Gmail’s Design Changes for Email Composition – I like it

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It has been few months since Gmail changed their composition interface to write a new email. There has been a mixed response on the change, but I personally loved it, for the simple reasons below.

1. We did not have other forms of digital channels (like Twitter, Facebook etc) in the past, and so one kept write long and lengthy emails giving account of every single thing which happened from the “last catch up”

2. Things have changed so much since then. Let’s take the below cases.

2.a: Known person: Let’s say I am writing to someone I know – now in this case this person is connected to me through my other social media stuff, which spares me from writing every single event in detail which happened around me.

2.b: Not a known person: Now, I can quickly write the purpose of exchanging emails, and my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter profile/ accounts are good enough for the other person to know what I do, and things which Interests me.

So, if the above is considered, writing lengthy emails is a thing of the past. And I think at some level the new Gmail new email window, reflects that. It tell me, be quick and relevant.

why i like new gmail composer

Cold emails with no sense?

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I keep getting a lot of cold sales pitches via emails. Very recently got one more. (I have masked the name of the company)

I am writing to introduce XXXX Platinum to you – our invitation-only premier Global service for CxO level executives. XXXX Platinum is a unique platform of 18+ online and offline business enabling services, including peer networking, consulting, research reports and a host of other services which are collectively aimed at helping business leaders create strong opportunities for business growth.

XXXX Platinum is designed for organizations like yours to increase productivity, enhance your knowledge, and gain customers cost effectively through a single platform. Having launched XXXX Platinum in the Indian market over the last few months, we have received a tremendous response and are actively adding new members. I firmly believe our corporate platform can further help you achieve your business goals.

This is a novel concept that requires a fair level of articulation, but one that could benefit you and your business. As such, on behalf of our CEO, YYYY we request a meeting with you to further articulate the proposition.

Huh? My head spun as soon as I started to read the email – notice that the first paragraph has 59 words and 397 characters but just 1 sentence. WOW!

I found the last paragraph quite funny – “novel concept that requires a fair level of articulation”!

May be I do not have brains to understand your “unique concept” and so please spare me and my time! Or, just keep it simple!

 

Complicated Sign

Image credit: dannyman

Entrepreneurship Lesson : Do something which you are not comfortable with!

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As an entrepreneur I have realized that every moment you will have to choose between the easy and the difficult task. For e.g.

Easy : Call up a friend/ family and talk and talk and talk about how you have a great idea.

Difficult : Walk to a customer, introduce your idea, convince him that your product is a game changer and how he should totally start paying you $$$. You know what you get, right?

 

BranchOut, Inherently Viral Services And Customer Acquisition On Social Networks

I don’t think any start-up person should take pride in saying the following stuff.

  •  I have an idea
  •  My friends think this is the next Facebook
  •  I already have figured out it’s a billion dollar industry
  •  I know the technology to build and I can finish the coding in a month
  • I have spoken to tons of Venture Capitalists and they all like it

Instead whatever looks easy to do, and you think there is no ‘customer touch-points’ – think again if you want to do it.

I was talking to a fellow entrepreneur and he told me he is very comfortable sitting with his laptop and adding more features to his B2B service. STOP! – Is what told him.

Since your computer doesn’t

  • Shout at you,
  • Says come back tomorrow,
  • Refuses to listen to you for 5 min

you are quite comfortable spending time with the machine.

One quality as an entrepreneur you have to build is the ability to sell.

  • Team members : to build a great team
  • Pilot customer : For Market Validation
  • Investors : To raise money
  • More customers : For IPO :)

It’s like public speaking without having a great sppech writer for you. So don’t waste your time with easy stuff. Instead build easy solutions to be adopted for real world problems and do the most difficult task : sell, sell and sell.

After all, selling is what generate jobs, isn’t it?

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulamarttila/5592059984/

 

Wax

Brazilian Wax, really? No, thanks!

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Brazilian Wax deal is being delivered to me since last 2 days. Don’t rub it in guys? I know I have more hair than a pig but Wax is not what I am thinking. (ouch!)

Give us a break you guys : Groupon, Yipit, Living Social and all you people who want to suck my savings (right, as if I have a lot) by luring me to those cheap looking daily deals.

In the world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare is it really hard to find out what I don’t want (I am not asking you to predict what I may like, want, need. I guess this would be tough and many smart people are trying to figure that out, but I think want I don’ want which is clearly “noise” can be determined easily)

 

 

Now don’t tell me we have a feature where I can put my likes, give my facebook account detail but I (as a customer) didn’t update those details. This argument is just LAME. Do something which will compel me to provide those details (Now don’t argue that your strategy is to send all these irrelevant details so that I tell you who am I)

I mean deal sites are good, but sending a blast email is so 1990. Why can’t there be a better way to filter the noise and have more targeted emails?

No?

You and your energy – What else can be done?

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Last week I met Sandeep Ayyappan, editor of You and Your Energy. It’s this awesome, neat looking, well organized content (edited / aggregated) around Energy sector.

I thought of putting up few thoughts of what more can be done. Really don’t know the complete business model and roadmap what Sandeep wants to take up for YAYE, but here is what I feel can be done.

# 1. Get a mobile app

This is like the simplest task. There are tons of DIY solutions which you can use and get a branded YAYE Iphone/ Android application. I have listed few below (Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with any of them)

AppMakr

Swebapps

Seattleclouds

#2. Community, Community, Community

You need to involve people. Getsatisfaction, Quora or as simple as putting up your own user driven community portal may help.

#3. Have a dedicated video section

Video section would make a lot of sense where instead of reading, I can also see stuff.

#4. Personalization using Facebook/ Twitter

There is a lot of news one can get. YAYE also offers a lot of news in Energy sector. Do you think you can ask users to login using their Facebook so that they can “subscribe” to specific topics and follow them – less clutter, no?

#5. Company database (Think Crunchbase)

Big fan of Crunch base. Or think of Angel.co. If you can create and maintain an exhaustive Company database around energy sector, that will be so valuable. All the financial updates, new announcements, gossip, investments, diversification news, board changes can be done on this platform.

#6. Follow Companies/ Exclusive Research material

A small extension of #4 and #5. You can also start letting people follow companies, bookmark particular activities around companies.

#7. Stock Track

I don’t think you need any explanation on this. Can you run Ticker of Energy related companies, their financial news, a particular news affecting all these companies, past trends etc.

#8. Infographics, Timeline story

So I noticed there is a special story. However, you can build some cool, useful Infographics around several such news.

#9. Bit.ly and Twitter Integration

Get Twitter feeds of all these famous companies or people who write on Energy related topics.

#10. Give it back to society

Tie up with services like Change.org. When I say tie up, it can really be a mashup. There are several such niche community driven sites as change.org

#11. Pitch more and harder

Promote your blog and site on

http://alltop.com

http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-promote-my-new-blog

Several other news promotional platforms

#12. Education

Tie up with TED. Or environmentalist. Let them blog, talk, refer you. May be you can have sections talking about saving energy. Invite guest writers to come and write on YAYE

#13. Misc

A. Special feature : http://youandyourenergy.com/~youandyo/gulfoilspillfeature/

I see this. It’s quite good but can I get a PDF of it? Out of 15 pages, give 5 and ask to sign up/ pay/ tweet for the rest of 10 pages. (or you may as well just give it)

B. Use platforms like Storify to write about events which are going around Energy or atleast controversies going on. They will at least bring you more readers!

 

Hope this is helpful.

What you should not do while Pitching to Investors!

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Well, there are tons of advice given on what you should do while pitching to investors. Sure! There are loads of articles available on what not to do. I thought of putting up my learnings as well.

Thanks to Young Startup Ventures and NY VC Summit, I got to learn these things mentioned below. It was a great event and got to talk to several great entrepreneurs, VCs, Angels, Corporate Investors. It was amazing!

# Do not educate VC’s about the “Market”

It’s really stupid to tell a VC that “Mobile” is BBBIIIGGG. Don’t do that. Or saying that SaaS is HOT, or Social is the IN thing. They know it. They may not know what you are doing in this hot market, so that is the reason you are presenting.

Please stay away from Market numbers, graphs. That is actually very offensive.

# Stay away using the word “Revolutionary”

A colleague of mine calls even a minor code bug as “disaster”. Oh common! A disaster is much more. Tsumani, a terrorist attack, bird flu, these are disasters.

So similarly, DO NOT say you have come up with a revolutionary, unbelievable idea. Honestly, no one will believe you :)

I mean there are very few of them which will be revolutionary, so mind your assessment.

 # Do not show a Competitive Analysis slide with everything “checked” for your service/ product

What is the deal with coming up with a feature list, and showing you have got it all, and none of your competitors are doing everything which you do. Don’t bull shit with this analysis. Be serious and honest.

# Dare you say – “No competition”

If you want to use this as a joke, sure go ahead! There is nothing like “No competition”. So if you say No competition, I guess be ready to get the answer – “No investment” :)

# Do not keep talking for first 10 minutes on how awesome you and your team is

Sure, you are genius and you have a unconquerable team. So what? You can cover that up within 1 min (30 seconds really). Move on. I mean even Steve Jobs during his presentations get quickly to business.

Tell everyone what this awesome team has do, and has plans to do.

If you want to blow your trumpet, there are other better areas to do that (like start a blog ;) )

# Do not have sloppy slides

The last thing you can do is have a shitty presentation. If you have put so much effort in finding a team, thinking through an idea, building it, spend sometime on your pitch. Your company deserves it. Atleast the audience deserves it.

 

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How to get profiled in The New York Times

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Last evening attended a course I found on Skillshare.com - How to get profiled in The New York Times.

This course was taken up by Jerry Guo. A 2 hours course covered quite a lot of topics on this subject. What I liked the most were live examples of some pitches and the goods/ bads in them.

I would recommend folks to attend that, not sure when Jerry is teaching it again?

India calling for more Cab Services

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In my recent stay here, in Mumbai, I am surprised to see that when you call up Meru, Megacab (the radio taxi services) they refuse to send the taxi because there is none available. Meru asked me to call and reserve a cab one day in advance!

Megacab, however, demands to reserve the cab 2 hours prior to travel, and if you forget to do that, you are left with auto-rickshaw or the black cab.

In a country of 1.2 billion, and huge amount of investment pouring in, why don’t more cab services are popping up.

From a driver of one of these cab companies, this is what I understood.

Every cab driver needs to earn Rs. 700 per day for the company. And the cost of the gas is not given by the company and is covered by the driver. That company has around 250 cabs in Mumbai city.

So Mumbai city is generating : 700 x 250 = 1,75,000 (INR)

So monthly this company is making (from single city) : USD 116,000 and yearly would be 1+ million (USD)

And thing to remember, they turn away a lot of customer, which means they are losing a lot of money.

Digital TV service provider needs to build App for their users

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I hate when I miss my favorite TV episode to watch. I hate it even more when I forget to record them so that I can watch them later on. I use Sky Digital as my service provider. They have given me a Sky box, which I can use to record the shows which I want to. However, I can do that only if I am in front of my TV and with their remote. WHY?

In the age of internet, when people setup gadgets to control their microwave, lights, car garage door from a phone, why can’t I do that to record my favorite TV episode?

I do not know if in US, the service providers have already given this “app” to their users, but if not, they should think about it.

Classical Bollywood

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Before reading post, you got to see this video.

At the TEDx Mumbai, Dhanashree Pandit Rai talks about how the Indian Classical Raaga form the basis of any song. I could never learn Indian classical music, but have always enjoyed it.

Any individual would appreciate the depth and beauty of these Raaga more, especially if one can get some background of the same. I do feel concerned that in few decades the Indian classical music will lose it’s charm and also the audience. May be I am wrong. However, I am not wrong in thinking that this art can be made more interesting or “understandable” for the common person. Or for the person who loves music, and especially is more connected with bollywood music and want to understand what Indian Classical Music is all about.

Look at our new generation. They would prefer going a bollywood night compared to a Indian classical concert. Well, I am not generalizing it.

As Dhanashree Tai showed us the underlying Raaga for the famous songs, atleast that can be done to all the hit numbers. Here are few things which come to my mind.

1. Build a bollypedia, where all the raaga can be described of the bollywood songs, and let this get populated by the wisdom of crowds. There is a website which tells from which original foreign song the Bollywood music directors copied it. If such a site can be there, why not put up a site while gives important information like this.

2. Music streaming sites like dhingana.com or raaga.com should integrate with the above information and show the raaga information. It can then also show other information like other songs based on similar raaga etc.

3. The music companies / producers can ask their composers to publish as much details as possible, to benefit the learners of this art.

4. Again using wisdom of crowds, creating directory of songs based on same raaga, and these songs can be from around the globe.

Feel free to add in more if you have more ideas.

Fring and Localphone

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Last weekend I installed Fring on my Ipod Touch.  I use Localphone to make International (India) calls. Honestly, I installed Fring after reading that I can use VOIP calls using Localphone and Fring.

This weekend while sitting in a local cafe in Barcelona, I noticed it has free wi-fi. After checking my mails I suddenly remembered of Fring and Localphone. And then without waiting a minute, I was talking to all my people. All I was paying was the normal Localphone charge.

So all you Localphone users, why don’t you take advantage of Fring, while you are travelling?

Organizing travel through wisdom of crowd

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I remember in my school there was a painting which had two horses running through the woods and had a caption “Each must find it’s own way”. However, this blog post differs in someway and here’s how.

Last week I was in Venice and explored the city a lot by walking. Apart from hundreds of eager tourists, several museums/ churches I also found abundant businesses and as a tourist sometimes you have good experience dealing with them, while sometimes leaves a sour taste in your mouth (in my previous trip to Florence I ran into a horrible restaurant ripping off 48 euro for some for some trashy food). While spending good 3 days here, I thought a day would come when every tourist would do something mentioned below.

There would be “tracker” sitting on the phones of every tourist (yes and I am hoping that international data plan would be very very cheap or may be free ;) ). Now this service would anonymously track the path of the traveler.  This application would do a lot of data mining on Best places to see in the given time constraint, restaurants to eat, mashup events, and not to mention hotels to stay and bars to hop into. The traveler can certainly attach experiences and put reviews for the activities/ businesses they dealt with. Services like Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp, Flickr can be integrated.  It would also help the local authorities to plan and increase the infrastructure to serve the tourists in a better fashion. The possibilities are endless.

Social networking is not the main purpose of this application. What people “generally” do, is what it will tell.

However, the success of this depends on two important things (out of several other roadblocks)

- The willingness of the tourist to let the real time information published (even though it can be completely anonymous)

- Free international data roaming plan

May be someone is already working on making it work for making the life of tourists an easy experience.

God, shopping brings out creativity in me!

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Well this is every man’s story, or atleast I feel it is. The other day while assisting my better half on her SPRING shopping spree, I was observing couples, where men were “brought” to comment (and trust me those comments do not count). I mean common, I know even if I say you are looking great, you are not gonna like it, unless you convinced about price, look, trendiness, how it gets on you, texture, feel, yada yada yada. (I hope you still love me, after reading this!)

So there is no point giving out a strong opinion, one thing I learned sometime back.

Coming to the point. While I was waiting outside the trial room, I thought I could form a club, or a meetup — “Husbands brought for not so welcomed input”. Anyhoo, this led me to another thought that there should be a social network where you can “hire” (may be not for money alone) people to guide/ comment/ watch your trials so that you can pick up something. You can also share what all stores to visit. What’s ON in these stores, and when is the right time to hit these places. May be you can exchange snaps before the shopping begins of your favorite outfits which you think go well on you so that the other person gets an idea of your taste.

Wouldn’t that just be great? Mark, are you listening?

When to stop exploiting the Social Media – An example

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I am doing some research for a service around Twitter, and stumbled across Kingfisher Airlines twitter account. What I saw was instead of Kingfisher saying “What they were doing?”, they are solely using Twitter as a CRM tool. Saying thanks for customer who have left them thank you note, or in some cases asking sorry to the angry customer who were not satisfied with some service.

Well, it’s all fair to use such social networking tool — but the downfall is, you are wasting time or may be turning off those customers who want to follow you to understand your promotions, flight announcements, last minute schedule changes, some critical security updates. Personally I feel, using Twitter for Saying Thank you, visit us again will flatter “that one” passenger, however will turn away several potential passengers who want to follow the business/ enterprise and gain more out of their tweets.

It indeed is an art how to distribute your tweets between tackling customer complains, building rapport by saying thank you on their good experience, sending our promos, delighting travelers with useful announcements etc. Well I feel the sooner an enterprise learns this art, the more useful such social tools will be — after all it is all about ROI.

kingfisher-twitter

Role of Social Media in Political Landscape

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Using Internet and Social Media to help win elections is not a new story. Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook did it for Barrack Obama very neatly.

What makes me write this post is the recent tweet by Sashi Tharoor that Oct 2nd, should be a working day instead of a holidy in India.  He said on Twitter,

Gandhiji said — Work is Workship — and we enjoy holiday on his birthday. He would have wanted us to work harder today.

In political circles this might have created a controversy but the work-is-workship believers indeed cheered up Tharoor’s tweet. What amazes me is the speed at which social media is connecting the politicians and the people. A politician who wants to connect cannot give loose excuses and visit only once in 5 years. And the young India is liking its leaders speaking their mind on such platforms. As long as this constructive effort is underway on Youtube, Twitter, Facobook and other social media giants, the next generation would hopefully find itself close to it’s leaders.

TOP 10 Myths Busted On Being An Entrepreneur

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Recently I came across this study published by Kauffman Foundation. I was surprised to see  some of their findings as I believed/ heard/ trusted a different mantra on entrepreneurship. Here’s my top 10 favorite.

Myth 1 : A successful entrepreneur starts at an early age.

Finding : The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

Myth 2 : An entrepreneur should have a family which has business experience.

Finding : Entrepreneurs don’t always come from families of entrepreneurs; slightly more than half of the sample were the first in their families to launch businesses.

Myth 3 : After marriage or after having kids, launching a company is almost impossible.

Finding : Entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to be married and have children when they launch their first businesses

Myth 4 : Work experience eats up your time, fire, and the zeal to start a new business.

Finding: Entrepreneurs are far more likely to have worked for an employer for more than six years than to have quickly launched their own businesses.

Myth 5 : You should be very rich, to own a company.

Finding: Entrepreneurs are more likely to come from a middle-class or upperlower-class background, and very few come from backgrounds of extreme wealth or extreme poverty.

Myth 6 :  The entrepreneurs are *Super Stars* in their school/ colleges in the academics.

Finding: They performed well in high school and in college, with the vast majority ranking average or above in their respective institutions.

Myth 7 : The entrepreneur launches a company so that he has passion for new ideas, wants to generate employment, yada yada yada.

Finding : Their primary motivations for launching a business are to build wealth.

Myth 8 : An entrepreneur always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Finding: Roughly half of the entrepreneurs said they did not think about it.

Myth 9 : I became an entrepreneur because I did not get a job using traditional methods.

Finding :  Only 4.5 percent of respondents stated that inability to find traditional employment was an important motivator in starting their own businesses. In fact, 80.3 said that this was not at all a factor.

Myth 10 : You need a co-founder, or a friend’s or family support to launch a business.

Finding: Only 27% of the entrepreneurs felt that, so it means if you want to do it, do it.

What can Twitter learn from Youtube?

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You might have a long list, which you can add in the comments section. But this is what I have.

I feel what Twitter should do (and guess youtube did it very well) is opening up dedicated streams for current events. Youtube captured presidential elections, live symphonies and what not very well claiming it’s leadership in the video space.

During Mumbai attacks, I was hoping Twitter will channelize tweets and open up “reviewed” tweets so that others can get updates etc; becoming defacto 140 char news source. I realize they have partially achieved this may be by showing the most talked about tweets/ topics or real time search (!!??) but may be I am looking more or refined feature from them.
Thoughts?