Category Archives: Business

How To Build Something People Want?

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The real question is not “how to build” something. There are enough technology experts around us who can build stuff. Capital, technology, processes and standards are only secondary to good product design. The real question then, is “what to build”, or “what to build” better.

It’s a tough question, but an important one for any entrepreneur (aspiring or established) to address early on. Most startups fail because they build something people never wanted in the first place (i.e. it doesn’t really solve a real-life problem or doesn’t add any value to an existing process), or they take too long (often over-engineering) to build something and hence fail to gain early feedback.

Over the past few months, I have observed that a successful (viz. revenue generating at the very least) product should be able to satisfy one (or more) of these four broad scenarios:

1. It directly helps people make money. Such a product would allow the users to monetize their own creations or digital assets. A few good examples of this product category are Google AdSense, Square, Etsy and oDesk.

2. It directly helps people save money. Such a product would allow the users to save money on their current expenditure (personal or business), or at-least help them manage their money better to start with. A few good examples of this product category are Mint and Google Apps.

3. It helps people to collaborate easily. People like to share stuff and stay in sync (across devices), while saving time and effort. That makes collaboration really effective and lucrative. It also makes this the most crowded category of all. Everything from Project Management apps to Social Networking apps to iPhone/iPad apps try to fit in this broad segment. But only a few genuine products survive due to two factors: most products are too bloated to be used efficiently, and secondly the sheer volume of this segment requires ingenuity. A few good examples of this product category are Dropbox, Evernote, Posterous and Basecamp.

4. It helps people customize a physical good or object. People like to stand-out in the physical world, by looking unique or by creating unique things. A few good examples of this product category are Shoes of Prey, Arduino and Blank Label.

These scenarios can be interpreted as statistical buckets. I’m not suggesting that all products follow (or must follow) these scenarios or that these are magical in any way.

On the contrary, I believe that a successful product is ingenious and simple. It should do less, but it should do that better than the rest. It’s not a novel idea, but first and foremost – you should consider building what you want. Keep it small. Build something that you would want to use everyday. Keep it simple. Build something that solves your own problem.

If you enjoy eating your own dog-food, you’ll eventually find others willing to pay you to share your dog-food with them.

6 Ideas Off My Chest

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For the past few months I’ve been sitting on some ideas (for Web applications) that I’ve scribbled here & there. I’m working on a few (not listed here) in my spare time, but realistically I won’t be able to work on all of them. So I thought it will be better to just publicly share some of the ideas for others interested in driving them.

1. Car Pooling – Sometime back I took a taxi cab to work. I got talking to the driver, a friendly guy with crude English. He mentioned something so simple that it made me think on several interrelated issues (environmental, social, economical) for days. “Only one person in each vehicle. That’s what’s wrong with this f**king world.”, he said. As I looked around in the sluggish traffic, I could really see only one person in each vehicle, for miles. It made me jot down a note to think about promoting car pooling and maybe improve the experience somehow. Eventually, a bit of brain-storming brought a question – what’s a good model for online coordination of car pooling, so that more and more people can easily get on-board and the mechanism is effective?

2. Comments Aggregation – Most of the decent user-generated content is built around niche online communities, where users often post some great comments on various topics. Most of these comments (however small or big) go unnoticed and get buried over time. If these comments were available for reading on a wider platform (a dedicated website) to a larger audience, then it can add more value. Each deserving comment becomes an independent post/article, linked back to the original post/article. The app can simply be a bookmarklet to clip thoughtful well-deserving comments and a website to aggregate the clipped comments with a clean uncluttered reader-friendly UI to go with it.

3. Social Goals – An application (probably a Facebook app) where anyone can set one or more goals (e.g. lose x amount weight in y days) for themselves or their friends. The user (person who has to achieve the goal) can then post regular updates on their progress. Their network of friends rank their effort on each update posted. Their network of friends can also send them a gift (virtual or real) at each milestone or when the goal is accomplished. The idea is loosely based on Game theory, as it aims to promote action and behaviour change through group motivation.

4. Feedback for Startups – Startups need early feedback as part of customer development. The idea is to create a website for startups to put-up a survey (small or big) and a special offer (e.g. discounts, coupons, gifts, gift certificate, books etc.) to go with it as an incentive to complete the survey. The longer the survey, the bigger the offer to the user. Users (who meet a set criteria) can then choose to participate in a survey and receive the special offer. Startups on the other hand can get the relevant feedback.

5. Food Photos – More and more people are sharing photos of their food. And there’s something about looking at other peoples (real) food. It’s somehow aesthetically pleasing to the eye. New York Times wrote about the phenomenon – People Who Photograph Food and Display the Pictures Online. The idea is to create a website and curate/aggregate food pictures in real-time from various photo sharing sites and social networks (Twitpic, TweetPhoto, Flickr, Posterous, Blogs). Add a bit of social voting and make it elegant for ‘food porn‘.

6. Integrated Blogging Environment (IBE) – Blogging is more common than ever before. From a bloggers perspective, I find that it still lacks a simple integrated tool to write rich articles quickly. Here’s my wish-list for a blogging tool: Web-based, simple WYSIWYG text editor, inbuilt support for dictionary & spelling suggestions, quicker reference to Wikipedia, inbuilt support for search and embedding of images (Creative Commons licensed) from Google Images and Flickr, auto-post to multiple blogs, auto-post to Twitter & Facebook. How about it?

Most of these abstract ideas have emerged from my own needs and observations. These ideas are open for anyone to use, so feel free to go for it. Drop me a message if you make any progress. Good luck.

Skewed By Consensus

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The other day I was browsing through the list of world’s most popular goals on 43 Things, when I came across something one might call a “true lie”.

Apparently, 25271 people want to “Fall in love” and on average it takes them 9 years to complete this goal. Not too far down the list, 19421 people want to “get married” and on average it takes them 8 years to complete this goal. And there is the fundamental flaw with the typical perception of statistical averaging.

The dictionary defines an average as:

central tendency around the middle of a scale of evaluation.

Averaging has long been an important methodological “assumption” in data-driven understanding. A lot of analysis and decision-making around the world is based on taking the averages of various quantitative measurements. But, is it really a reliable way of result representation?

An average is a single value that is meant to typify a list of values. This can be misleading if misused. I think the problem with averaging is largely related to transparent distribution. For example, on average every person has one testicle and one breast. Misleading, but true. Without valid segmentation, an average doesn’t accurately classify the data set and the inference becomes biased.

In most cases, an average ends up sounding like a generalized fact, mainly to justify a marketing strategy. If a company promotes a product by stating that its been proven to be effective for “75% of people on average”, it leaves a lot unsaid. What age groups, gender, income levels etc. were these people segmented in while deriving an average? The chances of this product being effective, and the chances of anyone buying the product, should marginally diminish with an increasing lack of segmentation made available. However, marketeers know well that it’s this very lack of segmentation that impairs the judgement of people. We buy what others buy, as Game theory comes into action.

On the other side, many market researchers overuse averaging and reach invalid conclusions. Organizations misapply these conclusions, all to their own demise. Most organizations produce stuff that may never be widely adopted, but since their market research was based on generic averaging to start with, they think otherwise.

Averaging of data without clear information around the segmentation of that data is a vague and pointless exercise, which can have grave consequences through cognitive bias. Unfortunately, it’s also the most popular way of drawing abstract conclusions.