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Latest Updates: office RSS

  • fritz Says -> thanx to all who care about my welfare
    6:27 am on November 12, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , office, ,

    Thanx to all the people who made phone calls sent sms’s and mails and had long chat sessions with me to know about my health and give advice and tips and even offered their cleartrip coupons etc hahahahaha.

    I really appreciate the concern shown and am really thankful for all the best wishes.

    Hmm from this episode I did come to know that there are a few people who want to see me alive hahahahaha yes from now on I am still pushing myself but not as much now I sleep for a decent amount and eat food on time and don’t skip meals anymore.

    But have not yet given up on pushing my mind and body but now do it a bit smarter like I told a friend few days back it is worth dying while trying in something you believe in and feel worth giving your body and mind rather then dying later in life repenting that you never had the will power to pursue your dreams.

    Well thanks once again on a lighter note the below image done by a close friend of mine selwyn is inspired by my the small incident in my life and no there are no prizes for guessing which incident hahahahaha :) so enjoy !!!!

    The image is not loading from blogger :( so here is the link chk out the selwyn’s blog and guess the image :)

     

  • fritz Says -> startup pains release 0.4- Motivating the workforce
    11:09 pm on October 10, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , office,

    Well for those who came in late (yes this line is taken from phantom comics of which I am a huge fan) in this series so far I have discussed the issues on the formation of startup then the human resource issue and then the funding so the first three articles in this series covered the above mentioned issues. Now for the 4th article in the series it is all about the motivation factor how do you keep the team motivated through the thick and thin?

    Motivating oneself is very very difficult but motivating others is virtually impossible with that said it is always good to give a shot at solving something which is impossible. when you are putting together a team they are all pumped up thinking about what they will be doing and how they will be doing it but once they join they get in the comfort zone and then they can go in a bit of a rut which can ultimately lead to becoming a unproductive employee who pulls everyone down and this is one problem that every entrepreneur should look for don’t allow anyone to get into the comfort zone how to do that? have ideation meetings, have brainstorming sessions regularly, update the people about the overall progress what has been achieved and what is remaining to be achieved all this meetings help in keeping the morale up and also keeps the people on their toes.

    Motivation factor varies from person to person some would be motivated by money, others by praise and some would some other way. Identifying what are the motivational factors for the team members is very important. Well in long term if you find that some member of your team is pulling everyone down then that member has to go out to keep the startup ecosystem healthy and motivated. Well being good at what you do and being motivated are two different things in a startup what is required is person who is good and one who is motivated.

    The Motivation factor is not only an issue for startups but also for established firms as motivational factor lacking in established firms lead to lack of growth and can stunt the growth most of the time this leads to disaster for long term prospects of the firm as innovating and striving for growth is not only the mantra for a good startup but for any company.

     

  • fritz Says -> online collaboration heating up
    12:08 am on October 4, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Online collaboration space is all heating up with now the big players in this space being Zoho, Google with its hosted apps for your domain and now Microsoft with its latest announcements (this) of Office going Live. Well the others are not far behind even companies like AT&T (see this) and Cisco (see this) are trying to get into this space and not to forget even Intel is making a huge push into consumer internet with its investment arm Intel Capital providing funding to many consumer internet companies.

    But out of all this players there is one player which is doing this with killer technology by its side and that is Adobe yes the new owners of the Flash platform now with all the pieces falling in place it looks like Macromedia was a killer deal for Adobe to inject new DNA into itself to become part of the innovation wave that is hitting the web now and Flash is paying a key part of it. With (this) announcement they have made it clear that they are taking part in the race and they do have the technology and the resources to win the race but will they be able to do it is the multi billion dollar question.

    But The runner that will win in this might not be the one who owns the technology but the one that builds on top of it see this the company called communigate systems have built a flash client for collaborative groupware and the interface in the screenshots look killer and since Google is in the acquisition spree and so are many others this might be the perfect target for anyone who is looking at a very innovative way to get into this race with one acquisition and their management team looks good with loads of experience behind them so they will fit well in the bigger picture.

    Out of all the big guns the one that I am very interested in is Adobe with the glimpses of what they have shown of what they are cooking in their labs it looks like a good place for lots of fun work going on now. For a very long time I have not seen anything fun reported or leaked from sources from Google labs.

    The new adobe service share looks pretty impressive but the best review has been for the media player as that would be a perfect replacement for information devices on the go.
    This is the holy grail of consumer and biz tech now finding the perfect online collaboration suite so that people people can work in a decentralized environment from multiple locations in the web 2.0 world. only time will tell who will become the winner but till the time comes niche players who are solving small problems in a innovative way of the bigger collaborative pie are good targets for acquisition. So If you are working on any nifty little project in the collaboration space or you come across something nice leave a comment.

     

  • fritz Says -> startup pains release 0.3- funding woos
    11:54 pm on October 1, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Well for those who came in late (yes this line is taken from phantom
    comics of which I am a huge fan) in the second part of this series I
    wrote about how I got past the human resouce problem for my startup with my dedication to student projects and mentoring students from local colleges on upcoming technologies which would be beneficial for them and me.

    Money makes the world go round well that is what everyone says and I do surely believe that in this cut throat biz world money is not just a important measure of your success but also a very important resource for fueling your biz growth and expansion. But for a startup this is a far fetched dream what is first required is a little bit of money and a lot of smart work to multiply that small investment and give good returns to all your share holders. but raising that small amount of money is no bed of roses it is one tough cookie to crack believe me have gone through that am still going through that as I need to raise more money to scale so that most of the goals set and deadlines are met.

    Well in my case for a small person who is making a living in a place like goa it is not easy to leave a job and start something of your own unless you are having a rich parents and bunch of friends who are rolling in money well for me I don’t have either. My parents are middle class working people well only my dad is working and mom is a house wife and am the eldest one of the family so I can’t borrow from siblings as even my one and only younger bro is also helping me with my startup so borrowing from a sibling who has a secured high paying job is out of the picture.And as far as my friends go well most of them have just started working and don’t have savings to the depth where they can believe in one of their friends and invest in his startup but in spite of this I am very grateful to some of my friends who have shown great faith in me and invested in my startup they are Luther,Sarvesh and Satya Thanks guys for showing some faith in me and investing in my startup they didn’t have a lot to spare but they did try to give me some financial help when I asked for it and that is what counts at the end.

    Finance and a startup hmm it is a well known fact that the different stages of funding a a startup are seed money and vc funding. well I cant go in for VC funding as I don’t have a track record neither the god fathers who can give me good references and as far as bootstraping the startup goes I have done that with my savings and also borrowings from friends especially Luther who has invested a hefty amount in my venture so far.Well for a startup I have gone past the bootstrap phase and now come to the stage where I have prototypes ready and I can go for seed funding and get the prototypes to the production stage and then look for VC funding.

    The bootstraping phase was completed with my savings and with what my friends pitched in and now I was looking for seed funding and am happy that have got that too and at a decent evaluation without diluting a significant portion of my equity in the firm and with this new found cash can afford to take the product to the next stage and launch it soon before I go for second round of seed financing As I don’t want to raise VC money unless absolutely necessary but want to build a biz which can sustain itself and also develop cash reserves for expansion plans but one important aspect of biz is nothing goes as plan and you have to be prepared fot it.

    Getting the seed funding is the happiest that I have been so far in my short life as an entrepreneur why you ask? It is for the simple fact that when you raise seed money it is a pat on the back which says well done and someone else believes in you and wants to trust you with their money and plus this small investment fuels you with renewed passion to push yourself more to get more out of the minimum you have raised so that you don’t have to go for more dilution of stake to raise money in the future. stretching the small amount of investment is a huge huge task cutting down costs for a startup which is virtually on a shoestring budget is virtually impossible the expenses don’t go down as time goes but they go up.

    Well what is in store for me now since the bootstrapping phase is over and so is the initial seed funding round (well for me seed funding round is equivalent to 1st VC funding round and not actually seed funding) as for people who invested in me thank you for believing and for others well all I can say is opportunity to become part of history might come knocking just once and when it does you either decide you want to take it or no. Well I will still look for more funding and see if i get better valuation then will dilute more stake to get strategic partners and off course more funds for expansion but the main point being good valuation.

     

  • fritz Says -> startup pains release 0.2- human resources
    3:34 pm on September 30, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , office,

    Well for those who came in late (yes this line is taken from phantom comics of which I am a huge fan) in the first part of this series I told how I got the idea for my startup and then how I identified the first obstacle to overcome that is getting the right people to work with you on your idea.

    The first problem was in getting them familiar with technologies that I was going to work with and the second problem was with getting the right talent at the right price. So to overcome this I started giving out student projects to work on technologies that I was planning to use and this would give me the opportunity to interact with the potential future employees. So far it has been going good got the right people and the other big factor which helped was the fact that there are a few people in goa who are willing to take risk by working on innovative projects for a unknown company (yet but this will change soon) rather then joining infosys and wipro etc for big fat packages but they will all be rewarded for their risk taking abilities and that is the sort of environment that am promoting in my startup. People with risk taking ability and ability to execute my vision will be rewarded handsomely in the long term.

    But this is not the easy way when you are mentoring students and holding a job and if mentoring is not a part of your 9 to 5 job then it is very very exhausting to do research and see if the project is on track do research about feasibility of the project and competitors if any at night and takes up most of the time during nights which you would normally spend sleeping or reading or relaxing or partying. But to get the bigger vision on track this are the sacrifices you have to make (it is not that bad as I make it sound but I wont know about it being bad as for me I had good company you know who you are so thank you for being there)

    This method does not work out always many of the students who had done their projects with me last year didn’t accept my offer and they decided to go with the other offers they got anyway all the best to them if all had not joined then I would have been in real trouble and very upset too. But then again hiring and firing is all part of the cycle if you want to stay in biz and want your biz to be a profitable one recently I fired a person didn’t make me feel good as that is the first person whom I have fired from their job in my startup two others have left but people joining and leaving is a vicious circle of staying ahead in this competitive world if you cant rise to the occasion you are out of here. But then again whether it is hiring or firing I do give a fair chance to them which is always important and the boss should decide does this person add value to the company or not and then it is a simple thing of calling and telling them whether they are in or out.

    Right people with the potential and skills and the right amount of motivation and enthusiasm to get it done is the biggest factor which can lead to a success story.

    As for me am happy that have found a bunch of very dedicated and hard working people but if they ever lose their zest then I guess i will give them a fair chance to get their groove back or else they get the boot. This human resource problem is there for a startup and a established firm so this problem is a perpetual one I guess and for me I dont worry much about this now as the core team that I found is good and I have faith in them so now with this issue in the wraps I move on to the next challenge which is the financial stress on a startup.

     

  • fritz Says -> weird dream last night
    6:07 pm on September 2, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    well yesterday night i had this really weird and crazy dream. In the dream I saw "myself standing somewhere and looking at a hill and on top of the hill there was this lovely beach with waves hitting the shores it was a eye pleasing sight"

    I guess you must think that I have gone cuckoo well you are not the only one thinking that right now (hahahaha) but I am stumped and cant make any sense of this dream this dream has got me wondering is my subconscious mind trying to tell me that there are some things that are impossible and that one of my pursuits might be one of them.

    I mean I have not seen the whole world but I dont think there is a beach on any hill or mountain anywhere in the world if such a wonder was there am sure I would have heard or read about it.

    Well maybe the work pressure is getting to me and I need some cooling off time before I start seeing myself feeding a unicorn or singing a duet with a mermaid (hmmm this might be reality hahahahaha I don’t mean the mermaid part I mean the me singing part)

     

  • fritz Says -> Mentally FUBAR and Physically FUBAR
    11:42 pm on August 10, 2007 | 2 Permalink | Reply
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    Well the first thing you must be asking is WTF is FUBAR well for all you people out there who don’t know what it is hmmm well I will tell you it stands for F****d Up Beyond All Repair.

    Why am I Mentally as well as Physically FUBAR you might ask well there is too many things on my plate right now with my ventures finally on the road and starting too many ventures at one shot is not a good idea and is very very taxing am really stressed out and I am beginning to feel that I have lost the ability to relax or in fact forgotten how to have fun all together. All the time I find myself working working working and then when I am not working I find myself thinking thinking thinking about the ventures and the pros and cons, marketing , financial forecasting , competitor analysis etc etc there is a constant battle going on in my head well that is all that I do now work think work think eat and sleep .

    Coming down with a mild attack of malaria gave me a much needed break from my actual 9 to 5 job (yes am stuck there till I can hand over and move on) The break had to be cut shot because you cant afford to relax when you are in a startup mode if it was just a break from my work then I would have taken a few days off and got paid for it but when you are the person in charge of a startup you worry about optimal use of the resources at your disposal before your startup is secure both financially and also in capturing the market share of the market that you are entering into.

    But the working during the day and monitoring and working on my strategies and ideas at night is a very very taxing ritual am actually cursing myself for not having the ability to walk away from something that I help build for two years and not worrying about the future of that entity and just concentrate on my own ventures but I guess am emotionally attached to my current job but now the question remains to be seen is for how long can I take it before I snap.

    And as if holding a 9 to 5 job working on two startups was not enough I am also mentoring 6 university projects with a group of around 24 people in total. Well all I can say to myself now is learn to relax and unwind asap otherwise you are headed to the mad house hahahahaha

    Well Maybe blogging might be one of the stress busters some of my other stress busters normally are Beer and Music. Music I still listen too but beer is not yet on the menu for me as am still on medication for recovery from malaria.

    Once I fully recover and am off the medication am back to beer gulping, potato chips munching , salad eating, music listening, restaurant hopping and constantly blogging hot blooded male and then will be a bit more relaxed but i guess the only time i can relax now is hmmmmmm never well why you ask well once this startups mature to sustainable businesses am moving onto the next challenge have already mentally sketched the blueprint for my next startup it’s in a totally different industry and all I can say is it is a very very challenging industry.

     

  • fritz Says -> well it is my badday today
    10:43 pm on July 23, 2007 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , office,

    Well it is my birthday and am 25 today
    today made me think about a lot of things
    all of them are listed below

    1)What if I live till i am 50?
    That means I have already lived half my lifetime (scary thought ain’t it)

    2)What have I done so far?
    well nothing that I wanted to do have not seen most of the places in the world,not been to disney land, not gone skiing or see snow or learn swimming(I have to get myself enrolled for the swimming classes),not started my own band (yep always wanted to start my own band),not tasted most of the cuisines in the world (yes am a foodie and a total sucker for pickles)

    3)Where is my life headed?
    this is a scary thought as have recently resigned the comfort of a paid job (to turn entrepreneur) well the job was going as far as I could push the company and it looks like I am the only one pushing a heavy load up a hill and was one of the main reasons for me to take the gamble with me and have a start the way I want it with my own startup.

    4)What do I do now?
    well my first priority is get my ventures on track and second is do some of the things that are there on my to do list. second thing is push myself more to meet the targets set by me.

    5)What have I accumulated in the last 25 years?
    well a good family,great friends don’t have any enemies(none yet if you are one leave me a comment and will get back to you to sort things out between us hahahaha),well I have a younger brother even though he is a bit too relaxed but has a good creative mind (I have to push him to achieve great things),a good education(yes I had great education I loved science from a young age and ended up graduating in a branch of science If I had not stopped I would have gone all the way to a Phd yep I would have been Dr Fritz D’souza ),have found a true calling in the tech world and really love my work and am looking forward to working with a bunch of people who are as excited as me about technology and am happy have found some of them to join me on my new venture.

    6)Well what do I have to accumulate in the next 25 years?
    A good person to share my old age with yep someone smart,funny,caring,passion for travel and passion for food(when I will start the hunt for that person I don’t know). Accumulate decent amount of worldly wealth (the normal stuff every hard working person wants a yacht,private jet,private island etc etc),See my younger brother reach great heights in the creative field (I would be the happiest person in the world when he says my name at the oscars during the acceptance speech well he has the potential but have to do something about his temper and attention span),well for quite sometime now my mom has been looking forward to seeing Las Vegas,Jerusalem, Florida and Rome have to send her to this places she too has a great passion for travel and I guess I have got that from her and the passion for food and technology from Dad.

    Well most of the things are achievable with a bit of good luck and lot of hard work I should be there.

     

  • fritz Says -> updating my blog on star date 15 july 2007
    1:17 am on July 16, 2007 | 2 Permalink | Reply
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    Well the last couple of weeks have been hectic. Have had no time to relax and put my feet up well today was a day with less tasks to complete and just plain lazy around and I just did that got some spare time off and checked out some of my friends blogs and commented on their posts.

    The last few weeks have been hectic as well as eventful in my life
    why you ask?
    well
    for one I quit my job yes yes I resigned from a nice 9 to 5 job (well it was a job it was not one of those cozy jobs where a person works from 9 to 5 goes home and at the beginning of the next month comes to collect the pay cheque for me the job was a lot more hectic then having my own venture)
    why you ask again?
    Well I suddenly got the bad uncontrollable itch of becoming a entrepreneur and so I did not with one venture but floating three ventures at a time yes yes I thought one would not be challenging enough so went ahead and started three :) yes if you are still in shock I said three ventures and more are in the pipeline but for the first year I just want to build this three up to become leaders in the sectors they are in and then move onto other challenges in other sectors.
    so the three ventures are in nascent stages now and will blog about them once the world is ready to know about them :) at present all I can say is one is local and will affect Goa and the other two ones have a global impact.

    Well what about the current company that I am working at since I did play a significant role in getting it on track (I would say I still have not yet made it reach all its goals and would have loved too continue to build it up but now I have a new challenge and would like to pursue that) so will continue to be on board till the new management takes over.

    Till I am totally out of the present employers company I am operating 4 ventures which is beginning to take its toll on me. I am in a totally f****d up state right now. physically and mentally tired need a vacation to revitalize myself but no time to take one :( and also cant afford one financially with me investing all my money in myself and also trying to raise more capital from friends first and then will try to raise some from the market (raising capital in india is a headache and will write a separate post on that later).

    the other fun thing I did today other then reading friends outstanding blog posts and commenting is did some good old fashion reading of a paperbook the book is Business Miscellany (it is a gem of a book and very informative) also went through the latest issue of business world and will read the latest issue of business today tomorrow as my copy is borrowed by a friend and will be getting it back tomorrow. Well normally also I do read a lot at nights I scour through around 28 sources of tech and biz news with all this information I consume in a day maybe that explains why I get only a few hours of sleep daily. But reading online and reading a physical book is totally different experience and I prefer a book to a computer screen anytime.

    Once I finish with this I have more books which I have bought from pune during my pune trip and have not had time to go through them yet but now will make it a point to read atleast half an hour from one of the books daily.

    Also the other things that I have been doing is putting together all the paperwork necessary for the new ventures and all I can say is it is boring and a total turn off to an entrepreneur it is a troublesome affair but I guess everyone has to go through it and makes the person wiser about the working of the govt departments and how to handle all the different officers whose sole purpose of holding govt jobs is not to do any work and occupy the chairs and get paid from the govt treasury.Well the paperwork is going on and hopefully will soon be complete.

    It will be difficult to get the blog updated frequently now but whenever I get time will write a few words about my journey through life and the new ventures.

     

  • fritz Says -> HR policy of a firm should be?
    1:43 pm on November 28, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , office

    The HR policy of a company should be focused more on happy employees? or loyal employees? all this time I have been focusing on policy for making the firms HR policy more employee friendly but from what has transpired in the last few weeks I have realized that the focus of the HR policy should be to make loyal employees . Happy employees don’t necessarily mean loyal employees it is good to have loyal employees as it is easy for the company to recover the money invested in building their skills and providing them with the much needed exposure to the industry.

    when you have stats which say that a company spends close to 25k Rs per employee the company should be able to recover this cost and the only way to do this is to retain the good employees with potential for a longer duration. so am still working on a HR policy for a way to create a policy which will help in retaining talent and also in loyalty of employees towards the company which in turn helps the company achieve bigger goals.

    If the company is stuck in the loop of recruiting and training people and then loosing talent the company wont be able to achieve bigger goals so now the focussing is to secure the future of the company by investing in loyal employees who are good and have the potential to become great.

     

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