What were the most important lessons that you learned at your first [...]]]> Lately I’ve started using this cool service called Askolo - where you can ask anyone any question. While I was at it, someone asked me a question which I thought of sharing with a broader audience of this blog.

What were the most important lessons that you learned at your first startup that you’re applying to your new company?

My answer was:

Many actually. But let me list down top 3 important lessons which I learnt & still learning…

1. Time – is the most important asset for any entrepreneur. Wherever it can be saved, save it. E.g. if you’re working on a feature whose implementation is taking time, don’t push yourself hard to get it right by spending too much of time. Acquire the knowledge by seeking help. It saves you from wasting previous engineering time relevant at that point of time & shipping your feature.

2. Speed of execution – is another important lesson for me. I think it’s the biggest arsenal that a startup has against big boys or competitors. Learn (fast), iterate (fast), deploy (fast), repeat (fast). Being quick & nimble has more benefits if you’re just starting up – both from economic & psychological point of view for you & your team.

3. Focus hard on short term priorities rather than brooding too much on long term benefits. As they say, there’s no long term if there isn’t any short term.

p.s. you can ask me more (harder) questions if you want to there. So give it a spin. btw here’s what I don’t want to answer there

It’s all about perspectives!

So to start off, daily deals industry actually started around end [...]]]> This post has been part of my draft for almost 8 months now. For obvious reasons, I’ve not posted it. But now since I’m out of DealsAndYou.com, thought of posting my point of view without any guilt trip.

So to start off, daily deals industry actually started around end of 2009 where me along with a friend gave an early sort at it with all guns blazing. However, the industry quickly shaped up like typical FMCG industries where money is the biggest ammunition to stay afloat while revenue is out of volume sales.

Now that’s not what a typical fledging start thinks early on or rather wants also. But that’s the nature of quick growing business models. So we got acquired & our fledgling startup got rebranded as DealsAndYou. That’s that.

The sales pitch to the local businesses was simple – helping them in offsetting the un-utilized inventory over a period of time by giving deep discounts to walk-in customers. That worked – definitely it did. That’s why we see many daily deal companies raising multi-dollar funding to the tune of around $50 Mn in India aggregately in the last 2 years alone for geographic expansion, increasing sales footprint, ops cost etc with definite revenue base (I’m not getting into the debate of GMV vs revenue vs margins vs net profit etc).

But the question is what problem did daily deal companies solve – after spending almost 2 years in the industry, I would say that they swayed away from the problem statement wherein they were supposed to help local businesses in offsetting under-utilized inventory problem.

But this problem came up another set of problems – since daily deal companies were more like a destination portal for consumers who can pick & choose which deal to buy; so customers often bought those deals which has less riders, more easy on their wallet (i.e. more discounts), can be redeemed almost anytime based on their convenience etc. Now if we dwell into solving customers purchase decision, then local businesses issue takes a back seat – which is why there has been rants globally that daily deal companies doesn’t have long term sustenance or local businesses would slowly move away from such value props since its a deal breaker over a longer period of time.

Now, lets understand what exactly local businesses really want which IMO daily deal companies can’t really solve with the present set of business metrics which is more biased towards consumer convenience (don’t get me wrong here – serving consumers & providing convenience isn’t wrong. Its just the way business models work in daily deals businesses).

So for local businesses, daily deal models are slowly shifting from “need to have (N2H)” to “good to have (G2H)“.

So to put it in black & white, local businesses actually want this:

• Attract customers at lesser discounts (of course way less than what daily deal companies give i.e. >50%+)
• Customers walk-ins almost 24X7 and not necessarily during those hours when customers want to come which is the late evenings & weekends because businesses are almost running full during those times.
• Lesser logistical nightmare like contracts, signups, deal structuring etc i.e. something more flexible which takes care of unorganized nature of the local businesses.
• Creating a pool of loyal customers & not being type-casted as discounted place.
• Something which helps the local business shift demand to those times when they are actually dull or running slow. That ways, businesses can actually offset their un-utilized inventory problem.

Now such flexible, easy & intelligent way of helping local businesses is kind of difficult for daily deal businesses to solve because of the business model paradigm (mentioned above) – but it is definitely is a huge opportunity at a global scale since the problem of unused inventory or lean hours problem is faced by almost all business.

Hope this post helps many in understanding few more things than already said.

Now I rest my case.

Update: Medianama crossposted this article here.

Here’s attached a small poll (via PollDaddy) where you can give your inputs.

The poll will be LIVE till 11th Nov night. [...]]]> Thanks to @helloanand (Anand Jain), we now have our ‘Made in Maximum City (MiMC)’ logo sample ready. Now wanted to get your feedback on the same.

Here’s attached a small poll (via PollDaddy) where you can give your inputs.

The poll will be LIVE till 11th Nov night. After that, will give out the results.

Again, thanks to Anand for taking time out for this

Note: If you can’t see the poll in your email, then visit this link.

Just reminded me something I read sometime back at Chris Dixon’s blog about predicting future of internet. Fits well right!!

from Mona Simpson’s eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.

First, go over to AVC.com if you haven’t yet visited Fred Wilson’s blog. I’ve been following Fred’s blog for more than 24 months now. I think [...]]]> Today have two specific destinations to share where you’ll find amazing startup content with interesting anecdotes & deep insights. Nothing more or less.

First, go over to AVC.com if you haven’t yet visited Fred Wilson’s blog. I’ve been following Fred’s blog for more than 24 months now. I think I’ve hardly come across such rich content destination for startups. More interestingly Fred post’s almost everyday – although he’s a busy person but kudos for able to follow the blog posting regime (p.s. – if you’re new to startups or want to know in-depth understanding of various nuances of starting up, the his “MBA Mondays” series is definitely something you should not miss).

Second, a chrome extension which I bumped into couple of months back. It’s a hacker news reader chrome extension. What I like the most about this little extension is its brilliant UI; not mentioning high S/N ratio from tons of hacker news URLs pouring every minute which sometimes can be overwhelming. I typically use this extension everyday to go through what’s happening in the tech fraternity. If you don’t use Chrome, you can move over to this URL.

Until next time…