by Satya Krishnaswamy : Entrepreneur + Geek
Is life the sum of one’s choices ?
Jun 5th
As part of the rollercoaster ride that I am enjoying as an entrepreneur, the latest up and down that I have been going through is trying to decide where to take the Next Principles solution next.
We have recently launched our Event Monitoring and Analytics (EMA) software-as-a-service solution which is now available for companies to use. While we are reasonably satisfied with what the first version has to offer (it passed a rigorous test by our first pilot customer with flying colors), we are busy adding a number of tweaks and enhancements to make EMA even better. But the bigger question in my mind is : What next ?
We firmly believe in listening to our users in order to shape our offerings but this is where it gets interesting – we have multiple feedback channels from such users which are giving rise to widely varying inputs. Some want us to go down Path A whereas others want us to head straight for Path B whereas there are others who make an equally compelling case for Path C.
These are all equally interesting options, both from a business as well as technical perspective. They would solve significant business issues that exist today between the worlds of Social Media and CRM and pose interesting technology-related challenges.
Our constraints are : time and resources. We have limited amounts of both and therefore need to decide on what to place our bets on for the immediate next step of product development.
I don’t believe that there’s a right or wrong answer currently and only time will tell whether the decision we make now will prove to be the wise one. However, as Theodore Roosevelt said:
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
So we have made the decision to not get into ‘analysis paralysis’ and have chosen a particular path forward. We are looking forward to announcing this publicly soon – stay tuned !
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
May 22nd
Just recently, a good friend told me to not apologize (yet again) for not blogging for so long. So, I won’t.
Much as I have been immersed in getting my startup, NextPrinciples, off the ground, there were a couple of articles that caught my eye recently which made me pick up my blogging pen again.
Before I point out the articles, I need to provide some context. About a year ago, right after I dived into the deep end of entrepreneurship, I was toying around with the idea of allowing consumers to collect their own purchasing history and use that (in combination with a number of other things) to drive more effective interactions with brands and retailers.
I went about trying to validate this idea with a number of folks, including some ‘pundits’ in the investment world. And the question I kept getting asked from the ‘expert’ investors was : “Where is the ability for the consumer to share his purchasing history? This idea is useless without this sharing feature – etc etc”. Every time I heard this, I got even more confused. I was trying to imagine myself as an individual wanting to share my purchases (including amounts paid) with the rest of my family and friends. Much as I enjoy their company, I was convinced that I would bore them stiff with my not too exciting list of purchases. More importantly, I was not sure that I would be comfortable sharing this information.
You see, this was the time when the hype around startups like Blippy and Swipley was reaching epic proportions (see here and here for examples of balanced, rational reporting on significant amounts of capital invested in these hype-machines). I was a newcomer into the world of startups and seriously thought that I was missing out on what could be the most critical piece of the puzzle I was trying to solve. I ended up spending many cycles trying to figure out how to make this feature meaningful – but try as I might, I could not convince myself that this made any sense.
Fast forward about 12 months and I see this and this. Essentially, articles announcing the death of Blippy’s original idea and explaining how ”… it turns out that almost nobody wants people to check out their purchases” and “… no one cares what their friends are purchasing”. Really ??? You could knock me down with a feather 
My ride through the world of entrepreneurship often makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland, especially when I read about or interact with some of the folks in the investment business. In this particular case, I feel like Alice after having drunk her tea laced with something strong.
Moral of the story : Stick with your beliefs even though others, particularly ‘intelligent’ and ‘we have seen it all and know better than you’ investors, may think you are dumb and/or not ‘innovative’. Obviously, there are some very smart investors out there whose inputs are very useful but beware of the lemmings. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Any incidents that you have encountered which either prove or disprove my thoughts would be very useful.
The same good friend told me to not promise (for the ‘n’th time) that I will start blogging regularly again, so I won’t. Until next time…
All aboard the roller coaster !
Feb 4th
Mark Suster, an entrepreneur turned VC, writes fantastically down to earth and unassuming articles. One of his recent posts on Techcrunch talks about the life of an entrepreneur and again, like all his articles, immediately hit the mark given the crazy schedule I have had for the last 10 days or so in India.
As an example, this is what I experienced in a 24 hour period last week :
(a) Last call with internal team ends at 11.30pm – clear up pending emails and go to bed at 1AM feeling good that things are chugging along well
(b) Wake up at 5AM feeling like something the cat dragged in – need a couple of really strong cups of coffee to feel half human and read/respond to emails before chucking my clothes into a suitcase and heading out to the airport – not feeling too good
(c) Have a couple of internal calls during the extremely long drive (even at 6AM) to Bangalore airport. The first call wakes me up and makes me feel supercharged again – there’s positive movement on a sticky topic that we have been struggling with for a couple of days. The next call takes me back to wishing I were in bed – why is common sense such a scarce commodity ?
(d) Get on to the flight and make final edits to the deck on my new toy, the Apple tablet. The fonts from my PPT are all over the place but this is a minor issue. Thankfully, the crew is pleasant and the flight comfortable even in cattle class. Catch 5 winks before we land in Bombay.
(e) Head straight to a prospect’s office through the complete chaos that is north-west Bombay. Construction sites, dust, humidity, traffic as though all the drivers have smoked something very strong, horns blaring… the entry road to the office is closed so I drag my suitcase and laptop bag (that weights half a ton because I have not cleared out the papers and other junk for the last 6 months) into the office through gravel, potholes, pavements that end suddenly, motorcyclists whose fun game of the day is to take a few of my toes off and land up in the office looking like a particularly rough character out of a Charles Dickens novel. Hmm, now I need to make a pitch with all the enthusiasm and energy I can muster.
(f) Great hour long meeting with the prospect in quiet, air-conditioned bliss – they somehow make sense of my incoherence and we agree to work with each other to see how we can collaborate. Get out of the office with a spring in my step ? the spring ends abruptly with the first pothole I hit immediately outside the office.
(g) Have a quick lunch at a junk food joint of American origin. Just as I finish up, I get a call – commercial negotiations with a prospect where the engagement needed to have started a couple of days ago. I have to make a sudden mental shift and recollect the details of where we had left off. Trying to finalize a deal with the traffic of Bombay as background noise is not an exciting experience but need to go through with it because it has already carried on for too long. End the call 30 minutes later with no final agreement – the lunch has disappeared from my system and I am definitely not feeling good.
(h) Cannot get a cab so head to my next meeting in an ‘auto’ – the three wheelers that infest the suburbs of Bombay. They remind me of contortionists – they can pretty much drive at any angle to get to their destination. A 30 minute bone rattling ride later, I am at my next prospect meeting.
(i) Enjoy the bliss of the cavernous but nicely designed office while I wait an hour for the meeting. Spend the time on a couple more calls – one with a biz dev partner, one with a development company that wants to provide its services to us – again, up and down emotions. Some things are progressing really well, others are not. At the same time, need to focus on the upcoming meeting because it is a critical one and I have spent hours over the past few weeks trying to get it organized.
(j) Go through my carefully tailor made pitch – notice a couple of folks dozing during the meeting. Maybe it’s the afternoon heat, more likely it’s me.. Either way, come out an hour later with my gut telling me that it did not go as well as I expected. Need to think through how to get them re-engaged.
(k) Meet an old friend who works in the same office – great to reminisce about the good ol’ times. Talking with him helps me understand more about their business and I start seeing some light at the end of the tunnel (and I won’t go into the old chestnut of express trains).
(l) Get a long but very comfortable ride with him to where I am enjoying the hospitality of my friends – great to see them and their kids again. Barely have time to exchange hellos before I have to pull out my laptop and connect into a call with a prospect in the US. Struggle with cell phone reception being spotty in the high rise and get into the call 10 minutes late.
(k) Discussions on a proof of concept go on with the prospect till 10.30PM – very exciting – I am really pumped yet scared because the expectations are high and timelines are short. I am confident we can deliver but need to ensure that we don’t get complacent.
(l) Internal call with my co-conspirators in the US to debrief them on the day’s events. Lengthy discussions about each of the meetings, what the follow up actions are, what to prepare for tomorrow’s meetings etc – by now, its close to midnight and I am exhausted but the day is not done
(m) Do some more research about the folks I am meeting tomorrow and fine tune my decks accordingly. Respond to a few of the emails that have already started flowing in from the US and gladly delete all the spam.
(n) Hit the sack – wake up an hour later with some random thoughts about the commercial discussions going through my head – cannot get back to sleep so decide to bore you with this blog post – take 30 minutes to write it with only a quarter of my brain functioning Finally go to sleep.
Thus ended the day. Apart from the flight, this is pretty much how every day goes (including the waking up early feeling like an old shoe) but am I complaining ? Absolutely, definitely not ! I love what I am doing, I love the highs, I don’t particularly enjoy the lows but need to take them in my stride and move on, I love the thought that I am (somewhat) in control of my destiny.
The multi-tasking and the need to be able to think on my feet, not worrying about ‘organizational dynamics’ … what’s not to like ? Sorry, got to stop writing post – need to rush into my next call….more next time
It’s been 6 hectic months
Jan 15th
since I last posted on this blog. One of my New Year resolutions is to be a better “social citizen” (there is some redundancy in that phrase !) so here I am with a fresh attempt to keep my blog current. When I last posted here, I was pursuing an idea around how to enable consumers to take more control over their interactions with retailers/brands. While the idea received significant positive feedback from folks in the space, I realized that getting it off the ground required a lot more runway than I could afford as a start-up.
I pivoted (quite a major turn, in fact) towards the Enterprise Software space and set up a company called Next Principles (apart from a bare bones home page, its website is not quite there). We are focusing our efforts on the Enterprise Mobility and Social CRM spaces and were fortunate to get our first customer – a large consumer packaged good company in India. We have already delivered our solution and are quite excited by the output – a Sales Intelligence solution on Android tablets built with state of the art HTML5/CSS3 technology. All in all, it was a hectic but immensely satisfying end to 2010.
With the dawn of the New Year, we have solidified the product vision for our Social CRM offering and have created a prototype to test out some key concepts. We are in the process of validating this solution with companies in both the US and India and are excited by the possibilities. We will soon set up a Next Principles blog and start providing more details there.
I hope to be able to update this blog more frequently during the course of 2011. Here’s wishing all of you a very belated but nonetheless sincere Happy New Year !
360 degree view of the consumer ?
Jul 15th
As I continue to research various areas of CRM as part of my dive into the deep end of entrepreneurship, it is becoming clear to me that the old chestnut about getting a ’360 degree view’ of the consumer has still not been achieved by almost any retailer. This used to be the holy grail in the market even in the 90s when I first started up the CRM LoB for SAP in Asia Pacific. Today, even the most sophisticated retailer is only able to get at best a ’2 degree’ or ’10 degree’ view of the consumer. The actual number does not matter. Suffice to say that it is very far away from 360.
And the more I think about it, the more it appears inevitable. There are 1 or 2 online retailers (who shall remain nameless) where I love to shop at but I don’t spend more than 1 or 2 hours a week at most even on their sites; how can they ever be expected to get a ‘complete’ view about me ? I believe the ultimate goal is honorable but most of the market has approached this from the wrong direction. I think the answer lies with the consumer. The question is : how do we get to the answer ?
More than a month…
Jun 20th
since my last blog post. Things have been extremely hectic and I am unfortunately not able to post any specific info except to say that I am truly in the deep end of the world of entrepreneurship. I am posting this to ensure that I don’t completely lose touch with the blog – I hope to be back sometime soon with more details.
The name game
May 10th
I thought I was done with bending my brain to the name game when my wife and I successfully named our two kids. But I was wrong – in comparison to trying to find a name for my startup, naming our kids was literally child’s play (apologies for the bad pun).
I am struggling with names here. I go to bed convinced that I have finally found THE name, only to wake up 8 hours later crinkling my nose in disgust at the name. Then there are times when I am sure I have got the name and then I subject it to the spouse test.
I usually provide my wife with the context for the name (what it is supposed to convey, whom it is aimed at etc) and then spring the name on her. Until now, I am the proud owner of a 100% failure record – not a single name has got her approval – and the problem is, she is right. Either it is too “enterprisey” or too “consumery” or too something or the other.
At this stage, I am hoping for some sort of divine intervention or inspiration.. Maybe I should go play a video game.. maybe I should play Mario..”its-a-mee,, Mario” 
Me and my data in a “private” cloud ?
May 2nd
As I continue reading Paul Greenberg’s book on “CRM at the Speed of Light”, one of the areas that has grabbed my interest is Vendor Relationship Management (or in the world of TLAs, VRM). This started me thinking around the lines of ‘owning’ all of my data as an individual – everything I did online, in the ‘real world’, said, wrote, thought (ok, maybe not that) would be collected together in one central repository and obviously in the world that we live in, would be available to me on-demand.
I know that some of my friends would scream privacy murder at the thought of this – but if I indeed had true control (and this needs to be defined better than what I can manage in a quick blog entry before I rush off to be a Sunday evening host), this would be useful in many different ways to me. I could decide who sees what part of the data, when and for what purpose.
I would indeed be in the center of my universe and be able to decide how marketing folks from Retailers and Consumer Products companies could interact with me – nirvana from spam and maybe at last a step towards targeted marketing promised more than 10 years ago ?
There are folks who have done a lot more thinking and have much more expertise in this area than me. A couple of good places to start exploring this concept are the Project VRM blog and Doc Searl’s blog
More on what I am beginning to think of as my “private cloud” in my next post – would love to hear your thoughts.
Raindrops falling on our heads – the cloud based content business
Apr 23rd
The announcement of salesforce.com’s planned acquisition of Jigsaw is an interesting move in the world of cloud-based ‘content’. I am loosely defining ‘content’ here as stuff that goes on top of software applications in order to provide additional value to the users (in effect, make the plain vanilla application come alive) – this is also routinely called ‘data’. In this particular case, users of salesforce.com would be able to (in the right context) seamlessly use the contact information provided by Jigsaw as opposed to having to enter it manually.
There have been many attempts by On Premise application vendors such as SAP and Oracle in the past to get into the content business. SAP tried this with Business Content within the Business Warehouse (BW) data warehouse while Oracle got a leg up in this through the acquisition of Siebel (whose industry specific Analytics made significant use of content). These initiatives have met with mixed results – one could argue that one of the reasons for this is because the vendors have not really pursued a hybrid model i.e. On Premise applications pulling in content On Demand. Trying to get On Premise content out to tens of thousands of customers to be integrated into their On Premise applications (that have in many cases taken months, if not years, to be implemented) is not an easy task. Plus, there is always the interesting debate around how content should be priced when your main source of revenue is from application licenses.
A number of these challenges become easier to solve in the on-demand world. Obviously, the coming together of the content and the application can take place in a much more seamless and timely manner with the end-customer having to do very little of the work involved to make this happen. If you share the increasingly common view that the typical on-demand stack goes from Infrastructure to the Platform on which the Applications are built and Services are added on top to make these applications useful/usable, the merging of content with applications fits in very well into the Services layer. So, salesforce could offer the Jigsaw content as a value-added service (priced separately) to its customers.
What makes this entire space even more interesting is that the 800 pound gorillas of ‘content’ such as Nielsen and D&B have started moving upstream into the applications space in the recent past (see an example here). It will be interesting to see how they take advantage of the on-demand sales, pricing and deployment models in order to make this transition happen in a much faster, cheaper and more scalable manner than they could have even a couple of years ago.
Staying fit while doing your own thing
Apr 18th
It’s been barely two weeks since I have got out of the routine of a job and I am already feeling the effect on my overall fitness. There was a certain discipline around jogging, working out etc that I had worked into my schedule while I used to go to the office.
Now that I am on my own, I pretty much have a flexible schedule which means that it gets filled with meetings to catch up with old contacts, brainstorming sessions with various idea partners and spending time with the kids (on an interesting aside, I used the word ‘babysitting’ to describe this activity when speaking to a friend and I was reminded that when it came to your own kids, it was called ‘parenting’ )
The net result is that I need to make a very conscious effort to carve out the 30 minutes or so every day to do something along the fitness dimension – and it’s been a hit and miss affair so far. And I can only imagine that when I do get into the deep end of a startup, this is going to get even more difficult.
So the question for you independent souls out there – have you managed to get this discipline into your routine and if yes, how ?
