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Latest Updates: startup RSS

  • fritz Says -> bye bye 2007
    1:49 pm on January 1, 2008 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , startup

    Well the passing year has bought its share of good and bad experiences in my life they are as follows lets start with the
    bad things

    • heart break
    • bad health (malaria,heart attack,cold,fever, food poisoning etc etc)
    • killed the company I spent 2 years building it was very hard but had to do it

    good things

    • frizilla
    • good team for frizilla
    • some of my ideas finally took off
    • saw some of the work which brother has a capability to deliver am impressed with it
    • made some new friends
    • friends chipping in to help with my own venture (thank you guys)
    • brother finally found a calling and put his head down and got his first product finally ready the launch of it is next year

    This is my last post for this year so happy new year to everyone :)

     

  • fritz Says -> can it be done ?
    11:43 am on November 12, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , startup

    For the past couple of days there is only one question on my mind is it possible to build a company worth 1 billion dollar in 3 years yes 36 months now don’t ask me how I got the magic numbers of 1 billion or 3 years but I guess the reason for such crazy questions going in my mind are the number of interviews I see on TV of entrepreneurs and new generation of business leaders in the making taking over family run businesses in India after their studies saying that their targets are to take their family businesses past the 1 billion dollar mark and make the business more professionally managed and not family run.

    Hmm all this has certainly got me thinking is it possible to build a company in a small place like goa worth a billion dollars in 3 years well maybe it is but has it been done in goa not yet anyway I don’t think it has been done in india also yet but one place where it has been done is US and in a place like silicon valley anything is possible for example in recent history youtube.com was founded in February 2005 and in less then 3 years was sold to Google for more then a billion dollar in Google cash and stock.

    So the conclusion is if you target a global audience with your innovation then it is definitely possible to build a company worth a billion dollars in 3 years the vital factors to achieving the goal being innovation,usefulness and global audience but if you are building a small entity with focus on smaller geography then it is not possible unless maybe you start digging in your backyard and you strike oil or a diamond mine hahahahahaha :) as they say for striking it reach you don’t just require smart work but also a bit of luck :)

     

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

    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 -> facebook the 15 billion dollar social network
    4:04 pm on October 29, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , startup

    Yes facebook is valued at that much when microsoft picked up a 1.6 percent stake in facebook for $240 million it gave facebook the valuation of 15 billion read this for more info.

    Well if this is not a sign of a bubble building then what is as far as investing $240 million in a company goes for Microsoft well it is no big deal for a company who is having close to $6.6 billion in cash reserves but the question remains why would microsoft give out such a huge amount for such a small stake in a company which does not have a solid business model yet the rumors floating around is that facebook is planning to monetize its user base by launching its own ad network. Well yes good that is very good but for how long can a social network claim they have a active user base well the normal trend now is where your friends move you move.

    For example I was on hi5 then moved to orkut and now am very active on facebook and orkut.  I don’t even bother much to login to my hi5 account to check it as my friends are no longer active on that so what does facebook believe will not give another startup an opportunity  to come and swoop  all its users to their network  will facebook be able to maintain its user base after all it is a plain vanilla social network it is no  yahoo or google where there is not just one thing but many things that can be done with one id you get mail, social network,shopping etc etc yes facebook has opened their platform to third party developers but so are other networks.

    I am really struggling to understand why Microsoft would value facebook so much when myspace is termed as the king of social networks and I recently read somewhere that it is valued at $10 billion  now when the market leader is valued at $10 billion and and upcoming star is valued at $15 billion based on factors like opening up the network to outside developers which other competitors can easily copy and are copying and opening to third party developers.

    Well bubble or no it is good news for all tech entrepreneurs as it shows that the market is right for tech ideas and the VC’s are willing to invest in any ideas whether they are built on good business models or no.

    As of now it looks like millions of users is more important then having a good business model

     

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

    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 -> gold rush for alternative source of fuel
    10:57 pm on October 9, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , startup

    Well the global fuel market is worth trillion dollars yep that is what some of the VC’s are claiming and I guess they are right and fuel affects every aspect of our life one way or another.
    The VC’s are not just crazy about alternate source of fuel they are in the hunt of clean fuel and which is also renewable. So lots of VC funds are pumped into this technologies right now there are various research being carried out in this issues and how we can achieve clean renewable source of fuel.

    Well (this) is a good place to know a bit about how most of the money is being spent on ethanol and the other segment which attracts equal interest and investment is solar energy.
    I used to be interested a lot in solar energy a lot when I was young and didn’t have the scientific know how on how the solar panels worked those small solar powerered calculators were a big mystery to me and kept me involved for quite some time have broken a few of them too to see the shiny display panels the enthusiasm lasted till I learnt about it and that is when I lost interest why you ask? Well it was simple you could not do much with it thats why it was good for small small projects and you could not do anything large scale with it and plus once realized the space constraints and how it impacted the power generating capability and also a few other shortcomings.

    The other research which has caught my fancy is the ethanol space now that is something that I might be able to do something in am looking at the opportunities on how I can be a part of this revolution. I feel the energy crisis might be better averted if we can perfect the cold fusion technology and that would give us enough energy not to worry about anything but then again we should see that all this energy which is getting created should not go into creating a whole different problem of pollution and global warming that is why For the sake of everyone and the future generations I hope some one finds a good cheap, clean and renewable source of energy or as I would call it someone should achieve the 3 C’s (clean, cheap and continuous) in their product for the good of all of us in the long run.

     

  • fritz Says -> Inspired by J. P. Morgan
    10:51 pm on October 4, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , startup

    Normally at night when I channel surf when from one network to another till I settle on VH1 or something else which I find interesting the other night I was channel surfing and I landed up on the History channel and the one show that I love there is the Biographies well that night they were showing the biography of one Mr John Pierpont Morgan the only reason I stuck to watching the entire show was the fact that I had heard about Morgan Stanley and I knew that the Morgan in J. P. Morgan was somehow connected to that and since it is financial I thought I will find something interesting and interesting indeed it was.

    The fascinating part was how he built the 1st ever billion dollar company in the world by acquiring small steel companies and some big ones like Carnegie steel and then combining them to form the United States Steel Corporation In this deal what I found fascinating was the fact that when Mr Morgan went to meet the owner of Carnegie steel Mr Andrew Carnegie he was given on a piece of paper the sum that Mr Carnegie wanted for his firm on the piece of paper was the written the sum $480 Million and to this Mr Morgan said Done and that was it no due diligence, no evaluation, no lawyers, no power brokers that is plain old you tell me the price and I say yes or no the risk taking and the appetite of the Wild Wild West is not there in biz anymore just see the media circus around the Tata-Corrus deal and the arcelor-mittal deal the evaluations, market speculations etc etc where as the the biz deal between Mr Morgan and Mr Carnegie was between a buyer and a seller but in the modern world I guess this old fashion ways wont probably work. But then again Mr Morgan had another famous saying "If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it" with this attitude I guess he tackled the biz world too.

    For anyone who wants to someday build a billion dollar enterprise Mr Morgan is the perfect role model during the rough days the sort of person who could twist the govt to their benefit and also predict the movement of the markets and also place wise bets over what will be successful.

    To know a bit about this amazing biz figure check out (this) but this has just the minimum the other details which were shown in the history channels episode of biography are not there like what is corsair pact etc

    The people who inspire me from the biz world are Bill Gates, Steve Job, Richard Branson and now Mr J. P. Morgan there will surely be more and more people added to this list as I explore the vast jungle of corporate biographies of people who build empires with vision and hard work and how it all began with a small dream and a small startup.

     

  • fritz Says -> online collaboration heating up
    12:08 am on October 4, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , startup

    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 -> scrabble goes online and is very addictive try it out
    11:39 pm on October 2, 2007 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , startup

    Well as children am sure most of us have played scrabble with our siblings and parents well if I certainly did and also with one of my uncle who used to cheat and make up words which were not there at all in the english dictionary.

    Well today came across scrabulous and online scrabble game developed by two indian brothers well first of all the game is highly addictive. I signed up for it the sign up process is a bit troublesome there is Ajax used but not to its web 2.0 potential but after that just entered a game and created a table and was soon joined by a fellow player for a game it was nice but then I wanted more but then again I had to get back to work so could not play but will head there anytime I want break from my work and some exercise to challenge my grey cells.

    Scrabulous is a venture undertaken by two brothers they are claiming that they have 5 million page views a month which is remarkable and the brothers do plan to launch the game in many international versions and also adding more games to their offering. well good luck to them it is a great offering and I think they are cool enough to pull off more success stories in online gaming space. the website is built on php and the actual game is built as a java applet this is what i didn’t like it was a flash widget then it would have been good but java applets now are considered to be irritating but then again am sure they must be making plans to migrate it to either a pure ajax app or a flash based one. The site also has a basic social networking features like buddy list etc but overall it is a great game and very innovative it is good to see young Indians like this keeping the innovation alive and now as they have released this as a facebook app they will be reaching a much bigger target audience which is good for them.

    Do try it out if you liked scrabble am sure you will like this online avatar of the game. am waiting to see what more good games the brothers can come up with one of them is still in college and is 21 years old.

     

  • fritz Says -> startup pains release 0.3- funding woos
    11:54 pm on October 1, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , startup

    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.

     

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