Most startups talk about product features and how they are better than their competition in terms of their offerings. They really don’t tell stories, however people remember stories for long and not the facts and figures. Most often than not, people say we are a startup, we don’t have paying customers and we do not have stories to communicate. The fact that they are developing a product itself is...
(Post 1 of a series on quick research and usability techniques. Start-up’s can use these techniques fairly easily to connect to and understand their end users better, as well as maintain usability standards on their products.) ProductNation in collaboration with a few like-minded design professionals, recently put together an informal forum for designers, engineers, product managers &...
As a lead up to India’s 66th Independence Day, ProductNation announces the launch of our OutSights Series. As there are a large number of thought leaders who have a lot of insights on a lot of topics, we decided that what we have, are OutSights. We start this series with structured reports showcasing #MadeInIndia Software Products with Global Outlook. We will create a ready listing of software...
In 1991, the second Independence of India took place – there was an opening up of the economy that led, in its own tortuous Indian way, to the opening up of the minds of a section of the population. The educated middle class that had till then either left the country for greener pastures or taken up jobs in the government or with the few MNCs operating then started looking around at opportunities...
There are some companies which start their business with a bang but can’t sustain their growth. Then there are other firms who seize market opportunities and add value to it. These companies succeed in the Indian Market and then get ready to go Global, including taking on the hard to penetrate Asian Markets. The following Interview is of a company that has reached a turning point and is...
My wife forwarded me an article recently that Booz & Co. had written on India’s leadership challenge. You can read the full article here. This confirmed something I have long suspected. While there are great leaders in the Indian business, there are very few great companies. Let me explain what I mean by that. In the business, we are in, i.e. IT, some companies have done very well...
Aurus Network was founded in 2010 with the vision to make quality education accessible to masses at affordable prices. It is revolutionizing the way distance/online education is delivered. Aurus offers CourseHub, its flagship product, which is a cloud-based solution for educational institutions (higher education, test prep and training,schools, etc.) to capture, store and deliver (live or on...
Being an Associate in a Venture Capital firm is a dead-end job*, that you can’t leap without entrepreneurial experience. And, entrepreneurs hate you for your pesky, clueless mails. Here’s hoping to help you out – and help ourselves. Dear Associate / Analyst, I know I took a big stab at you [1] and went public with it. I know you are trying to do your job, but the way you are going about it...
Pixel Jobs, designed by the talented folks at Sparklin, is a refreshing look at the boring world of job portals. The problem to solve was simply, “How to get a job post seen by the best creative talent?” An old fashion job-board served as a physical metaphor to yield a clean, simple and inviting job portal cheekily named – Pixel Jobs. It has nifty filters to make searching easy...
When you see Yahoo offer $1.1B in cash for Tumblr or it pays $30M for Summly, the reactions around the world range from kudos to the founders and initial investors, to “I’ll have some of what they are smoking”! But most of the time, there is some sanity behind all that madness but there have been times when it has been more of insanity as at the peak of the Dot.com boom, in the...
