Dec 6, 2010 ~ Web 2.0 Asia Blog

Monday, December 6, 2010

Tumblr returns “shortly” after outage for over 24 hours

9:40 PM Tech News No comments

“Shortly” has a new definition on the web: more than 24 hours, as defined by Tumblr.

On Sunday, the increasingly popular blogging service went down for what they claimed to be a scheduled maintanance on one of their database clusters, which worryingly carried on through Monday, echoing to the disaster that happened last year to social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia. The service has now been restored to the relief of millions of Tumblr users, though it has been intermittent across the globe.

“Frankly, keeping up with growth has presented more work than our small team was prepared for — with traffic now climbing more than500M pageviews each month,” Tumblr explained on its blog.

“But we are determined and focused on bringing our infrastructure well ahead of capacity as quickly as possible. We’ve nearly quadrupled our engineering team this month alone, and continue to distribute and enhance our architecture to be more resilient to failures like today’s.”

Not the best news for the New York-based startup, which has seen its monthly US pageviews in October grow at an astonishing 1,540% compared with the same period last year. According to figures by comScore, Tumblr served up 1.2 billion pageviews in the U.S. in October, with heavy traffic building up since June this year.

In November, the service also raised a new round of funding of around $25 million to $30 million, according to Fortune, placing the company’s value to be around $135 million. It’s expected that part of the funds would go into building a more robust infrastructure to handle the staggering traffic, and major outages like Sunday’s won’t happen for a long time — which, in Tumblr-speak, would hopefully mean “never”.

[image from Saira]

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Ayojak Partners with Suvidhaa For Offline Payments

10:21 AM Tech News No comments

Ayojak, the online event management startup has partnered with Suvidhaa for offline payments. This tie up will enable Event organizers in India to enable the purchase of their event tickets by cash payment at any of the 30,000 Suvidhaa outlets across India.

For the context, we have used Ayojak for UnPluggd ticketing and a trend that we have always noticed is the importance of having an offline channel for payment. Going by what we have seen, around 60% attendees of UnPluGGd (for the context – a technology event catering to India’s early adopter community) preferred offline payment!

If that’s the state of a technology event like UnPluGGd, imagine what happens to other events! Offline integration is a must (in India) and I’d expect this to add more transaction volume to Ayojak.

How does the Ayojak/Suvidhaa Partnership Work?

Event organizers can now make their ticket payment collection available across all Suvidhaa outlets spread at convenient locations like kirana stores, mobile stores, medical stores, STD booths, cyber cafés and travel agencies, easily accessible to policyholders. Users can book their event ticket in Ayojak and pay cash for ticket to the Suvidhaa store owner who will punch in the details and amount at the kiosk and generate a payment acknowledgement receipt of the transaction. Ayojak’s Online Ticket Booking software is integrated with Suvidhaa transaction system in real time therefore users will be getting instant ticket as soon as they make payment in Suvidhaa.

Event organizer can enable this while setting up an even in Ayojak by selecting ‘Cash payment via Suvidhaa’.
When the event is published, this option will be shown to buyer on event page, for example as shown in this test event page http://ticketing.ayojak.com/event/test-ayojaks-pay-cash-at-suvidhaa-for-event-ticket
Event attendee can select ‘cash payment option’ on check out page; when attendee confirms booking in Ayojak, they will get a confirmation record having order id to show it to any Suvidhaa retail outlets.
For easy access, there is also a Suvidhaa outlet locator, which shows the nearest Suvidhaa outlet.
When user makes a payment in Suvidhaa, they get a SMS confirmation about their payment by Suvidhaa to ensure it is transparent and safe.
Ayojak sends an instant e-ticket mail to the attendee.

An interesting milestone for Ayojak.

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Book Review–The Intelligent Entrepreneur

10:21 AM Tech News No comments

Very few books related to entrepreneurship really study the subject. Most of the books on entrepreneurship are heavily titled towards stories in hindsight and end up as a good bed time reading books (especially the ones based on QnA with entrepreneur).

The Intelligent Entrepreneur, a book by Bill Murphy walks you through stories of three Harvard MBAs (1998 batch), with different background/different businesses – the only common element being the story of success and failure.

The three entrepreneurs Marc Cenedella (TheLadders.com), Marla Malcom Beck (Bluemercury.com), and Chris Michel (Military.com, Affinity Labs) have a unique story (and interesting background, right from McKinsey to Navy).
What’s interesting about the book is the conversational tone and the fiction-styled story telling (for example – Marla’s obsession of working with Ledecky and fears of losing job when she’d tell him about her entrepreneurial ambition).

Chris Michel, on the other hand was doing just fine in Navy and had no entrepreneurial ambition. His story is important from a perspective that he trained himself to think big and found a niche (military) where there was huge demand and no serious player in the space.

Chris is a good example of my point that people aren’t always naturally ambitious. When I asked him when he first began to think big, he didn’t know quite how to respond. “I have to say,” he said, “I was doing really well in the navy. I mean, I don’t think that my career could’ve been going any better, at least not on paper. But for what ever reason, I was not satisfied. I love the navy, but the navy did not seem enough.”

The (real) stories are set in the early days of dotcom era, though business domains haven’t got anything to do with the lessons hidden inside the stories.

Based on his interaction with entrepreneurs, Bill nicely sums up the golden rules

Make the commitment.
Find a problem, then solve it.
Think big, think new, think again.
You can’t do it alone.
You must do it alone.
Manage risk.
Learn to lead.
Learn to sell.
Persist, persevere, prevail.
Play the game for life.

Here are a few quotes that are worth sharing:

“And be careful which mountain you climb. God forbid that you climb a mountain, plant your flag at the top, and then look around and realize— What was I thinking? I climbed the wrong mountain.”

“In my mind,” . “I was a very successful guy. Then I met these people, and I was like, oh my God— I get it. There’s a whole other level.”

“had a strong sense of my own opinions. I think to a certain extent you’re born with that. Being an entrepreneur is about saying, I know this doesn’t exist. This segment isn’t being addressed. But I can go do it. I suppose some people might call that arrogance. To me, it’s a matter of self- assurance.”

To cut the long story short, The Intelligent Entrepreneur essentially dwells into the science of entrepreneurship (and hopefully puts an end to are entrepreneurs born or made sort of debates).

In few instances, I found the book to be too descriptive and sometimes a bit boring (especially with stories of HBS), but overall, it’s a must read for early stage entrepreneurs and ones who have been planning to start off on their own.

Unlike several other crunchy books that celebrate entrepreneurship with hindsight stories and try to make their subject look-like-a-hero, The Intelligent Entrepreneur takes an honest shot at it.

Disclosure: We received a sample copy of the book for review.

Other Book Reviews from us:

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Cheap Motorola Devour clone priced about $70

8:01 AM Tech News No comments

Motorola-Devour-clone

Look at this MOTO Devour, it’s quite nice at looking, but the most important thing is that it’s unbelievably cheep, priced just around $70. Of course, its other specs will be not able to satisfy you if you are looking for a powerful smartphone. It’s just a nonsmartphone that’s based on a MTK chip, with a 3 inches 240*400 display, dual sim, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and 1GB onboard storage. It gets two camera respectively located on the front and the back, but resolutions are sad, only 0.3 megapixels.

[Source: M8cool]

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Itoos i5 MID hits the market, priced at 780 Yuan

7:28 AM Tech News No comments

itoos-i5

As tablet/MID become more and more popular, it seems that those cheep but function-lacking portable media player has lost the love from consumers. So many Chinese PMP manufacturers have enter the MID market. Itoos is among them. This company’s first MID i5 today was officially launched to the market. As the PMP products, this MID has advantage on price, compare to those international big brands. It’s only priced at 780 Yuan( about 114 USD).

Itoos i5 packs a 800 Mhz Telechip 8902 chip, a 7 inches resistive touchscreen, 256MB DDR2, 4GB onboard storage, a 1.3 megapixels camera, Android 2.1 OS. The device support 1080p decoding.

[Source: imp3.net]

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Recap of Startup Acquisitions

2:30 AM Tech News No comments

Any startup acquisition story usually sets off speculations and varied guesses on the acquisition amount. While some companies are forthcoming about it, most companies keep it as a heavily guarded secret.

With Groupon acquiring three startups last week, we thought this would be a good time to revisit some of the earlier acquisition stories we reported on. These acquisition amounts given below are in US Dollars and not the official numbers, we are reporting based on what we’ve heard from various sources:

Beeconomic

Amount: $24 million

Started in : May 2010

Groupon acquired Singapore-based deal site, Beeconomic last week. The Straits Times, Singapore-based publication, guesstimated the acquisition amount to be $24 million. Beeconomic has been around for just about six month and was started by siblings, Karl and Christopher Chong. Along with Beeconomic, Groupon acquired uBuyiBuy and Atlaspost in Taiwan.

tenCube

Amount: $10 – 15 million

Started in: 2005

Singapore-based mobile security startup was snapped up by Internet security giant, McAfee in July 2010. The Straits Times speculated the acquisition amount to be $15 million. And we heard from some sources that the amount falls between the range of 10 – 15 milion dollars. Check out e27′s interview with Darius, post-acquisition.

Koprol

Amount : <$500,000

Started in: 2009

Yahoo’s acquisition of Indonesia-based Koprol created quite a stir within the tech community in Indonesia. This was Yahoo’s first foray into the location-based social networking space and the acquisition took place amidst rumors of Yahoo buying Foursquare. The acquisition amount was never disclosed but it has now come to light that amount was less than one million dollars. We also heard from a few reliable sources that the amount was less than 500,000. Yahoo picked up the startup for an absolute bargain.

Some other recent startup acqusitions were JobsDB acquiring CozyCot and Travelport acquiring Sprice. The acquisition amounts of these startups remain undisclosed.

The acquisition amount stated here reflects the rate at which some of the startups in the region are being acquired for. And looks like Beeconomic has definitely hit the jackpot, specially for a startup that is barely six months old.

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101 on Founders Agreement [Legal Resources]

12:06 AM Tech News No comments

Most founders begin their startup with their friends, colleagues or someone who they have known in the past. The earlier social relationship is now an economic relationship and it is essential to have a strong
contractual agreement. There are some pertinent points that you need to discuss with your co-founder(s) and the best time is upfront, when you are freezing on the idea / broad goals and preparing to start.

Some founders actually go shopping for a co-founder. But before you startup, could you also check on the ‘Chemistry’? Yup! You would have heard about trust, passion, complimentary skills required for the business. They are absolutely important, but without chemistry it just doesn’t seem to work.

Equity Structure: Do decide about the shareholding and vesting(if a partnership firm, then contribution ratio and profit sharing). This is also related to other aspects such as roles that each co-founder would play, the amount of cash investment, salary to be drawn by co-founders and others. There is no one formula, but generally, the person who has invested cash and also takes a very active role in the company, would obviously get a higher stake compared to the person who just invests. While on this point, also discuss future financing capabilities of the co-founders, openness to debt-financing and equity dilution scenarios.

Roles and responsibilities: In a startup, co-founders pretty much do everything between themselves, until they have the initial employees and some organizational structure. But still, it is necessary to have a sense of who does what and responsibilities. It not only helps in having adequate discipline amidst chaos in the initial period, but also establish commitment and accountability.

The key take-aways from this discussion would be to identify the decision maker, would it be the CEO / Chairman of the Board/ or a majority shareholder. While it is great to have a consensual approach, it is
imperative to have one person who will have the final say. Closely observing how the decision evolves from this discussion gives you a lot of insight. Be tactful when you discuss designations, some are hung-
up over a designation!

The other interesting dimension that it helps is in identifying each co-founder’s personal goals – a profitable venture, a life-style business or exit at high valuation. It is a good time to think through the authorization for operating the bank account as well.

Broad contours of the business: Most startups evolve over time. While it is hard to foresee the future requirements, you can check-out your co-founders flexibility / rigidity on a given idea and execution. I have seen a startup team disintegrate because the co-founders came together to build a product company and the market realities (cash flow constraints) forced the company to ‘also’ do services, which consumed a large portion of the startup team’s bandwidth.

Salary: Till the time the business earns revenues, the co-founders need to sustain themselves. Expecting a salary during the very early stages is hard. However, a discussion on the compensation structure, including performance based incentive in the form of sweat equity/ESOP, though sensitive is crucial. It becomes a touchy point especially if one of them has invested more than the other. But, a candid discussion reduces the heart-burn later.

When things go wrong: You should discuss on the ‘give-up’ strategy; that all the intellectual property developed by the startup will belong to the company; that a co-founder will not continue / start / participate in another similar or competing business; that a co-founder can be asked to leave if she is not performing and the modalities; most importantly, how would the shareholding alter if a co-founder left.

A co-founder leaving is emotionally draining, but do mitigate the risk and pain by discussing these points upfront.

A Founders’ Agreement primarily captures the outcome of the above points. You could either have a separate written agreement or make it a part of the charter documents.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a legal advice or opinion.

[Sharda Balaji is the Founder of NovoJuris (www.novojuris.com) a legal consulting company focused on start-ups and SMEs in technology space.]

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Tech Around WWWorld–Facebook’s New Profile Pages, WikiLeaks Mirror Sites [and more]

12:06 AM Tech News No comments

Facebook has launched new profile pages, that brings quite a bit of personal story telling (where are you from/which school did you go to etc).

“The profile also gives you new ways to share your interests and activities. You can list the projects you worked on at your job, classes you took in school, your favorite musicians and sports teams, and more. You can also share your life philosophy by connecting to the religions, political affiliations, and people you follow and admire. All your interests and experiences are now represented with images, making your entire profile a more compelling visual experience ” [source].

Visit this link to get access to new profile page.

WikiLeaks Mirror Sites

Wikileaks is now running on over 200 mirrors (see the entire list). You can also create a Wikileaks mirror site by folllowing below instructions (details here)

Setup an account where we can upload files using RSYNC+SSH (preferred) or FTP
Put our SSH key in this server or create an FTP account
Create a virtual host in your web server, which, for example, can be wikileaks.yourdomain.com
send the IP address of your server to us, and the path where we should upload the content.

“We will take care of all the rest: Sending pages to your server, updating them each time data is released, maintaining a list of such mirrors. If your server is down or if the account don’t work anymore, we will automatically remove your server from the list.”

Google To Filter Content Piracy Terms From Autocomplete

We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete. While it’s hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we’ll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.[source]

Groupon Rejects Google Offer

First reported by Chicago Breaking Business, Groupon has rejected the Google’s acquisition offer. As per AllThingsD, Google was offering $6 billion for Groupon — $5.3 billion plus the possibility of getting another $700 million if it met performance milestones.

The rejection of the Google offer is a milestone in Groupon’s dizzying journey, which in two years has taken the company from a struggling Web site to a tech star with more than 3,000 employees worldwide, a presence in 35 countries and expected annual revenues of at least $500 million this year. The company was profitable in its seventh month.

Must Read : The Groupon Story