Promote Entrepreneurship

Most of us would like/love to be entrepreneurs at some point in their life or at least have thought on these lines. I wonder what would happen if we were exposed to entrepreneurship right from our school days irrespective of our subjects. That is a humanities student or an art student should know as much about it as would a management or an engineering student. Only when we will involve all from various backgrounds right from early years of learning, would we see great products/services materialising sometime in future. Would that not be amasing!

Evolution of Yahoo

I was listening to the former president of yahoo Ms Sue Decker who now teaches at Harvard Business School. She tols that more than 500 million people visit yahoo per month. In the initial years ie from the year 1995 to year 2000 the main aim/strategy of yahoo was to get big fast. Then till year 2006 their main focus was to monitize through media sales and text marketing and now their main aim is to integrate all irrespective of the audience and give them a seamless experience. She also told how they feel that they should have entered much before in search. Now they are rewiring yahoo and making it open to third party developers and in this way they are hoping to cash in the wisdom of crowds. Even though their latest marketing communication of " Its you" they are promoting their customer first approach which is indeed commendable and should give them good results.

Do you know what you don't know

In your life it is very important to be aware of those things which you do not know or are not within your scope. This is important because then you can think of other alternatives of doing that thing or involving a third person who is best suitable for that job. After all , no one know everything.

Technology spreads exponentially!

If you are an entrepreneur in the technology domain and say you come up with an application of mobile phone and it clicks. One can imagine the king of value it can create for your customers as well as you in a very short time. I read somewhere that HP took 40 years to become a billion dollar company, Microsoft took 15 years, Oracle 9, yahoo 2 and Skype took 6 months only! One can imagine the kind of wealth future entrepreneurs will create.

Why some organizations buzz with energy?

I was listening to the podcast of Lynda Gratton professor of management practise of London business school in which she has explained why some organizations buzz with energy and some do not. She calls this by the name of hotspots. She says that hotspots are created when employees work in a co-operative ways irrespective of the internal competition, good coaching and mentoring practices are also an add on, behaviour of senior management as well as your hiring process also becomes important. It becomes important to screen out non cooperative people. Encourage people to work across boundaries on something that excites everyone. Strong commitment and the ability to work with different styles of people also becomes important.

Small business mistakes

I came across a great article on 101 small business mistakes and what you can lean from them. I am giving the link: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/money/article/101-small-business-mistakes-and-what-you-can-learn-from-them-gregory-go

Circus from monkey cage!

I was listening to a podcast on top management in which I came across an unusual statement by a US journalist and critic of American life henry luis mencon said that “democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage” In that way you are taking care of your employees( Similar to monkey) and also your customers( Similar to the people who have come to watch the circus). It does makes some sense.

Entrepreneurship: Few Questions

Is it seeking un-chartered waters? Are skills required at the start same as the skill required in the later stages? Is it about breaking the set mentality? Is it about risk taking? Is it about expecting the unexpected? Is it about taking feedback from your first few customers and then implementation? Does it include working in a predictable market? Is it about nurturing great people? Is it about failing fast or succeeding sooner?

Product companies Sales Staffing

How to hire your sales representatives in an IT product company also depends on the stage of the company. For example if the company has just started and has released it beta product then the best strategy will be to hire for learning and hire few good people who are interested in technology and sales so that your burn rate is not much. In the initial stages all your customer facing departments like sales, product engineering, and marketing should focus on learning from customers so as to stabilize the product. In the next stage when the product has stabilized and your revenue model has been proved one can hire more no of sales people who should be instrumental in getting as many leads as possible. In this stage some companies make wrong choices of sales people and they hire along the lines of their initial hiring which is not required. In this stage you require sales persons with decent knowledge of product and aggressive attitude to sell so that they can give as many leads as possible. They need not be paid on similar lines as the previous sales recruits. The goal should be to capture as much market as possible in minimum possible time and to reach the breakeven as early as possible with least burn rate.

Wisdom in hindsight or foresight!

A thought came to my mind that that generally people are of the view that wisdom is in the hindsight , but i feel both foresight and hindsight are inter-related. Only if you have hindsight you can gain foresight. So it become of utmost importance to analyse events which have happened in our life and internalise the learnings. This will sharpen our foresight.