Forum Nokia Developer Conference, Bangalore, Dec 7

Forum Nokia Developer Conference

I’ll be attending the Forum Nokia Developer Conference thats happening at Taj Residency on December 7, 2009.

Looking forward to it. I have built a mobile app in the past and the last time I went there, I met 3 very interesting people. One of them was our competitor whom I had only read about! Fantastic chap!

None the less, here are the details:-

Taj Residency, Bangalore 7th December, 2009 Sessions 09:00 – 9:30 Registration 09:30 – 09:45 Welcome Note 09:45 – 11:00 Unlock Star {Within} – Nokia & Developer World 11:00 – 11:30 Tea Break 11:30 – 13:15 The Nebula – Where Stars are born 13:15 – 14:15 Lunch Break 14:15 – 16:00 Enabling the Stars 16:00 – 16:30 Tea Break 16:30 – 17:45 Star Showcase 17:45 – 18:00 Thank You Note and Lucky Draw Prizes

The event fee is Rs. 750.
I guess thats to filter the serious crowd.

I am particularly interested in understanding more about Ovi Store Publishing.

You can learn all about the event here.

Lessons Learnt!

Life’s been such a roller coaster.

I went yesterday to “complete” with V. It was a good meeting.

Some lessons that I learnt are:-

1. There is always scope for misunderstanding.

2. Its good to complete and leave everyone complete. Misunderstandings only drain our power.

 

I’ll write a much longer post about my learnings from my entrepreneurial journey so far. That would be a loooong post. But for now, I just wanna update that life is cool at my end.

I have started doing some freelance work. Have my hands full. Gives me $$ (been such a long time) and life is comfortable. I finally purchased a Laptop and a Digicam and went on a holiday too.

Have done all kinds of interesting work so far, Head Hunting, Business Arbitrarge, Web Design and Development, Business Development, Online Marketing Strategy Consulting and Social Media Marketing. Not bad, I say! I am actually a “jack of all”. They say that a good thing would be to be “king of one/some” but I am fine this way.  As an entrepreneur I want to be a generalist. I’ll hire the specialists. But I should know enough to understand if the specialist is bullshitting me!

Am starting a small Web Design and SMM firm. Already have a good deal of orders. Need to execute them. This time no partnership.

I have also taken on being “fun”. I am so frikin serious in life and so significant. I am getting over it, and thats one of the coolest things thats happened off late.

Another post to tell about M, N and U with whom I have moved out. M is like a mum to me. Literally treats me like her kid. She has an extraordinary commitment for me. I am unable to express either my love or my gratitude to her.

I am planning to earn a scholarship to do an MBA from Stanford. Thats my dream school. Planning to apply in Fall 2010. The best part of moving out on my own is that I have had time to introspect and create a new dimension to my future.

Wow, I am writing after 3 monts or so.

Good feeling.

I quit my company

This blog post has been pending for a while now!
Major things have happened in the last one month!

For 1, I walked out of my company. V and I had extreme difference of opinion about roles, execution and ownership. My choice. And I am absolutely complete about it. Some are shocked, some call it dumb, some feel happy for me that finally I’d make better use of my skills and get paid for the same (but then they can’t realize that my struggling startup was worth a few Crores in valuation at least) ;P… I am confused. But its a good kinda confusion. One of my biggest weaknesses (as an entrepreneur) has been my dependence on peoples’ opinion. I am over it. I can see that I have grown up. My whole world has turned around, hundreds of unanswered questions. And truckloads of people who’d come and tell me “I told you so!”, but I don’t care this time. I take responsibility of the situation I am in. I don’t avoid their pointed questions, and I don’t let their opinions bog me down. Its a good feeling to realize that I have gotten more independent than I earlier was. I guess I have reached the right level, where I don’t bother about what people say, yet can objectively understand what they mean and learn from the same.

Of course, there are lessons to be learned. I gotta get more focused and gotta work more on my discipline. I also acknowledge that I am more focused and disciplined than the average lot, but what I have is not good enough to accomplish the things I have set out for.

Maybe, I’ll take up a job now and start paying my loans. I will own up my work. Something I didn’t do when I worked for Subex. Infact, just now I realized that I didn’t own up my work in my own company too. I am a go getter, but I wasn’t a go getter when I worked for my own company. No wonder V didn’t want me to execute this project. While I don’t approve of most of the things he feels, I take responsibility of not being someone he could count on. At the same time, I am far from feeling guilty. I did a good job. Dealing with whatever I was dealing with, I did quite fine.

None the less, its a major thing. I have learned from it.

As the saying goes, “when you loose, don’t loose the lesson”.

7 Reasons why I love Bombay!

I had been to Bombay to participate in HeadStart Summer and I just fell in love with the city! When in Bombay, I could probably list 21 things, but right now, I’d be happy if I remember the top 7 ones.

Here they are in no particular order.

1. The city’s culture. Its awake in the night! Bombay is fast paced. On my first day in the city, I witnessed 1000s of people leaving their workplaces at 9:30. Bangalore starts getting deserted by that time (Yeah, our city had its hay days but they are long gone!) Even at 11:30 in the night you find several girls roaming around which speaks a bit about progressive society. Being a feminist  I really appreciate this aspect.

2. Local Trains: Man I can write an indipendent story on them! They are just so consistent. I travelled on a lot of locals and not one of them missed its mark by more than 30 seconds. Besides, you can hang outside and enjoy the gush of cool air between Vashi and Navi Mumbai! You can hang out and notice the wheels changing tracks. It was fun. And then the design of the coach is a beauty. Its been designed to accommodate 48 people (yes I counted) in a 12/18 feet space. Its been designed in a way that makes it impossible for someone to just flick off your bag kept on the railings and there are lot of other interesting things (like water diverting turns in the rooftop that double up as a holder for the out hangers). Besides, I loved those automatic ticketing terminals! Didn’t see a big queue in front of them though. A slight learning curve for most people I guess. And last but not the least, the pickup! Its sexy.

3. Juhu Beach: This was the only beach that I could visit, but what fun we had! I absolutely loved the sea! I found it relatively cleaner and less crowded than Marina beach. But then I visited the latter on a Sunday and the former on a Monday, so that could have made the difference. And along with the beach, the sheer variety of delicacies – All the chaats and tikkis, golgappas, the Khatta Meetha gola (Milk Maid gola was a flop). Mumbaiya chaat ki to baat hi kuch aur hai!

4. Bade Miyan! Kya khaana hai boss! Mazaa Aa gaya!

5. Marine Drive! Perfect dating spot! But the thing that I liked the most was that the public was all cool with the couples coochicooing around the corners. No moral policing, and its a pretty chilled out atmosphere! I am not sure if I am the PDA types, but everyone should have the right to self expression devoid of “what people deem appropriate”. Just my views though. The place makes for an excellent jogging spot too. Cool breeze, leveled parapet.

6. Autos and Taxis! This is a big one. Out there you don’t have to bargain with the Auto walla or coax him to taking you by the meter. It goes without saying. And what shocked the hair out of me was that after paying them the exact change, they returned some of it back to me! Can you beat it? And here in Bangalore, you find yourself lucky if they charge you as per the meter!

7. The chicks: At the risk of sounding despo, I must acknowledge that the Bombay chicks have an Oomph factor. Its like they notice you checking them out (the “ah she’s cool” look), they watch you straight in the eye and look straight ahead and continue in stride. Typically a girl would just look down and walk through. And while you find a lot of hot chicks here in Bangalore too, but you’d find them in clubs or in cars or select parts of the city like Lavelle Road or Koramangala. In Bombay, they are everywhere, and they are on the street walking, talking in Hindi (Man I love people talking in Hindi) just like everyone else. There is no superficial sophistication, that I notice in some of my friends here.

Its become a yet another long post. But I enjoyed writing! Reminded me of all the fun moments I had there with friends! A big thanks to Mitesh for making my trip at Bombay really memorable!

Summary of the last 8 months

Wow, its been ages since I last posted my blog. I felt real good seeing the WP dashboard! I have posted a few private posts though. Since I used to write this blog just for my self, I felt no need publish them publically ever since I noticed the “private posting” feature on WP. But then, I guess I stopped blogging too because private posts weren’t motivating enough to sit up in the night and speak out my heart!

Glanced through some of my old posts! Felt like “Wow, thats personal… but none the less, let it be”. Read some others and felt like a kid! Well I am one.

Here’s the summary.

A lot has happened since we lost that 2 Crore contract. The company we were dealing with had some internal issues between the directors and it closed down along with the project. Good learning there. Though I still catch myself repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I am not thorough about doing the “paper work” for instance.

I have grown a lot as a person. I have out grown some of my habits that stopped me. Expanded my ability to execute things which I have no clue about (thats what entrepreneurship is, to a great extent IMHO).

Ya, so in December, we had this new killer idea that had a BIG untapped market with underserved customers. We quickly validated our idea after speaking to a few target customers and started working on finding appropriate partners to execute the plan. Within 2 months, we had tied up with the best (and probably most innovative) companies in the said domain and had a suit of solutions ready. We aggressively pitched to as many customers that we could. We also won a really big contract. We executed a small one and the big one was recalled a few days before the delivery. None of the other pitches worked either. You gotta sell well as a startup. I learned a lot of lessons on sales from this experience. Some of them being:-
1. Listen to the client’s pain points first
2. Don’t show all your cards at once
3. And a lot more

Our business is basically selling tech enabled canvassing and branding solutions to Polticians.

We worked real hard during the political season to sell them, and poor strategy, decision to not borrow and other factors (all internal) led to our not making a significant profit. We just made enough to meet our costs. I somehow don’t believe in luck, neither in circumstances. I don’t know if this comes out of my becoming a more responsible human being or out of my innate desire to bash myself . I think its the former. Though I have skill in the latter too!

Post this, V picked up one of our previous kickass ideas and he himself went and validated the market for it. This looks like the most promising of all the things that we had discussed so far. V got kicked about it and started working on it, while I played the devil’s advocate. Initially I chose to not assist him and make some money out of consulting.

Then came the shaadi season, I was a ladki waala in the weddings of 4 of the closest people to my heart. This also served as a good and well deserved vaccation. Meanwhile I spoke to some prospective customers about V’s product idea as well and they ALL said that they’d pay for it. I was like, “Awesome… not bad V”. V is my partner btw.

Currently I am working hard on our product. This is a big company in the making. It feels like this is the thing that I have been conjuring up in my mind for the past 10 years. This is my dream company in the making. This is the first time when everything seems right. So far, everything I was doing, I took as a learning experience for my big billion $ enterprise. This seems to be the One! October 2014 is the time by which I intend to grow it to that scale. This is the only goal that has remained constant through the last 9 years! October 2014 is when I turn 30. That was the timeline, my internal milestone. The product is under development, and we’ll launch it soon.  I have also sobered down enough to know that life (particularly an entrepreneur’s) is very unpredictable. But its all cool. As someone said – “You’ve already failed if you didn’t try”. Did someone say that?

And yeah meanwhile, I learned some great team building skills while taking care of HeadStart’s Bangalore activities. I also got featured in a newspaper (A nice 2 page story with a lot of pictures) and a handful of others. While I wasn’t particularly kicked about it, the people in my life were like “Wow!!”. The best thing that happened out of it is that, my parents felt a little at peace. While dad has been a pillar of support all through out. Mom was like “Chalo, kuch toh kar raha hai bachha!”. I am happy I could give this to her.

I am loving it!

Poverty in India, something worth working on

This is a lovely video I came across.
Made me feel how fortunate I am and how distant I am from my fellow countrymen. Would like to live the life of the financially underprivileged sometime.

Don’t you quit.

The past couple of weeks have been a phenomenal experience for me. For the first time in my life I confronted the question “What if I fail?”. For anyone other than me, it would be a very vague question. But for me its pretty straight forward – “Not being able to fulfill on the goals that I have listed down in my dream list”. I am a dreamer. I think big. I BELIEVE that we are here to shine, to experience everything that the world has to offer. I don’t want to live a life of wants. I want to be a creator, a creator of something from nothing, a creator of my destiny.

These 2 weeks, I have come to understand why my loved ones are so concerned about what I am doing. [Quit my job, tried my hand at many things for a while, working on a startup from which I am evidently not making any money]. Seriously, I have gotten their concern.
Until now, I was so damn sure of myself that I never even once considered “Not being able to accomplish my dreams”. I have been courageous enough to actually unabashedly share them with whoever I click with.
But these past few days, I have confronted a lot of stuff. I won’t go overboard by calling them “harsh realities”, but they definitely made me feel so miserable that I didn’t feel like eating food for days and escaping from everything that I am doing. All my responsibilities (most of them). And sleeping it out to avoid facing the truth.

Well there is no real truth, only perspectives. But the perspective that I was choosing to push under the carpet was:-

Its been 11 months since I have quit my job and I have only earned some 40K Rs so far. I have borrowed money and asked my dad to help out on multiple occasions. And even right now, I have no assured form of income.

In my perspective, I was doing great.

I got multiple job offers (one of them payed me more than 2times my previous salary), 3 people approached me to start a startup with them, I got ownership of a startup even though I didn’t have the capital to invest on the same, I almost certainly got business contracts worth a couple of crores etc etc.

You know there are times when you work hard for something with only 1 fuel, “belief”. When these kinda things fail, then you feel real low. You question yourself and your abilities. It becomes all the more tough when there are people waiting to catch hold of you and tell you how foolish you have been for not taking their advice earlier. Its this kind of a feeling that I went through and seriously considered QUITING as an entrepreneur. Taking up a job – probably one that would earn me some respect in the eyes of those who measure your success by your “Compensation Package”, probably do an MBA from an IIM and earn big bucks, clear myself of my financial liabilities and then become an entrepreneur again. This would take a few years at least.

But no baby no, I ain’t quiting. I went through the dumps. I understood how people feel when they say “Whats wrong with you”. (Its just their way of expressing, I love you, I am concerned about you) And I appreciate the fact that I realized all this.

Entrepreneurship is a game of creating wealth doing something that you are passionate about. And I am here to play this game and win it. I swear, in 5 years time, I am gonna have the skills to be able to create wealth and freedom anywhere, anytime.

Here is a video that I absolutely loved. It invoked in me the spirit to do whatever it takes to accomplish what I want. To give it the best of what I have got!

Rise Up – By Yves larock

Life is Fun

Off late I have been really low.

A majority of my initiatives didn’t work out. And I started living inside this conversation called – “I am a failure”. But in reality, I guess its just that I am not on track with my targets.

Life is fun. I saw this wonderful video on YouTube! It really cheered me up.

More often than not, people are not able to comprehend why I am doing what I am doing. I don’t want to explain anything to them either. I want my actions to do the talking, but off late, my actions have not spoken much and I have had to give a lot of explanations to people for my supposed “inability to make money”. This video really pepped me up. And even though I am a little spaced out right now, I am all set to kick some solid ass in the days to come.

The Big Idea

There was a very interesting question posed by a gentleman in a mailing list. The question was,

“Should you just start up and figure out your big idea, or should you wait for the big idea before you startup?”

Its such a brilliant question. I asked myself the same so many times. So I thought I’ll put this small piece in my blog too.

To this question I replied,

I couldn’t agree more with xxxxx

My very short entrepreneurial journey so far has revealed exactly the things pointed out by xxxxx.

I noted down ideas that came to my mind for nearly 2 years in an “Idea Book” before I quit my job to finally start up on my own. I had treaded the same path many times when I felt that my idea was the next big thing, only to do some research and find out about many more who are doing the same goddamn thing or something better! I also had a few unique ones, but I gave myself excuse after excuse for not quiting my job to start up on my own. Those were the wannabe entrepreneur days! Then I quit my job and tried 2 of the ideas that I had kept in my idea book! I chose to do something that I would really love doing even if its not big enough to fit into my dream company’s paradigm. Usually your idea doesn’t seem so cool after discussing it with 10 people, right. But the real learning comes after you start executing it. Both the plans failed. I built a simple prototype for the first one, I got booed by the early adopters and I quit. The second one didn’t require anyone outside of me to boo it down and stop!! Of course there were a lot of “logical” reasons to stop as well, but I think the biggest learning for me was to realize how much my own and somebody else’s communication affected my actions. How much significance I attach to “failure”.
I am sharing all this because, in retrospect I feel that there are a lot of things that we need to learn before we become the self that can fulfill our vision.

Right now I am running a software services + training company. Its not exactly in congruence with my vision for my life and the world. But I am giving it my best here. I am also working side by side towards making it a fully functional entity which can run independently of my partner and me by March 2009. I am learning and growing. My partner and I consistently put around 10 hours (often more) every week researching our “probably big” ideas. I am meeting people, my future team mates/ co-founders/ evangelists! And I think I am doing the right thing.

I won’t say that I have grown over my limitations yet, but am definitely learning and learning fast. Starting up on my own, has brought me much closer to being the metaphor “entrepreneur” than my job could ever have.

Conclusion: Don’t wait for the big idea. Start up with your average ones. Get your hands dirty. Taste success/failure. Learn from them. You will be ready for the big one when it comes.

Coming straight for the heart!
Amit Singh

Some More Habits!

In one of my previous posts, I had declared taking on some new habits. I did not fulfill on that. I will take it on from today.

Here are a few habits that I am gonna follow from today onwards.

1. Waking up at 6.
2. Doing everything that I say, when I said I will do it.
3. Eating 3 proper meals a day.
4. Planning my day every night. Referring to the plan, every morning.
5. Planning every week on Sunday evening/Monday Morning.
6. Implementing the Performance Triangle in my life.
7. Being absolutely unstoppable. Whatever I resist, I’ll confront and transform.

This is a new beginning!

This time I shall fulfill on each of the above 7 points.