Other

The coming 20+ year disruption in Higher Education

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This is a post on the problems & solutions in higher education from someone clearly not qualified to make those observations. The only information I have is the 79 pitches from entrepreneurs large and small who are all trying to disrupt Higher Education from around the world. Besides that over 500+ articles, blog posts & discussions with several professors at the top colleges in the world.

The Higher Education market is largely a US dominated one. With over 4500 private, public and semi-public colleges and universities, this market is over $475 Billion. Over 9% of US GDP and close to $1.3 Trillion (pdf) is spent on education overall. While there is more spent on K-12 education, the higher ed market has more spend per student.

Most of the money spent by students in on tuition. Over 57% of the higher ed spend is on tuition. This goes towards educators, libraries, textbooks, facilities, etc.

The average 4 year college cost is reaching $30K+ per year for private colleges. Given that over 70% of US students end up with over $30K in debt after college, this clearly unsustainable.

With the advent of MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses) I personally believe it is only a matter of time before many of the 4500 colleges shut down. I personally think 50% of colleges in the US will close down in 10+ years. Similar for Indian colleges – over 50% of colleges in India will shut down in 20 years.

Most private colleges make money from endowments, grants, and then from tuition – in that order. Most of the moneyed institutions have “rich” students who then become alumni and donate to the college, many of the smaller colleges dont.

The average private college takes 2000+ students and charges about $30K per student. Lets say that is $60 Million per year.

Now imagine that the private college wants to take 20,000 students (online) instead. [They could also take 100,000 students, since nothing is going to stop them from doing that]. All things being equal and factoring in inflation, and the cost to run the university being largely the same, they would be able to charge $3K per student per year and still do well.

It is not a dream. It is going to happen. In 10-20 years, or likely sooner, but it is going to happen.

Would you rather get a degree from MIT and be taught by the top professor at MIT or a local college professor who may not have the level of depth and knowledge about the subject as the MIT professor?

You can do this from Saudi Arabia, Australia and India. That’s because even the folks in Newton, Mass, who live <100 Miles from MIT will be doing the same.

Most learning is going online. In a massive way. Higher education is as well.

Now, I understand the concerns.

A) The Internet do not replace the interaction you get in a face-to-face setting.

B) How can you build relationships with your students and network with them – which is the biggest value of a college 10 years hence? and

C) Online learning is still largely unproven.

All that will get itself sorted out with other offerings to supplement the MOOC.

In the future you will have interactions (office hours) remotely managed by professors.

In the future you will learn from your peers together as much as you will from the professor – which will build the relationships.

In the future you will have more teaching aids and tools to help you sort, identify and collate your learning better than textbooks.

That future is less than 10 years away.

I am going to shift gears and now try to talk to future parents.

What should you do? What are the things you can do to make sure your kids are going to be successful? This is primarily if your kids are between 0-10 years old.

First and (I cannot understate this) let your kids find their way.

If you can make the investment, buy them a tablet and let them learn stuff using the machine.

If you can get them to follow structure courses online (for older kids), I’d recommend Khan academy and other sites like those.

We dont have Television at home, but I am not convinced that’s the right approach for everyone. If you can get rid of the television, do it. I’d highly recommend it.

Kids will play more games than use the tablet for useful stuff initially but that novelty wears off in a few years. The % of core gamers and those that are addicted to gaming is still small. I am not saying ignore it, but be less worried about that than no exposure to games at all.

I dont think most parents will give up the school environment all together, since they need the kids to be “someplace” other than home when they head to work, but I would focus a lot less on grades at school.

In fact, grades will become irrelevant in 15 years, increasingly replaced by “show me what you did” instead of “how did you learn”. Why?

If you are MIT or Stanford and you want 20K students to take your course, you are likely to get less picky a decade from now. 

[Side note: Similar to startups these days, when being evaluated by investors, the focus is on product & traction, not on idea, grades tell me how you studied, not what you learnt].

The goal of these colleges will go away from “exclusivity for some” to “knowledge for all” very soon. That’s the direction they are all heading. Will MIT as an institution or the lecture halls go away? – not likely. They will be the purview of the few rich kids who can spend $100K per year to be housed in 5 star luxury comforts. For the rest of us, a computer and an internet connection will suffice.

This next paragraph is going to unsettle a few folks, but hear my argument.

Focus on spending money *now* to help your kids, than saving money for the future. Most parents I know end up trying to save for education – by putting money in 529 plans, education savings plans and the like. I would use as much money you plan to save for the future into their education right now. Give them any edge they can get now and you will end up spending 1/3rd of what you originally planned for later.

That’s because the cost of higher education is going to drop dramatically for most students.

So who will hurt from these disruptions?

1. University deans, college presidents and the endowment chairs, who make over $1 Million per year.

2. Smaller unknown colleges who will see their enrollments drop dramatically and will likely have to shut down.

3. 529 plan administrators.

For the rest of us, quality higher education is going to be highly accessible.

Other

The “design” problem among Indian startups

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This is going to be a very long post on design and startups in India and in particular the questions we have about design as a important discipline in India.

Speak to any investor and mentor / advisor in India and you will constantly hear the refrain “Indian companies need to get better at design” or “We dont design our applications very well and that’s the reason we dont have world-beating companies”.

Speak to an entrepreneur in India and they will state that “getting designers in India is very hard” and “hiring a design firm in India is very expensive”.

Over the last 1.5 years, we have been trying to solve the “design” problem for startups at the Microsoft accelerator and met with limited to no success.

The first part is to frame the “problem” correctly. Let us focus on the stages a startup goes through and look for opportunities and the needs for a designer. Then we will try to outline the solutions we offered and why (I think) they failed.

We’d love some advice on where we are going wrong and what we can do to solve this problem first for us in a small scale and then largely for the community in general.

In the very early stages the entrepreneur has an “idea” and they want to solve a problem. At this stage, they end up “napkin-ing” a solution and then trying to find ways to build a solution. Most entrepreneurs in India already believe they have a solution, so they do think they would be best at “designing” a solution as well. So the designers role is largely relegated to “give me some good color options” or “make me a kick-ass logo”, or “build a sexy website”. Most of this work is either done by friends or colleagues who moonlight and help the entrepreneur by offering a design.

In most hackathons  (over the last year I have judged and attended over 30 of them), the designer is the only role that is very hard to find in teams. You will get 20+ hack teams and only 4 designers. The teams that have convinced the designers that their idea will “win” the hackathon have designers. The rest of the teams end up largely having engineers perform “minimal” design.

The next stage is when the company is beyond the wireframe stage and actually building an application – mobile or web. At this stage, most folks would like to “hire” a designer, but complain that design talent at $8000 – $10,000 per year (4L to 6L INR) is too expensive. The entrepreneur believes the role of the designer at this stage is to take the “wireframes” they have designed and put together psd files, do a few revisions and then create the HTML and CSS files. Most entrepreneurs use inexpensive agencies or freelance consultants at this stage since they can’t afford to hire a full time designer. They also believe that hiring a full time designer is not something they can afford, since once the design is “complete”, they dont think there’s any work left for the designer. They’d rather hire a developer full time to keep adding features.

The stage beyond this is when they get some customer feedback and actually have users who are working with their application. This results in feedback that entrepreneurs are surprised with – things like – “It is not easy to use your application” or “I dont think the application is very nicely designed”. The other indirect way they get this feedback is when they tell me “I am not able to charge a premium for my product even though it has the same features as a US clone because my customers know that my app is designed in India”. At this point they do take design somewhat seriously and try to hire a designer. If they have gotten to this stage it is very likely that they have some funding so they can afford the designer who charges $10K per year we mentioned before.

Finally when a company is growing and scaling, new products, new features and new capabilities force them to think about design more seriously and they do end up hiring a design team – think of companies like Zomato, Cleartrip etc.

That is the background of the problem we encountered, which we have tried to solve in different ways.

Version 1 of our solution was to hire a seasoned design firm to do a 2 day (shortened from 5 days) workshop on design for entrepreneurs. While very well received initially, most entrepreneurs felt they liked the content, but they needed a person to implement the learning from the workshop. In other words – do it for me, don’t just tell me.

Our version 2 of the solution was to offer a design mentor for each of our startups who would spend 1/2 day or 4 hours each month helping the company with design. These mentors were seasoned practitioners at other companies who took time to help startups. The feedback we received after 3 months was there was too much “advice – gyan in India” and too little “action”. The entrepreneurs felt that the design mentors were able to point out issues that needed fixing but they were not willing (or more likely did not have time, since they were in a full time role already) actually implement the changes. Given that most entrepreneur teams did not have a full time design person on staff, the “advice” was useful and obvious, but they could not be implemented.

Version 3 of the solution was to hire a full time design staff of 4 resources (including a project manager) who will work with the companies to help them with the user experience, design and development of their application. These resources were available to all our companies, and they could very easily sign up to use these services, by just speaking to the project manager and outlining their design requirements, which could be as small as a new logo to as involved as a new website design or as complicated as redesigning a new application user experience.

After 4 months we abandoned the program, for 3 reasons. First, the resource utilization was less than 25% by our startups. Second, the design firm came to the conclusion that requirements from several teams were too vague and simple and third, many companies did not value the design team enough to give them quick turnaround (i.e they took 4 weeks to respond to the designer) on their design which they requested in the first place be done “in a week”.

Now we are back to the drawing board. While the high level problem “Indian startups need design help” gets visceral reactions including furious head-nodding and shaking of the head from investors, entrepreneurs and others, we still dont know what the solution to this problem is.

If you are an Indian entrepreneur who is in one of these stages, I’d love some advice and comments on what would be the ideal way to help you solve the “design” problem.

Or just let me know if I am barking up the wrong tree and let me know if there’s really no problem.

Afterword:

This post touched a nerve with over 20+ comments in the first hour of posting. There are a few clarifications to make. The design firm we used was excellent, because the same team is used by our accelerator at Israel and they LOVE working with the team. Second, I am looking for some suggestions on what do you think we should do to help, instead of just comments like “Founders should do design”. They don’t help us understand what we should do to help our founders.

Entrepreneurship, Learning

The pretender and the contender wear the same clothes

8 Comments

In the last year I have talked to over 800 entrepreneurs. About 200+ were discussions over 15 minutes. That roughly equates to about 1/2 my work time. This time was split between listening and learning from them and the rest was spent sharing some “gyaan“. For what it was worth, most of them were very nice to me and politely nodded when I dispensed my 2 minutes of “framework advice”.

What I have learned is that it is very hard to give an answer that’s cogent, well thought out and precise. In an era where there are enough advisors, mentors and other folks giving lots of advice, there’s a cottage industry sprung up around trying to “help” entrepreneurs and “grow” the ecosystem.

Here’s the challenge for us as entrepreneurs. The pretender and the contender both wear the same clothes, speak the same language and likely use the same words. We have to discern who’s who.

So what’s the framework to use to determine who you should listen to and who you should ignore?

There are enough folks suggesting that peer learning is the way to go. After all, what better than someone “like you” who has just been through the same path before. The pros of peer learning are usually – practical advice, “here’s what I did and it worked for me” and knowledge dished out without airs and graces. The cons are lack of context, the inability to give you a framework to think and providing answers to questions that you might never encounter.

There are other folks suggesting that “successful entrepreneurs” should provide you with the right advice. Meaning, folks who have seen relative measure of success and would be likely able to share more refined nuances of their journey. The pros are well thought out arguments, balanced perspective on what works and does not. The cons are that success comes over a long period of time. The things that worked a few years ago are rarely going to work as effectively.

Still others say the best advice is from “failed” entrepreneurs. They can possibly tell you everything you should not do, but not all the things you most likely should do. The pros are that you get to really understand that the rose colored glasses that are worn tend to be tinted anyway. The cons? – What should you do? Opposite of all the things the failed entrepreneur did?

At the end of the day it will become obvious that to have some modicum of success, you will have to blaze your own trail. Else someone who has done the “exact” same thing that you did, will likely “clean up” before him, leaving nothing but crumbs for others to “feast” on.

The only way to know who the pretender is and who the player is to watch them in action.

Which is why I highly recommend that you work with the advisor and mentor for a few weeks or a month before you actually bring them on board. For the first month, if they truly believe in what you are doing, they would offer their time for free, then you can overcompensate them for their work post that effort.

Entrepreneurship

Are Indian entrepreneurs “thin skinned” or misunderstood?

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There are so many great tech entrepreneurs of Indian origin in the valley who have been successful over the last 2 decades. A last count indicated over 40% of all startups in Silicon valley were either started by or had an Indian cofounder.

This has led to several of them (entrepreneurs from the valley) and a few “industry observers” commenting and comparing the startup ecosystem in India to that in the valley. Most are not encouraging. From the outside looking in it is relatively easy to say “There are too many clueless people running incubators” – actual quote from a self-proclaimed Silicon Valley expert, or “Focus on local opportunities, not on global ones” – actual quote from a Tech Crunch article.

In both cases, many entrepreneurs in some closed Facebook groups that I am a part of, were all up in arms about these broad generalizations. The articles themselves were focused on many aspects of entrepreneurship as well in India, and the quote alone, taken out of context would be construed as a “passing mention”. Nonetheless many entrepreneurs took umbrage and the conversations denigrated into an abyss.

Back to my question about Indian entrepreneurs. Are we just thin skinned or misunderstood?

First, our startup ecosystem is fairly nascent. Comparing it to the valley is not doing either location any good. Both investors and entrepreneurs complain about each other constantly in both locations, though. Many investors claim entrepreneurs lack the depth, knowledge of the markets and understanding of what it takes to build a great business. Many entrepreneurs claim investors are risk-averse, predatory and bean counters without the expertise to build a business.

They are both are right, but both are wrong as well.

Market dynamics and conditions in India force both of them to play hands they are dealt with and I think so far we have done well. Comparing a teenager (Indian startup ecosystem) to a mature adult (Silicon Valley) does not make any sense though.

Second, I do believe that we can be more appreciative of each others positions and show a lot more empathy for our investors and founders. I am not suggesting a group therapy session, but knowledge and understanding of the constrained markets India has and the small exits that we generate does not help investors is important. Neither does expectation of Silicon valley type exits or “traction” help entrepreneurs.

Can we all get a little more thick skinned as well? – possibly. For most parts if you read a “self-professed expert”, such as myself or others, claiming to understand the nuances of the ecosystem, which you believe are incorrect, be direct and point it out, with a cogent argument explaining your point of view, instead of vitriolic comment spewing or worse – name calling without context.

Marketing

Guest post: How I Used Setback as a Setup for (PR) Success

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Ever hear that saying…

“when life gives you lemons, make lemonade?”

Now, what happens if the lemons you get are covered in poop and smell like rotten milk, AND you ran out of sugar?

What then? Drink muddy, bitter lemonade that smells like durian?

Exactly. Believe it or not, it might turn up better than you imagined.

2011 was a really crappy year

  • I started a pet website that wasn’t doing so hot. I already pivoted a couple of times, and they all tanked.

  • I was down to my last few dollars in term of my bootstrap fund

  • I broke up with my ex a couple of months ago.

If shit is how you describe how you feel when you’re down, down I was straight doo-doo.

Now to make things worse, i lost my dog. A bunch of people came into my house to fix a broken door without calling me. My dog spooked and he ran for his life.

As a bachelor living by himself in a loft with his own dog and with his family thousands of miles away on the other side of the country, this was like losing a child.

I mean.. a grown man, crying alone in the dark.. drinking two buck chuck, lamenting over his lost dog.

If you never lost a dog before, you’ll never know the feeling.  Especially for me because my dog was the one real “family” that I had (in California), cared for, and loved.

I read somewhere that if you lose a dog and don’t recover it in the next 24 hours, your chances of finding it are pretty slim..as in, never.

The odds were against me.

  1. I didn’t have family who’d help me look during the day (when he’s visible). I had to ask friends for their time after they get out of work.. which by then, was too late.

  2. My dog didn’t have a pet tag on because his collar was being washed, which means no one can ID him even if they found him.

  3. My dog is completely black, which means he’s quite hard to see at night.. especially for car drivers

Of course, as an entrepreneur, i was used to fighting the odds and hoping for miracles.

So in span of first 40 hours of losing my dog, I was superman. I managed to

  1. call every vet, animal shelter, pet businesses in 3 mile radius

  2. (with help from my ex and a friend) posted 250+ flyers, dropped off 150+ posters in people’s mailboxes

  3. place ads on every possible place you can possibly think of, including Facebook ads and Google display ad network ads.

…all this on no sleep.

I even tried hashed up a simple auto dialer software using Twilio and a database I bought off the web, and called everyone in 4-5 zip codes.

Yes, I was on a mission.

I must’ve had 2-3 leads every couple of hours with my ads and with my auto dialer, but they all turned up to be all junk leads.

Until.. I got a phone call from a lady nearby. She told me that she saw my flyer at a nearby park in Willow Glen (San Jose, CA).

At this point, I wasn’t even sure if my dog was still alive. So many false leads, and people were telling me different things as far as where they thought he was heading. On top of that, he probably hasn’t eaten or drank anything. Maybe worse.. he got hit by a car or got attacked by a big dog.. and he died.

Funny how your mind plays all these crazy movies in your head when you’re in dire need.

But I told myself I can feel depressed any time i want. Let’s see if this lead takes me anywhere.

And in fact, IT WAS MY dog that they found…thanks to this awesome couple:

If you don’t know who he is, he’s a NHL San Jose Sharks team player Joe Pavelski.

At the time, I didn’t even know who he was or what he did.

All I noticed was his insanely big house in the middle of Willow Glen (a very posh neighborhood).

So I casually asked him what he did… and he replied “oh i play hockey.”

My initial thought: “What? there’s a hockey team in San Jose? NO WAY. When was this?”

<insert clown music here>

Yes, he was a celebrity. But at the time, I didn’t really think much of it

I just was so grateful that he found my dog that i just wanted to kiss the man.

(But I settled for just a picture with him.)

When my dog and I were reunited back home, I gave him a bath and fed him two HUGE bowls of his favorite dog food. After that, both of us hibernated for 14 hours.

Seize the Moment

When I woke up, I started wondering how I can use this story for my pet website.

Of course, I could’ve just posted this and shared with my Facebook fans and email subscribers at the time.. but I felt I could’ve gotten more of a BANG, so to speak.

So? I decided to email journalists, hoping that it would get covered… and it DID.

If you Google “joe pavelski dog”, the story got covered on NBC sports, CSN Bay area, and BUNCH of other sports sites that have page rank 5+.

Then voila.. i had a HUGE surge of traffic to my site, and because of that surge,

  • my email list increased by factor of 95%

  • i had 50+ backlinks to my funny pet picture website PawshPal

  • i had all these new men Facebook fans for PawshPal (99.9% prior to that were women)

If this were a link bait tactic, it sure as hell worked well.

So did it save the PawshPal business? Nope. It didn’t.

The people that opted in were more interested in Joe and/or sports.. and opted out.. and all those backlinks didn’t help much at all in terms new traffic. Indeed, not all traffic is good traffic.

But I learned a WHOLE lot about PR.

Key Lesson in PR

1) “Rub Off” Popularity

If you are not famous, you can “get” famous just by being next to them.

This is the basis for celebrity endorsement ads.

People seeing your product or service next to a celebrity gives (instant trust.

2) Don’t fight, instead praise

There are SEO and marketing “gurus” that claim that you should pick fights with journalists and bloggers to get some attention.

If not, spam them in the comment section.

Ugh.. here’s a better way.

Instead of fighting popular people, praise them and their fans will praise you.

Negativity can only get so far. On top of that, news is inundated with bad news.

Why join them? Try being positive for once. (Heck, try meditating.)

3) Promote yourself.

Your efforts don’t mean diddly squat if no one knows

Fundamentals of marketing – no matter how great you (or your product) is, if no one knows about it, you might as well have never done it.

Stop staring at the screen.

Start connecting. Start sharing. Start teaching. Start giving.

Then the world will give back.

4) Copywriting matters

If you do any marketing whatsoever, you know about copywriting.

Copywriting is about selling with words, conveying who you are, what you do, and why they should read your stuff.

Copywriting is probably THE most important skill for any marketer these days.

If my copywriting sucked, I doubt anyone would’ve read my story, including the journalists.

Without an interesting email subject line, the email would’ve never gotten read.

Without an interesting email body, the link would’ve never gotten clicked.

Without an interesting story, the journalists would’ve never linked back.

Without the journalists linking back, I would not be here telling you this story.

5) When things are bad, there’s usually a reason.

Like Steve Jobs said, you can connect the dots only looking backward, never forward.

If something bad happens, as long as you don’t stay down and depressed, you can use that story as a way to set yourself back up for something great like all great entrepreneurs do.

You just won’t know unless you fail, dust yourself, get back up, and try something different.

But don’t forget step #1 – dust yourself off and get back up.

Without step #1, there is no step #2.

Most importantly…

If all your marketing fails, “accidentally” lose and find your dog at a celebrity’s house.

Take your dog to your nearest celebrity’s house.

Call him and ask him if he’s seen your dog.

Of course, your dog is magically there.. then you cry.. give him a big hug.. take lots of pictures.. and send them to the press.

And voila! Free PR!

<insert evil laughter here>

Hell, my dog teaches me about business everyday.

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TaeWoo Kim is an entrepreneur, a growth hacker, a speaker, and a blogger. You can follow him on Twitter (@TaeWooKim), Google+, and on his blog FreshSuperCool.com.

NPC

Building great outcomes in #payments only at #NPC2013 – Braintree acquired for $800 Million

1 Comment

Not every day do you get news of an $800 Million acquisition in technology especially for a 6 year-old company, but Braintree just got acquired by PayPal for that ginormous amount.

What’s that got to do with NASSCOM product conclave you ask?

Well if you want to know how the payments landscape is changing dramatically with the advent of Square, Recurring payments startups, NFC, Bitcoin and the innovation in India, there’s only ONE place to be this winter. (So register for #NPC2013 already)

The payments track at NASSCOM product conclave features some of the smartest minds who can help you make sense of this large, growing and dramatically changing space.

Payments is a very interesting space because there are inherent barriers for external companies thanks to regulation. This is a space that’s closely watched by RBI, the banks and politicians themselves.

There have been multiple versions and attempts at solving the payments problem in India. We are bringing together the top experts in the payments space – the innovators, the investors, the disrupters and the incumbents to give you a birds-eye view followed by a kickass opportunity view as well.

If you are looking to innovate in this space, these key movers and shakers are the people you want to network with and they are going to be in Bangalore on Oct 29th and 30th at the Taj Vivanta.

This session is not all talk either.

We have terrific demos from JusPay, CitrusPay, ZaakPay,Ezetap, Oxigen, Khosla Labs and many more.

The top customers and enablers of payments, many of who turned payments into a differentiation – Ashish of BookMyShow, Mekin Maheshwariof Flipkart/PayZippy, Subba from Cleartrip, Loney Antony from Prizm Payments,Sunil Kulkarni of Oxigen and others – will share their approaches and strategies to tackle this problem as well.

Additionally with Aadhaar becoming a big part of the national payments infrastructure, hear directly from the UIDteam on how the platform is creating disruptive opportunities.

This track is being curated by the two top entrepreneurs in the space – Sanjay Swamy (investor at Angel Prime and ex CEO of mChek) and Puneet Agarwal (ex-Google – mobile NFC and payments).

If there’s anyone you need to know in this space, it is highly likely they will be here.

Come join us – because if you can’t collect the money, your business is just a hobby!

NPC

The Global Startup Quiz at NASSCOM Product Conclave #NPC2013 #fun #unique

Most tech conferences offer you a plethora of speakers and peers to learn from. That’s par for the course. Many also offer practitioners who will guide you on the ways of the world – like the “blind leading the blind” Matthew 15:13-14. Others offer immense networking opportunities – cofounder dating, angel investor connections. Its matchmaking at its fastest. If marriages are made in heaven, cofounder dating assumes that heaven was made in a day.

How many promise you a fun time?

I mean a time that you will remember because you laughed so hard or when your pulse raced.

I mean, really, there’s no rule that says that you cant have fun once you join a startup.

Lets have fun. Big time.

Let me take you back a few years. Remember your days at school or college when you had a knack to remember the most mundane of things and store them in your head? Ahh! Those were the days my friend. Trivia seemed to find all the space in my head, but those damm chemistry equations never did.

Our volunteer team at NPC this year is an eclectic mix of folks who seem to think “fun is their birthright”.

So they are bringing you the Global Startup Quiz at NASSCOM Product Conclave this year.

You can form teams of 2-3 of your peers and participate in your knowledge of startup trivia.

The winner gets automatic funding** from Shekhar Kirani from Accel (who’s coming to NPC this year BTW)

** some restrictions apply, void where prohibited. subject to approval. conditions apply, fine print applies. do not operate after consuming alcohol. Plastic bag (part of the quiz) is not a toy. Keep away from adults – children only. Blah Blah Blah. Are you still reading this? go register for NPC

Yeah right! You wish.

You think you know your startup trivia?

Who said “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?” – dude that was not Steve Jobs. Wrong!

Make a team and match your skills with the best in NassQuiz, a one hour quiz on technology products worldwide.

  • Questions on world tech biz (not just software)
  • Written prelims before the 1 hour event
  • Audience participation included – winners get spot T-Shirts or goodies
  • Audio, photo/video questions as well

So if you want to win the bragging rights as the startup trivia quiz Czar – you gotta be at NPC this year. Register now.

Entrepreneurship, Management

How to encourage more amazing people to join #startups – for #investors & #entrepreneurs

9 Comments

In the last 2 weeks I have had to catch up on several shareholder’s agreements that startup founders have sent my way to review.

It is very disappointing to see that most of the Indian founders keep 10% or less towards Employee Stock Option Plans.

There’s no better way to say this. This is silly, very backward in its thinking and has no justification.

I dont buy the argument that employees dont value stock options. They dont understand them and hence they tend to ignore them.

As an investor and startup founder it is your duty to make sure employees understand the value of stock options.

All successful startups will agree that the startups with the best people usually wins. Not always the best product or best technology but the one with the best people.

The best people dont come cheap. They have multiple options – Working at a large company, working for themselves or striking it on their own to build their own startup.

If you want to encourage the best people to consider startups, you not only have to pay well, but also give them enough incentives and “upside” to ensure their success.

I am also very disappointed that investors are not asking this of startup founders. The long term viability of the ecosystem depends on the best folks making good money so they can become entrepreneurs or investors again.

The wealth needs to go around. 2-3 folks in any company making a lot of money while the rest slave away for paltry sums is a recipe for a host of B and C players being early startup employees. None of us want that.

I dont think this is very sustainable.

If you are a startup founder, one of the most important things you need to do is to ensure your employees make a lot of money as well if there is a big upside.

I want to be a big force of this change for the good.

Starting today (as part of Microsoft Ventures and my own personal investments) I pledge I will ensure that every startup (starting in India) has at least 15 if not 20% of the shares kept aside for early employees. I also want to make sure that the shares do get granted to employees. Finally I also will make sure that our portfolio will share the wealth with the employees as well. I understand that means we might have to take a haircut on valuations or even reduce our ownership. So be it.

If any of our co-investors do not agree to our model for equitable employee contribution, we will not do the deal.

Be the change.

Other

How can we change the format and structure of #startup events in #India

16 Comments

I had a chance to see the agenda for 6 startup events that are taking place over the next 2 months. NASSCOM Product conclave, TIE Con Delhi, TechCrunch India and 3 other media events by local folks.

As part of our work at the accelerator we also track the top 137 key “startup speakers” in India. Just so we know who the most frequent, popular and the most sought after speakers are.

Here’s the headline. The same 35 – 40 folks are speaking at all these events. Its almost as if we have run out of ideas in terms of speakers. There are possibly 2-3 reasons for this I think. One, event organizers feel if they get a top name speaker, then the attendees have a reason to come. Two, they probably do not want to “upset” the important folks so we end up having panels of 5-6 people on a 30 min slot and by the time we finish intros and a 2 min spiel by each panelist, we are done. Third, we really dont have too many articulate, insightful speakers so they same names come up all the time.

The second part of the problem is the format and structure of the event. There is a “same-ness” to every one of these – panels, reverse pitches, fireside chats. Throw in 10 “startup pitches” a-la American Idol and you have a $100K profit event.

Most of these events are fairly formulaic, now it seems. Throw in a few ecosystem partners, you will be guaranteed about 300-500 attendees and most likely this event is churning at the low end $50K to $100K or more if the event is larger.

While many event organizers will tell you this is what folks are asking for and signing up for, they are also looking for fresh ideas on how to change the format.

I think the number of events is going to increase not decrease in India because most folks running these events are making good money. While I used to think that 50% of the folks attending these events are the same that appear in each event, I have been told otherwise. Many of the folks (over 50%) are putting their toe into entrepreneurship and looking at ways to network with prime movers who are those 30+ speakers I mentioned above.

I would love to get some ideas on both topics and formats that you think we should experiment on.

P.S. I am as guilty as the others in helping program manage some of these events or help put the structure together for these, so I am as much a part of the problem. Which is why seeking help possibly redeems me.

Personal

Is the bias against women in technology subliminal as well?

11 Comments

I know I’ll get into trouble for writing this, but I dont know any other way than to write what I think. Sometimes I have thoughts that I feel bad about. This is one of those. I am hoping that writing this will help me remember and correct my bias. Although I dont think I have a bias, I think I am trying to be politically correct in speech but my own thoughts need better refinement.

I have always considered women and men alike when it comes to technology of all sorts. There may be fewer women in tech, but most all of the women I have worked with (I have had 3 women managers as well) were as good as the men I worked with.

So before I got into my bias (or perceived bias) I have to say I am a big fan of Marissa Mayer.

This morning I read Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr post on their new logo. I read it in its entirety and was pretty thrilled with its content, and she did a great job on the storytelling. After I read it though, I wondered if the CEO of a large company like Yahoo should have spent so much of her time on the logo. My first reaction after that was, imagine if she spent that time in front of customers convincing them to spend more on Yahoo ads. Or with the product team on a new feature.

Then I remembered later in the day reading Vic Gundotra’s blog post on Steve Job’s icon ambulance a few years ago. I remember being very impressed with the line

CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.

Then I wondered if I was as biased as everyone else.

Is it that she’s a woman, so I trivialized her obsession on the Logo and font? Versus Steve Jobs obsession of almost the same thing?

I dont know. I hate to think the answer is yes.

I felt awful for quite a bit thinking about this. I thought it was better to write this down than fight the daemons in my head.

Its okay for you to judge, but I would say that I have never felt that I have the bias ever.

The personal blog of Mukund Mohan