JyotiConnect: Executive Summary

A little over two hours ago I sent my executive summary and powerpoint presentation to Irene Hodes and Yao Huang for the Dot Com Hatchery event on January 13. This is what I sent. I hope to elaborate on the themes at this blog over the coming days leading up to the presentation. That is the social media way.

Hunger, Vision, Money 

JyotiConnect Inc.
Executive Summary by Paramendra Bhagat

JyotiConnect Inc.’s vision can be encapsulated in two letters: IC. IC, as in Internet Computer. The PC ended the mainframe era. The PC will not die. But the center of gravity in the computing industry is going to shift to the IC in a rich ecosystem of computing devices from smartphones, to netbooks, to PCs, to servers, to huge data farms. The IC will be the primary way the average human being will interact with the internet in a meaningful way.

The smartphones are all the rage today as they should be. And the mobile space will bring many more people their first web experience than the PC ever could have. That is exciting. But you can’t write a term paper on a smartphone. You need a device that speaks to the human dimensions for the screen and the keyboard. The hardware will look like a laptop of today but will be vastly different. Something much simpler, much cheaper, much lighter, much stronger.

There are three components to the IC vision: connectivity, hardware and software. My company would like to tackle it in that order. One and a half billion people are online today out of more than six billion. That is not good enough. Down the line we have to be able to offer wireless broadband supported by ads. But in the short term we have to be technology agnostic in how we bring people online.

You create few pilot projects, and once you have the basics down, you grow globally through the franchise concept. That way you tap into local capital, local ad markets, and locals’ awareness of the local political, social, cultural knowledge.

The hardware part could be a great second step. And you could argue everyone but everyone is already doing the IC software. Google is in the lead. Google today is the premier IC software company.

You want a barebones operating system that runs the browser, because all your computing needs are met online. If Web 2.0 has taught us anything, it is that the people, the masses are the very center of computing. Technology is secondary. And the web is poorer for every human being who is not yet online. The push for globally universal broadband, I am calling it Web 3.0. The semantic web is not it. That would be Web 2.1. (Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition)

I was done raising my round one goal of 100K and then in February 2009 most of my investors walked away reacting to the worst economy in 70 years. I took some time off, focused on social media, and now I am taking a second crack at my idea. This is the very first round, round 1, as I call it. I am looking for 100K.

Like Steve Jobs said years ago, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won, let’s move on to the next thing. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone. I am saying the dot com wars have been won by Silicon Valley. If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift to NYC, it is not going to be because NYC finally outdid those on the West Coast in the dot com space. I don’t see that happening. But NYC is magically suited to take the lead on Web 3.0, as I define it. My company would like to take the lead. (Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World)

Presentation

JyotiConnect Inc.
The IC as in Internet Computer Company
5 slides for 5 minutes
By Paramendra
Twitter.com/paramendra
Facebook.com/paramendra
LinkedIn.com/in/paramendra
paramendra@gmail.com
Google “paramendra”

Slide 1: The Vision

o Mainframes ---> PCs ---> ICs
o Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0
o And the visionary.
o Me, the butterfly effect, and Nepal’s magical April Revolution 2006.
o I am extremely good at vision and group dynamics.

Slide 2: The People

o Adam Carson, former Morgan Stanley banker, currently at the Tuck Business School, no longer a team member, though still a friend.
o Khushboo Vaish, IIT, IIM graduate, same school as Indra Nooyi, the Pepsi CEO.
o JP Rangaswami, CIO of British Telecom, mentor. (And If This Is Not JP Rangaswami, JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta (2))
o Anu Shukla, friend, California person, sold a company for $300 million in 2000. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)

Slide 3: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3

o Step 1: Raise and burn 100K. One full timer in NYC, a pilot project in Nepal, the poorest country outside of Africa.
o Step 2: Raise and burn 1-5 million. 5-10 full timers in NYC. 20-50 full timers in Nepal and Mumbai, Calcutta.
o Step 3: Grow like crazy globally through the franchise concept.

o I was done raising round 1 money and then most of my investors walked away in February 09. I let them. This is me taking a second crack at it. Ride the upswing. The future is now.

Slide 4: Round 1

o Looking to raise 100K.
o 15-20 K for the pilot project in Nepal.
o 25-30 K for a mobile, global team of part timers.
o 50 K for one full timer in NYC.

Slide 5: Web 3.0 and NYC

o Like Steve Jobs said years back, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won. Let’s move on. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone.
o If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift to NYC, it will not be because we will produce the next big dot com. Silicon Valley won that round. Let’s move on to Web 3.0 as I define it. We will win. No place quite like NYC. (Empire State Of Mind)

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Book Of Eli

Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising

Image via CrunchBase

Michael Arrington going after Anu Shukla a few months back would be like Michael Arrington saying Google is an evil company because click fraud happens, link farms happen. Click fraud happens despite Google's best efforts. Crime happens in New York City despite Michael Bloomberg's best efforts. "The safest big city in America just became safer."

First Anu has to work within the FTC guidelines and she does, or she would not be in business very long. Then there are the Facebook guidelines, and Facebook has chosen to have higher standards than the FTC because they don't want to compromise the user experience in any form or fashion. And if Anu did not follow those Facebook guidelines, some of the games Anu is involved with will no longer be on the Facebook platform. But they continue to be. That is to say they follow the Facebook guidelines. And Anu's company Offerpal Media has strict guidelines of its own. Because they know not compromising the user experience is good for their bottom line. And Anu's company allows its vendors to kick out individual advertisers from their platforms without having to explain why. You don't have to be a fraudulent advertiser to get kicked out. If a particular game does not like you, you are no longer welcome on their platform.

Despite these half dozen layers of policing, some slimey stuff does end up happening. And that can be talked about. That has to be talked about, sure. But to make that slimey stuff the center of the focus is to miss the fundamental point, which is that Anu has done nothing less than found the new frontier in advertising.

Image via CrunchBase

Yahoo used to do banner ads. Then Google came along and said no to that. They said, we don't want to have any ads on our main page, and we want to offer contextual text advertising. At some level that was like going from color movies to black and white, from colorful ads to text ads. But Google had hit the new frontier in advertising at the time. Zuckerberg said search contexts are less relevant than the social graph. And that was the new frontier all over again. Anu has come along and said, wait a minute. Banner or text, context or social graph, you are missing the point. The real action is that people are interacting. That is what gaming is about. The ads and the money transactions have to be part of that gaming experience, not a banner apart. Now that is fundamental insight. That is a paradigm shift.

More than 160 million people and counting play Farmville. Of those less than 100,000 file complaints. Most of those complaints are people saying I paid real cash for virtual coins, and I did not get my coins. Farmville takes care of all those complaints. Usually it gives players more coins than they paid for but say did not get.

Michael Arrington wrote 22 posts on TechCrunch about those 100,000 people. I look forward to seeing 35,200 posts on TechCrunch about the rest of the "scamville" users.

I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

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