To pivot or to not ?

One of the quintessential questions that comes up while doing a startup is whether to pivot or not. The next follow on question is when to pivot. Before delving to debate about this topic I tried to get an understanding of what a pivot is. Broadly speaking, from the information that I've gathered pivot can be  defined as 'course correction'. So when to correct a course - A simple answer is perhaps testing business viability. The moment you figure out that your idea is unviable, it's time to pivot. This is easier said than done and the lean startup ideology of iterating fast is perhaps approach to figure out the 'how' of pivoting. 

To understand pivoting better, one also needs to look at the ideas/goals. I always tend to think of the example of wright brothers. Their story of flight is just such a vast collection of pivots. However, they were really married and passionate about their goal. They did so many pivots to attain their goal, it's perhaps not worthwhile counting those. 

So I've come across two types of pivoting: 

Some entrepreneurs have a goal and they do multiple pivots/course corrections to reach that goal, based on the business viability.

Some entrepreneurs start out with a goal and change the goal itself, again based on business viability.

Not necessarily sure if there is any right or wrong approach between the two, or even if it's worthwhile classifying these as right or wrong ... but one thing is very clear. The moment there is widespread proof of business unviability of an idea, it's time to pivot, no matter how married you are to that idea or no matter how much time/money you've sunk in to that idea.

Having too many ideas - Is this necessarily bad ?

The journey of entrepreneurship is by far, a journey of idea metamorphosis. Well known fact. You have an idea, build a product, hope that many people will use the product and eventually pay for it. It's a tiresome journey. Some entrepreneurs thrive though the journey, some fail to go beyond the first few steps, some get intimidated, some stop the journey at the last minute and, very few end the journey well and a select few of those continue on other journeys.

One of the reasons cited for these failures is that the entrepreneur shifts focus rapidly and doesn't focus on one idea. Going by Linus Pauling's quote, that shouldn't be the case at all. I mean, after all he's a Nobel laureate and his words better have some value. He says that the best way to get a good idea is to have many ideas. Given this, ideally, an entrepreneur should experiment with a variety of ideas before zeroing on 'the idea'. Have all successful entrepreneurs done this - no.

But that's a wrong metric to look at. What we have to instead look at are successful products, not successful entrepreneurs. Products and more specifically product cycles are very measurable. Most of the old product data is public data (The ones that have passed the innovation protection period). If we look at any of the successful and innovative products, we will find a common trait. The final product was an evolution of a variety of ideas. Most of the initial ideas of these classy products were discarded. These ideas, what we commonly call as prototypes are the key to a successful product and hence to a successful enterprise/company.

I personally failed to understand this concept all these days. I got carried away with the fact that the first idea that I got should be 'THE IDEA' and I went after it. I now think that's not necessarily correct. What's far more important is the GOAL. So I think it makes a lot of  sense to have an end goal and be open to iterate through many ideas/prototypes that will lead to some form of the end goal. Figuring out this end goal is really difficult. Perhaps in the next post I'll write about possible ways of figuring out the end goal. 

Social media distraction

I hit Facebook at least 5 times a day, twitter  at least 10 times, gmail around 5-10 times, HN at least twice. Amidst these, there are multiple times I chat on IM, answer phone calls or read messages. At the outset, this behavior colludes concentration and focus required for churning out good software products. Nicholas Carr describes this behavior more elaborately in his book The Shallows. He describes what the internet and google especially, is doing to the human brain.

Is this rampant multitasking essentially bad ? While it's a debatable question, I think it's bad for creativity. Anyone who's seen John Cleese's video on youtube will immediately recognize this. For creativity to bloom in your mind, you need a meditative sort of an atmosphere, in which you can let your thoughts flow freely. This has to be done for a specific duration of time, let's say 30 minutes to an hour. Today's internet setting, like the one I've described as my day-day affair, is extremely crippling for unleashing creativity and without creativity, innovation is crippled as well. 

While I don't believe that my behavior is an exception, there are measures that can be taken to void distraction and be more focused and creative. Several thought leaders have suggested these methods but I personally find these very hard to follow:

1. Wake up early, between 5.30 and 6 and reserve about 30 minutes for creative thinking by just sitting still and letting the thoughts race across your mind.

2. Do not open email as the first order of the day. 

3. Focus on the most difficult task of the day, first. 

4. Reserve time slots for email and social networking activities. Preferably twice or thrice a day. Definitely not early in the morning.

5. Take scheduled breaks during the day to just walk around.

6. Finally, before hitting the bed, just remember a gist of your completed tasks.

I'm trying out most of these suggestions, but I find sitting still to be the toughest, closely followed by waking up early. I've been moderately successful at not checking email as the first order of the day and taking scheduled breaks for walks are fairly easy. 

I am getting tired of these addictive social media habits, and can feel their effects on my mind. However, it's very difficult to get out of this addiction, one because it's so damn easy to type a URL in a browser and get distracted. Reminds me of a friend who said why it's so hard to quit smoking - it's so damn easy to find a cigarette and light it.

Beta launch

So, after a lot of deliberation I launched the beta version of our app in the Android Play Store. I was quite scared that something feature might not work and piss off the initial users who might never return to the app again. So did my level best to fix all minor and obvious issues and finally put the app in the android play store. True to my fear, I had to do an immediate upgrade as I had missed some basic elements such as launcher icon and google analytics.

This was not an easy process. First, I found out that there was already another app with the name SocialEyez on the play store. So had to look for another name. I'm really bad at coming up with names but with some luck came up with a decent name 'TripLaud'. The name has nothing to do with the beta version but it is about a bigger play I'm thinking about. If we get sufficient user traction within the next couple of months, and if people find this app useful, we'll not only improve the app but build some exciting new features as well.

Then there was the debate of a free app v/s a charge app. I read several theories and articles about pricing but was not too enamored by the idea of charging for an app. Moreover,  this app is a social utility app, an area that is flooded with free stuff. So this was an easy decision.

The tougher decision was about the openness, should I keep the source proprietary or make it public. I saw a couple of upsides in keeping the source open.
1. User participation - One of the major issues in mobile app user traction is early adoption. Perhaps an open source app might attract a particular breed of early adopters who love to be a part of the app creation.
2. User feedback - Related to the above point. Perhaps users will provide constructive feedback not only about the app but also about the code quality. This best suits a bootstrapped setup.
3. Personal glory - I can tell the whole world - hey this is how I wrote this app. ( That could also backfire very badly as my code quality is nothing stellar ).
The possible downsides:
1. Someone might copy - I couldn't convince myself that someone will really copy this app and make a boatload of money.
2. Patentable technology/licensing revenue - In all honesty, I believe that a patent driven ecosystem is terrible for software as such. I can understand patent protection for pharmaceuticals or even perhaps chip making, industries that have to spend a lot of money to build a product. That's not the case in software and certainly not the case with TripLaud app.  So after some considerable thought, I made my source public on github

The beta is out. This wouldn't have been quite possible without the help of Riju, Gaurav and many others who gave me the required moral support, and of course the guys  at StackOverflow for answering all my stupid questions. So a big thank you to all of you. I've updated our website as well. Hope you guys will find this app useful.

The beginning of an entrepreneurship journey

Back in 2011, within a very few months of joining IBM, I was feeling restless and unworthy. Somehow, the people around me, the pace at which the organization moved, felt too alien for me. I was looking for a way out.

So in March 2011, as I was glancing through the Indian startup news, I came across this StartupWeekend. Read through the particulars at the website and I thought to myself that this is just a weekend event. There are little or no entry barriers, so why not try it out. I didn't have any ideas to pitch but I thought of joining another team. With this, I registered for the event.

The event started off with two electrifying talks by Sharad Sharma and Bharat Goenka. When you remember a talk after 2 years, that says something about the speakers. I saw all the guys pitching their ideas, and half heartedly made up some idea and I also pitched. One idea that caught my attention was from Gaurav Lochan about crowd sourcing traffic information. I asked him shamelessly if I could join his team and voila there I was in a team of 5 guys building a crowd sourced traffic application.

We came up with the name - MakeMyTripFast just as a pun on MakeMyTrip.com. We started brainstorming about how to build this app, what the revenue potential will be, and if at all we can take this app forward. What surprised me was the energy and cohesion in our team. Very rarely will you meet 4 strangers and 'feel at home' while developing a product. Heck, even at my day job I hadn't experienced this kind of camaraderie. We built an Android app, a Heroku backend and put together our demo videos for the presentation on Sunday.

Our presentation went well and by some stroke of luck, the panel picked us as one of the the top 3 winners. I think we were placed third. We were very excited and the panel gave us very encouraging words to take our idea forward. This was the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey. What started as a casual drop in, resulted in an eventful turn in my life.  It took me another 6 months to quit IBM and join Gaurav to launch Beetroute. Since then I have pivoted and now building SocialEyez. But for Startup Weekend, I'd perhaps never have taken the plunge to do a startup. What the future holds I don't know.  I might fail or I might get back to a job, but the experience at SW has definitely etched a memory that I will cherish for a really long time.

EDIT - We were placed second at SW and not third. Thanks Avinash

Startup monetization strategy

If I'm really stumped doing my startup, it's because I haven't been able to figure out a monetization strategy. Yes, I do know that advertising is a straight forward option and so is charging customers directly. However, I don't find anything creative about these approaches. Let's talk about advertising. I personally hate ads. I don't believe in the advertising model, mostly because, how badly the plethora of ads have killed the actual experience that they supposedly support. Be it, web, TV or even mobile. Plus, everyone does advertising. It's a well refined process followed by millions. I am also ignorant of the advertising model, since I don't like it, I haven't explored the field much. 

So, what are the alternatives. One straight forward approach is to charge customers. That's again direct selling and nothing to brag about. For a mobile app, it's pretty straight forward - you really have a couple of price points to play around with. A basic knowledge of statistics and a bit of playing around will help you hone in the price point and sell your product. I'm not belittling this approach, but implying that it's a well trodden path and it's not that hard to figure out a price point.

Another alternative is the Kickstarter model. Demonstrate that your product will have value, ask for people to financially back the process of creation rather than pay for what's created. Definitely innovative and disruptive.  There are a lot of successes stemming out of the Kicstarter model, app.net being the latest. I personally like this model. For one, it breaks almost all existing norms of monetization. Two, it let's you be open and vocal about almost all of your policies and decisions. Three,  it's the most effective way to engage users with your product. 

Yet another alternative, mostly for products built around the social theme is to enable selling within the group. Something like an ebay just for your group. While selling on ebay is feasible and it works, selling within a known group has the greatest advantage of trust.  There is practically no need for a third party to 'guarantee' any transaction. It's a true democratic way of doing commerce, within the trusted group, and with some thoughts and guidelines,this can be made to scale as well. 

While I'm still stumped figuring out what's a better monetization strategy, I'm almost certain not to follow the advertising path. Sometimes knowing what not to do is more valuable than knowing what to do.

Beauty and time

As I sat pondering today, I couldn't help reflect the awe of Grand Canyon. I visited Grand Canyon in 2004, yet the memory is so vivid. Anyone familiar with the history of Grand Canyon knows that the canyon was formed by a gradual change in the earth's crust. I'll save the statistics, and simply say that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the canyon to be formed. In the present day, it looks gorgeous and awe inspiring. I was just thinking about all the other spectacular things that nature has in galore and not one of them was formed in a whiff.  Even man made wonders were not built in a day or two. All those things that are beautiful, that have a long lasting impression, those that won't be forgotten easily - have all been a result of a constant, long enduring process.

This thought came about as I was building one of the features for my app. It reflects upon the wisdom of many 'old school' entrepreneurs, that to build a long lasting company or an application, it takes a really long time. The thought also correlates with John Cleese's creativity ideology, that,  the more thought you put into an endeavor, the more creative you can be. To make beautiful things, therefore takes time, a long time. In other words, to make my app beautiful, to make it so that it stands out amongst a billion other apps in the ecosystem today, I should be prepared to put in a lot of time. To put in this time, without actually having a notion of solid day to day progress, is really hard.

Just for a perspective, going back to the Grand Canyon, assuming there was some entity that created the canyon, what would've been the thought process of that entity, as thousands of years passed during the making of the canyon. What would've been the day to day progress ? one millimeter of rock displaced. How inspring :).