Archive for August, 2008
Having been active in the start-up scene for 3 years now, i have personally come across this significantly important question. How (or when) to launch your website? When are you really ready? When should you let the world know about the coolest thing you have been sweating on?I have faced this in numerous web projects, both at work and on start-up projects.
A usual strategy is to keep developing in a small team, adding several features, because you want to get the best thing out. However, this is usually a never-ending process. One can get sucked into a development/brainstorming/refining cycle and this usually happens because there is no real users yet who are using the product - that is there is little possibility of organic growth within the product itself based on what users like and do.
Then arises the second question? How does one launch - try to create a sudden big bang or go for slow but surely rising one can and then one day when you are ready, email the top tech bloggers like TechCrunch, GigaOm and hope that they cover you. Very likely you will see a traffic spike if any of these bloggers write about you but that spike can be a drastic fall too (see the graph of cuil.com as an example).
Just got a link from a colleague about How to Launch Your Software? The blog described the strategy adopted by Gmail developers to launch their product. I dont necessarily think there is one better model - in some cases a big bang may work but i am more inclined to follow the slow but rising traffic model that is based on the key principle - “get your users from day one” . That is a key point and i have seen the benefits of this in my own several startup projects. Users are the acid test for your product and will surprise you by not using or recognizing the importance of a feature that you thought was “cool”.
For example, we built this very cool flex based interface to show the connections between people and people and food for ifood.tv - we called it the ifood explorer.
iFood Explorer
But we soon realized that people didnt care much for something cool - they just wanted the recipes first and then anything else.We have not involved users till completing the product and so learnt a good lesson, of getting users as early on as possible.
August 26th, 2008
Well lots. I just came across this on my startups twitter account and this gotta be among the most suicidal logos i have seen for a for a company (logo post and pic, courtesy the cleverblog, which is a blog dedicated to logo design.
Ok, the logo is for an institute for oriental studies. The idea of an oriental institute with the red sun does convey the purpose of the company - an institute of learning of the orient. But boy, the logo conveys a totally different perspective, if you see the sun as an enormous backside, and the institute spire, poking it (other other ‘p’ word, would sound too nasty). What do you think? This logo has been discussed elsewhere too
Being a startup guy for 3 years now, one of the most important thing that i have learnt is that, simple rules, that may sound as cliche, are actually very very important. There are quite a few of these simple rules or rather mantras, which i will discuss as i go on, but today time to reflect on the importance of the name and the logo. A sticky, meaningful logo can convey a great deal. A good logo should communicate the core idea or mission of the company. And in my experience, just hiring a designer (specially some of those who offer to do your logo for say $50) wont cut it.
Infact, before you even hire a designer the startup founders should be very clear about who they are and what they are offering. Many times, startups fail to define their core mission and goals and get bogged down in daily grind of “Getting things done”. However if the mission and goal is solid, everything flows from it, even the idea for the logo.
One golden rule of know what you are really doing is to write it down in just 2 lines (cut it down to 1 if possible). Once you have this clear, you could generate visual ideas and communicate the same to the designer. But just telling a designer we are to come up with a logo doesnt cut it.
Here is an example if a logo for one of my startups, ifood.tv .
When we made this logo, we really werent sure what we were offering. The logo doesnt communicate the core idea of the website at all - it just tells you the name. Farming this logo out to a designer would just have made it prettier, but not more informative.
iFood New Logo
Our new logo communicates the central idea of a site that is video based and allows any one to create their own food network. The first iteration was done by my friend (is if referred to on this blog as COP) and then on along with the inputs from the team and an outsourced designer, it got its new final shap.
The new logo is better than what we have, but still has a long way to go. Some designers are really particular about the company clearly defining who they are. And i like that. A friend , who is a top brand and product development guy, a heck of a creative guy, really nailed down what ifood.tv is (or ought to be ) in terms of its communication message (will add the logo he built) . However, that design never got completed, because it was too clean, i guess.
Here are some of the most communicative logos, i have come across
FedEx has a great logo - Notice the “->” arrow embedded in the letters E and X. Clearly communicates the speed at which fedex delivers.
The logo of Sun microsystems is tied to their tagline - to the Nth level. logo has every letter built of the letter “n”. Will post more.
August 24th, 2008
CricketHighlights.com
The cricket world cup was up in 2003 and then unless you bought some
expensive dish network subscription there were hardly any options to
watch the games. Online videos were non existent. And even if one
could watch the game at some friends house, the time zone difference
between USA and cricket playing nations was such that one would have to
watch the game are really odd hours (i remember the world cup games
used to start something like at 3 am). So i always used to wonder,
wudnt it be just easier if one could watch a 30 minute highlight of a
cricket game (the one-day versions are 8 hrs long) online?
Solution Goals:
1. To develop a website, www.crickethighlights.com (i still have the domain) to showcase the game highlights
2. To develop a software solution that would automatically extract
highlight segments from the video broadcast. This would require fair
bit of video processing but wudnt be terribly difficult. One could
check the signal for the score and determine points where a player gets
out or hits a four or a six (just think of them to be like home runs in
baseball).
Status:
1. I didnt do much till 2005. then found a digital video processing
guy who was doing a PhD in the area of video summarization. Sounded
like a perfect guy to build the technology. After many mths of trying,
we cudnt really get the software going. Mainly because he got busy with
his PhD.
2. 2006. Pitched crickethighlights.com as an online video site for a
b-school course on launching new ventures. The idea was very well
received but since this was not cricket and not baseball, the feedback
was that the market is too small.
3. Nothing since then. In 2007 the BCCI, announced it would develope
a portal for doing exactly this for the global cricket audience. Seemed
like this was the end of the road for crickethighlights. However, the
BCCI site never really took off
4. then Youtube happened and suddenly one could see 2-3 minute clips of the cricket games.
So perhaps, crickethighlights.com is now an idea that should retire to the deadpool. What do you think.
UPDATE On May 15, 2010: I have been getting more than 200 or so odd unique visitors on this domain, i am embedding a widget to help awareness of new diabetes treatment trials
You can find more such trials at TriaX.com
August 23rd, 2008
Grubia.com is a social way to discover and know what to eat and where to eat what you want to eat?
As a foodie, i have had some real information needs which translated into the idea for grubia.
Idea Date: Somewhere around Jan, 2008. After many hours of brainstorming with my co-founder, we nailed this down. We wanted to do something in the online food media space. But we wanted to solve a real need and also build something cool and different (read not another restaurant review site, food blog or recipe site).
Site URL: Grubia.com
Blog: http://grubia.blogspot.com
Motivation: Consider the following scenarios
1. Have you ever been in a situation where you have gone to a restaurant and looked at the menu and wondered, what to eat there? What is good? Perhaps, yes (specially if you go to eat food you are not very familiar with ). You may has asked the waiter/waitress and heard them say, “Oh, everything is awesome here!”. Wow, that surely helps. So you know where to eat, but not what to eat?
2. Similarly, you may have had a burning desire to eat one of your favorite foods (hmmm, i just love the classic north indian dish, mutton biryani).
3. You just walked into some place to grab some food. And it turned out that the place has an awesome cheeseburger. You want to tell the world. “folks, you cant not miss the burger here.” You know where one should eat and what one should order but dont have a place that you can do exactly that.
Existing Solutions Landscape
1. Restaurant review sites - such as yelp.com, zagat.com However, these focus on restaurant reviews and not the review of the dishes being served.
2. Menu listing sites - such as menupages.com. Again, they provide what is available but not what is great at a place
3. Blogs - well they do everything but cant answer the specific question, what to eat at a particular place?
4. Recipe sites - such as ifood.tv which provide recipes but that is not that helpful.
Innovation Factor:
1. Focusing on just the real stuff, food!
2. Crawlers that get the menu and restaurant data
3. Grub ranking algorithms that use several parameters to rank the different dishes across the restaurants so that when you lookup a place, you know what are the three most recommended appetizers, drinks, entrees and desserts
Current Status (as of 08/01/2008):
1. In active development since may, 2008
2. Submitted for techcrunch 50.
3. Interviewed for tc 50. Invite for the demopit
4. Site launched (alpha) on August 20, 2008.
Stay tuned! Will be posting many updates. The site will be launching in private beta in a few days.
August 23rd, 2008