I was listening to the podcast – Happiness. Todd Kashdan, Eric Lambin, Eva Hoffman. 22 Dec 2012. Some ideas from the podcast: Learn to be curious. When we are curious, we like to explore, discover things. Exploration helps us grow, evolve. Happiness depends on the ability to tolerate pain ( it never occurred to me to link happiness to pain) Invest in relations – having a sense of...
December 27, 2012
Three Podcast Links Worth Checking Out
27December
December 26, 2012
5 Key Considerations for Platform Approach
26December
Platform mean different things to different people depending on who you ask. It is not just related to software or computer hardware industry but is also very relevant and prevalent in other industries also. It is an entity that bring things together, mask complexities, is a enabler to build/create on top of it, help foster innovation and is a ecosystem enabler. Over the period governments...
December 24, 2012
Why a degree of chaos is better than order
24December
I can bet you are familiar with this one, but not its consequences, in product development: you’ve seen project managers in product development teams express frustration at not being able to keep the development on track, on time and on budget. I had earlier written about the kind of expectations people have of product development and its perils – but this problem of project management is worse...
December 23, 2012
Building Innovative Products Out of India: Lessons from Bell Labs India, CDOT, Cisco, Concept2Silicon and Ittiam
23December
What will it take to build an Apple or Google out of India? This is a question we often ask, and you might recall that I gave one perspective on this in my Outlook Business column some months ago. Sanjay Nayak of Tejas Networks has devoted the last decade to building high tech telecom products out of India. He is passionate about building a supportive product ecosystem in Bangalore/India. So...
December 22, 2012
Announcing the angel investor office hours in Bangalore (soon in Mumbai and Delhi as well)
22December
How to hack your seed round in India, got 63 emails, comments and twitter messages asking me to take the post to its next logical step. The 3 biggest issues entrepreneurs raised were: 1. They dont have the email addresses of these angel investors. Even if they did send them an email, responses were slow or went into a “black hole”. 2. The angel networks in particular have a fairly arduous process...
December 21, 2012
Re-positioning and Re-imaging India
21December
Over the last year or so, the image of India, like the Indian Test team, has taken a beating. The halcyon days of India Shining, of India Everywhere and the world’s “fastest growing free market economy” are now over; the brand-builders and spin-masters are not able to conjure up the magic of old. Instead, we have the picture of a struggling economy, just chugging along at barely over 5% a year;...
December 20, 2012
Getting funded by US investors vs. Indian investors – a perspective
20December
This is another post to force the debate. I have heard many Indian entrepreneurs say that they would rather be funded by a US investor than and Indian investor. In fact most would prefer specific Silicon Valley investors. There are many pros and cons to both Indian and Silicon Valley investors. Lets do the valley first. Pros: 1. Investors move quickly. They make no decisions fast and yes...
December 19, 2012
MusicFellas makes music more cool!
19December
MusicFellas is a social, indie music discovery platform where one can have meaningful interactions around the music. It helps discovering new music, have conversations and support the artists. The artists get 70% of whatever people pay to buy their music. In conversation with Aakriti Bhargava from Boring Brands , the young co-founders talk about their startup moments and life in MusicFellas...
December 18, 2012
Develop and Pray is Bad Planning in Product Startups!
18December
Total Addressable Market, Technology and Market Adoption Rates are crucial for Product Startups! Ignoring them early on will only cause immense heart ache down the road for you, your family, your company, your employees and their families! It’s all well and good to follow your “passion” and do your startup purely for your passion. It will be a great hobby and extracurricular...
December 17, 2012
Q&A with Startup ArrayShield’s CEO
17December
Editor’s note: Two brothers co-founded ArrayShield Technologies in Chennai, India, in 2010 to provide a two-factor authentication product for secure access to corporate data. We interviewed co-founder and CEO Pavan Thatha about lessons learned thus far as a startup in the security space. This article is brought to SandHill readers in partnership with ProductNation. SandHill.com: Please describe...
