Are you making a chindogu?

Well if you are a internet startup, It's difficult to know if you are making a chindogu. While a quick feedback from you friends might help to figure out if you are making one,but it doesn't guarantee you are not.If you believe you are not making one and your friends say so, the only way to figure out is implement your idea and let the people decide if it's not one.


what's a chindogu?, Wikipedia says

Chindōgu (珍道具) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions, would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever


image:http://www.chindogu.com/chindogu/chin3.html

Scaling, One problem I wanna have

Scaling is one problem I'd love to have sometime soon, I know that this is the one thing that every internet entrepreneur dreams of achieving. Have a look at the number of web startups adding up everyday and you will know why most of them don't get to have that problem.

If you are not having a scaling problem even after a few of months of release, chances are that
1. You are not providing enough value addition.
(or)
2. Your product is too disruptive and you don't know how to cross the chasm.
(or)
3. You haven't done the right kind of marketing.

Now you know,most of the internet startups fail for the first reason.I'd like to believe that we don't have first two problem's ,coz snizr has got enough value addition and is not disruptive,now all we need to worry about is marketing.

With snizr scheduled to release in the last week of September, we have crossed our finger's and we wanna have the scaling problem.

Maslow's hierarchy

Today I was discussing the mobile market in India with some of my colleagues, and during the discussion I told them that I really don't need a mobile phone, right now I have a I-mate JAMA and am thinking of moving to Iphone 3G the very moment it's here in India.

"Logically" speaking, I don't need a PDA and I don't need any of the features of 3G, yet I am thinking about buying Iphone,This is what makes me think and get amused of the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and how people make wonders by making their products climb up the hierarchy.



Image: http://businessballs.com

Double or Nothing

Man I love this book!!

Building remarkable products

A remarkable product is something that's worth making a remark,something that makes it easy to strike conversations among customers,make meaning for them,solve a bugging problem and inspire awe.

Yesterday I watched the hindi movie Taare Zameen par,it had all the traits of a remarkable product.I heard people telling me that they could identify one of their child with the character Ishaan awasthi at some point or the other.The movie provided a point of view and a novel one for bollywood.It pointed a serious problem and the solution for the problem too,the other important thing is,it is one of those David Vs Goliath stories and people love these stories.It is a truly remarkable product.

Most exciting time in India

It might be the most exciting time to stay in India,only next to the freedom struggle times for me but for businesses sure,it's the most exciting time to stay in here.Stock indices rising to the unprecedented highs,rupee ascending dollar,genuine businesses flourishing,it feels like heavens are singing for this country,now it seems so true that

There hasn't been a better time to start a business with no money

What do you people say?

Sustainable growth for software

I got quite intrigued by the very question,Is software growth going to sustain for a long period? Now,I'm not aware of the subtleties of economical growth but as far as I think the answer is No.IT companies are quite aggressively developing software and after a couple of years I'm not sure if people would need any better software for years to come.



A changethis manifesto The six laws of the new software reads

....., Most home consumers have all the software they will ever need, and most companies out there already have all the basic technologies they
need to successfully compete right now.

The trait of software is,it does not depreciate or wear and tear like a car or a pair of NIKE does,it continues to serve your purpose and there's no need to upgrade it if it's serving your need aptly,unless you encounter a bug.Now when there's no need,there's not going to be any demand and thus no growth.

Image:stockxpert.com

Innovating Business models

Conventional wisdom has always told people not to innovate on their business models,many don't.I really don't know if Radiohead proved the cliché wrong or it's just an exception.



The english Rock band Radiohead had released their new album In Rainbows with a new pay-what-you-want and download MP3 kind of distribution,though this is not a new concept for Music industry where small abstruse artists are already using this, but it's the first time that a big group like Radiohead has dared to pull this off. Though ran a risk of getting paid nothing as users could choose to pay £ 0.00 and download the entire album(like me),the band was BIG enough to take the risk.It was a sure thing(atleast for me) that it's going to be a big hit and the news is as of today Radiohead sold over 1.2 million albums, $8 each.

Is strengthening Rupee a problem for India?

Rupee is strengthening,the vigor is quite obvious in the alarming bells of corporate India and in the words of Mr.P.Chidamabaram,Finance Minister

level of appreciation of the rupee was well beyond comfort levels......
I suppose the central bank will intervene..

he said.

The rupee has gained more than 11 per cent against the dollar this year, and this month strengthened past 40 per dollar for the first time since May 1998 and today its trading for 0.25220US $,but is strengthening rupee a drawback for India?Reserve Bank of India is trying hard to keep the rupee down,but should RBI do that?




Experts at wharton and elsewhere say that though the rise in Rupee is a problem for companies like Wipro and TCS who earn most of their revenues in dollar,it also creates opportunities for Indian firms by making it less expensive for them to acquire overseas assets.

Jeremy seigal says
"My feeling is no, they should not intervene" (here they implies to Indian Governement)

but the RBI has bought around 28.4 billion in dollars between January and May 2007 to bring the inflation down,they shouldn't do it,it's not possible to keep the value of rupee down for a longtime and it's not good for a growing economy,Companies in India should now stop whining about acquiring dollar and possible decrease in outsourcing,but should exploit the advantage of rupee inflation and create more jobs, embrace new business models and concentrate on the high end work with a higher payoff.

photo: istockphoto.com

johanna cardona?

Porn is one thing that sells like crazy,and yeah the self made "love" videos too,there's lot to learn from why porn sells and how could one liken its sales for their product.

Ok,but who is johanna cardona? A signaller who used to work with channel TB3 in Barranquilla Colombia until recently and the latest of the self-made sex video victims.

If you have a look at today's technorati top searches she appears twice!( Coz she is also joanna and johana)

Honda recalls .18m civic sedans!

Japanese auto giant Honda recalled 1,82,756 Civics manufactured between March 24, 2005 and February 8, 2007, the vehicles had a faulty wheel-bearing seal that may leak and cause malfunctioning of brake switch thereby preventing illumination of lights on braking,If they do a recall in India apparently it'd be a second instance in last three months as HSCI had recalled 2,310 Accords in July.Read the article on today's business standard

Woot

I got to know about this website www.woot.com through Seth Godin's All Marketers are liars,woot sells products online at discounted rates and no it's not another wannabe amazon,coz it sell's only one product a day and woot already has overe 800,000 registered members sold over 1,000,000 item's.

This is how the company describe's itself

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it's taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 – by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we're still the lovable scamps we've always been. But don't take our word for it

While everything looks awesome,there is some criticism on woot's customer service as it doesn't provide any,woot's info page on wikipedia says

Woot does not have a satisfaction guaranteed return policy, they only accept returns of defective products. "If you buy something you don't end up liking or you have what marketing people call 'buyer's remorse,' sell it on eBay. It's likely you'll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn't work, find out what you're doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it's probably your fault. Google your problem, or come back to that product discussion in our community and ask other people if they know. Try to call the manufacturer and ask if they know

Declined Music sales

People thought that declined CD sales will actually be compensated by the digital download's,though the digital downloads(sales) have increased significantly,the e-marketer figure's reveal that the average price per purchase has dropped,the main reason behind the plummet being the large number of consumers buying only single MP3 downloads and the decrease in CD sales,30% from 2000 to 2005 is too steep for the digital downloads to alleviate.

With growing music piracy I wonder Music Sales in India might have plummeted more!

Ford's paradox

7 years before Kevin Baker wrote this article for The Industry Standard,where in kevin says Unions are the solution for the Ford's paradox,Now you might have already read about the Ford's Paradox,for those who didn't let me give a briefing about the phenomenon.

Henry ford slashed the prices of the Model-T almost by half from $825 in 1909 to $440 by 1914 by creating swift assembly lines,In those days $440 was a huge amount for a typical American.Ford realized that in a modern, mass-market economy the people who make stuff are the people who buy stuff and he took a really bold step which was perceived crazy and "distinctly utopian" and "foredoomed to failure", he doubled the daily wage of his 13,600 workers to $5,Ford said"he right price is the lowest price an article can be steadily sold for. The right wage is the highest wage the purchaser can steadily pay", he increased the disposable income of workers and reduced the working hours so that they have more time and money to spend on goods,cars in specific,this act of his increased loyalty in workers and there's no count as how many workers spent their disposable income buying Model-T cars.

Now we arrive at an important issue more specifically a paradox,In a stagnant economy no single business can dare to make the first move toward increasing wages, the market as a whole cannot raise wages,If the market as a whole does not raise wages, no single business can prosper in the long run,because people have decreasingly less disposable incomes to actually buy products,without businesses running how can an economy actually move forward.

Sprint Nextel fired customers??

We've always learned that we should strive to retain our customers no matter what, and it sounds so stupid that Sprint Nextel actually fired their customers,why would anybody fire their customers at all,well here Sprint might have done a good thing,Sprint had few customers calling up very frequently with queries on billing and service,they were draining out the support resources,and Nextel fired them,I agree with mike as to why firing some of these customers is a good idea.

Mike's three reasons why one should fire some of these customers

1. All your other good customers will love you more
2. Business is a FOR-profit endeavor for a reason
3. Pushing back brings respect and value

See the Firing letter sentout by sprint

Why do people buy?

This kind of makes a really good question for every marketer and business man,I was reading this book "How to sell yourself" by Joe Girard, he confronts us to this question,Why do people buy, do they buy to possess a thing or something else,actually no body buys a thing to possess it per se,rather people buy things coz they are influenced by their emotions to buy,people buy coz they "need" comfort or social status or to solve their problems.

Now this makes another good question,how to make people buy?

Customer support

Everybody knows that really good customer support is vital for the success of a business.Products,usually software have loads of bugs,customer could still bear with the bugs if fix is provided on a need basis,i.e., if the company provides good support for the product,the worst of the things one could do,is providing no support.

I have a problem with my I-mate JAMA I bought few days ago,when I turn on the speaker for the phone,the person on the other end hear's an awful echo of his own,I wanted to enquire about this with the Live-tech support on their website and was astonished to find the tech-support is offline at 1:01 PM!! I wonder If there is any support at all.

Why I think Monster's Video Resume` will not work

Monster India has launched Video Resume` service and it supports every format of video that youtube does,all you need to do is shoot a pitch of yours on a digital camera and upload it to monster and Voila, wov that's great ,but what I wonder is what kinda value addition does the monster offer to their customers through this? very little or none, I guess, coz there'll not many people actually using this service,coz people have stage fear, they have fear for camera,people run away from fear,so how are they gonna manage to do this and also If they are targetting media industry for this,still I'm not sure if it'll work.

Before thinking of a product or service,one should actually figure out the amount of value addition you're gonna offer a customer and this is where value innovation comes into picture.

Why clothes matter?

Clothes, do matter, the way you dress kindof convey's what you are and not just this, when I read this post on trizle,I thought " Oh, yes, this is true,I've noticed the same damn thing,Dressing good actually improves your performance and boosts ya confidence",

According to Harvard Medical’s Alice Domar

Although it may seem counterintuitive to slip into the skirt you save for special occasions, it helps to look in the mirror and see an energizing image — not a deflating one that confirms and reinforces your internal state.

Dressing for success will give you a big mental boost every time you catch sight of your reflection throughout the day.

Trizle's El rule of Thumb says

*If you dress sloppy, you’ll likely do sloppy work.
*If you dress kick-ass, you’ll likely do kick-ass work.

Unobvious problem

Last weekend I was reading this book My startup Life by casnocha ( I used to pronounce it kas-no-cha but it is kas-no-ka ),He says that you can't persuade a prospect to buy a soultion for an un-obvious problem and I agree with him,you just can't goto a prospect and tell him "Dude you know you've got this problem, and you should buy my super duper product to solve your problem", coz he's not going to buy it, on the other side,you might loose credibility,if any,I donno,may be you can get them to buy ya solution(product),If they've consulted you to find out that problem they are oblivious of.