Whatever...

Very recently I have been following Jason Fried's posts on 37signals.com. I am impressed by his minimalist thoughts and the whole idea of customers 'growing out of' and 'growing into' your product. Per Jason, there are just a certain simple features that customers really want and a product company should strive to be the best at those features. But beyond these features, your customers will always have some desires and will keep asking for more features. One should learn to say no to such demands and crowd the Product with features that only a few of your customers will actually use. These frills not only hamper the performance of the product technically, but also make the Product manufacturer waste a lot of effort in the form of product support and other allied activities. This seems to have been working for folks at 37signals.com and many more such companies (SFDC, Flip Video recorders etc.) I then started thinking of this philosophy in the context of Indian IT co...

I had twitted about 2 business ideas and had promised the details would be on the blog. So here goes... JustGoa - See a different Goa every time I have been consulted at least about 15-20 times by different people for their leisure trips to Goa. This idea is a fallout of the experiences. This is a Goa specific travel company. I know there are hordes of Goan tour operators. But this one is with a different marketing strategy. This sort of concentrates on repeat business. The tours are thematic. Some of the themes would be - Chillax Religious Eco Celebrations (Weddings, Anniversaries, Receptions) Corporate (Conferences, team building exercises, product launches) The main thrust should be on maintaining the visit history of the tourists and ensuring they do not get bored with repeat visits. Aligning Marketing with capacity for special programs in monsoon, around long weekends etc. will definitely bring in a new angle to this business. 10ant.com I am not sure if there is anything like t...

The title is a mere analogy I have drawn, the topic of the post is more to do with IT and IT consulting. I have done 2 green field implementations, one in Telecom domain in India and one in pharmaceutical retail in the UK. Most of my dwelling has been in the Marketing and Sales Force Automation (SFA) space in both these implementations. While the Telecom implementation was in PeopleSoft CRM, the retail implementation was in the Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) domain. When we first started with the Indian implementation, we faced major challenges like loosely defined processes, inadequate change management, untrained staff etc. It is here that I first thought if IT could really help our customer to achieve what they wanted - A better CRM? On a post dinner walk then it struck me. The Director of IISC Bengaluru had once said in one of his speeches - "e-governance is not about IT. IT is just a tool. e-governance should first start with a willingness to change" This is the...

Consider a scenario where you are starting a new business, and are fairly novice in the area. Will you build competency first, or get business first? Is it not the chicken and egg situation that all entrepreneurs go through? What is the solution then? I am of the opinion that one must first build competency, whatever be the costs. You may have to offer a service free to the customer to gain his confidence and make a mark in the market. There is no other way you can offset the apprehension in the prospective customer's mind. Consider this as the cost of entry into the business or a one time marketing cost. Ones you have put some experience behind you, made some name for yourself, it will be fairly easy to demonstrate capability in further proposals as you will have credentials to show off. However, if you chose to win a deal first and learn at the expense of your customer, I look at that as a big risk. Yes, the risk does have commensurate rewards, but not worthwhile I think. The ver...

I am thinking of a business idea. We have small shops all throughout India selling computer hardware. Along with this they sell or give pirated windows OS and MS Office for free. This is no doubt illegal an the only reason MS is mum about this is probably because of their business model. They would like the world to be dependent on them so that most applications are developed for Windows. They can anytime enforce the anti-piracy crusade making people buy their OS. Is it possible to create a niche for oneself in this market by promoting open source software? Most of the home users tend to use multi-media, web-browser and office tools like word editor and spreadsheet. With the wide gamut of Linux flavours available now and companies like Open Office spending a lot of time and talent on development, I think is it very much possible. This can even be coupled with user training in these areas. Spreading the usage of open source software among the lay users and small business users can cr...

OK! For once a blogger is inspired instead of the readers. And I want to start a venture in product development. I have something in my mind on the lines of SaaS. I intend starting a company at my home (preferably in my garage so that success is guaranteed). But the main question is, is it the right time to start a venture? With rising salaries in the industry, one will have to cough up a lot of money to hire good people. Although, the venture may be easily financed, break even may take a loooong time knowing the cost of recruitment in the industry today. So, wouldn't it be ideal to wait for a slow-down, may be a few lay-offs and a bit of panic in the industry. It will then be time when people will be ready to work for much lesser wages. I may put a post on my business plan someday. But as of now, what is your opinion?