5 Myths for a Technology Start Up (Before Starting the Journey)

Myths are common in any sector, similarly, there are myths with regards to a Start-Up. Below are five of them I would like to bust today.

1) Perfect Product: There is nothing called a perfect product. Product development, whether it is a software or a platform or an app is an incremental process.  There will be bugs and there will be further developments. So, you need to figure out what is the minimum development that you should do to sell your product. (Even giving it for free is selling because you are asking the user to invest his time; and time is money). So, the first step in every entrepreneur's journey is figuring out this Minimum Viable Product (MVP). I will talk about figuring out this MVP later. So, figure out your MVP, complete your development (its ok to have some bugs, you can tackle them on the go), launch your product. Don't delay.

2) You should start marketing only after you launch: Wrong! This is one of the very frequent mistakes that an entrepreneur makes. You should start marketing along with your product development, even if your product is not ready. I would say you should market even before product development. Today, marketing not just trade shows, events, advertisements. Marketing has a whole new definition. There are various new marketing techniques under Digital Media Marketing which include Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing etc (apparently, everyone who has a Facebook page is a expert in this. Don't fall for them). 

Anyway, Marketing is a slow tool with  a very few exceptions. It needs time to grow. So, if you start your marketing after your product development then you wouldn't have any customers right after product development and this will be a very frustrating scenario. Entrepreneur and his team get demotivated during this time. The right way is to start marketing right from your start. Make a marketing plan along with your product development plan. Embed marketing in your product development. How to do that is a topic for another day. 

Golden rule - Engage, Empower and Embed. 

Engage with your prospect customer, Make sure your product Empowers the customer, Embed their feedback in your product.

3) Start Up will make me rich: Success of a start-up should ideally make the entrepreneur rich. I still call it a myth, because it is very subjective. There are many entrepreneurs who are not rich even after a few rounds of funding. So, it is really important for an entrepreneur to have the financial sense. Of course, its never too late to learn. Everyone, compares funding to success. This is not true, there are many start ups, which are funded and then closed down. So, you need to understand this for your own good. Very prudent financial planning is necessary for a start up.

4) Great product doesn't guarantee Success: Having a great product is wonderful. But it doesn't guarantee success. There are many great products which were not successful for various reasons. You should also concentrate on usability, user friendliness, dependability etc while developing of the product. Your product might solve a very small problem, but you can still be successful because of how dependent your users are on your product. So, don't stop just at the product, make it usable, make it dependable, reliable and more importantly simple. Someone once told me, if you cant explain your product to your customer in 2 minutes, then you don't have a product. This might not always be true but the principle is still valid.

5) Instant Success: People expect start ups to be instantly successful. This is not true in most cases. For many, it takes years to be successful. You might have to change your model, pivot, shuffle etc. It needs all the time that you have. You will have to postpone your dreams, trips, cars, houses, marriages etc. So, start up is not something you should do if you are looking to enjoy life. It is something that you should do for your passion. I personally like to call it a lifestyle rather than just a business. You are lucky if you are instantly successful, if not embrace the journey; learn, implement and try to be successful. Start up is not just luck, it is hard work, persistence, trust, dedication, learning and it is many things. 
I will end this by saying  "Fortune favors the brave". 

There are many other myths. I would like to hear about them from you. So, please free to post your experiences, knowledge, learnings, comments etc in the comments section below.

E-Commerce

Lately, I have been using various E-commerce websites to buy stuff. I think this is true with many of us.

There are some sites, where you would love to go back to and some where you don't want to unless critically forced to.

Here I am, just trying to rate this by telling how likely or unlikely, I am to go back there.

Online Shopping:
Amazon: Very Likey
Ebay: Likely
Flipkart: May be 
Snapdeal: Unlikely
Askmebaazar: Very very Unlikely

Furniture: (Never tried) - will try and update
Fab furnish:
Urban Ladder:
Pepperfry: 

Fashion:
Jabong: Highly Unlikely
Myntra: Unlikely
Fashion and You: Likely

Food:
Tinyowl: Unlikely (due to bad service) - but awesome app, no denying that
Foodpanda: Likely
Tastykhana: Unlikely

This made us think, and we thought online teaching and learning has a very good scope in improving the educational infrastructure and could deliver training and courses to unreachable areas and that too at a cheaper cost. So, we started www.learnwithguru.com, which helps teachers conduct online tests and online courses very easily. 
Also, considering that there are not many tech savvy teachers, we associate with them and take over the technical stuff into our hands, so that they can concentrate only on teaching. Save time by conducting online tests and providing online courses and revision classes.

Education:
LearnwithGuru
Udemy - Open platform
Wiziq - Open platform

View from my Hotel Room - Vung Tau, Vietnam

Guilty of editing the picture in my mobile. Still the view was awesome. This was a few months back, just felt like posting it.

Section 66 A of Information Technology Act

Indian Constitutional Reference:

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution protects certain rights including freedom of speech and expression with reasonable restrictions.

According to Article 358 of the Indian Constitution, when a proclamation of national emergency is made the six fundamental rights under article 19 are automatically suspended.

But the 44 th Amendment Act of 1958 restricted the scope of Article 358 by restricting its applicability only when emergency is proclaimed on the ground of war or external aggression.

Section 66 A of IT Act states that any person who sends by means of a computer resource or communication device any information that was grossly offensive or has a menacing character could be punished with imprisonment for a maximum term of three years, besides imposition of appropriate fine.

Argument:

Can we really say that Section 66 A can be termed as a reasonable restriction for Article 19? or are we in the state of emergency proclaimed on the ground of war or external aggression?

Firstly, usage of subjective terms like "grossly offensive" and "menacing character" to define such an important article makes it very susceptible for misuse by our administration, politicians, wealthy and police. Also, things which are offensive to a person may be acceptable to other, which makes this further debatable.

Furthurmore, the constitutional validity of the article is being widely discussed and is still pending with the Supreme Court. Government tried to support the act with various explanations like "saying misuse of law isn't strong enough reason to scrap or amend it" or "an advisory has been issued to the Chief Secretaries and DGP's of all States and UTs.The advisory asks State governments not to allow the police to make arrests under Section 66A of the IT Act without prior approval from an officer not below the rank of Inspector General of Police in the metropolitan cities or Deputy Commissioner of Police or Superintendent of Police at the district level". Also the Government tried to justify the legality of the act by comparing it with Section 127 of the UK communication act.

 

Comparing the act with another act in UK doesnt really justify the act itself. Moreover, when the said act in UK was widely criticized by the House of Lords. Our Constitution was framed by taking references from various other constitutions in the world. As outlined by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in this context, "The only new things if there can be any, in a constitution framed so late in the day are the variations made to remove the faults and to accommodate it to the needs of the country." (Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol VII p (35-38)). In such a case, making an act in lines with an act in UK which was widely criticized by its own House of Lords is clearly a risk to the idea of the formation Indian Constitution itself.

This law is similar to the laws made by the Imperial British Government in India in the Pre-Independence era to curb the nationalist movement. Would the National Leaders, framers of our Constitution or we ourselves would have accepted a similar law if it was passed by the Colonial Government in India before 1947? Six decades after Independence are we going back to those days? During the colonial rule news papers, pamphlets, journals, public meetings are the main routes for the speech and expression, propagation of nationalism by the nationalists. In this era, social media is an additional route which is more powerful than any of the above means. Restricting it through Section 66 A also makes it almost impossible for people to criticize politicians or expose corruption. This is surely against our values of liberty and democracy.

In a way this can even restrict the freedom of press. Are we trying to go to such a state after all these days and struggles? If we continue in these lines we will slowly retreat to our earlier days of colonial policies but by our own people.

Another perspective:

Some argue "Indian National movement is the only movement where the broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of position was successfully practiced; where state power was not seized through one movement of revolution, but through prolonged popular struggle on political, moral and ideological level; where counter hegemony was built up over the years."
But the social media with full freedom, can try to bring the radical social change in a modern liberal democracy, as described by Gramsci which involved more than anything developing a strong and dynamic culture people capable of establishing the necessary institutions for a subversion of hegemony. For such a state social media can be a means, is this what our Government is trying to avoid?

As a democracy, if these dynamic changes are what the people want then then Government shouldn't try to undermine them, people should be given the choice.

Relief:

Atleast we can take respite from the stand taken by the Supreme Court in the dismissal of a PIL by Advocate M. L. Sharma seeking intervention by the court in directing the Election Commission to curb hate speeches (debatable decision), instills the confidence that we haven't lost this war for our freedom of speech and expression yet.


Disclaimer: This post doesn't criticize anyone, it is just an opinion and facts drawn from various sources.

Took an IQ test yesterday

Free-IQTest.net - IQ Test

SMILEY MOON

Top left is Venus, Top right is Jupiter, Bottom center is moon

Today we(me, kishu, phani) were going to atm(taramani guest house) on our way i saw this wonderful and astounding scene..Later after coming to room a friend(phani) sent me a link about this. Which says ""In the last week in November and the first week of December 2008, the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, will be close together in the evening sky, forming a spectacular double. The two are closest together on Monday December 1st. On the same night the Crescent Moon will appear just beneath them, forming a “Smiley Face”

Mumbai

The inhumane killing spree went on in Mumbai struck everyone by shock and terror. 40 terrorists, divided into batches of 5, attacked(raided) Mumbai(India) in an most unexpected fashion, killing people and taking hostages. Then police and Indian military took control and launched counter attacks. The pictures of gunmen killing people, bloodshed, army wandering the streets etc..makes us wonder what the fuck is this? Is this war?yes, it is war and only the other side is attacking and we are just counter attacking those.
We all know that people who attacked are only dummies, we also know where the roots to this war are and who is nurturing these forces. "To kill a tree we have to uproot it." Cutting the branches won't help. Isn't it the same reason quoted by US and the allies to attack Afghan and Iraq? I know unlike those nations we don't believe in vengeance. We trust in peace and non-violence, after all that is what we preached and that is how we earned our independence. But this shouldn't come out as inability and cowardliness. If we are silent even after this atrocious attack we risk our fame in the world. This attack (holding foreign nationals as hostages) is to show the world that we lack security. This attack damages not only our tourism and sports industries but also many other industries are at stake. We must show the world that we are not going to be bullied any further. Lets warn "Stop nurturing those organizations otherwise we will make you." Our intelligence even have proofs that the arms for this attack are supplied by them. The prestige of India is at stake now.