Here’s what people are trying to tell you when they sound the car horn in the bay area:
1. You almost caused an accident you mo*@n.
2. Hey, get off the damm cell phone and concentrate on the road you id#0t, you’re getting in my lane.
3. The light’s been green for the last 20 seconds, move on.

In Bangalore however sounding the horn can mean many things. I can personally assure you I have seen every one of the below situations in just the last 4 days:
1. Hey I saw my friend.
2. Get to the other side faster you pedestrian, I have to go by quickly.
3. Hey look, I have a new horn.
4. What is this thing in the center?
5. This thing sounds really cool, let me press it a couple of times to see if the sound changes.
6. Mr. Policeman, I have waited for 30 seconds, now let traffic from our side go forward.
7. I am really bored now.
8. I am going left (or right), watch out!
9. Good morning (to fellow drivers).
10. I am a new driver, I was told by my instructor to sound horn frequently.
11. I want to pass by or overtake you, lemme go.
12. Everyone else is doing it, so maybe its part of the driving experience.
13. All the trucks are telling me its ok to sound my horn, so there.
14. I was going to fall asleep, so I pressed the horn to wake myself up.
15. God, I hate this traffic, so I am going to express my frustration by sounding the horn.
16. Its early morning, (or mid afternoon, or late night) so I should let everyone know I am here.
17. We are near a hospital zone and the road sign says dont sound the horn, so I am going to express my sense of civil disobedience.
18. I have this little kid sitting on my lap (on the drivers seat), and he’s the one that’s sounding the horn, not me!
19. I am backing up, so watch out everyone else behind me. (this is in addition to that annoying noise coming from my reverse gear tune).
20. Damm motorcycle drivers, think they own the road.

Please feel free to add below situations where you feel you saw the sounding of the horn different from quite possibly its original intention.

Photo: Ananth Narayan! Thank you Ananth.

Melissa wrote a few weeks ago about the most important personality trait of an entrepreneur.  In her words is “flexibility”.I am not sure I agree with her 100% since if I was asked one, I would go with determination to succeed.

Either ways, I wanted to give some insight into the flexibility of the people Bangalore. This may apply to most India, but I have no way to verify so I am going to stick to what I have observed.

You’ll hear a common phrase in Bangalore “Adjust madkoli sir” – which roughly translates to “Please adjust accordingly” and means “It is what it is, now its up to you to make lemonade from lemons”. This is quite possibly the most frequent utterance I have heard in the last few days.

1. Having lived in the US for over 15 years, I naturally drive on the “right side” of the road. India on the other hand (like most of the world) drives on the left of the road. (If you know where this is going read on). I attempted to show my supreme sense of “California driving” skills to both my kids and driver. I got in the car, did the usual routine (adjusted my rear view mirrors, ensured my seat belt was secure, etc.) and started to proceed. About 2 miles and 5 minutes into the drive along a very crowded two way street which could possibly have one large truck drive on any direction, I noticed my driver (sitting next to me) was a little nervous. He seemed pretty okay for about the first 3 min and then got a little antsy.

Turns out I was driving on the “wrong” side of the road for all of the time, but EVERY person driving in the opposite direction, (13 cars, about 20+ motorcycles, dozes of cyclists) took my cue and drove on the other side (i.e. – they also drove on the wrong side) to accommodate me. I did not hear a single curse, nor did I see a flipped bird, and no curious onlookers. Just another day in the life of a clueless driver, was possibly what they imagined.

Finally my driver suggested that when I got to the intersection that I move to the other side – “Just so you can go faster”. He mentioned to me that “You can still go on the right side of the road onto oncoming traffic, and no one’s going to complain, but its going to take you a long time to get to where we want to go!”.

2. Making my way to the bank the other day to withdraw money I noticed that my credit card transaction was rejected. Mumbling for a few minutes I made it inside to ask someone for help. Turns out my credit card company monitors my credit access and by default denies all requests outside my “normal” usage zip codes. So even if I dont tell Mom where I’m headed for the weekend, I have to tell my credit card company (go figure), so they can approve any “out of state transactions”.

I approached a teller to ask for assistance and requested an advance. She seemed genuinely eager to help and requested a photo id. I had my California drivers license, which I promptly placed in front of her. She really needed a “local address proof” – a perfectly reasonable request, but I did not have that.

So she asks for someone that can vouch for me. I look around, see no one I know.

“No problem, here’s my cell phone. Call your mom or dad and ask them to confirm” she said. That was the nicest thing she did, and I got mom on the call to verify I really was her son.

Problem solved, very flexible and really happy to “adjust to any circumstance”.

“The title is an attempted technical nerd alert “.

Trying to embarrass the Bangalore crowd into doing something that is the “right thing to do”, just does not work. Let me give you 3 examples.

1. On my plane ride from Bangkok to Bangalore, I picked up a copy of Newsweek and the Asian WSJ. Long flight I imagined, might as well get some light reading done. I boarded the plane and sat down at my seat, realizing that I had my contact lenses on, left the reading materials on my seat and put my toothbrush on them and headed to remove and store the lenses.

On my return I noticed the man next to me reading the WSJ with the Newsweek on his lap. Trying to be nice, I mentioned they were mine and purchased outside.

He looks at me quizzically, looks at both the items and returns the newspaper he was reading and says – “Okay, you read this and give it to me when you are done”, still holding the Newsweek in his hand.

“Huh? (double take). They are mine, I bought them, so let me have them and when I am done I’ll let you know” was my response, a little too curt perhaps.

He seemed annoyed to say the least (as was I). This is going to be a really long flight I imagined, wondering if I could sweet talk the air hostess into seating me elsewhere.

She would not hear of it – “Sir that’s your assigned seat, please dont change”. Looking around there were a few seats free, so I ventured I’d change after the doors closed. Meanwhile my neighbor was asking the air hostess for some juice. The Thai airways air hostesses had been awesome from HKG to Bangkok so I was a little surprised when she replied with a stiff “Please wait”.

Turns out the flights from any place to India (and other countries nearby BTW) are the most detested by the Thai airways air hostesses – “The passengers are demanding, very impolite and ill mannered” says the purser.

“Not everyone going to India is that way” I countered.

“True” he said, “but its hard to discern, so we take the lowest common denominator, and nothing seems to embarrass them”.

2. Flying from Chennai to Bangalore I was seated at the “waiting area” when a well dressed (Boston loafers, Tag Heuer watch, and a Blackberry 8800 to boot) gentlemen next to me, sat down, opened a piece of hard candy and dropped the wrapper to the ground.

My N95 to the rescue I thought and whipped it up to take the video of the incident, the wrapper and him chewing on the candy.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Taking a video” I responded, ready with arguments of free speech, free country, blah blah, blah.

I made it very obvious that I wanted to shame him for littering the place.

“Oh cool! Nice phone.” he says, “Tell me which website you put it up and I’ll show it to my kids and wife” in earnest, not missing a beat.

3. Outside the building on the entrance to my dad’s office I visited is a whiteboard with a listing of the companies and individuals that have not paid their rent for the month of May.

I walked up, waiting for the elevator, staring at the whiteboard, when 2 more people sauntered in, engrossed in an animated conversation. They stopped and pressed on the elevator call button a few time (Just to make sure), then wandered towards the whiteboard.

“Hey look, my name’s there again” says one, “this is the 3rd month”.

“Hat trick boss” says the other, “my accountant is taking care of the payments, and I think he’s paying my rent too early these days” looking deeply disappointed, making a mental note to call his accountant and give him a piece of his mind.

They both turn to face me and the first one asks “What is your name, sir”?.

“Mukund” I replied, not expecting anything else in terms of conversation.

“Oh! Never seen your name on this list of defaulters. I made a hat trick this month” he responds beaming from ear to ear, fully expecting a nod of approval or appreciation from me.

I walked into a Reliance Digital store in Bangalore (Cunningham road) late Friday evening. This is the Indian equivalent of the chain Fry’s Electronics with some minor modifications. Most stores follow the same format apparently and are not located in malls. They sell books, music, appliances, electronics, the works. Unlike Fry’s prices are not very competitive (by local standards). For me (having been in Silicon Valley for 15+ years) it was more like Fry’s electronics without the great prices, lacking in selection and still had the same uninformed sales staff.

The store is in 2-3 floors, with the lowest having books, kids toys etc. and appliances, music, electronics on level 2. At 630 pm Friday there were more uniform clad 20 year old sales people than “customers”. In fact sales people outnumbered customers 3 to 1.

Wonder why?

“Power cut sir (ed. This means there’s no electricity)” says a 16 year old Sahil, “You cant go upstairs, we have no current (sic)”.

Hmm I wonder. You spent a lot of money on the store and inventory, but did not get a generator or UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply)?

He seemed to have read my mind based on the frown on the face.

“Its been this way from 2 pm. Our generator is only good for 3 hours” he adds.

“Okay, do you have a replacement battery for Blackberry Curve?” I ask.

“Sir I do. I have every possible accessory for your Curve, battery, faceplate, hoster, car charger. But I cant sell you anything now. Our cashier cannot generate receipts. We can take your cash, and may be able to give you a paper receipt, but if you want to return if it does not work, we cant honor it “. he replies, clearly frustration showing on his face more than mine.

There you have it – the real problems with growth in Bangalore. Lots to sell, everything to buy. Just not when you want to either buy or sell it.

As I tweeted, I am in Bangalore now and will be for some time working with our team. Landed at midnight (every international flight lands only between 11 pm and 2 am, at night in India – dont even ask why) in Bangalore airport Wed. I had a couple of boxes with me and 2 laptops – one was my PC which has all my files and mail from ages ago and another was my new MacBook (relatively new, its a few months old now).

Apparently you are allowed only one laptop when you clear customs in India. So they scan every bag and mark the ones with a laptop with an X in red. I was duly asked to “step aside” to be inspected. There was a customs officer T.P. Ullas who asked me why I have two laptops. I said one was an old (5 years) one, which has my backup and another was the laptop I used. He quickly pointed me to a not so official cartoon that stated “only one laptop per person”.

“Okay” I said what now? I can “declare it and put it in my passport” (they make an entry in your passport) so I have to take it back when I return.

“No” replied T.P. Ullas, “what else do you have?”.

“Clothes, books, not much” I said.

Ullas: “Well you have to pay the duty”.

Me: “But I am taking these things back”.

Ullas: “That’s not the rule”.

Me: “What is the rule then?”. annoyed.

At this point I was tired, bored and really wanting to get this over with. I looked around and there were 3 others going through the same predicament.

“Okay, what’s the duty” I ask.

Ullas: “Show me the receipt of original purchase”.

Me: “I dont have it, I dont carry it around”.

Ullas: “Okay then wait here. I’ll ask around”.

He goes and asks another guy and a third guy and they quickly start to talk about IPL Cricket.

I am totally annoyed at this point. So I get in front of them and confront him with ” I want to move quick, tell me the duty and I’ll pay it”.

Again he replies “I need the receipt. We cant do anything without the receipt”.

Me: “I bought it for about $1000. That’s the base price”

He goes inside to a room to bring a book with some numbers apparently that indicate duty prices. He says “I cant take your word for it, so it has to be the maximum”.

Resigning to the fate, I wanted him to get this over with. He then wanted to open all the boxes and assess everything from my Blackberry and iPhone – “Why do you carry 2 phones?” was another question, to my IPod, Kindle and finally came up with a ridiculous “I think the maximum estimate is Rs. 120,000” or about $3000. (Not sure even if the sum total of all my items would amount to that).

“You can do this quick or you can do it by the book” he says then.

I did not quite want to understand it. I knew he was asking to be paid and since I did not have any local currency I wanted to pay by check for the duty. He wont hear of check.

He pulls me into a smaller room and takes my passport and says “Just go outside to the ATM machine and bring me Rs. 3000 (about $90) and I’ll take care of it”.

Given the endless catch 22 of receipts and duties, I just stepped out, went to the ATM, withdrew $100, came back. He took me back to the room inside, satisfied with the Rs. 3000, gave my passport back.

Awful. Dont know why I had do give in and not sure why I had to pay him. Still trying to cleanse. It was the difference between $100 or $3000.

What would you do? Why? How do I get this better next time?

I was in a discussion with the CEO of a small software company (enterprise software, they sell to large fortune 2000 corporations) about their new version.
They had been working on a new version for over 4-6 months (a long time in the Web 2.0 world for sure). Turns out they completely changed their user experience – what they thought was better for their customers based on input.

Customers consistently (even those that are “Windows only shops”) said – “Why is the User experience not like Apple”?.

Even if your customers have never used a Mac, they are possibly iPod or iPhone customers. They know someone or have some experience with someone who has a Mac. Here’s what I believe they mean when they want an “apple like User Experience”

1. User delight: There’s a certain glint in the eye when someone is using their iPhone or the new iPod Touch. Same when I saw several folks using their Apple Mac on the plane. Same when they were using the older iPods. They feel like they’re having fun, their “device” or the software in the device is “delighting” them. If software or the device makes the feel like its a chore (like accepting my Linkedin requests) then you can be assured its a matter of time before users give up.

2. Intuitive Navigation: Most people in enterprise software focus on “consistency” of the user experience. Like my friend Ashwani was telling me today – an enterprise software feels “antiseptic”. Menu’s on top, left or right navigation with standard tags etc. Apple products seem to know what are the 1-2 things I want to do when I am at any point of my product usage. The key difference is the fact that they dont try to make it consistent just for the sake of being consistent. My blackberry is also starting to feel like that BTW. Choose something (like a name) and there are only 1-2 things I want to do – like look up address or call someone. If I am on the address, the menu choice is Map on Google maps. Very intuitive.

3. Simplicity: I dont have to expound this any more than say even if your product does only 3 things but does those three things well, the simplicity of Google search will beat the cluttered search experience of Yahoo.

4. Pleasing color scheme: Colors matter. Dont let anyone tell you otherwise Brushed steel or grey is Apple standard, with lots of simple black and white. But the software color patterns are fairly pleasing on the eye in my Safari browser. Very bright, seems like a “well lit place”.

5. Never make them feel like an idiot”. Even after using my Mac for a long time I dont think I have explored over 20 keystrokes and most important items I’d like to do. But I dont feel like an idiot not knowing the 100 other things I can do, since these are good enough to get back. My Vista experience on the other hand (move back to XP) was horrible. The new Microsoft 2007 suite is an absolute nightmare to learn (PowerPoint & Excel especially). Things that were simple to do in previous versions are very difficult to find.

That’s ultimately what makes the Apple user experience a great one: Simple & pleasing to use, Intuitive and delightful to interact with.

Is it just me? Tell me if this happens to you more off late.

Happened to me 11 out of 15 times at Web 2.0 Expo. Meet a person on the Expo floor. Showing the demo of a product (Big company IBM, Microsoft, – these are JUST EXAMPLE COMPANY NAMES BTW etc. or small company).

You start to talk and its clear they “like their product” but dont “love it”.

So you chit-chat, get some schwag and move on.

Later after hours you meet Ms. IBM at a party (Web 2 Expo parties ROCK BTW). You start to talk and lady tells you she has a startup she’s doing (on the side mind you).

Hands you a Moo card and suddenly all that passion about the space, the problem she’s trying to address, the market, the Google ad-words revenue, all come out with the fervor of an evangelical priest.

Everyone I know now has:

a) a side web 2.0 startup
b) a Moo card
c) worked with a team in Estonia/India/Russia/ (fill in good programmers at low cost country)
d) downloaded the Apple iPhone SDK
e) knows a big name blogger and can get “great buzz for their startup when the time’s right”.

Its awesome.

I liken this to democratization of moonlighting. Previously they did 2 jobs to make ends meet. Now its to make the 2 antipodes (passion and work) meet.

If you have a  Internet / Web / Software startup and are looking to either a) raise money or b) hire people or c) sell to your customers or pretty much do anything “normal” any other startup would do you’ve heard this question before: “But I do this right now with (a) + (b) + (c) + cut and paste…”

Lets say you answer that question with something that buys you 30 seconds from your audience and you get to a demo or better you have an alpha product that you’d like some feedback from potential customers on. Here are some new barriers to adoption that you’ll face.

1. Application better work super FAST. Response times have to be immediate, not quick. You’ll get this from customers more now thanks to Google. Every application is now expected to have google type response. Regardless of how immature the application is. The only exception is Twitter. What did they do to deserve that billing? Point #2

2. Instant gratification: The users expect to do nothing and get value. I gave you my email, should that not be enough? Figure it out. I give you something I want 10X value back ASAP. I dont blame them at all. As a user myself I have little time for web applications that give me value only after I add 100000 people to my “friends list”.

3. Allows users to make mistakes but still works. As in why does your search not recommend things to me? I misspelled “Michael” and forgot the e. Your application should prompt me to the right keyword.

4. Make the first impression seamless: If your first 3-5 clicks / keystrokes are not intuitive or productive, then the user has lost confidence in your site. Used to be in the enterprise software world users were convinced they were doing it wrong and the software was right. Nowadays the users are smarter. Even if they are wrong, then expect the software to get it right.

your thoughts?

From what I can tell (TweetClouds)
1. I talk a lot about twitter (that’s to be expected from 50% of twitter users)
2. I spend a lot of time thinking (is that a good thing?)
3. I am always going someplace
4. Life’s great
5. I like people

Or something else altogether.

I am purposely coming to his thread late. Figured this way, I’ll avoid being the yet another techmeme link. Jason Calacanis posted a while ago about how twitter can be a billion dollars.

“An absolute idiot with 10-20M users can make a ton of money. So, get to tens of millions of users and forget about money.”

Linkedin (a service I use because most of my business contacts keep sending me requests to connect) is such a service with 10 Million users.

I believe recruiters get a huge amount of value from Linkedin, so there’s a small population of their 10+ Million users who get some value by “paying” for premium services.

So back to Jason’s point, if you get 10 Million users, game over – trouble is, even at that number if your value is to a fraction of your 10 Million, then its really a house of cards is it not?