Readable Stuff October 31, 2008
Posted by rizwan adil in advertising, business, technology.Tags: business, economy, heart, instinct, life, mark cuban, paul graham, statistics, steve jobs, technology
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i normally dont post stuff written by others on my blog, but i guess i am bending that rule now. the content really appeals to me and i thought it would be good to share it with others. these are excerpts from the websites and blogs i normally read. thats it , enjoy the wow moment
1. Mark Cuban, blogmaverick.com
These investors, including myself, know what you don’t, and they are not telling you. The minute you ask for money, you are playing in their game, they aren’t playing in yours. You are at a huge disadvantage, and it’s only going to get worse if you take their money. The minute you take money, the leverage completely flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.
Investors don’t care about your dreams and goals. They love that you have them. They love that they motivate you. Investors care about how they are going to get their money back and then some. Family cares about your dreams. Investors care about money. There is a reason why venture capitalists are often referred to as Vulture Capitalists. The minute you slide off course from the promises you made to get the money, your dreams fall in jeopardy. You will find yourself making promises to keep investors at bay. You will find yourself avoiding your investors. Then you will find yourself on the outside looking in. The reality of taking money from non family members is that they are doing it for only one reason, to make more money. If you can’t deliver on that promise, you are out. You will be removed from the company you started. You will find someone else running your dream company. If this sounds like a scene out of the Sopranos or an episode you would watch on TV about a loan shark, you are right. The only difference is that it’s all legal.
There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle or aunt because you blew your nephews college money or the money for grandmas last vacation… I cant.
You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders. I started MicroSolutions by getting an advance from my first customer of $500. The business didn’t grow quickly in the first couple years. We didn’t grow past 4 people in the first couple years, and we all worked dirt cheap.
So what’s wrong with that? It’s OK to start slow. It’s ok to grow slow. As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t.
The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.
2. Also from blogmaverick.com
At no other time have their been 3 financial news networks and thousands of websites providing so much financial information and opinion. The sum of which has definitely lead us into a situation of “Paralysis by Bullshitalysis”. Everyone is afraid to buy. Everyone is afraid to sell or short. Sales forced by de-leveraging is the catalyst for the market. However, there are so few buyers, the de-leveraging sales are taking forever.
Who knows what the new normal is. No one has any idea what is going to happen in this market. NO ONE. Personally, I am completely hedged. I bought puts, sold them. Sold Puts, bought them back, then decided to hedge every long dollar and then some with big puts on the market. This allowed me to be protected on the down side, and tip toe on the long side. As stocks go down, my hedge allows me to buy more of the stocks I like. If the market takes off on the up side, hopefully my longs will more than cover the cost of my puts. If the market does nothing. I’m stuck right where I am, with my puts losing time value every day.
Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. What I do know is this, everyone is a genius in a bullmarket. The last 5 years, that wasn’t a stock market. THIS is a stockmarket. This time it is different. This may just be the new normal.
The impact of tax rates on productivity and development is something economists masterbate about, enterpreneurs don’t waste their time thinking about it. We have business to do.
3. Paul Graham, paulgraham.com
For example, initially I thought maybe this principle only applied to Internet startups. Obviously it worked for Google, but what about Microsoft? Surely Microsoft isn’t benevolent? But when I think back to the beginning, they were. Compared to IBM they were like Robin Hood. When IBM introduced the PC, they thought they were going to make money selling hardware at high prices. But by gaining control of the PC standard, Microsoft opened up the market to any manufacturer. Hardware prices plummeted, and lots of people got to have computers who couldn’t otherwise have afforded them. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect Google to do.
Microsoft isn’t so benevolent now. Now when one thinks of what Microsoft does to users, all the verbs that come to mind begin with F. [3] And yet it doesn’t seem to pay. Their stock price has been flat for years. Back when they were Robin Hood, their stock price rose like Google’s. Could there be a connection?
You can see how there would be. When you’re small, you can’t bully customers, so you have to charm them. Whereas when you’re big you can maltreat them at will, and you tend to, because it’s easier than satisfying them. You grow big by being nice, but you can stay big by being mean.
You get away with it till the underlying conditions change, and then all your victims escape. So “Don’t be evil” may be the most valuable thing Paul Buchheit made for Google, because it may turn out to be an elixir of corporate youth. I’m sure they find it constraining, but think how valuable it will be if it saves them from lapsing into the fatal laziness that afflicted Microsoft and IBM.
The curious thing is, this elixir is freely available to any other company. Anyone can adopt “Don’t be evil.” The catch is that people will hold you to it. So I don’t think you’re going to see record labels or tobacco companies using this discovery.
4. Steve Jobs, stanford.edu
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
…..
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
…..
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
billboards, iphone and business sense. August 27, 2008
Posted by rizwan adil in advertising, business, technology.Tags: apple, education for all campaign, ethics, idea, india, iphone, maruti suzuki, reliance, technology, villages
5 comments
billboards have always been able to catch my attention, this time i have a lot to say about the ‘Idea cellular’ billboard which proudly flaunts their new marketing tag line “one school, all present” (or something like that). the underlying idea that is that Idea cellular is so cheap and has such a wide network that teachers will be able to teach number of students across the villages of india (through phones!!) thereby spreading literacy and developing the nation. sweet. very sweet indeed. BUT, what is this billboard doing in the middle of a city?, infact at every other corner in the city? Reliance communications made the same mistake (you cannot call it a mistake in the fullest sense) when they promoted their network as the common man’s network. they lost many of the customers in the cities to other networks. the mindset of the people metamorphosed in such a way that even those who were a bit affluent abhorred reliance. idea is doing the same thing now. people from the cities do not want to associate themselves with those in the villages, not at least in india. even those who come from the villages do not want to associate themselves with the villages. funny, i know. (this is typically similar to the NRIs who come back to India and insist on mineral water forgetting totally the fact that a few decades ago they used to run around drinking water from borewells in short nickers, or even without.)
what i want to say is that the advertising should be consumer centric. the people in the villages would be able to connect to the idea cellular’s education campaign, not just in a small way, but in a big way. the ads strikes a perfect ten there. however, the city crowd has a different way of thinking.
if you take the KFC himayatnagar road, you are likely to find another billboard which shows the picture of an iphone labeled ’smart’ and then the picture of a maruti suzuki car labeled ’smarter’. now this is definitely crazy, my first instinct was may be they give you a free iphone when you buy the car or something like that, but no ! i have absolutely no idea why maruti suzuki is gone nuts. please come and have a look at the billboard for yourselves.
speaking about the iphone, all i want to say is that – it wont work. now, i know i am a total apple ‘loyalist’ and would love to see apple products everywhere, but logically thinking, we end up elsewhere.
1. the iphone costs a whooping 31,000.
2. there are two types of people who have this kind of money for phones.
a) people belonging to the age group 40 to 60. one thing we need to remember here is that india has this generation of people who have worked ‘their way up’. very few of this age group population would have inherited their fortunes. (FYI, india is still a developing nation and we didnt have proper roads in cities until a few years ago.) these people are definitely unlikely to shell out 30k on a phone.
b) the heirs of this 40 to 60 age group, this market sector would be in their teens or twenties and they’d love to have the iphone if only it had ‘forwarding messages’ and ‘video recording’ in it. there goes your youth market.
the iphone was designed keeping the needs of an average european or american businessman in mind, who, as per our research should be atleast a second generation rich. that will take another 20 years in india, until then people will still use phones which are good enough to talk and talk alone.
good night and yes, dont forget to excercise tomorrow morning, you look weird these days.
make them want you May 9, 2008
Posted by rizwan adil in advertising, business, life, technology.Tags: apple, business, common sense, humans, ipod, life, microsoft, needs, predictability, relativity, technology, wants, zune
6 comments
predictability, my friend is a bigger virtue than patience.
no one is, was and ever will be in the same space-time coordinates as you are now, so the same rules, tips and tricks which work for you now may not work for others or even for you at another time(or even vice versa).
every disease has its cure, and you cant swap ones medicine for the other.
the same logic applies to both life and business, what might ‘totally rock’ today might be dull and drab tomorrow.
the 1980s saw the sony walkman coming into the music market, it was the right time and the right attempt, it ‘totally rocked’.
the ipod came somewhere around 2001, once again they hit the right shot at the right time, business bloomed.
then came the zune player(did you hear about it ), bad timing, bad hitting.
the thing about the market is you have to give them what they want, no matter how meaningless or foolish it is. and often the market only asks for a ’sequel’ to what already existed. the desktop market asked for laptops, the laptop market asked for better laptops and so on so forth. the task of the company is to give them that. plain and simple(so, it may seem! )
people will always want more and better stuff(human nature, my friend , human nature) , its the job of the company to give them that and when you cant meet up their expectations, you are simply wiped out unless there is nothing in the market which is as good as yours. perhaps one big reason why zune didn’t work is because people had already seen the ipod. perhaps one big reason why windows works is people haven’t yet seen a mac.
this can best be explained by the automobile market, all cars have four wheels and a steering, until you see a better car, you are going to be very happy with your old one, the moment you see a better one, you are going to want it.
say you didn’t know about ice creams, then you wouldn’t have bothered about them, but now that you know what an ice cream tastes like, you are going to want it.
‘wants’ might be said are subject to viewability. (business is more to be ‘want based’ than ‘need based’).
your product should shout at the customer: ” dude, this is what you have been looking for all your life”.
the challenge here is to rightly anticipate what people want and i tell you this is not at all easy, there will always be error, the trick is to minimize the error. six sigma helps here, but you know, being humans, you can never predict anything to an entirety, how much ever you try, there will still be loads more that could have been done.
beauty, my friend is when you look a little less uglier.
cause and effect April 29, 2008
Posted by rizwan adil in advertising, business.Tags: business, cause, cool, effect, life, market, mistakes
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in business, the bottom line is that you are there only for one reason: to make money.
in life, the bottom line is that you are here only for one reason: to get better.
as far as i am concerned, business and life are very closely intertwined, businessmen need to understand life much better than any one else. and the more you try and understand business and life, the more deeper they get, as long as you get too desperate or messy, things will go pretty smooth. i am a believer of the ’cause and effect’ doctrine from which it follows that if something is going wrong now(the effect), then there have must been a cause, things simply don’t ‘happen’ on their own.
lets us now analyze the jaundiced causes which end up in goofed up consequences, life is very short, one way is to go ahead blindly and ‘learn from your mistakes’, the other is to look at others and learn from ‘others mistakes’, like they say it makes no sense reinventing the wheel, you simply cant keep making the same mistakes which others made, also, you cant keep yourself from making mistakes, so its perfectly ok if you if you make ‘new mistakes’, in fact its great!
there are some mistakes which keep repeating so often and are so obvious that it becomes hard to notice them, people screw up their prospectus in all possible ways and they do it very stupidly. here are a few of them
i love what i am doing/my work is cool: like what Covey said in his book, its important that the ladder is leaning against the right wall, people are busy climbing the latter, mindlessly, senselessly without bothering where its heading, the kind of work that has to be done is the kind of work which is in demand. ever wondered why the so very cool gadgets produced every now and then don’t survive the market. well the answer is obvious. your product should be adaptable to the market, and if possible cool, not the other way round.
target market: yet another goof up when the managers don’t do their homework properly, you can’t sell a helicopter to someone afraid of heights, however cool it might be. this explains why diet coke never worked in India.
