with other co-founders. When the original founder does not have sales and marketing expertise, they seek out co-founders with that expertise.

- More the number of co-founders, higher the probability of success. His research studied companies with up to four co-founders. There was not enough data points to conclude about the effectiveness of companies with five or more co-founders.

Successful start-ups shared the following traits:


- They possessed a high degree of advanced technology transfer.

- They were product oriented.

- They had strong marketing orientation and practices, always putting customers first.

- They all possessed a focused growth strategy

For the super successful companies, later stage strategies included:

- A strategic product/business focus

- Strengthened market orientation

- Overcoming new problems

- Personally avoiding fatal "founder's diseases"

One other point that struck me which Professor Roberts made was that VCs on a start-up's board have mixed interests. Their focus is the company's exit strategy. For people who want to build great companies and help entrepreneurs build these companies, this is a painful and incompatible mindset.

He left us with a lot of food for thought, and speaking for myself, very curious and excited about what else the research uncovered.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Sage advice for tough times

This showed up in my inbox today. I thought it was sage advice for tough times.

Alan Patricof, founder and managing director of New York venture capital firm Greycroft Partners LLC and an éminence grisea of the U.S. investment community, sent us a statement today urging restraint in how bloggers and members of the media characterize the "contagion" roiling global financial markets.

Patricof, who also formed the private equity firm that would become buyout giant Apax Partners, specifically addresses the flurry of reports this week that Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia Capital Partners had summoned its portfolio company executives to warn of the impact of the ongoing financial crisis. While advising emerging companies to closely monitor costs and to be realistic in their near-term growth forecasts, he also says this is "not a time to panic, cut off all investment in the future, and burrow into a dark hole." -- Alain Sherter

Following is the full text of Patricof's statement:

The comments made by the partners of Sequoia Capital at their recently held 'CEO Summit' have been widely covered by leaks to numerous bloggers. These bloggers have disseminated the details and spread the contagion of the sentiments to the public at large, unfortunately running the risk that the words become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Without challenging the comments, which expressed a heightened degree of doom and gloom for the economic prospects of young start-up companies particularly, I do think it calls for a somewhat more restrained response on the outlook and required action before throwing the baby out with the bath water. Certainly, we are going through a period of enormous economic and political uncertainty. The loss of confidence, primarily in our financial system, as a result of the excess of the past five to ten years (if not longer - we may never know how long some of the flawed
practices have been going on) is one of the leading contributors. We are also at the moment looking for leadership on the political front, and both because of very low public support for the President and because we are in the midst of a heated election for his successor, we have no real voice of authority to provide some guidance,
reassurance, and inspirational confidence that the bus has a driver who knows where he is going.

Nevertheless, aside from an over-inflated housing boom that had to collapse sooner or later and a complicated financial system that arose in part to fuel this engine, the basic economy was in reasonable shape, with GNP growth and productivity gains supporting a solid, if not vibrant outlook (I know the automotive industry is also
going through bad times but it no longer pervades the economy as once conveyed in the expression, "As GM goes, so goes the nation.")

Advances in technology are allowing companies to make goods and provide services faster and cheaper. The wireless revolution and the Internet have made the dissemination of information easier and more pervasive for the entire world and brought significant benefits to every phase of our economy. That is not going to stop, although it may temporarily slow down. In these difficult times, there will be
winners as well as losers (and the former may be fewer in number for a while).

The point is, the financial problems are being addressed, if not a bit belatedly, and some international mechanism will be found in short order for some coordinated policy that will restore order and confidence to the system.

Most young companies, with which we are specifically concerned, are financed with equity capital. That has its positives and negatives; on the one hand, debt is a very small factor in the capital structure of most small companies so loan foreclosures and the interest rate burden are not of prime concern. On the other hand, equity capital,
which is provided by private investors, requires confidence in future prospects for reaching profitability and creating a strong market value. Certainly under current conditions it is hard to engender such confidence although history has demonstrated that it is in times like these that great opportunities are created. I have always said, "The best time to invest is when the drums are beating, not when the trumpets are blaring!"

This is surely a time for companies to pay meticulous attention to detail, particularly their cost structure. It is a time to be realistic in their near-term assumptions for revenue growth and take nothing for granted. Raising additional capital to support operations is of course critical, as it is at any time, but this is particularly a time for young companies to be extra cautious in developing pragmatic assumptions of their needs and in focusing on the amount and not necessarily the cost of that capital.

This is not a time to panic, cut off all investment in the future, and burrow into a dark hole. Take a page from the packaged goods industry that the time to gain market share is during tough times when your competitors are weaker in responding. And while this may feel more directly related to portfolio companies, we as a venture industry should not retreat either. It is our strong belief that we can and will continue to make sound investments in excellent opportunities. It is as good a time as ever to start a company with sound fundamentals.

So my point is to heed the caution of the Sequoia comments but to use them only as a strong message to reexamine all cost elements and growth plans and use this opportunity to assure that you are a survivor. Find a way to use this moment to gain your greater share of the market by providing a solution that is needed by others to
improve their prospects in the difficult environment ahead. Tighten your belt and live within your means. Although the timing makes this message seem more prescient, it is a philosophy that works for successful companies at all times and at all stages; it is simply put, good business. This is not a time for heroes!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Emerging Technology Conference 2008

I have been meaning to write part 2 of the post about decision making pitfalls, another post about a presentation I attended by one of the founders of hubspot.com - unfortunately, a day only has 24 hours.

I skipped classes this morning to attend the Emerging Technologies conference at MIT this morning. I was very glad I went. The keynote by Vinod Khosla seemed to start-off on a pessimistic note. He made the point that prediction has varied widely from reality in the past with respect to things like oil prices, consumer adoption of cell phones etc. When the next slide switched to alternate energy sources, I thought I had a clue as to what was coming. I was pleasantly surprised. He went on to talk about the scope and magnitude of solutions that will be required to make a dent in the energy challenge, and how any proposed solution must be inexpensive enough to be adopted by the "Chindia" market to actually make progress. He then talked about "Black Swans", disruptive technologies capable of changing the nature of the game, and how any solution that comes along must be profitable on its own merits without requiring subsidies. He went on to talk about the criteria used by Khosla ventures to make an investment, and about the companies in his portfolio. Some of the ones he mentioned are doing incredible work, can't wait to check them out!

I also attended 2 sessions of the TR35 elevator pitches and came away very impressed, as expected. I had a chance to chat with Dr. Shafi from University of Pennsylvania afterward. His story was fascinating, and his enthusiasm infectious. I was particularly awed by how the polymer simply gets absorbed into the body once its job is done - very neat. I extended an invitation to him to participate in the MIT100K competition since he mentioned he was looking for another round of funding, and he is very interested. So MIT people reading this blog, if this is something you're interested in, drop me a line, he's looking for a MIT partner with whom to enter the competition.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The hidden traps of decision making

I am reading an article from the Harvard Business Review titled "The hidden traps of decision making" for my Organizational Processes class. It provided much fodder for thought.

The first hidden trap of decision making is ANCHORING. When I read this, I couldn't help but recall my positive bias for all things made by Apple. My bias initially started from reading positive, glowing reviews about Steve Jobs and the iPod. In one case, in a friendly argument with my sister, I even passionately defended the iPod shuffle as a great MP3 player out of my desire to be consistent! Honestly though, I have to admit, it's a crappy idea. How useful is a MP3 player without a display, which will force you to listen to a random sequence of tracks? You might own it, but you can't control it, literally. But defend it, I did. I now understand I was a victim of the anchor trap. My strategy going forward, is to be aware that there exists such a trap and to stay as open minded as possible.

The second trap is STATUS QUO. I have been guilty of this so many times, that it's hard to pick just one example! I bought Cisco stock during the heydays for $65 a share. Then came the dot com bust and I watched the stock price fall steadily from $65 to the sub-$20 range, taking a big chunk of my portfolio with it. I finally sold it when it was in the teens. The reason this memory sticks with me painfully is not just the financial loss. For someone who thinks of herself as being a logical, analytical person and an engineer to boot, how can I reconcile the fact that it took me as long as it did to sell the stock? The reason I waited was because I knew I would have to do extra paperwork come tax season to report a capital loss, and I just didn't want to go to that trouble. I preferred to not disturb status quo no matter how illogical, than to take the extra 10 minutes to complete and file a schedule D IRS tax form. Now I know that kind of stupidity actually has a name.


The third trap is the SUNK COST trap. I couldn't help but smile when I read this because this time around, I was "smart" and recognized it. Just that it took too long to think of all possible alternatives and time was running out, so I resorted to the status quo trap instead! I still have the car I bought from my very first job 10 years ago. I couldn't bear to let it go for sentimental reasons. Besides, it's been a real work horse and never asked for much beyond basic maintenance in the time I've owned it. That changed 6 months ago. Last December I paid a mechanic $800 to take care of some problems. Eight months later, I was back at the mechanic's again, this time being told it's going to cost $2500 to fix the car. Fully realizing that I might be throwing good money after bad and working out conditional probabilities (I kid you not), I went ahead and had the car fixed anyway, promising myself that the next time the car needed repairs that cost more than $500, I will buy a new car. The human psyche is strange.

To be continued in the next post...

Friday, September 5, 2008

To share or not to share?

What's it with people claiming to be entrepreneurs who are tight lipped and believe everyone is out to steal their ideas? It makes no sense to me and I find it downright funny. If you won't share your idea because it is so easy to duplicate, you have a serious problem with your competitive advantage. It better not be something every Tom and Jane can replicate overnight! If it is something so cool that no one else can do it, what are you worried about? Think iPod. Think of the (lack of)success of its copycats.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Slideshare contest winner

This slideshow was announced the winner of this year's contest. A classmate from MIT Sloan and I were brainstorming ideas to participate in this contest, but eventually ended up not entering due to time constraints. Just as well.

I was disappointed at the outcome. Comparing this year's winner to the winners from the past, there seems to be a clear and obvious pattern. Not to take away from the content of these presentations which is definitely thought provoking, the recipe seems to be as follows: throw in a bunch of statistics, eye catching visuals and short phrases, stir well, spice up with the hot topic of the day, heat and serve with a side of captivating images. Never one to cook by the book, my reaction was, well, whatever. How predictable.

How would the judges judge a presentation on a topic that does not lend itself to statistics or catchy phrases? Not every topic one needs to present on lends itself to this stock formula. When we were planning to enter the competition, we thought this would be an edifying experience. Turns out we made a wise choice with how to spend our time.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Mobile technologies

I was thrilled to learn that fellow MIT-ians took the top prize at the Google competition to develop software for the Android platform. It's a very cool application that got me thinking. It would be fantastic to have an application that will look at my to-do lists, and use the GPS feature to figure out where I am, and prompt me to complete certain tasks from my to-do lists, based on my location, time of day and due dates. A mobile version of Remember the Milk, so to speak, but smarter in doing automatic location based planning. If you know of an already existing application that will do this, please let me know, I could really use one!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Thanks Guy!

So I got an email today that took me completely by surprise. It was from Guy Kawasaki saying he enjoyed my blog post titled "Salesmanship" and had tweeted it. And lo and behold, my inbox is deluged with comments/questions/interest about my blog at a scale unprecedented so far! Some of the notes were so thought provoking and engaging that I've decided to reconsider my decision of using this blog as a personal wiki. I learned today that there's much to be learned from my "lessons learned" by engaging the wider entrepreneurial community. So, Thanks Guy!, for the shout out on Twitter, and Thank you, Tweeters!, for taking the time to write so many thoughtful messages. I promise to respond to each of you individually though it may take a little longer than my usual email turnaround time.

Monday, August 11, 2008

NY Times and Sexism

I normally make it a point to discuss only topics pertaining to my journey as an entrepreneur on this blog, but had to make an exception this time to focus attention on the audacity and blatant sexism displayed by NY Times. They classified and printed this article about Women bloggers in the Style and Fashion section! I can't imagine a similar article about male bloggers being printed anywhere other than the technology section. Perhaps they were trying to prove the point many of the attendees at the conference made about being ignored and patronized by the media.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Salesmanship

When I started my first company, I was convinced I hated sales. I disliked the idea of selling something a person does not really need, but ends up buying because I was glib. I questioned the ethics of it, and told myself that I would never be a good salesperson because of this. Boy was I wrong! Well before I acquired my first customer, I realized that practically EVERY aspect of running a business involved sales. I was constantly selling something or the other - an idea, a product, a vision - to someone or another, be it the software engineer, a partner or an investor.

Why I remembered this today - I stumbled upon this really interesting blog post titled "What I learned buying a rug in Turkey". I found myself relating to a lot of the author's experiences and educated myself about the psychology and science behind it. I am looking forward to reading Robert Cialdini's book. I will post a review when I am finished.

Mr. Weisburgh's post reminded me of my own experience recently when we were visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. In order to minimize pollution and for security reasons, vehicles are not allowed close to the Taj and the nearest parking was a fair distance away. When we reached this parking lot, we were besieged with people offering to take us to the entrance using various means of transport - a golf cart, an EV, a horse carriage, and a cycle rickshaw were our options. The horse carriage and the rickshaw drivers got our attention appealing to our emotions - they pointed out this was their livelihood and will likely forgo a meal if we end up picking the golf cart. Having effectively whittled away our choices, the rickshaw puller played the emotional card further asking us to choose between feeding a horse versus a human being. We were effectively trapped though I had misgivings about a man doing the work of a horse - the road had a slight slope and it was no easy task for one man to haul 300+ pounds of our combined weight.

We had negotiated for one way transportation only since we were trying to get to the Taj as quickly as possible before it closed for the evening, and had planned to take a leisurely stroll back enjoying the cool evening breeze. When we reached the entrance, several things happened. Looking back at it after reading Mr. Weisburgh's post, it was classic salesmanship that I experienced, without recognizing it.

1. Reciprocation: During the ride, the rickshaw driver informed us that electronics such as cell phones and iPods are not allowed inside the Taj for security reasons and to make sure we leave them at the lockers provided if we didn't want to be harassed by security people. He also made it a point to mention that potable water wasn't readily available inside the Taj, and to make sure we take our own when we go in since it was a particularly warm day. We were very grateful for this advice, particularly since it was spot on.

2. Commitment and Consistency: The driver told us that all of the entrances would look alike once we were inside, and to make sure we retrace our path and come out of the same entrance if we didn't want to be stranded a long hike away from the parking lot where our car was parked. We couldn't deny the logic of this advice and committed to coming out the same entrance, and out of consistency, agreed to meet him when we returned since he said he would wait for us.

3. Social Proof: The driver was so grateful for the business that when he clasped his hands together to profusely thank us, who were we to say we won't give him our business on the return trip?

4. Liking: The driver provided helpful tips on how to get the most out of our Taj visit and built a rapport with us before he successfully talked us into riding his rickshaw for the return trip.

5. Authority: He told us he was born and raised in the area and had been in this business for a number of years and therefore had inside knowledge of the Taj, thus establishing his authority.

6. Scarcity: Knowing that time was scarce and if we had walked we would have made it barely 10 minutes before closing time (as the rickshaw driver pointed out) made the rickshaw ride more compelling.

I bet the rickshaw driver hasn't read Cialdini's book. Successful salespeople just seem to know the tricks.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Thoughts on salesmanship

I was reading an article about the importance of sales in any organization and that got my mental wheels turning. I figured I could use my blog as "lessons learned" ledger, so here's what worked for me when I was trying to sell my Smart Shopping Solution to grocery stores:

- First and foremost, confidence in my product and sales skills. It was uncanny how people I was making my sales pitch to could instantly pick up when I was less than completely confident.

- Characterizing and selling my product as meeting an unmet need, as opposed to a "want". Sounds simple enough, but it took me a couple of failed pitches to figure this out.

- This one took me completely by surprise, but in hindsight make sense: having a competitor is VERY important on a couple of levels. Potential customers get uneasy when they think they're guinea pigs for a new technology or a new product. The more adventurous will try to use that to their negotiating advantage. Plus, it's really hard to make a case that you're fulfilling a need and not a frivolous want when you claim there's no other company in the world that does what you do!

- Fairly basic lesson learned during my days in corporate America trying to communicate with people who are not involved in the nuts and bolts of engineering the product, basically any one who was not an engineer and a co-worker: describe the product in terms of benefits to the target audience, not features. No matter how cool, or gee-whiz-bang the feature is, save it for fellow geeks who actually get the"it's not a bug, it's a feature!" joke.

Monday, March 10, 2008

A key ingredient for a successful start-up...

...is its people. From my personal experience, hiring part-timers does not work for multiple reasons. It's easy to lump all the reasons under "lack commitment" but that would be an unfair generalization. Part-time employees have a commitment to their other job that cannot be discounted or shrugged off (particularly when I expect the same commitment to the position I hired them for!), a bigger juggling challenge to achieve work-life balance and often, conflicting priorities which are equally important. I believe happy people make better employees and consequently, no surprise when I found myself in full agreement with this blogger and his post. With that said, no part time employees for me at my next start-up unless faced with a dearth of options. Perhaps I should look at contracting out positions. What do my readers think? Either post a comment below, or send me personal email. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Once a geek, forever a geek

An ambulance siren and an innocent observation triggered my train of thought this morning about the Doppler effect. It eventually got to the point where the geek in me HAD to know the Doppler formula, and the keyboard being more convenient and handy than pen and paper, I went online to find it. Which is when I stumbled across this totally cool, awesome website.

Bernoulli's equation and the Venturi Flowmeter were the next perfectly logical stops to my mind, and to my delight, found those too! The geek in me totally revels in the content on this website, and wishes it had been there when I was swotting for yet another final exam. It would've been a great entrepreneurial idea back then.

Travel's more convenient these days, with Virgin leading the way

I came across an announcement about Virgin's new charter service on Techcrunch. I also learned this factoid:

"Twenty-five years ago, stuck in Puerto Rico after a canceled flight to the Virgin Islands, Branson found a charter plane and went around the airport with a blackboard that advertised a charter flight for $39 per person. He filled all 50 seats, and that is how he started Virgin Atlantic."

Pretty cool! Now there's a website that connects the consumer with charter flight operators, and importantly, allows leverage of this information by offering "Hot Deals". "Hot Deals" are basically flights that were chartered for one way trips and will be flying back empty to their home base, therefore any revenue generating passenger is better than none.

I was even more encouraged when I came across this operator. I would definitely consider flying from Dubai to NYC on a private charter aircraft, with all business class seats and fully flat beds, checking in 30 minutes before the flight at a private terminal with no serpentine security check lines for less than 4200 USD, round trip.

Now, I am looking for a company that will let me combine different modes of travel to optimize my travel by time or cost or convenience (child friendly would be great!). For instance, instead of flying San Francisco to London Heathrow and connecting at Heathrow to Rome like we did recently, a more sensible itinerary would've been to fly non-stop from San Francisco to London, and connect by train/chunnel to mainland Europe and onwards by Eurail to Italy. I even explored booking this itinerary but was put off by the complexity of figuring out flight/train/shuttle departures, connecting logistics across foreign geographies and the realization that I will be completely on my own trying to figure out Plan B in a foreign country with linguistic barriers, if my Plan A doesn't execute perfectly. Perhaps it's time to build another start-up....

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Made in India - Software as a product company

It came as a breath of fresh air to read about an entrepreneur who has successfully built a software product out of India for the global market, and is competing with household names elsewhere. Even more impressive were the following facts:

- This is a 100% bootstrapped effort, with no outside funding.

- Some of the "engineers" who are coding this software are high school graduates with 9 months of training. Without this job, the prognosis for the future of these individuals is not particularly encouraging. I applaud this social element which Mr. Vembu has successfully combined with the financial success of his venture.

More about Mr. Vembu and his venture can be found here.

Ms. Mitra has published an interview with him on her blog.

I first stumbled across Zoho at the Web 2.0 expo held in San Francisco from April 15 through 18th last year. It piqued my curiosity since Google had not rolled out the spreadsheet functionality completely, whereas Zoho had a spreadsheet program I could use. I played with it for a while and though I liked it, found Google more convenient since I am already a Gmail user. I returned to their website recently after reading the Forbes article and found that they have introduced a whole slew of applications since. I am sufficiently intrigued to check out "Zoho show" and will post a review soon.

The one thing that struck me as unusual is that Zoho is competing purely on price. Few companies, if any, have managed to sustain growth and profitability with pricing as their sole competitive advantage. With software in particular, once the code is written, debugged and staff salaries paid, there are no limits as to how low the price can be slashed by a competitor. Even a penny per customer is a profit in this case, unlike physical commodities where rock bottom pricing will equal lowest manufacturing cost. It remains to be seen how Zoho fares and whether the Googles of the world will bankrupt the Zohos by offering the software free, since their revenue stems from elsewhere.