RK's Musings

VC - Founders

"VC - Founders" link explored by Paul Graham, in the light of recession.

Link : Could VC be a casualty?

Similar Idea

Here is a similar idea that TP and I tried during 2004-05 in India . Couldn't scale it then.

http://unyk.com/

Will it work now in India ? May be someone will go for it again

Purple Cow : Ambient

Ambient - Design at its best

Data doesn’t have to be dry. We’re used to seeing online information delivered as boring numbers, dense charts, or incomprehensible tables. This is dramatically different from the way we think about the analog world. We know if the pond is frozen from the color of the water. We can tell the status of the gas in our car by glancing at a simple gauge. The smile on a friend’s face is all we need to know a lot of complicated data about whether we’re doing something right or not.

So Ambient is trying to bridge that gap by creating a series of analog devices that measure digital data. The first is the Ambient Orb, which receives signals to change color. It can be red, blue, or green, or somewhere in between.

Logging onto Ambient’s Web site, one types in the serial number of the Orb and tell it what to track. It can show tomorrow’s weather or the status of the stock market. If the Dow is up, the Orb glows green… in a bear market, it’s red, red, red. ..And yes, Ambient sold out their entire production run last Christmas, with more goodies to come.

Chowhound.com

Via Seth(Flipping the Funnel):

One of the most profitable small businesses in Queens, NY, is a little Thai restaurant named after its owner. Mrs.Sripraphai sells amazing Thai food. With no advertising, they’ve managed to keep the place packed, night after night.

The buzz about the restaurant got so loud that the all-powerful New York Times could no longer ignore the place—even though it’s not in Manhattan. A two-star review (almost unheard of for a restaurant like this) led to long lines—even after the restaurant doubled in size.
So what’s the secret? How did she do it?

She didn’t. Chowhound did.

Yes, Mrs. Sripraphai created a remarkable restaurant. But the visitors to chowhound.com made the difference.For several years, dozens of us posted about the restaurant. Every single dish was analyzed. Arguments were made for and against the jungle curry. There was no funnel—but many of the diners had a megaphone. Chowhound.com is exactly the platform a remarkable business needs. Even though the design of the site won’t win any awards, the 350,000 people who come every month (looking to read and to be read) are precisely the people who make or break a new restaurant.

Why does it work? Because the people who post are trusted. They have a reputation. They are not anonymous.And most of all, they have real voices, voices filled with authenticity and experience, giving people a reason to trust them.

End of WallStreet

Via Ashish

Michael Lewis revisits Liar's Poker as WallStreet era ends.

Link

Head of Long Tail !

Here is a service which captures Head of Long Tail! Buzz Tracker

Filtrbox

Another attempt to fill this gap:

http://www.filtrbox.com/overview.php

Mahalo

This company has to be run out of Bangalore / Hyderabad or some location in India. This is a classic human powered search and I have no clue why this guy is running it out of US. And now he is laying off people and blaming it on economy!! Com'on!!

Link : tough decisions!!

CDBaby.com

Heard of CDBaby.com . If you are music fan, you would have ..Here are a few stats which make the site real cool : ($84 M of real value to the artists..wow!!)

# 244,574 artists sell their music at CD Baby
# 4,606,776 CDs sold online to customers
# $84,085,098 paid directly to the artists

Something interesting on their site -:)

# Our servers are running Linux, Apache, PHP, and MySQL.
# No Microsoft products were used in the creating of this website.

Indian version of Woot.com

This had to happen . A purple cow like woot.com can be camouflaged in to many versions and here's one in India

Online shopping portal Infibeam.com today announced the grand opening of its Mobile Store. The company will continue to feature its innovative business practice of discounting one mobile phone each day, which is displayed every midnight as Deal of the Day on its web site, http://www.infibeam.com/Mobiles The mobile phone displayed on Deal of the Day is often sold out within minutes and customers are served on first come first serve basis.

Audible!!

I am really pleased that Amazon has seen a great value in Audible.com
It is a great site and gives wonderful range of titles for the customers. Now what does it mean to amazon ? Obviously it is going to be a nice complement to its new product - kindle.
What can existing customers expect out of this deal ( me, included) ..Hmmm..least of it is more titles !

Link : Amazon.com buys Audible(for $300 million)

Riya challenged?

Riya founder Munjal Shah said in a recent interview that Face Recognition has reached its limits and cannot be improved. Just a day later that I watched the interview, here is something new... Link : Researchers Announce '100% Accuracy' In Facial Recognition

I guess the challenge for the researchers now would be to deploy and test it on a large scale.

Kindle is doomed!!

According to Steve Jobs, Kindle Reader from Amazon will not take off !!

Via: New York Times

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

Chitika .. What's wrong ?

A few months ago Chitika was hailed as a super service. But checked it to see how it is doing now..I am surprised their reputation has taken a beating .

Link :
Chitika publishers see drastically reduced earnings in audited reports

Tutor Vista : WOW

A google search on " row reduced echelon form" - gives the results of principles related to rre. But apart from that one needs to notice what appears on the right hand side.

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Help With Math Homework--- Tutorvista..WOW !! I am really thrilled to see an Indian web company having come this long way. I sincerely wish Tutorvista grows beyond imagination and the service becomes damn useful to any high school student who wants a private tutor...

Limbo - Bid Low and Win !!

In India, where mobile population is reaching 160 million, I think there is definitely a scope for a entertainment service like this. I think there are companies in India which would want to give away goods for free for brand promotion.
Check this cool site which has become a craze in US

Limbo 41414

Welcome to Limbo 41414

We launched Limbo 41414 in October 2005 for one simple reason - to help people get more fun out of their cell phones.

It's really quite simple;  It's a text-message based game where you compete against other (real live) players to find and retain the lowest, unique bid™.

Why play? Well, first of all it's really fun - just read what other players are saying. And you can win some pretty amazing stuff. Stuff that you've always wanted like new cars and expensive trips. Plus you get instant feedback, you can connect with other players AND you always win because you earn Loot for every SMS bid, which you can trade for things like T-shirts, CDs and ringtones.

How's this possible? We've created partnerships with big companies who give away stuff in sweepstakes all the time. We've just given them a fun, new way to reach people - through their mobiles phones. At the same time, we give you - the mobile user - a way to get more fun from your phone. And, it's on your terms! We don't buy or sell phone lists, and we don't spam. We just count on your interest in the prize.

Killer Firms

In the past few days I have come across the following firms which can real killers if everything pans out as they have envisioned.
1.Netvibes  - Exceptionally simple UI for creating webstart pages
2.Coghead - Any non programmer can create a web app . Who said rails makes web development easy ? who needs to develop anything if everything is already available in drag and drop format
3.Next Medium - TIVO solves a problem, but also creates a problem for marketers. Their ads on TV become ineffective, to say the least. This firm works on product placement in the content itself.
4.Blue lithium - My favorite - Serving contextual ads and taking on the mighty google
5.ClearWire - WiMAX firm which is shaking up all the big telcos and cable provider business
6.ZOPA - thought abt such a service while reading "Wisdom of Crowds" Now it has become a reality.
7.Jajah - Free calls with out burden of heavy client, headsets etc
8.Hype Machine - startup by a 20 yearold guy - technorati for mp3 blogs

It will be damn damn interesting to see how will these firms play out in the future

Longaberger : Purple cow

The Longaberger Company is America's premier maker of handcrafted baskets and offers other home and lifestyle products, including pottery, wrought iron, fabric accessories and specialty foods. The company is based in Newark, Ohio, and there are tens of thousands of independent home consultants located in all U.S. states who sell Longaberger products directly to customers.

One of the special elements of the company is its retail store architecture..Now that's a purple cow!

Pixar Story

Here's an account of how pixar became what it is today
Link : The Pixar Story

A profitable firm which VCs wont touch

Can you think of a site which is popular next to facebook  and VCs do not want to fund it? Yes it has to be related to porn...MercuryNews.com reports on Andrew conru, a Stanford grad who runs a profitable firm, adultfriendfinder. Article though does not mention about the revenues from the site.

carwale.com

A concept which took 6 years to work in US seems to be working straight away in India..carwale.com in India is a near replica of carmax.com

Walmart of used cars

Carmax is the walmart of used cars. It had to happen as the industry was not organized. Its inspiring to know that this company has held its head straight for the FIRST 7 YEARS MAKING LOSS..Now it is breakeven its operations and has become a force to reckon with in the US Market. Studying the way they manage the inventory, sales locations etc would make a really interesting business case

Why Digg might not take off

Via Chicago Tribune :

I'm with the latter group, mostly because, whenever I think about new technology and its potential to go mainstream, I remember the Rule of the VCR. Every household had one. They were easy to set up and use, and using them fully offered people the great benefit of watching TV on their own, not the network's, schedule. Yet in more than 9 out of 10 homes, the VCR might as well not have had a "record" button; it was put to its simplest use, playing tapes.

The Rule of the VCR states that in non-vital matters, people follow the path of least resistance, even when only a little extra work will bring great benefit.

Firm focused on Disruptive technologies

Garnett & Helfrich Capital

Garnett & Helfrich Capital is the first fund to exclusively focus on the emerging venture buyout segment for mid-sized technology spinouts. Formed in March 2004, with $250,250,000 in capital from leading institutional investors and educational endowments and now expanded to $350,350,000, the firm invests in buyouts in the enterprise software, communications and networking, semiconductors, data processing, and internet content/infrastructure segments of the technology industry.

Garnett & Helfrich Capital is actively looking for
acquisition opportunities where the business has ongoing annual revenue
of $40,000,000 to $200,000,000, a positive brand and solid reputation
in the marketplace for technological excellence, and an installed base
of customers who have an enduring relationship with the business.

These
businesses may (or may not) be profitable or cash flow positive, may be
in need of new technology and products to expand the existing offering,
and may be “broken and orphaned” within the parent organization.
However, these spinout businesses must possess the potential to be
turned into great operating companies that can grow revenue and profits
dramatically in the coming years as standalone entities.

Slick Calendar

Here's a nice web based calendar - AJAX based interface : Kiko - Paul graham camp

Backpack.com

Came across a site Backpack.com, which will allows me to store all sorts of lists .It is also rss enabled. Now I can get rid of Excel sheet where I used to store my To-Do list and carry it to whichever machine I went to..

Slowly I get a feeling that day is not near where everything will be on web. delicious, flickr, backpack are just the early indicators I guess

The Business Experiment

Based on Wisdom of crowds fundas, here is Robert May trying to experiment in the real world whether there is a possibility of building a business , decisions relating to all aspects taken by crowds .Will  be interesting to watch the outcome of the experiment
Link: The Business Experiment

Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor :This principle thought up a long time ago by William Occam while shaving(!) states that the shortest hypothesis, or solution to a problem, should be the one we should prefer (over longer more complicated ones). This is one of the fundamental tenet's of the way western science works and has received much debate and controversy.

Which means always the smallest, simplistic equations explains the phenomenon in the best possible way. Is it true in the case of successful companies ? Are they few priciples based on which we can more or less predict the success of a company. I am half way thr the book - Good to Great...The main predictions from the book after a decade long number crunching and analysis of successful companies does propose a few priniciples for companies to become great.

Watch out for my book review soon !