Ideas

Google on it’s way downhill?

Google has had a great run till now what with their innovations on monetizing their biggest strength – Search. There also has been a lot of talk on how the last slew of products coming out of Google have not hot the bull’s eye (maybe with the exception of Android and Chrome). We also have seen an exodus of talent from Google to its rival FaceBook and the lengths Google has gone to stop it. Does all of this indicate the start of the decline of Google as the internet superpower ? Is there someone already in the making who […]

Strategy

Building great products

I have been thinking about a lot of great products that have now become an integral part of our life aka Google, iPods, iPads, SAP ERP, Zappos, Facebook, Twitter, Intuit, Amazon, Mitticool, etc..  When I think about what is common across these products and their growth to super-stardom and i found these common traits: Great products are highly focused in solving a particular need of a particular customer. No product ever succeeds if it tries to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.  Great products are very simple to learn & use. Great user experience can make the difference […]

Entrepreneurship

Understanding startups – Dropmocks.com – Amazing photo sharing tool

The second start-up that I want to talk about in my series of blogs on start-ups is an interesting start-up called http://www.dropmocks.com/. This is a very simple photo sharing application. To share your photos, all you need to do is drag and drop the photos to the webpage and you get a link that you can then share with all your friends for free. All this can be done under 2 minutes! No registration or sign-up required! No advertisements! Now this is simplicity at its best.   Question now is how they will make money. I see the following options […]

Entrepreneurship

3 reasons to start a successful startup

Any start-up which has gone on to become highly successful does fall under one of these criteria:   They found a solution to a problem everyone knew but no one had solved till then. They found a potential problem not known to the market till then and tried to solve it first They found ways to solve a known problem dramatically (5x times) better/faster/cheaper. There are a lot of start-ups which achieve decent success just by adding new functionality to an existing product/service as well. They thrive till the overall market grows and then inevitably stagnate for growth. The one’s […]

Sales

The Art of the Quick Phone Call

I have found the article on the art of the quick phone call by Mark Suster very interesting and helpful. I have had to sell to a lot of people on the phone and I have learnt from experience that the tips that Mark has listed work really well. Few more things that I would like to add to the list are: Summarize the discussion or decision in an email and share it with the caller. This will help clear mis-understandings upfront.  Pls share any pre-read that can help save time and provide back-ground information for the call at least a day ahead if possible or […]