Two Principles and a Learning

This is a quick posting. Because I have something to share and because I just havent posted for so long.
Two Principles that I believe are good to follow and would have signficant affect on success or failure of person/organisation

• First things first (prioritize) - assuming that you are smart enough to figure out what to do if we can do it in the right order, it could lead to a dramatic increase in output. Let me take a very simple personal example. Our office starts at 9:15 am. Everybody is supposed to be there. But for me there is this habit of reading newspaper every morning which takes half an hour and given that I have been sleeping late, I kept on getting late by 15 min and used to hate it. Made a simple change. Now I go to office and read the newspaper
• The ones who survive are neither the smartest nor the strongest but the ones most adaptable to change (obviously Charles Darwin). I believe this is true for all success stories

A Corporate Learning: "All processes in an organization will evolve and change". Which leads you to practical things:

• Keep reviewing processes as you grow
• Don’t try to make the most comprehensive process possible for starters. Start with the means (read time) you have to build and manage the process. Just get off the ground

takecarez,

Harpreet

Learning No. 13: Drawing the line

This takes on from an earlier post on how time becomes crucial when starting up. You have 24 hours on your hands.

Meeting new people (and marketing there) is probably the most critical part of a startup. Potential customers, investors, advisors, accountant and in general people who can help. One great place for doing so are conferences. The dilemma comes in when the conference ends and you come back home with a stack of cards to follow up with (50 - 100 if you are a networking person). So what do you do then? You see the loads of work that tomorrow shall bring and the backlog that is definitely there because you went to this conference. You met some nice people, some big hot shots, a few customers who were really interested in what you are doing, some media guys who could give you coverage and some people you just want to forget.

The hardest to write mails to are the customers because you shall have to customize your offerings and think clearly about what you write. But even though the lure of the easy mails saying 'It was a pleasure meeting you' beckons, save them for the last (but make sure you do it the second night). Write to potential customers first and then schedule meetings with the few hot shots you met (lunch, coffee, dinner) and the media guys. See who you can find on LinkedIn.

There is loads you could do. Know where to draw a line. Don't go overboard and forget that your baby beckons.

Learning No. 12: Website

In layman’s language, here are a few basic things that I think one should keep in mind while building a website:

• Make a platform which is scalable/sustainable
• Make the platform integrable with third parties. The efforts of mass will always be more than 10 people in your company
• Apply extra effort on interaction design
• Keep the offerings simple and focused on the core values that you provideMake the website available on various devices online, offline, phone etc and for each device provide a different set of chosen features which gel with its use

Learning No. 11 : Building a brand

Suppose your company is going through a tough time. Think of an environment when everything is going great. Think of all the good things happening. Now use that vision to build your brand, to make the changes that will take you from your current place to the strong one. Create a perception of a strong brand and a stronger brand will also come following. E.g.: Infosys in order to revamp its image among employees in 2003-04 recruited foreign interns. This created a belief that people even from abroad wanted to be at Infosys!!

Learning No. 10

Evaluate your idea on this framework. I believe it is better than the popular MBA ones. This at an overall level answers the question: what is the pain you are solving and is the pain big enough to push users to use what you are offering?

• How did they do it earlier?
• How will they do it now?
• How much would they have to change?
• How much would it cost?

Learning No. 9

This one is a ‘big learning’. Why? Because this is a compilation of learning’s, those which have already cost me a lot of time and energy. I hope I can learn, improve and implement these aspects as I go forward.

An identification of a leader is to get the best out of people. And I recently failed here. I think the problem lies in not analyzing why you need people, which translates into not making people aware of their roles before joining and finally into no clear responsibilities for them. And this leads to not getting the best out of them. So, assign clear responsibilities and decision powers.

Secondly, be sure that the work you are assigning to people under you is relevant and that will ensure that their efforts do not go waste. Wasted efforts breed negativity in a team and show lack of value for someone else time.

Finally, here is something that I already knew and still faltered on. Trust people, but also spare the time to follow up that trust.

Learning No. 8

There are so many things that build up your life like browsing through websites, playing, meeting friends, clicking photographs, opening a bank account and others such small things.

So you have a job!!
When you are employed with someone, you do all of these on your employers time. Even if you spend a day browsing or playing, you are being paid for it at the end of the month.

What happens when you are working for yourself?
Half of the useless things go out of the window and you optimize on the rest. Now this may mean not going to a concert, playing less and working more. Yes, you gain the independence you always craved for, but it comes with a responsibility, towards your idea, towards people who trust you and towards your bank account.

Learning No. 7

This is a simple learning. I am writing it as a reminder to how you will face additional difficulties when implementing your vision. The last two months that I have been on the road, so many things that we did not think of have cropped up.

The good news is that many things that you thought would be difficult are actually much simpler.

For e.g.: we thought that shooting videos would be tough in colleges and students would not be much enthusiastic. What we found was that they were over eager to shoot the videos. At the same time, what we did not think of was that girls and their parents would have a problem with an online video profile. So, we have ended up with most guys shooting it, and also adding an additional option of hiding video for girls.

Learning No. 6

Okay, so you have 24 hours on your hands. And you can choose how to spend it, either to build your business or check out how the competition is doing. Checking out competition is good but this often leads to a lot of time being spent on game theory and can be disconcerting for what you were trying to build.


Keep some time aside each week for checking out others. If you come across a link during the week, archive it for that session. In that session try to look at what other people are doing and any learning that you can incorporate from them. And the rest of the time focus on your business.

Mind you, it will need discipline.

Learning No. 5

Your meeting went good. You had a nice conversation, you got great feedback and you can think of a couple of ways in which you can go forward in the future. Well, looks like you had a productive morning.

Wait.

Did you get any money? Did he buy what you went there to sell? No.

So you had a nice time and have hopes of getting money in the future. This is business development alright, but if you are in a startup, you need clients now. So don’t be lead into complacency by having a good meeting. Get the cash.

Remember that, water like feedback is abundantly available and very valuable but does not bring much money when sold.

Learning No. 4

You will need people to run your company. And for that you will need to trust them and value them.

Value a person not by what he is getting, but what he should get. If you see someone with potential doing a lowly job, instead of offering a menial raise, offer him his full price. This is the way by which startups can solve manpower crunches and grow big.

Learning No. 3

This one is around marketing.

Close out deals fast.

Learning series | Learning No. 1

What is the learning series?
It is an effort to put down what I learn here from my entrepreneurial journey in www.cocubes.com on the web.

Learning No. 1
Ideas begin and get implemented in the following steps

Things began with a simple idea and associated assumptions.cWe then research the idea to make it complex. Then we try to define the value proposition we are offering and cut it down again to make it a simpler offer for the market

Stages 1 and 3 are both simple representations of ideas, but what may have changed is the value proposition. This could be because of the extra insight we gained into the problem which led to modification of initial idea we had.

The take away is to get to stage 3 with minimum time investment and the correct market offering. This is one of the things I hope to get better at.

How is this made possible?

• Validate your assumptions as quickly as possible. Even the strongest assumption. This can be done by taking feedback from the parties involved in the business
• Develop a sense of what is important and what is not. Look at things that can be scaled up
• Concentrate on the basic offering – the one which provides major value proposition for the users. If you get that right, the users shall take care of the rest