17 Feb 10 Do the Biggie’s have a war cabinet?
Hit first, hit hard, keep hitting
I always wonder do the big global multinationals have a war cabinet. And if so how do they operate? Who is the enemy? Who is the friend? Here I mean the big multinationals who are in the new economy and not the old economy of military hardware, manufacturing, energy etc. I mean more like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, IBM, Amazon, Dell, HP etc … Observe most of them are American.
Looking at the announcements from the likes of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google recently they seem to be at war with each other. Facebook trying to bring down Gmail, Google trying to beat Twitter and Facebook with Buzz, Apple trying to beat Microsoft and Google and so on … It really looks like a Mexican stand-off.
But in this war against each other how do they react to each others moves. With budgets as big as a small country they need to have strategies and thinking which is not too far from managing and defending a country.
I am an admirer of Admiral John (Jackie) Fisher – generally regarded as one of the greatest admirals in the British Navy. Fisher is primarily celebrated as an innovator, strategist and developer of the navy rather than a seagoing admiral. One of his quotes springs to mind here – “Hit first, hit hard and keep hitting“. Now I truly believe in doing that to your competition. It is not survival it’s winning I care about when running a company. So does any of these biggie’s have such strategies and do they have admirals like Jackie who think like this?
Tags: Amazon, Apple, competition, Dell, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, innovation, Microsoft, MySpace, Strategy, Twitter, War Cabinet
08 Jan 10 Europe – learn to fail, instead of failing to learn
A common question asked in the European technology startup community is – Why can’t we build a Google here? What are we missing? We have the skill, the money, the ecosystem, the will, the ability and the dream. The Techcrunch article about the closing of Popjam a startup founded by the UK star entrepreneur Alex Tew (founder of milliondollarhomepage), gave the answer. The lengthy discussions there say it all.
We have not learnt how to fail and to respect people who fail and learn from their failure. This is a common theme I have observed and experienced in Europe. And we go even further, give no encouragement to someone who has failed before and wants to try again. Getting a startup up and running is hard enough and when the community who claim to be part of this ecosystem work on getting such people down it is really sad. In Britain we seem to go further, there is such harsh personal attacks which makes one think twice before putting themselves out there. I have seen many personal attacks played out on twitter and other blogs widely read by the startup community in UK. Is this an inherent culture of journalism like “The Sun” being played out by all the right one? An open discussion yes, but why get personal? Should we not grow up and appreciate people who want to make it on their own. And like the silicon valley – accept and embrace failure so we rise ahead. Unless we do that we will never be able to build great companies in Europe and especially in UK.
12 Nov 09 Can I choose my customer?
We quite often talk about what the market for a product or a service is. And always asked to focus on the customer. Problem is that the market is always staring at you like a large gorilla in the middle (not corner) of the room. Will I want to say no to any part of the target market – NO!. So who is my customer? Specially when it comes to Web2.0 and e-commerce companies it is hard to define this in each stage of the company.
So my assertion is go and choose your customer. Learn from those you choose to learn from and give them the best of what you can. Build everything around these chosen ones as they will define what you make, how you make it, how you fund it, how you sell it etc. Ignore the rest for now. Too often founders think they do not have the power to choose. If you don’t choose you don’t focus and if you don’t focus you loose product and market strategy. And remember when your customers change (as you expand focus) you will need to change too. These changes will be in your – product, process, talent, business model and how you fund your business. So YES you can choose your customer and you should.
21 Sep 09 Why I hate deadlines and love milestones
While there might seem little or no difference between deadlines and milestones for many, I think there is a major difference. It’s like the difference between running a 100m dash a number of times continuously and running a steady marathon. I hate deadlines not because they make me nervous or I feel threatened with the time-lines. I hate them because I hate the aftermath of a deadline. I am the kind of person who uses a large hammer on a tiny pin – hence I have failed many times. Failures are for another day. I am yet to learn the art of not using a hammer on small pins and hence also be a marathon runner.
So why do I crave for milestones rather than deadlines? I hate the aftermath of a deadline when I have the worst empty feeling of nothing to do. I am sapped of all energy and drive to start anything new. If I don’t have a plan ahead I am like a flight with no flight plan and ready to crash. Milestones on the other hand are a continuous plan to keep things going and there is always an after-plan. I like the regular – “yet to do list” than a deadline to meet. Maybe that is why I hate exams as there is no after plan. And maybe that is why I like to build things and take them to market. I hate to party after a product is made as the real work is yet to begin – get the first customer. Should a start up party after a product is launched? Absolutely NOT!! The only person that is done at this stage is the tech team. Others need to start proving things now and need to meet milestones and not deadlines and now same goes for the tech team. It’s a marathon and you need to keep up and not work on a start-stop schedule. Hence my love for milestones and a dream of running a marathon (yeah right!!)
Tags: Rant
02 Aug 09 Will Microsoft buy Zoho?
While this might sound odd and unbelievable to many I think Microsoft will do good to buy Zoho. While Zoho faces competition from Google with it’s Google apps there have been numerous complaints form customers about lack of proper integration between the various apps and with gmail which is quite frustrating to the enterprise user. Google has also been playing catch up with Zoho in terms of bringing in new apps and still lacks the complete office suite that Zoho does – including project management, CRM, marketplace etc. While Salesforce has a great SaaS product they will be beaten by Zoho soon as they lack the complete suite that Zoho seems unbeatable at. While Zoho has been slow at some products like Zoho mail, they have finally understood what the customer is really looking for.
I think Microsoft will try to buy Zoho. Microsoft has promised to release a free online version of their next MS Office but even they will struggle to integrate the suite well enough to meet the needs of a SME who is today moving to Google apps/ Zoho etc. While this makes commercial sense – Microsoft will be afraid of going for such a deal as the stock market will perceive them to be unable to build such a product themselves and see it as a sign of weakness. Which this might be true, but I still think they will be stupid not to approach Zoho.
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