I first read the term ‘Retention Marketing’ in an article in a marketing journal at University and dismissed it immediately as one of the new terms we marketers come up with. It was for an assignment and I did not pay it a second more attention than was needed to write a passable term paper. I heard it next at a meeting in office, about two years later. And was promptly dumbstruck by how...
The proverbial chicken and egg problem of building a new social product is well understood among tech startups, and it’s been commonplace to follow two contrasting mechanisms for getting traction. Traditionally, startups have solved this problem by racing to connect users with each other, essentially providing them the pipes to interact with each other. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have grown...
In our latest blog we had written about CIOSE(CIO Strategy Exchange) and about the 5 companies that were shortlisted to provide a presentation to Ernest M Von Simson and these five companies were ArrayShield – “Two-Factor Authentication” C2il – “Asset Life Cycle Management” i7 networks – “Agentless BYOD Discovery & Control” Fieldez – “On Demand mobile workforce management” Kreeo –...
I love Israel. Having been there 7-8 times over 5 years when I worked for a company (Mercury Interactive, acquired by HP) that had its development center there, I believe they have some of the best developers, product thinkers and execution oriented folks. They are also amazing at marketing. They have successfully convinced the world that they are the “startup nation“. Never mind that they...
Often, enterprise goals of security and collaboration are mutually exclusive. Seclore, with customers in Asia, Europe and North America, resolves that dilemma. Seclore’s CEO, Vishal Gupta, discusses Information Rights Management trends as well as development of the company’s IRM product. This article is brought to SandHill readers in partnership with ProductNation. SandHill.com: Please describe...
Depending upon who do you ask the question, the answer to “Indian Startup ecosystem has a shortage of good quality?” would oscillate between kick-ass investors and great customers. While the presence of both is crucial to validate the success of the startup, founders always seem to be cut-off from both of kick-ass investors. With India poised towards climbing up the entrepreneurial ladders, no...
Advisory boards are rarely meant for fixing fundamental flaws with business plans. Having big names on the advisory boards, purely for their name value, rarely works. It might help a little in raising venture money, if at all. However, when composed and used wisely, advisory boards can help your product company choose the right corporate, product, market and sales strategies. Simply put, your...
They say lighting does not strike twice, but it definetly did at Kunzum café where the 4th #PNMeetup was happening. The theme “Making your product go viral on a low marketing budget” got over 40 people to the venue all intent to desipher the Virality dilemma. We had Amit Ranjan from SlideShare’s, Pathik Shah from Hike & Bipin Preet Singh from Mobikwik. At the product nation...
Update: Some readers have asked for information about MOOCs. A (MOOC) massive open online course is an online educational resource that is available for open access via the web. MOOCs originated around 2008 within the open educational resources (or OER) movement. For more, refer to the Wikipedia link. Online learning is undergoing a paradigm shift and this Forbes article is a pointer of the shape...
Was going through popular book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … and it’s all small stuff” by Richard Carlson, PhD and realized lot of the points outlined by Richard are applicable precisely for enterpreneurs in their startup journey. Make peace with imperfection: As a startup, we always are short of resources that are typically available for a big corporation. When...
