Lessons: Dots, Tom and Upping!

Its been an interesting time over the past few months. Lots of interesting things happened and continue to happen and unfortunately – I havent been able to write too much, so here is a compiled updates broken into these three broad headers:

1) The importance of the dots created by god

2) Tom Friedman’s visit and. Very interesting and thought provoking

3) Other lessons in start upping!

Lets go!

The importance of the dots created by god:

Old saying: There is a reason for everything to happen. Trust me – its true. Here is a list of the compiled set of things that am sure every entrepreneur thinks about, have happened to Voicetap and me, how they looked bad at that time, and how they eventually are turning out currently.

- Problem with Co-Founders: I had not worked with the co-founders before Voicetap. I started from scratch, and from business communication to thinking about the bigger picture to being anal about ‘Vision and scalability’, I just hammered away. No problem with the co-founders, just that we were not on the same plane. Now that we are – I am thankfully making myself redundant from a lot of things (and now is when I need to)

- Not the right valuations: We gave away equity at a ridiculously low valuation. I thank my stars for that today. The great part is that we got to look up at the ball and try and hit it for a six. Without the money (and more importantly the angel behind it), we wouldn’t have been able to do anything with this business. I cannot stress enough the importance of a good angel and not thinking about how much equity you should hold blah blah. Get a shot at the game first. We did – and we have a bigger shot today.

- Direction to take, money to spend etc.: I was forced by my angel to go for the awards, and he said – we’ll keep this outside of the agreed amount. Just go – it will open up your eyes, and give you a lot of exposure and the Red Herring award is conferred on some special few. You are lucky to be one of the youngest ever. I went to Shanghai, to LA and then to Barcelona – all for international awards. Today – we get nominated automatically, and the PR cycle continues. People ask me about the buzz around Voicetap – and its really *touch wood* happening without any active involvement. <– really helpful

- Product to make, technology to use, people to hire etc.: Lots of too-ing and fro-ing here. I dont have a tech background, and I was the product manager. I didnt know how to think through a product, document it, put it up for A/B testing, and then launch. We just went for it – took our first product live in 21 days from scratch, and then kept on making iterations etc. Got screwed many times over – db crash, product problems etc. etc. We learned a helluva lot. We learnt that businesses are the paying guys. We learnt that consumer facing businesses require a lot of attention and money. We learnt that absolutely consumer facing businesses require a LARGE team. Most importantly – I learnt that we as a company don’t have the inherent DNA for a consumer focused business. We have the DNA of an enterprise / operator facing business. Good pivot, and thank god for that! At the time – we were bulls, bursting our heads trying to understand consumers. We did to a bit – but not completely. Fine. Now we know our customers.

- The partners: Partners can screw a small company. We got screwed. If it hadn’t been for one specific partner, we might have been in a different position. Having said that, if it weren’t for that one frightfully wrong partnership, we would not have understood the nuances of legalities, not got the fire to fight on, maybe not developed the product that we are today deploying on top of two operators and might even have become a staid VAS company. The good part is that we learnt again – about VAS, about operators, developed the product, finetuned it, started generating revenues without operators and are now taking it on top of operators.

You can take the above to heart – or you could just say thats the speak of someone who is happy where he is, and sees a silver lining in every cloud!

Tom Friedman in our office:

I had a great time when he came over. We spent a good 1 hour debating about various things. Its always good to have someone so knowledgeable to debate with. Having said that – I was a bit taken aback at the fact that he himself is looking for answers for the whole of the US.

The question was only one: With so much innovation happening in India and China – what does this mean for the US? and how can the US ensure that it retains some edge over everyone else?

My points were:

1. I dont agree with the notion of The world is flat: Factually, even Friedman agrees that some parts are ‘unflat’. Unfortunately – definition of flat is ‘Have internet – is flat’. By market size itself, thats flawed – cause you have 1.2 bn people out of 6.6 bn who have the net, and the others dont. The other interesting part was that the 4.8 bn who have phones dont really ‘need’ the net now. The Subzi walla here doesnt need the net – cause his world is now satisfied by the phone that he holds (one of his steroids). Its like this graph (I actually drew this for him):

This creates problems. If the majority of the people (not connected to the net) are not impacted by the net (think about how many people are actually impacted by Twitter) – then how is the US relevant to them?

2. The US is usually the flint – but the fire burns elsewhere: The US has been and will continue to remain the powerhouse of innovation (thats systematic – with its institutions, society, economy, ecosystem etc.). However, how many non tech innovations that have come out of the US have actually been the ‘monopoly of the US’? Errm – none. Even the tech elements will not remain the monopoly of the US for long – if they keep on focusing inwardly. What has happened till date is that the newest innovation has come out of the US, but has been taken by China / Japan (unfortunately not India) – and productised to the level that the US cant reach today. Toyota, Sony, DoCoMo – all examples of the same. Google / MSFT / FB / Coke / Pepsi are the only things that I can think are truly American and the reason why they have survived so well is because they looked outside of the US. They took the fire to other countries.

3. The muscle builds because lack of O2: Interesting fact, and one that I was not aware of till recently. When a body runs – muscle develops. Why? Cause it takes in more air? No – cause the body realizes that not enough air is reaching the critical areas – so works harder to get the oxygen there. It is the same with us. We dont have the systems here – we dont have the ecosystem here. My office runs on Generator for 6 hours a day. There is no social security, no net to protect me if I fail to fend enough for my wife and two sons. O2? Nah – lack of it.

4. What have you built? The infrastructure, the civil society, the housing system, financial system, media, railroads, social security – everything that the US society is built on, was built by the fore fathers. Nothing wrong with that. The only problem is that not everyone is charged enough to want to better the system continuously (Like Tom is). They are too comfortable. There is the need of a revolution internally. BTW – this question is what drives me daily: What have I built to earn my place in the world?

Other interesting points came up – and we had a great discussion. It was a pleasure having him here.

Tom Friedman at the Voicetap office

Other lessons from the trenches:

This is a long post – and I am no expert at this, so will rattle them off in bullet points:

1. Pricing is KEY: PLEASE think through this carefully. It is a f*&^*& bitch to change your prices later. I learnt that the hard way!

2. The Orange peel bit: Vivek beat me to this one, but its fundamentally true. If you look at any situation – and you want a successful outcome, dont approach it straight. Find out the objective (of the person talking to you, of the company you are dealing with, of your wife, your friend – whoever), and you will know how to approach it.

3. Dont be scared of change: Of realizing that something is not working / that someone is not working / that something / someone needs to be changed / that something needs to end now. Remember – the business is above everything else. Even above yourself. My favorite analogy to my co-founders is that if the business will do better without me – replace me.

4. HR is key: I can not tell you how important this is. Building, sustaining and maintaining a good team takes a lot – mentally and emotionally. Enough said.

5. Try and look for the dots ahead of where you are currently: Guys in the office used to joke saying that I am always on skype talking to guys in far away continents trying to sell something, whereas we have so much to do in India. True. However, I could see the form of the company 6 months ago and started working towards that. Today, we have sustained clients on the enterprise side and two operator relations. One of them thanks to my skype chats.  :-

6. Enjoy yourself: Someone asked me the other day – I will give you 5 Lakhs a month. Give this up and come work with me. Guess what the answer was. No thanks. If we are hitting for the fences together, then the captain is not going to throw in his hat before the game starts!

Enjoy your roller coaster! I know that I am loving mine!