Hampi !

Ah yes ! The magical land of the Vijayanagara Empire. Where the next Flintstones Movie is likely to be filmed.

Good thing the King invested in so much real estate. 

Self directed effort is the best kind

Self directed effort is the best kind: "

How much are you paying for a drill sergeant?

Perhaps you can burn 500 calories on the treadmill before you give up for the day. With a personal coach, though, you could do 700. The trainer gets you to exert more effort.

You wake up on a Monday morning after a long hard weekend of misbehaving. You have a splitting headache. You can easily call in sick, no one will freak out. But then you remember that there's a $500 bonus at stake if you keep your attendance perfect. You make the effort because someone else is bribing you.

On the playground, it's tempting to rip into a kid who stole the swing from you. You're about to whack him, but then you see your mom watching. With a great deal of effort, you walk away.

Effort's ephemeral, hard to measure and incredibly difficult to deliver on a regular basis. So we hire a trainer or a coach or a boss and give up our freedom and our upside for someone to whip us into shape. Obviously, you give up part of what you create to the trainer/coach/boss in exchange for their oversight.

Has it become a crutch? Are you addicted to a taskmaster, to someone else's to do list, to short term external rewards that sell your long-term plans short? If no one is watching, are you helpless, just a web surfing, time wasting couch potato? Who owns the extra work you do now that you're being directed?

There's an entire system organized around the idea that we're too weak to deliver effort without external rewards and punishment. If you only grow on demand, you're selling yourself short. If you're only as good as your current boss/trainer/sergeant, you've given over the most important thing you have to someone else.

The thing I care the most about: what do you do when no one is looking, what do you make when it's not an immediate part of your job... how many push ups do you do, just because you can?

"

Big Content Farm Still Thriving After Google Algorithm Change

Big Content Farm Still Thriving After Google Algorithm Change: "

It’s been six weeks since Google flipped the switch on its new algorithm that’s supposed to push low-value content down the search-engine food chain in favor of more robust offerings. The move was hyped as a potential boon to established media sites producing original journalism, and a serious hit to content farms.

One of the biggest losers was supposed to be Demand Media, a Santa Monica-based firm that owns sites like eHow and Cracked.com, which themselves use algorithms to produce content with high advertising potential. The strategy’s worked. Since launching in 2006, Demand Media has grown to roughly $2 billion in value by producing a fire hose of self-help/how-to content, articles and videos like How to create a home first-aid kit, and Ideas for your kid’s boxed lunch. In the first two weeks after Google’s algorithm switch, Demand Media, according to comScore, actually saw its traffic increase, from about 26 million weekly unique users to 27 million.

Maybe without Google’s change, that number would have been 30 million instead of 27 million. But in any case, the switch hasn’t exactly broken Demand’s back.

In the meantime, blog reader Rebecca Luzenski sends over this info-graphic care of OnlineMBA.com, demonstrating exactly how content farms like Demand Media make so much cash.

[Source: OnlineMBA.com]

"

How To Be Extraordinarily Happy – In Work and Life

How To Be Extraordinarily Happy – In Work and Life: "

This is a guest post from Jennifer Gresham at Everyday Bright. Jennifer was the winner (if you want to call it that) in my guest post not-contest. This article immediately resonated with me and I hope it resonates with you as well. Thanks Jennifer!

My friend Jim works a job he hates, but he doesn’t see a way out. Here’s a guy who is incredibly smart and talented, but for whatever reason, he’s been unable to negotiate a new career. And he’s miserable.

He recently asked me, “What if I’m just not a happy person? What if I try to change my job to something better and I’m still unhappy?”

This isn’t a dumb question. But if you follow the science of happiness as I do, the answer isn’t exactly clear either.

The science of happiness

Back in the 1970′s, research showed both lottery winners and recent paraplegics reverted to previous happiness levels within a short period of time. This led scientists to believe there was a happiness set point, essentially a happiness cap determined by our genes. Accordingly, your decisions and circumstances in life didn’t have long-lasting impacts on your happiness level.

Then positive psychology came along and said, yes, there is a happiness set point, but it only accounts for about 50% of our happiness. So of the portion that’s within our control, what makes us happy? Sadly for Jim, the positive psychologists say relationships account for 40% of what we control, and only 10% arises from our circumstances, including our jobs.

In a review of the positive psychology literature Penelope Trunk said

The thing that increases our happiness is our relationships. A job cannot make those better. However a job can make you so unhappy that you can’t relish the relationships in your life.

I agree. I had what anyone would call a great job. I was the Assistant Chief Scientist for a lab that examined ways to improve human performance. I guided the work of hundreds of super smart scientists and engineers alongside my boss, who is one of the best leaders and mentors I’ve ever met.

And yet … I got euphoric every time I took a day off. Although I enjoyed the higher purpose that came with leading in a large, government laboratory, the bureaucracy was slowly driving me insane. Before long, I was getting snippy with the very family I loved.

But that’s not the whole story.

Does our work really matter?

Science says we are pretty lousy at predicting what makes us happy. Part of the problem is that most of us don’t spend any time at all figuring out what brings us fulfillment. We don’t take a class on it in college and our parents likely didn’t provide very good role models.

What we do know is that Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t have a definition for success, society is more than happy to supply one for you. By and large, that definition calls out money, power, and prestige as the ultimate indicators of a good life.

Let me be clear: there’s nothing wrong with making money. I’m all for it. But I think we’ve got it all backwards. We chase after jobs that pay a lot and hope we like them. I think we should chase after jobs we love and hope they pay a lot.

Because at some point you realize a person who “lives” for the weekend has reduced their enjoyable life span by over 70%.

This is where I have a problem with the “relationship only” model of happiness. If our work didn’t matter, you’d think that ultra rich people would be the happiest people on the planet, since they’d have a lot of time to focus on nurturing great relationships. There should be a big correlation between having so much money you don’t need to work and off-the-charts happiness. But there isn’t.

In fact, the research shows the connection between money and happiness evolves from a sense of status. It’s not the absolute value of your salary that matters, but how much higher it is than those around you (sounds like some pretty healthy relationships).

I’ve been told on more than one occasion that most people don’t “live to work” but “work to live” and I should stop spouting this “follow your passion” BS.

But I can tell you that once I figured out what I really wanted to do with my career (and more importantly, found the courage to go do it), my happiness soared. Something really profound has happened: I love my work so much that Monday is now my favorite day of the week.

When I admitted this fact to my husband, he was worried (needlessly, I might add). In my experience, there are two different well springs of happiness: relationships and a sense of personal achievement. The question is how to design a life that maximizes both.

Overcoming average

Psychological research is tricky. It relies on surveys where not everyone agrees on the definitions. It has a hard time accounting for variation, on both an individual and day-to-day level. And like most science, it searches for a universal truth that may not exist.

We know that when it comes to emotions and stock markets, the “average” response may be of little value. What makes someone else happy may not make you happy, yet we continue to act like there’s only one definition of success (and only one path to happiness).

I told Jim I could be sure of one thing: while he might not naturally be the happiest guy, a job he enjoyed would make him happier than one that didn’t.

The secret ingredient to getting that sense of personal achievement is to find work that encourages flow, which is derived from four qualities:

1. stretches a person without defeating him


2. provides clear goals


3. unambiguous feedback


4. a sense of control

The idea of flow came from researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, but it’s quite similar to the ideas presented by Daniel Pink in his book Drive, who calls for more autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In either case, it is possible to transform work from something of a burden or a chore into something rather exhilarating.

This is what people refer to when they tell you to “follow your passion.” The problem is that most have no idea how to discover their passion and so assume is it mythical at best or a scam at worst.

Don’t take my word for it. Do your own experiments–pull a Gretchen Rubin and tweak your life until the foundations of your happiness become clear. Research may say we’re lousy at predicting our own happiness, but I’ll say there’s also no one better.

In other words, if you want an extraordinary life, why design yours according to the responses of average people?

Jennifer Gresham is a Ph.D. biochemist who left her job to become a writer. She blogs about finding the clarity and courage to design a fulfilling career at Everyday Bright.

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And we're live !

Welcome back Live Music Scene in Bangalore !

Its never been better than this with a lot of new bands getting some fresh crowd regularly at clubs ,pubs,open air concerts and even the occasional corporate gig.

Operative words here are new bands , fresh crowd and most importantly - regularly

My first experiences with performing in Bangalore were with the Sunday Jams at Indira Gandhi Musical fountain organised by The Live Gig .Those were the days when you would wait hours on the lawn outside the gazebo tracking the shade of the tree next to you , finally to get your 20 minute slot and play to your heart s content . And that was a privilege! . Things have changed now with the guys focussing mainly on promoting live music at establishments in the city. Freedom Jam last year had a fantastic format,where each venue was genre-specific and the schedule was clearly indicated prior to everyone, and knowing bangalore , people here know exactly what they want to hear.

Eventually we formed our by-now veteran Jazz / Funk band Bourbon Street and have succesfully completed myriad City Wide tours throughout Bangalore. It was difficult at first to get gigs and have people sit and listen to us playing our avant garde non-style of music but eventually figured out some tips and tricks.

Word of mouth is an extremely powerful tool in promoting your band

 Just telling people how good we are didnt bring in any extra crowd. So we said theres free beer !.

Ok maybe we lied. But the point here is that word of mouth is effective.

Taking word of mouth to the next level is what Whats the scene is aiming for. The team is hungry for the who ? , what? , when? and where? of any concert/gig/jam/show/band/ in this country. Voracious for info, these are the guys taking the scene by storm online with their newsletter packed with equipment reviews,interviews and profiles.

 Over the course of two years we've met and jammed with many musicians, from diverse backgrounds and its been very enriching personally and musically.People at shows have been very supportive and at times offered us tips on how to delicately introduce Raagas in our Carnatic Set (see below). Meeting up with like minded musicians for some gear talk and obscure band recommendations is the best way to access credible info and learn some chops while at it too !

Krishna nee begane baaro

Bourbon Street | Myspace Video

Recently we were approached for an interview on Radio One, and this is being broadcast on Sunday 13th March. Again we promised people freebie for listening in. Lets see what happens this time :)

4 Ways to Beat Your College Competition (None of Them Involve Grades)

4 Ways to Beat Your College Competition (None of Them Involve Grades): "

Everyone knows that in order to amount to anything, you have to go to college. While I agree that college is a wise decision, the untemplater in me knows that the real reasons for attending are not the ones you hear every day.

In fact, there are tons of misconceptions about why you should attend a university. The conventional wisdom consists of the following steps:

1. Attend a four-year college with a good reputation


2. Suck up to professors to get good grades


3. Get good grades in order to go to law or grad school


4. Get an entry-level position with a large corporation that will “”treat you right”

The untemplater knows there has to be a better way; there have to be more compelling reasons to spend another four years in scchool. Having come to the end of my university experience, here are four things the untemplater should learn in college:

1) Learn How to Be Persuasive

College is the time to learn how to deal with all types of people. Your university probably has students from all sorts of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The structure of classes forces you to sit next to and interact with people you probably wouldn’t any other way.

With this diversity and forced interaction comes an awesome opportunity to learn what makes other people tick. Learn what other people like, dislike, and how to help them recognize both. Learn how to be persuasive, how to present an argument and get others to agree with you. This “soft skill” as it’s called in the business world will take you far.

2) Learn How to Work in Groups

At least half of the classes I attended included some form of group work. Now is the time to learn how to delegate, make group decisions, and disagree artfully. Gone are the days of the lone ranger, “collaboration” is the buzzword in today’s business world.

Even if you choose the untemplater path of a freelancer, you will always be consulting with other business owners: asking for their opinions, outsourcing tasks, and collaborating on large projects. Unless you are going to be an accountant or programmer tucked away in a cubicle, learn how to work in groups.

3) Learn How to Start a Business

There is no better time than college to start your own business. Think about it: what responsibilities do you really have? What is holding you back? Life is only going to get more complicated from here when partners, children and mortgages come along.

If you fail now, it will hurt a lot less. So start a business and learn from your mistakes. In college I was able to start a web design business and blog in my spare time. It sure was more instructive and profitable than playing Xbox or partying.

4) Learn How to Learn

Sounds obvious, but hear me out. Most people go to college and their chief concern is getting good grades. They spend hours sucking up to professors, milking their grades and looking for extra credit. All of this work in hopes that a large corporation with a good name will hire them.

The untemplater follows a different path. Instead of grade-grubbing, focus on learning. Take classes you are genuinely interested in and learn what is important to you and your career. Worry less about the letter grade and more about the information.

How to Do It Right

Now, don’t get me wrong, grades are important. Make sure you pass your classes! I graduated with an average GPA and had very little trouble finding employment that interests me, even in this economy. As long as you have something to show for in place of your less-than-stellar grades (like starting your own business), many companies that aren’t stupid will want to hire you.

College is an awesome time to learn skills that will help you in your untemplater career. Just don’t get sucked into grade-grubbing and other useless conventional wisdom.

What untemplater skills did you learn in college?

"

Importance of Cash over Profits

Importance of Cash over Profits: "

Profit vs. Cash Flow : Importance of Cash over Profits. Focusing on the right financial indicators for your business.

I have been invited by folks at Power of Ideas to give a talk on the above topic as part of POI start up workshop 2010 - that will take place @ IIMA Campus from 8-17 October. I looked at the agenda of the workshop & believe its is a very good idea and should end up adding a lot of value the shortlisted teams (big improvement over last year mentoring sessions).

They requested me to jot down my thoughts about the session and share with POI folks for feedback. I thought why not jot down the thoughts on my blog and also get feedback of a larger community. I plan to use a lot of real life case studies (both good and bad) from the my experience @ madhouse and with all The Morpheus portfolio companies. Here is a related post I wrote previously: Should a startup be Ramen Profitable

Basics

• A startup should focus on only two things - Making & Selling
• When you are making something you need to spend cash & when you sell anything you earn cash
• Naturally Making comes before sales and hence cash wise spending comes before expenses
• You can divide a startup's life into following stages
• S0 - Team formation - This is the stage in which the founding team gets formed.
• S1 - Problem (or Idea) identification - This is where you decide what problem will your venture solve or what idea will you work on
• S2 - MVP identification - This when you identify the smallest part of problem you will solve with V 1.0 of your product
• S3 - Making V 1.0 - This is when you make the version V 1.0 and will need to spend the initial amount of cash
• S4 - Customer Acquisition(CA) V 1.0 - This is when you start customer acquisition efforts / which will eventually lead to "Sales"
• S5 - Making V 2.0 - Based on the feedback you receive from early users / your roadmap and results of CA 1.0 you making V 2.0 of the product
• S6 - CA 2.0 - Again based on the feedback & experience of 1.0 you evolve and execute V 2.0 of Customer acquisition
• and so on.....
• These stages dont take place serially in fact any given time you have two subsequent stages going on in Parallel.

Making

• While making V 1.0:

• Identifying the minimum set of features that you need to build in order to solve the smallest part of the "big problem" you are going after
• What you build should offer "definitive value" to the customers - so that you can users to use your product
• Getting paid for V 1.0 is optional - but getting users is important
• It should be something you can evolve (or scale) into a bigger business
• Do not invest more than 40-50% of your initial capital in making V 1.0
• It should take between 2 - 6 months to make V 1.0

• Closer to 2 months for a simpler product - lets a web service
• Closer to 6 months for a more complex product lets a hardware based device

The lesser the time & features - the lesser would be the cash you would need to spend before you can start sales

Since you have 50% of your capital still with you, there will be enough room to evolve your product into some thing that will people will pay for and something that makes money

Important pointers

• In the beginning, don't spend more than 2 weeks on discussions / analysis / customer surveys / market search and other such activities
• Remember "Doing is learning" - so start the process of making your product asap - the real learning will start when you start making stuff
• For the initial version almost all of the making should be done by founders / there is no room for hiring employees for making or out sourcing the making. You will need to spend more time / more money and you will end up with lower quality product
• Never hold a release waiting for a perfect product.

• There is nothing called a product that can not be improved and this startup who get into this mindset normally end up spending most of their cash building V 1.0
• Irrespective of how much you spent making V 1.0 - it usually doesnt sell - you need to be able to take the learnings from this phase and build 2.0 / 3.0 and some time 4.0
• So you should launch a product with minimum features and good enough quality and see what happens to it in the market
• Keeping the cost of making to minimum means your sales target for becoming cash flow positive will be lower
• Releasing early allows you to start your sales effort and you can get valuable customer / market feedback and gives you the room to make improvements early in the life of your startup , while you still have cash available

Most of these points also apply to versions that come after 1.0

Selling

• Right from our childhood we are bombarded with so many advertisement across all kind of mediums and by all kind of brands . Hence we strongly believe that the only way to sell a product is by "advertising"
• Now this is far from truth as possible when it comes to startups - there are lots of other capital efficient ways of spreading awareness about your product / generating leads / closing sales and getting repeat orders
• In good startups all money is spent on "making" and there is no budget for "Marketing or advertising" and even if they were to spend some amount, given their small budgets - no one would notice them
• In in first year or two almost all marketing and sales should be done by founders / there is no room for hiring employees or outsourcing the work. You will end up spending more time / more money and bad results
• Startups need to practice "Zero budget marketing" which consists of stuff like

• Create kick ass products which will be sold by the initial users to other users
• Start a blog / build a website - both with grt design that communicates what your startup makes
• For offline ventures create brochures / pamphlets
• On the blog and other parts of the website / create content that is relevant to users and gets you links / tweets / likes / references from users who read it
• Create channels to engage with your users : FB / Twitter / Linkedin / email newsletters / Off-line newletters / offline meetups etc.
• Build a community around you / Distribute your content via these channels
• Attend events & conferences relevant to your startup and present in as many forums as possible
• In some case you may need to get an existing data base of potential users (mail ids or phone numbers)

• Do not start spamming via email or SMS or via cold calls
• Create nice campaign to reach to these guys and ask their permission to engage with them
• And when you ask a customer to engage with you - offer them clear benefits of the engagement
• Remember engagement does not mean they start buying from you - it only means you have permission to keep in touch

Goal of marketing is to generate leads - so you need to choose channels similar to listed above to create leads

Sales

• Once you have leads - you start the process of sales
• Start a one on one conversation with a potential customer to convert them into paid customers
• Since you are a new brand you will face a problem of trust from the customer
• The best way to tackle that is to offer your customer a chance to try your product before buying.
• You must figure out a way for doing that both in case of B2B and B2C
• In B2B you should not only offer a way to try but also after the trial customer should be able to make a purchase worth a small amount / smaller quanity and if they are satisfied with that - they can move to the next level
• Building trust via - community engagement / free trial . small purchases is essential for customers

Remember the golden rule of Permission Marketing

• Convert Strangers to Friends
• And Friends to Customers

Back to basics

• Make a good product while controlling the spend on making
• Practice zero budget marketing techniques
• Founders should take care of both making and selling
• Improve the product fast to help sales take off
• There you are

• Low monthly expenses
• Early Sales
• You are now cash flow positive and that feels good

Cashflows

• Running out of cash is the biggest reasons for startup to shutdown
• Hence its very important that at every point you have a good understanding of

• Cash in Bank
• Monthly cash flow
• Runaway available

monthly_cashflow = (monthly_cash_in) - (monthly_cash_out)

For example if you spend 1000 Rs in month of September and got paid 600 Rs for the sale made

monthly_cashflow = (600 - 1000) = - 400

Having a negative cashflow means the total cash that you had at beginning of September is now less by 400 Rs

If you keep going like that one day you will have "ZERO" cash available and that would end up killing your startup

On the other hand if you become cash flow positive even by a small amount - it means at end of every month you have slight more cash than what you had the beginning of the month

This means few important things

• Your startup had infinite runway (feels good)
• You have made something people want to use and pay for
• You have managed to keep your cost of making and selling below the cost at which customers are buying
• And this is pretty much formula of a successful business

While fighting the battle of survival - cash flow and runway are the most important things a startup should pay attention to

Profits

• They also matter but more in longer term after you have won the battle of survival
• There are two kind of costs

• Monthly costs (for example - office rent / salaries etc)
• One time costs (for example the office printer you paid for this month but will use for next 2 years)

While calculating monthly profits you take the one time costs and convert them to monthly cost and compare them to your earnings

One time Cost

• You purchased a printer this month for 2400 Rs
• Printer will be useful for next 24 months
• You convert the cost into monthly cost - which is 100 Rs per month
• You add the printer cost into monthly cost

Lets you monthly cost are 1000 rs without considering the one time cost

Now to become cash flow positive you need to earn above 1000 Rs

But to be profitable you need to take into account the one time cost as well and earn above 1100 Rs

Notes:

1. I have kept the talk to Monthly Cash flows and Profits

2. I have also kept the concept a little simplified so that its easy to understand. Not gone into payables / receivables / PAT / EBITA etc

3. Once people understand basics they can build upon them

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