Making A Difference…

I’ve just finished listening to “Bootstrap Finance“, an article by Amar V. Bhide (audiobook by audible available here).  This is quite an old Harvard Business Review article published in 1992, at a time when Word Perfect was still a household name. He argues, and I’m paraphrasing, that you don’t need VC funding or at least you don’t need lots of them and would fare better if VC funding can be minimized.

Entrepreneurs better do it the old fashion way, where they focus on a niche segment of the market, generate break-even cash as soon as possible, and only grow as necessary, thus minimizing the need for huge sums of capital.  It takes longer and requires more patience, wits, and creativity, but you retain control, freedom, and can run below the radar under much less pressure.

It seems like good old fashion advice.  However, looking at the way startups are started today, it seems like people are doing it as if they will be crushed by faster competitors if you don’t grow big fast.  You either grow fast and dominate your market, or you’ll die. Is it really true ?

Anyways, some good advice for startups from the article:

1. Get Operational quickly
   Just jump in and do it, if necessary copy other people’s business first.  Don’t wait for the big breakthrough idea.  Opportunities will come once you jump in.
2. Look for quick break-even cash generating projects
   bootstrapping startups need to get cash to cover expenses as soon as possible.  Think of ways to generate this and don’t consider it as distraction to your core idea. This is how a startup can survive.
3. Offer high value products or services that can sustain direct personal selling
   Use your personal passion and salesmanship and willingness to go the extra mile as a substitute for big marketing budget to convince consumers to buy your product/service.
4. Forget about the crack team
   Strong core team is needed for VC to fund you.  If you don’t need VCs then you can manage without having that strong core team initially.
5. Keep growth in check
   Grow only at a pace which you can sustain with your current resources.
6. Focus on cash, not on profit, market share, or anything else
   In startup mode, cash, more than anything else is king. It’s even beyond profit and other strategic goals.
7. Cultivate banks before your company becomes credit worthy
   Maintain good relationships with banks so that you will be able to get loans from them when you need them later.

I met with a gentleman which has his own IT professionals recruiting services several weeks ago and I had a very interesting conversation with him. In essence he’s indicating that the quality of the IT professionals available in Indonesia isn’t very encouraging. In fact he says only about 1% of all the new IT grads available is really qualified to work professionally. This statistic comes from his company’s own experience with recruiting IT professionals.

There are several factors that come into consideration when he says they are qualified, including, among other things:

1. Technical Competencies
2. Passion for the job
3. Work ethics and attitude.

After grueling screenings, about 99% of the applicants fail and only about 1 % “diamonds” are found. Most of them fail in the passion and work ethics area.

This is a very sad statistic. Just when other countries are gearing up for information economy, we are only producing a measly 1% qualified IT professionals.

How is your experience in this area ? Is it just as bad ?

How would you feel if you buy a book (of the real physical kind, not an e-book) and it says on the shrinkwrap of the book that the minute you open the shrinkwrap you are agreeing to the following terms of use,

You are the only one authorized to read this book. Loaning, selling, or giving this book away is in violation of this agreement and punishable by law.
We reserve the right to at any time confiscate this book if we feel you have violated this agreement.

Absurd ! Ofcourse. But not so in the digital world !

I’ve got copies of e-books I’ve purchased from ebooks.com that is authorized only to be read by computers that I have authorized, and it is limited to 5 computers. I am not allowed to print, annotate, copy, or do anything with it. I can’t give it away either when I’m done with it, unless you want to sacrifice an authorization token. Worst of all I can’t move it and read it on a different device running a different software.
Is it really my e-book ?

I’ve got music that I download through iTunes that only works on authorized computers. I can’t loan it to anybody, I can’t give it away. I can’t listen on different devices.
Is it really my music ?

I know it is easier said than done, but I think they should get these DRMs to behave as they do in the analog world:

They should come up with a worldwide standard of DRM (like I said, easier said than done). Within this standard, people will be allowed to do pretty much the same things as they can do in the analog world, i.e. read anywhere, make copies for their own use, print, annotate, etc. The same limitations as the analog world will apply as well, such as

• You will be able to read/listen to your stuff anywhere, but it can only be used in one place at a time. All other instances will be disabled.
• You will be able to loan it to others, but your copy of it will be disabled until the loanee gives the stuff back to you.
• You will be able to give it away, thus disabling your copy and you can choose to delete it.

(It will be neat if there is the capability of carrying annotations around in the digital copies, such that people can share annotations. add links and other informations, etc.)

What do you think ?

Inspired by my own frustration with DRM, Scoble’s blog, and from an episode of TWIT (This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte) (I forgot which episode, though)

How much time have we all wasted sitting idly in traffic in Jakarta? Time that we can use to generate more revenues for our companies, time we can use to spend with our families, time we can use to grow this nation? Instead we are spending more and more time within the confines of our car looking at the same sceneries every single day going back and forth to our offices.

On several occasions, my driver has asked other drivers about how long on average their travel times are to and from the office. On average for people going into the sudirman area it takes about 2 hours one way. If they start going at 9 o’clock i n the morning, they’ll arrive at the office at 11. With that long of a travel time, they could already be in Bandung.

If say you consider that you spend 2 hours going into the city and about 1.5 hours going back, that’s 3.5 hours per day. Say you work 5 days a week, in one month you’d already be spending 17.5 hours in traffic. In a year you’d end up wasting around 210 hours. That’s roughly equal to 26 days of work days, or about one month worth of work time.

Imagine that ! Out of the 12 months that you go to work, you actually spend one month sitting in traffic. Can you think of other more useful ways of spending one month worth of your time ?

Getting tired of your tidy desktop on your windows or macs ? Here’s an innovation to messify your desktop. Inspired by real messy desks, this application actually makes your computer desktop fun and intuitive (or more confusing ?)

Just like your real desk, you can have piles and piles of stuff on top of it. you can also throw things around to bump on one another, you can pin things on the wall, fan them out, leaf through your stuff and much more.

Here’s a video demonstration of it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ]

You can find a presentation by Anand Agarawala, the creator of BumpTop at TED here

For more info, visit http://bumptop.com

Remember my earlier post about the Microsoft Surface, the iTouch table ?  Well, apparently there is also an iTouch Wall developed by Autodesk Labs.   Perhaps it’s an upcoming trend of “iTouch-ing” everything we interact with today.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX8wOjUbmww]

 A short article about it is available at the GISuser site.

I must say I’m impressed with the new Surface from Microsoft, the iTouch table (apparently microsoft didn’t build it from scratch, but rather bought it from an inventor) … It’s a computer disguised as a table, and you interact with it via its surface. It has a touch screen interface, and it can interact with objects on the table. It can do….. well just watch the videos:

Promotional videos

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP5y7yp06n0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cog8b8ojji0]

Actual Live Demo

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeS09UenMTo]

Here it is once again, all wrapped up with cool music to make you beg for it for christmas…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj4YUhH0M68]
For all of you microsoft basher out there, you’d enjoy this one:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY]

On the downside, imagine what it will do to your back after hours interacting with the table… chiropractor’s services is bundled with every purchase of microsoft surface..

Everything on the web is expected to be free of charge. Google offers their products for free. Most other things are free as well. Is this a good thing ?

I used to think it’s a good thing since I don’t have to shell out huge sums of money and I can get all these nifty services. That is until you try to build a business on the web. Guess what ? Whatever you are offering is expected to be free as well… Where do you get your revenue from ? Is advertising the only source of revenue that is available for services offered on the web ?

I suppose this can be good if you view it from the perspective that it forces you, as the provider of service, to tap into your creative brains and come up with breakthrough business models.

What types of breakthrough business models do you think is available for services on the web ?

Comments welcome !

I’ve just heard this very good comparison to get you thinking about whether your company’s productivity needs improving.

Let’s take a “tukang bakso” here in Jakarta. Lets say he charges Rp. 5000 per bowl and lets say he can sell about 200 bowls a day. At the end of the day he will have generated Rp 1 million. So one tukang bakso generates Rp. 1 million per day.

Now if you take your company’s revenue, divided by the number of employees, and divided again by 365, you will get how much each person in your company generates on average. Does this number measure up to what the tukang bakso can generate ? If your company generates Rp 1 million per day per person, then your company’s productivity is the same as the tukang bakso. However, the tukang bakso probably doesn’t even have a complete high school education, whereas your employees most likely have bachelors or masters degree. Shouldn’t the productivitybe way higher ?

To complicate matters you can also divide your equity by the number of employees, to get the equity that each person gets per year.
Lets say the tukang bakso can start his business with Rp. 10 million. This means that with Rp. 10 million he is able to generate Rp. 1 million every day.
How much equity does each person need in your company to generate how much revenue per day ?  Does it measure up to the tukang bakso’s numbers ?

Can you beat the tukang bakso’s productivty ? Or maybe you should just start your own bakso enterprise…

Have you ever wondered whether companies that are doing CSR are really doing it sincerely or merely as a marketing ploy ? How can you tell the difference ? Does it differ by intent alone ?

You may start doing CSR because you think that it’s the right thing to do: you get benefit from society, and you give back to society.  But does it really matter if the public knows what you have done ? It shouldn’t matter whether or not the public knows about it, because it’s the right thing to do!

However, you may start thinking: well, okay, maybe I’m sincere, but the public doesn’t know that I am and what I have done for the community. One day I get attacked by a negative campaign.  Will it hurt me me and my company then that the public doesn’t have a balanced view of my company ?

Dilemma, dilemma….