Wednesday, October 28, 2009

NASSCOM Product Conclave & Expo 2009

These are my key takeaways from the NASSCOM Product Conclave & Expo, held in Bangalore from 27-28 Oct 2009.

Keynote: Entrepreneurship 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki
1. Build what you want to use
2. Pay Rs. 0 for Tools - use free tools/ software like PHP, MySQL, Drupple to build your app.
3. Pay Rs. 0 for Marketing - use Facebook, Twitter & MySpace
4. Suck down/ across not up - impress users with a solution thats of value to them and they'll spread the word about your product.
5. Use Twitter & Tweetmeme for marketing & selling your product/ service
6. Pay Rs. 0 for people - employ interns.
7. Put everything on the cloud - use the inexpensive infrastructure available for a subscription fee
8. Ship then test.
9. Forget venture capital - first build a prototype and build a customer base and then go to VCs for funds to scale your business.
10. Niche Thyself - offer something unique and of value to users.
11. Beware of the Bozos.

Workshop: The Art of Writing a Business Plan by Naeem Zafar
(Note: this was the best session)

Steps to start a business with higher probability of success:
1. Find unmet need
2. Validate need
3. Market Research
- Who needs it
- How many people are out there - sizing
- How will I make money - business model
- How will I uniquely position myself - unique sustainable positioning
4. Create investor material
- profound understanding of market dynamics
5. Find a team
6. Write a business plan

Why write a Business Plan?
- Business Plan is for YOU
- To organize, debate and validate reasons to start the business.
- To convince yourself and others that it'll make money, so it's worth the investment.

Business Plan answers three questions for a Investor:
1. Is there money to be made?
2. How much money?
3. Are these the people who can make money?

Business Plan Anatomy:
1. Exec Summary: 2-3 Pgs
2. The unmet need: 2-3 Pgs
3. Market size: 1-2 Pgs
4. Competitive Landscape: 1-2 Pgs
5. Your idea: 2-5 Pgs
6. Positioning: 1-4 Pgs
7. Business Model: 1-3 Pgs
8. Your Team: 2-4 Pgs
9. GTM Strategy: 3-6 Pgs
10. Financial Assumptions: 1-1 Pgs
11. Key Financial Projections OR KPIs: 2-3 Pgs
12. Use of Funds: 1-2 Pgs
13. Status Timeline & Traction: 1-4 Pgs
14. Supporting data, research, resume, proxies: 5-15 Pgs

Team:
- Co-Founder
- Advisory Board MEmbers
- Strategy Consultants
- Professionals - law firm, accounting firms etc.,

What's the diff b/w Co-founder & Early Employees?
The difference is in the,
- Mindset: co-founder has owner mindset
- Expected contribution/ remuneration
- "Halo Factor"
- Shared vision

Team Equity Divide:
70% Founders
20% Early Employees (hired in first 18 mos)
10% Advisors

Ideal ADvisory Board:
- Market Guru - domain expert
- Technical Guru
- Personal Coach
- The connector
- The celebrity

Strategic Advisors & Experts
- Financial models
- Market research
- IP experts
- Licensing
- Off shore
- Manufacturing

Business Plan sections elaborated...

Unmet Need:
Do a survey to identify unmet need. 28 key questions to ask are published in his book. E.g.,
- What issues & problems they foresee?
- Why have they not fulfuilled their need?
- How have they tried to look for a solution?
- What should an ideal solution look like?
- How will they buy it?

Then validate the need thru'
- Google Adwords
- Online survey (site.google.com)
- Personal interviews - atleast 10 conversations per founder. preferably 20+ conv'

Market size:
- Look for publicly available data
- www.10kwizard.com
- www.sec.gov
- Estimate # of users & your revenue per user
** then estimate how many you can get to realistically each year for the next 5 yrs
** proxies? e.g., who did it before?
- VCs don't typically invest in small markets

Competitive Landscape:
- Google
- Pretend to be a user of YOUR product
- Do mystery shopping - order products, sugn up for info
- Put yourself in your customer's shoes

Differentiate between customer (payer) and user of your product. E.g., Pre-teen products, Medical & hospital products

Business Model:
- How will you make money?
- Who pays who? What is the relationship between all characters in this play?

Positioning:
Positioning is "what you do" etched in customers', investors & employees mind.
- we are like ------- & unlike --------
- we are like ------- except this -------

"Be memorable thru' association"
"Help your audience place you in the right compartment"

GTM Strategy:
- Pricing
- Channel Selection
- Alliances
- How to lock in your first "n" customers
- Support strategy
- Customer acquisition cost

Distribution channel:
- Where do you fit in the solution stack?
- Thru' which channel do people like to buy this product?
- Distribution channel doesn't do any selling. They only sell products that sell by themselves.
** Distribution channel comes into the picture only after the product is established
** You need to do the selling & evangelizing as a startup

Assumptions & KPIs:
- Identify success metrics & watch them
- Take corrective action if assumptions fail

Financial Projections:
- Make reasonable assumptions & have proxies
- Be conservative in 1st & 2nd year because people will be watching you. Get bold in yr 4 & 5
- Give 5 yr projections of
** Revenue
** Gross Profit
** Expenses by Dept.
** Special Expenses
** Net Profit

Timeline & Profit:
- Past 6 mos & future 18 mos

Supporting data:
- Show actual survey questions, interview transcripts etc.,
- 10kwizard.com

Exec Summary:
- Same as topics 10-12 as paragraphs.

Other tips/ words of wisdom:
- Develop your personal filter to screen ideas.
- All ideas have to be chiseled away to be funded.
- People don't leave companies, people leave managers.
- You have to be stubborn in your conviction & flexible in your execution.
- You need a team to start a scalable business. You are not going to find anyone between your couch & TV. You need to go out to find a team.
- A Players attract A Players. B Players attract C Players.
- In battle the plans are useless... But the planning was indispensable.

Exit Plan:
There are only two possible exits - IPO or Get Acquired. Build a company for value. Exit will come to you.

Twitter as a marketing tool by Guy Kawasaki
Direct Selling e.g.,
- DellOutlet
- Kogibbq
** Street food vendor
** Location bound business

Support
- Comcastcares
** Look for problems that comcast customers are having and address them.
- JetBlue

Engage
- VirginAmerica
** PRovides info about the company & engage with customers
- Fandango
** online movie ticket booking.

Tip to grow your followers
- find interesting info & tweet it.

Tools Guy Uses
- www.alltop.com
** site to find interesting site & info for tweeting
- wapi.adjix.com
** shorten URLs & post tweet
- stumbleupon.com
** site to find interesting site & info for tweeting
- smartbrief.com
** manual editors find interesting articles on a topic & publish it in the form of a newsletter, which you can receive via email too.
- objectivemarketer.com
** shortens links
** schedule tweets
** analiyze link clicks
- tweetdeck.com
** twitter client
** react to people who mention you or send direct message to you
- oneforty.com
** twitter app store
** tweetie iphone app is great
- socialtoo.com
** a tool for managing twitter followers, direct messages, spam etc.,
- tweetmeme
** put on blog page so people can spread link to that page.
** helps grow your followers community
- twitterfeed
** automatically tweet RSS feeds from AllTop or other such sites
** objectivemarketer can do it too
- twitterhawk
** paid mass tweeting service service. 5 cents/ tweet
** auto respond to tweets to promote your product/ service
** has effective spam filters.

GTM Strategies: Top Tools in your GTM Strategy by Digit River (??)
- Affiliate MArketing - 15-30% incremental revenue
** affiliates are "sales people" you do not have to pay until they sell something for you.
** best way to drive traffic to your online store
- Paid Search - 7-10% incremental revenue
- Organic search
** optiimize your site for SEO
- Free trial - 2-5% incremental revenue
** helps generate word-of-mouth marketing
- Traditional Advertising - 3-15%
** established brand is a pre-req
- Email/ maintain ongoing communication with customers - 8-12%
- A/B testing - 5-10% incremental revenue
** continuously test your site, cart offers and optimize

Difference between Affiliate & Reseller
- Reseller
** requires knowledge
- ongoing training aboud your pdt/ servcie
- you pay commission for the sales they make
- you need to be more hands on

- Affiliate
** more remote control
** they just drive traffic to your site for a commission

Thursday, July 02, 2009

very funny poem!

WASHINGTON POST COMPETITION ASKED FOR A TWO-LINE RHYME WITH THE MOST ROMANTIC FIRST LINE, BUT THE LEAST ROMANTIC SECOND LINE

This is the winner:-

My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife,
Marrying you screwed up my life.

I see your face when I am dreaming.
That's why I always wake up screaming.

Kind, intelligent, loving and hot;
This describes everything you are not.

I thought that I could love no other --
that is until I met your brother.

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl's empty and so is your head.

I want to feel your sweet embrace;
But don't take that paper bag off your face.

I love your smile, your face, and your eyes --
Damn, I'm good at telling lies!

My love, you take my breath away.
What have you stepped in to smell this way?

My feelings for you no words can tell,
Except for maybe “'Go to hell.”'

What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Two parts tequila, one part lime JJJ

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Holiday in Thailand

My end-of-year holiday in Bangkok & Pattaya was a roaring success. Five days of shopping, sight-seeing, water sports, lounging on the beach, going to shows, and indulging in great food... it was just perfect.

Bangkok is like any other metropolitan city – sky scrapers, fly-overs, bumper-to-bumper traffic and crowded. I stayed at the Royal Benja Hotel, conveniently located close to the sky train station which gave easy access to the shopping malls. I spent two whole days shopping at Siam Discovery, Siam Center, Siam Paragon and MBK. Between them these malls pretty much covered the entire spectrum of unbranded and branded stores. It was overwhelming. I found some great shoes in Siam Paragon Department Store, but didn’t have much luck with clothes & accessories though.

Better than shopping was the food hall in Siam Paragon. The desserts spread had my mouth watering and going round and round in circles unable to decide what to order. ‘Special Fruit Cake’ at ‘Secret Recipe’ was the best of the four desserts I tried. It was delicious with lots of cream and fresh fruits.

I went to the must see show in Bangkok, Siam Niramit. It’s a musical about Thailand’s history and culture. The whole evening was like a dream – buffet dinner, personal tour of artificial Thai village inhabited with actors dressed in traditional costumes and play acting different village scenes, classical music & dance performances in the courtyard, and finally the actual show which lasted for an hour and half. The show was larger than life & so magnificent. Imagine elephants actually walking around on the stage, auditorium walls come alive with ligthening and sudden appearance of dancer who transforms into a picture while you watch… you just have to see it to believe it.

Buddhism is the religion of 96% percent of Thailand’s 63 million population so naturally there are lot of Buddhist temples. We visited the temple of reclining Buddha, which was quite interesting.

I was blown away by the jewellery collection at the Gems Factory in Pattaya. I couldn’t not buy anything, so i got ruby earrings & pendant set in silver.

I went to the two must see shows in Pattaya - The Adult Show.. there are multiple choices, i went for the Russian Strip Tease Show. The girls were young, pretty and had nice figure. The music, dance and costumes were great. Then there Tiffany’s Show It’s another must-see show in Pattaya. It’s a dance show. The sets, costumes and performances were brilliant. I couldn’t believe it when our tour guide told us later that all the female artistes were actually transvestites. You just can’t tell!

On New Year day I went to coral island where I did parasailing (my first time… it was great), went for a water scooter ride, had the best Thai food, and discovered the joy of lounging on the beach sipping tea… it was lovely. On the way back I went shopping at Royal Garden Plaza. It was a much smaller mall compared to the ones I went to in Bangkok but I liked this one much better because I got lots of nice tops at Zein and Ten & Co. at very reasonable prices. And then shopping for hair accessories at Motip was delightful. My day was made.