Last week a very interesting free e-book called “Software Paradox” was trending on Hacker News. The premise of the book is, that the value of software as a product is diminishing, but the value of software as an enableris rising. Pure play software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are fading in comparison to rising stars such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and newer ones like Uber...
A man with a severe tooth ache goes to the dentist, who upon examining the tooth, assures the man that the problem wasn’t anything serious and that a simple procedure performed under a local anesthesia would help repair the damage. Upon hearing this, the man gets very upset and tells the dentist, “What? Local anesthesia? You think I cannot afford a foreign one?! I demand an imported one!” I...
You’re at an event, and you’re ready. You know your product inside out. You know the competition. You know the licensing terms. The deals. The partners. The competition. Technical details. Market details. Detail details. Regulations. Strengths. Compatibilities. Your head is stuffed. Crammed, just when – A customer comes to you. “I’ve got sixty seconds. Why should I buy from you?” You spent years...
NowFloats – Getting small businesses online in 4 SMSes and 13 minutes! I love clear mission statements, and NowFloats couldn’t be clearer: 9.6 million small and medium businesses need a website. Only 0.6 million have one. That’s 9 million tasks on our desk (and that’s just in India!) I recently got a chance to catch up with Ronak and Jasminder (Jas), 2 of the cofounders of this exciting...
Every now and then, we hear people arguing about building “Microsoft” and “Google” of India. Companies like Microsoft, Google have built up incredible technologies and their contributions in improving our life is significant. When started, they started with big vision, a tough and relevant problem to solve, and brilliant team behind the vision. While I cannot look into minds of founders of those...
Marketing a product is always tricky business. Step into a marketing discussion and it invariably ends with, “Should we really be spending so much on marketing? Isn’t there a better (read: cheaper) way to do this?” Now observe the marketing head honcho whose responsibility it is to get the product into the hands of users. He or she will scrunch the shoulders into a compact shape, ready for the...
