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Friday, May 13, 2011

Born In The USA



Why The Donald Asked For Obama's Birth Certificate
Obama: Funny Fun
Donald Ratass Trump, And So, I Was Born In India
Donald Trump enters the Oscar De LA Renta Fash...Image via WikipediaDonald Trump: Racist Bitch Motherfucker, Jackass, Punk
I Am Going To Act Like This Is 2007
Donald Jackass Trump

The Next Web: An Indian Entrepreneur visits New York: “I was born in the wrong country :)”
Aditya Sahay, co-founder of India based Radbox ..... his no-nonsense personality ..... He explains that most of his customer base is in the US. ..... “I visited TechStars in New York and worked out of their office for a couple of days as David Cohen’s guest. I spent good time with David discussing our idea, and attended some mentor talks – Fred Wilson, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brad Feld. It was an awesome experience to be in the same room as these people. It was like being a small time film maker in the same room as Spielberg!”, he exclaims. ..... “From very negative to very positive”, he replies. “I met some other startups who are now competitors; I did not get into TechStars, and could not make up my mind on how to proceed, and whether we could raise any money depending on where we were at that stage” ...... turned out Aditya and Radbox were not on a hockey stick curve. Since they were not based in the US, raising money was out of the question. Aditya goes on to explain why, “Investors have cities where they invest. They won’t give you a cheque to have you fly away half-way across the world, only to never meet again”. ....... “The thing with US is there’s a lot of noise too. They have all these happy hours, parties, events where everyone is talking a lot about making NY the next big tech scene. Then there’s this startup incubator bubble. Everyone and his dad wants to open a startup incubator.” ....... the highlight of the trip was demoing Radbox at the NY Tech Meetup ..... “Startup events (in India) are more PowerPoint (and) less demo. Most (events) don’t even have Wi-Fi to demo! Hell of a difference! I had to demo here using prerecorded videos most of the time.” ........ “Demos help filter out signal from noise – I can do a one hour presentation on any topic under the sun. But to do a 3 min demo in NYTM (New York Tech Meet-up) we worked non-stop for the previous 40 
Image representing Radbox as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBasehours,because it was a tiny window, and nothing should go wrong.” ....... He realized that whatever they’re figuring out through first-hand experience in India, was already prior knowledge there. ...... “Also, I was working out of Dogpatch Labs; so I got to hang out with a lot of cool startups. And I met just about everyone in the tech scene. I would totally open a Dogpatch Labs here! Doing a startup is lonely and I think physical incubation (not just real estate, but co-working + mentorship + guests) is a great model worth replicating. I got opportunity to hear and even meet someone like Mark Suster thanks to Dogpatch Labs.” ....... At any point, did he feel he was doing stuff the wrong way, as an Indian startup? “Lots !”, he exclaims. “Not moving fast enough; trying to bootstrap without being very wealthy; Not building a team before building a product and not having the right advisors on board” ...... the primary mistakes they made while working on Radbox were not growing their user base fast enough, and not shipping mobile apps sooner ...... turned out that time was more valuable than money. They never factored funding in their plan, not thinking far enough ....... “If I had Rs. 50 Lakh today, I would’ve spent it on a team – hire great developers, designers and even a community manager – be a team of 4-5″ ....... “The goal should have been maximising opportunity, not minimising loss/risk – which had been our thought process.” He explains that in the US startup scene, funding is obvious like food, nobody thinks about it. Its not really a ‘decision’. Startup founders in the US think about their product and funding, whereas in India, people don’t really think about funding too much. There’s very little money in the early stage (pre-revenue) startup in India ....... while visiting US he went crazy asking himself, “Why the hell am I not here?” after he met all those awesome VCs/angels. He replies, “I was born in the wrong country ”. ...... “We don’t underestimate. We are culturally so different that we probably don’t give it much thought. Like an American will not think about arranged marriage which is so natural here. Its a cultural thing. Funding, advice is not a part of the culture, doing a startup in itself is not a part of the culture.” ...... the ‘bubble’ or whatever in US is not here (in India) which is good. ...... “Well, here’s the deal – Let’s take a typical profile – a guy who’s done 2-3 startups, one which was a big success, one a failure, one maybe moderate success. This guy has wealth, loves startups, has wealth of experience, strong network, knows what works and what goes wrong. We need a 100 of these guys right away. But i think we can’t even count 5, or if they exist then no one knows about them.” ...... “I don’t know if there are successful exits in India.” ..... “Startup events: should only allow real working demos. We need real entrepreneurs. Powerpointpreneurs and Excelpreneurs are not needed. They should also provide wi-fi to allow us to showcase products and demos !” ..... “VCs and angels: Call them angels or whatever – these guys can help push the startup scene and they’re not here. ” ..... “Indian startups: Don’t make the mistakes we made! If you’re too far from good revenue, explore funding opportunities, move fast, build a team ASAP and have advisors who can add outside perspective. “

The Black Keys: Act Nice And Gentle



(Via Fred Wilson)

Ace Reporter: We Used To Wait: Arcade Fire Cover



(Via Kirk Love)

Song Manu Dibango: Soul Makossa



(Via Whitney McNamara)

Lost A Whole Bunch Of Blog Posts


Nope, it was way more than one.

And Blogger Is Back

The Mad Dash To Ubiquity
Two Models Better Than Five
Someone From Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Now Follows Me On Tumblr
Two Deaths: Coincidence

I just did a Google search on "paramendra the mad dash to ubiquity" hoping maybe the lost posts have been saved by Google in cache form. And all my other posts that were also lost showed up in the search results. This reminds me of the "balloon people" rant by Al Pacino in the movie Heat.

And now YouTube is down. What up, Google? Et tu? Google found out I was about to embed that clip from Heat.

And Blogger Is Back


Blooger was down yesterday. It has been down today. But looks like it is back now. Oh Blogger, I have so missed you.

Looks like I lost one blog post. That I remember. And, no, it is not in the draft section. It is simply gone. Poof. Let me see if I can rewrite it from memory. I still have the idea of it. It was called The Mad Dash To Ubiquity.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Someone From Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Now Following Me On Tumblr

Image representing Tumblr as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBaseMy Twitter account went out of hand a long time ago. I have about 45,000 followers and I follow almost all of them back. I decided a long time ago I was going to use Twitter as a broadcast network. It is my own little TV station, my own little radio station. No expectations of intimacy there.

Facebook is a little less of a broadcast network for me but even there my response to over 200 pending friend requests from people I don't know was to put the privacy setting to "Everyone." There I have high school friends and college friends and people I have met in person, and a few I have never met except online, and that's okay. But the number one feature at my Facebook account is I have uploaded more than 10,000 pictures of New York City. My high school and college circles are far from the city I live in, and I wanted people to have a feel for the city I live in. My blogs feed into my Facebook stream. So it is a little bit of a broadcast network too, but not like Twitter where you don't only see my blog posts, but also articles I might read out and about.