business ideas

People wonder why some have great ideas and go on to start multiple companies while other really smart people struggle for ideas to base companies on. A simple approach towards this is given here.

And of course while trying to automate jobs, if you also address jobs that are painful that adds to the value of the solution. Of course, one can argue that sometimes that is not true. Look at iPhone. And that is true. In this case, you need to be able to anticipate how you can make life easier for people to do jobs in ways they could not before. Anyhow, I am rambling here.

Learning from bad experiences

Reading a skeptical view of the Sprint-Tmobile merger reminded me of my own interaction with skeptics on a different topic. this is the topic of outsourcing SW development.

These skeptics believe that outsourcing SW development to say India, Russia or other countries will not work. And when asked the reason why, the answer is that they have been in companies where they tried to do this. And it invariably did not work.

Those are fair remarks but what concerns me is that these same people do not step back and try to analyze what went wrong. And how to fix it to make it work. They have experienced that it did not work and hence they conclude it will not work. But they do not make an effort to learn from their bad experiences.

As far as outsourcing goes, I believe it can be successful if two conditions are met namely you need to have a capable partner (project manager with a team of SW dev) on the other side. Secondly, you need to be very precise about the interfaces and requirements that that govern the outsourced product.

Of course on the Sprint-Tmobile issue, I am a skeptic when it comes to the promises reportedly made by Son. And that is because of physics. In such a case, you really cannot make it work if it goes against the laws of nature.

Impact of extreme isolation

It's well known that man is a social animal. An interesting article on the impact of extreme isolation on the human mind is here.

DRM

An interesting angle on DRM given here.

The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices.

fundraising mistakes

A great article by Sam Altman, the new chief of YC, on fundraising mistakes made by founders here

Reasons for startup failures

Recently came across this article that provides 20 reasons why startups fail. This is based on analyzing data from failed startups.  Interesting read.

The above article also links to an interesting related article from Paul Graham of Y-Combinator fame. This is based on the experiences of the author and is also an interesting read.

Wearables

Read an interesting article about the challenges associated with wearables. I strongly believe that wearables of different types (watches, glasses, bracelets etc) will be key towards the "data driven everything" world that we are marching towards. 

Several opportunities in this space that I can think of

• Help me with my social interactions. So can my google glass help me by recording names, important nouns in my conversation and provide me context for next time I meet the same person. Helps me get over my "small talk" challenges maybe.
• Make me more efficient. So can my "watch" or "bracelet" understand that my bp goes up when I talk to person X and try to manage that for me; maybe by making me call X before a party or going to sleep or whatever so that i can recover fast and not waste the entire day after a conversation with X trying to recover.
• Show the impact on my health. Wearables these days focus on "easy pickings" such as showing me how much i walked, ran etc. But can they then tie to how beneficial these activities are to the blood pressure, sugar levels etc for the person. And warn me when I do not exercise as to the expected impact on my health. I bet such information about positive and negative impact will get lot more people "keeping their promises with regards to exercising".

Here is another interesting article on wearables that I read this weekend.