iAccept To Lower Hiring Anxiety [Employer - Employee]

iAccept, a Bangalore based startup has set out to solve few major pains of talent hiring – anxiety, embarrassment and last minute ditches. One of the hardest moment during hiring is to roll out one’s best offer and then see a “no-show” day by the potential as he/she took up assignment elsewhere. For employees, on the other hand it is an outright embarrassment to take that call from HR and explain why they did not join company – B and joined company – A instead. In fact many times it is almost a total disaster of having accepted offers from many companies (an ego-massage!) at the same time and then join only one of them without informing the others. But this happens quite often today.

Simply, because it is ugly to take that call from HR managers and explain to them how it makes you feel sorry but cannot accept the offer finally.

Hiring is like an arranging a marriage between employer and the potential, and it costs a lot to match talent with expectation before an offer is made. Blank fires can cause much loss to the company, and delay the execution of project itself. Small & medium enterprise being most sensitive of all suffer the most due to this.

So here is how iAccept can help businessmen (& hires):

When your company rolls out at an offer it invites the potential using his email & PAN card number (for freshers there is university roll number) through the iAccept company dashboard [See picture below]. The potential will get a notification on his email and can click to see the offer actions such as date of expiry, date of joining and click to accept. At the same time the person with offer can see offers from other companies who approached him/her using the same PAN card number. The hire can choose to accept any one offer as per his/her liking.

Once the hire accepts the offer from company-A all other organizations receive a message that the person bearing PAN Card no. such & such has accepted offer elsewhere. The information of “non-availability” is passed instantly to all employers and this lowers the last minute suffrage. Here is how the dashboard of the potential looks like:

There is also flagging process like “no-show” and “absconding” to help company note the history of applicants. I feel that such negative flagging should not be available to organizations outside (except to the one who flagged), because then it becomes a serious privacy issue. Besides companies will try to cripple career prospects of potentials given that it is natural for people to jump companies upon realizing that they made a mistake by joining them in the first place. There is whole lot of complexity in there, which iAccept does have an eye on as I spoke with them yesterday.

iAccept has applied to patent the above hiring process as B Mohan Kumar, CEO  explains the underlying challenge. Having more such services would mean bifurcation of the database, and then again the same problem of misinformation & failure in status relay would occur. True it is, and tough one considering low barrier to entry over the web. iAccept will have to keep a serious guard to enforce the patent as well.

So guys, what do you think of iAccept?

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Working On Your Startup In Stealth-mode While Being Employed? Know the Legal Side of It.

It takes time from ideation to actual execution. Those who are employed many a time would like to have the cushion of a monthly salary when still perfecting the idea and getting close to execution, so that the bills can be covered while attempting to establish a client base. However, there are legal issues to be aware of when starting on your own while still being in an employer-employee relationship.

While most of the below is common sense, it still happens to be top 5 mistakes startup entrepreneurs commit. Interestingly, I get this question during most startup events.

The employer-employee relationship has certain well entrenched doctrines, from Intellectual Property laws to labor laws. All IP generated by the employee ‘during the course of employment’ belongs to the employer or the fact that an employee, specially key employees cannot operate a competing business. An employee must not only check the employment agreement and employment policies but be aware of these doctrines.

Speak with your employer: I believe it should be your mandatory task, to discuss with your employer on the business you want to pursue (ensure that you do not mis-represent) and check if there are any issues. Honesty is still the best policy.

Some companies have restrictions / disclosures required on holding board positions or substantial ownership. It is best to be upfront and transparent, rather than daring a law-suit or losing IP.

Moonlighting: Some organizations have zero tolerance to moon-lighting, while some are ok as long as it does not hamper productivity, not in the same domain / area of work and not utilize company’s resources. Even if you are working on your startup on personal time including phone calls / emails and ensure it is a different business from that of your employer, but then if you are tired all the time, it still means that you are not a very productive employee.

Conflict of interest: Multiplicity of interests clouds the right decision making. Ethical impropriety is hard to define and the best way to deal it is to avoid it.

Company’s trade secrets belong to the company and can be used during employment only for the benefit of the company. Misappropriation by memory is the most difficult to defend. Adequate disclosures may not be the best plan for mitigation of risk either.

You must have heard before that the IP creation for your startup is like being pregnant (IP creation) while being married to someone else (the employer). It raises ownership issues and other legal rights.

For example, Free Software Foundation (FSF) explicitly requires its contributors to execute copyright assignment stating that the software belongs to FSF, primarily to avoid contributor’s employer claiming ownership rights later.

Check the employment policy for Cooling off period where an employer may prohibit the employee from pursuing the same/similar business. The belief is that with the time lag the memory fades or the trade secret the employee had stales. Many of the points made here can’t be patched up later. You should not only strip everything that belongs to your employer but also be perceived to be not using anything that belongs to the employer. It costs much less in terms of time and money to get it right at the beginning that trying to sort it out later.

[Guest article by Sharda Balaji, founder of Novojuris.com, a legal consulting firm.]

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Talking of Webinars, authorStream has an Awesome Webinar Feature

We earlier shared Slideshare’s Webinar plug and while the company has no interim plans to launch this service, Chandigarh based authorStream boasts of a neatly implemented webinar service that lets you start your own webinars and control the entire flow (attendee registration etc).

Termed ‘Present Live’, the feature enables you to create a webinar – all you need to do is upload the presentation and click on ‘Present Live’ link [is available only for premium members].

By default, everyone entering the session gets the control to change slides. You as a presenter can block the navigation control for rest of the attendees so that only you can change slides. You can even have attendee login as optional.

I tested the service and it works flawlessly – highly recommended for startups/SMEs who want to use a no nonsense webinar service.

What webinar service do you use?

» authorStream recently raised the first round of funding

Also see: List of Free Web Conferencing Tools [Dimdim Alternatives]

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Tech WWWorld–LinkedIn IPO, Nokia Hints at Smartphone OS Changes

LinkedIn has filed for IPO

LinkedIn has 990 employees and revenue for 2009 was $120 million. A few key notes from the filing (link).

1. The number of registered members in our network is higher than the number of actual members because some members have multiple registrations, other members have died or become incapacitated, and others may have registered under fictitious names. Given the challenges inherent in identifying these accounts, we do not have a reliable system to accurately identify the number of actual members, and thus we rely on the number of registered members as our measure of the size of our network. Further, a substantial majority of our members do not visit our website on a monthly basis, and a substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members.

2 Our core value of putting our members first may conflict with the short-term interests of our business.

One of our core values is to make decisions based on the best interests of our members, which we believe is essential to our success in increasing our member growth rate and engagement and in serving the best, long-term interests of the company and our stockholders. Therefore, in the past, we have forgone, and may in the future forgo, certain expansion or short-term revenue opportunities that we do not believe are in the best interests of our members, even if our decision negatively impacts our operating results in the short term. In addition, as part of our philosophy of putting our members first, as long as our members are adhering to our terms of service, this philosophy may cause disagreements, or negatively impact our relationships, with our existing or prospective customers. This could result in enterprises and professional organizations blocking access to our website or refusing to purchase our hiring or marketing solutions or premium subscriptions. Our decisions may not result in the long-term benefits that we expect, in which case our member engagement, business and operating results could be harmed.

Nokia’s Q4 Profit Drops

Nokia claims 31% of the worldwide smartphone market share (down by 9% since last year).

Yet, Nokia faces some significant challenges in our competitiveness and our execution. In short, the industry changed, and now it’s time for Nokia to change faster.

NOKIA OUTLOOK
- Nokia expects Devices & Services net sales to be between EUR 6.8 billion and EUR 7.3 billion in the first quarter 2011.
- Nokia expects its non-IFRS operating margin in Devices & Services to be between 7% and 10% in the first quarter 2011.
- Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expect Nokia Siemens Networks’ net sales to be between EUR 2.8 billion and EUR 3.1 billion in the first quarter 2011.
- Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expect the non-IFRS operating margin in Nokia Siemens Networks to be between -3% and breakeven in the first quarter 2011.[link]

Egypt Shuts off the Internet

The Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.[link]

- Find How Trustworthy a Website is [Opera's Web of Trust]
Video: HoneyComb Demo

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Kinect Dragonball – Blast Your Kamehameha!

image from Motivate Urself

The guy who created Kinect Ultra Seven has released his new experiment with wider-known energy wave, Kamehameha from Dragonball.

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Groupon enters Malaysia. Now what?

CEO of Groupon Malaysia, Joel Neoh. Photo from joelneoh.com

On January 26, Groupon made its foray into Malaysia when it announced the acquisition of GroupsMore, a group-buying site built by YouthAsia.

With the purchase of GroupsMore, Groupon has now acquired five group-deal sites in the Asian region within the span of two months, the others being Beeconomic in Singapore, uBuyibuy in Hong Kong, AtlastPost in Taiwan, and more recently SoSasta in India.

In an e-mail interview with the CEO of Groupon Malaysia, Joel Neoh explains to us his views on the future of the group-buying model in this country now that Groupon has arrived.

Why do you think Groupon chose to acquire GroupsMore over the competition in Malaysia?

I’m not exactly sure how they selected us, but I can take a wild guess based on how I would select a Groupon clone if I was them: Groupon can easily grow revenues and member numbers easily by simply investing money, but what I think would be critically important is the pioneer, management, and founding team. I noticed is that the companies that they acquire have similarities in cultural fit where the founders are mostly young adults who are highly entrepreneurial and passionate about what they do.

What will happen to GroupsMore’s operations in Malaysia?

We will continue to run independently, where I’ll take the lead as CEO of Groupon Malaysia, and (YouthAsia partner) Ng Khailee will remain in YouthAsia to continue pursuing our social advertising business Says.my.

At this point of time we’ve always had a team of less than ten people – we’ll need to grow headcount in the next few months to accommodate our growth to reach out to more Malaysians to try something new.

There won’t be too many operational changes beyond increasing the headcount. However quite a number of our employees will be sent to visit the Groupon offices worldwide to learn and share best practices and meet the awesome Groupon peeps. (Neoh tweeted later: “Groupsmore team going places. After announcement of Groupon Malaysia: some are London-bound, some are Chicago-bound”)

Has this been an exit strategy for GroupsMore all this while?

We never really thought too much of the exit strategy when we started. We identified it as a good business model that is in line with our belief in the “collective power of people”; prior to GroupsMore, for example, we had more than 88,000 youths to fully organize and participate in the country’s youth festival. So we think that this group-buying model was highly scalable. Groupon contacted us end 2010 and here we are today under Groupon.

How will Groupon’s entry into Malaysia change the uptake of the group-buying model – do you think there’ll be a greater influx of deals and buyers now? Are you expecting the proliferation of groupon clones to drop away?

Collectively across all group buying sites in Malaysia, I don’t think there are currently more than 200,000 who subscribe and fully understand the model. With the entry of Groupon into Malaysia with us, the ambition now is to grow that 200,000-strong base and bring the concept to the masses. Eventually, we hope that group buying online would be something as commonly done as buying a SIM card.

As for Groupon clones, I think its eventual for the clones to drop – as I’ve said before – whether Groupon enters Malaysia or not. This is only because if they don’t scale to a certain size, they’ll be in the red every month. The group-buying model needs volume to succeed.

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A New Start, MobiNode is Now TechNode.com

As a hobby, I have been blogging on MobiNode.com for over 4 years together with our guest editors. Thanks to everyone who is reading this blog and finds the writing here valuable, we are so proud that this blog has been recognized as one of the best resource to learn about China/Asia web market. The blog also builds me and gets me recognized by international/local industry. It’s a bit hard to say so. But I think it’s time for a change.

MobiNode = Mobile Node,  meaning in wireless (ubiquitous) networks, everything would be considered as a mobile node and able to communicate with each other with wireless technology, which was part of my PhD research project. But as you may agree, nowadays and soon in near future, for wired and wireless network, there is not much difference at all. 3G, 4G etc, when the wireless technology get improved, wired and wireless are just tech terms, and for consumers, it’s basically the same: Internet.

Therefore, it’s time to say bye for MobiNode and in order to bring MobiNode blog to next level, we’ve decided to rename it. It will be TechNode from today, and to be more explicit, we will be focusing on the general Tech environment in China/Asia, the startups, ecosystem, web industry, mobile networks, gadgets and so on.

We have one aim: to be the No.1 independent tech blog in China. Every local startup and entrepreneur, we want it to be TechNoded from now on.We will stop writing on MobiNode.com, at least for now. So please do remember the address: http://en.technode.com.

Thanks a lot, again. And as always, TechNode.com needs your support!

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Singapore’s EDBI Is Lead Investor In Smaato’s Expansion Financing

US-based mobile ad optimiser and mobile advertising company, Smaato just closed a new round of funding with Singapore’s EDBI as its lead investor in the USD 7 million funding round. The funding enables Smaato to expand in Asia, particularly to establish presence in Singapore which is considered as one of the fastest growing mobile ad/digital advertising hub in Asia. Press release below.

SINGAPORE, January 27, 2011: Smaato, the leading mobile ad optimiser and mobile advertising company, today announced the closing of a new institutional round of funding. Singapore’s EDBI led the $7 million round, with participation from existing shareholders including global private equity firm aeris CAPITAL. The new funds will help fuel Smaato’s international expansion, in particular to extend its presence in Asia from its Asian headquarters in Singapore.

Ms. Chu Swee-Yeok, CEO of EDBI highlighted, “Smaato is a leader in the mobile advertising optimisation space with its highly innovative advertising optimization platform. As a digital advertising hub, Singapore is an ideal base for Smaato to address the fast growing mobile ad market in Asia, given the high concentration of ad networks, media agencies, and publishers here. EDBI looks forward to working closely with Smaato to partner key industry players leveraging on our networks in the region, and executing the company’s ambitious expansion plans in Asia.”

More than 11,000 publishers have signed up with Smaato to monetize their mobile content, with Smaato managing close to 20 billion ad requests per month. Smaato will further grow its more than 55 staff worldwide and strengthen its leadership position as the largest mobile advertising optimizer.

“We have seen a tremendous growth in Smaato’s revenues in 2010. For 2011, we expect even more exponential growth by partnering with leading mobile publishers and app developers worldwide,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and Co-Founder of Smaato. “Singapore has proven to be an excellent location to expand our Asian business. This new round of funding will help us improve our reach, foster product innovation and grow the Smaato team worldwide.”

Further reinforcing Smaato’s leadership in the mobile advertising industry, the company has also recently been recognized for the third time on the OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies list for 2011. Smaato was selected from more than a thousand U.S. and international technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and digital media industry insiders.

Mobile publishers and mobile app developers partner with Smaato to maximize mobile advertising revenues with the aggregation of 50+ leading ad networks. Working with mobile ad networks on a global scale, Smaato has a unique offering to the market with relevant local ads made available globally in a single sign-up process at www.smaato.com/signup.

About Smaato Inc.

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers and app developers. More than 11,000 publishers have signed up with Smaato to monetize their content in 220+ countries and Smaato is managing close to 20 billion ad requests per month.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of 50+ leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising revenues. Through an open API and a wide range of SDKs, SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato Inc. is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced international management team. Additional Smaato locations are based in Hamburg, Germany and Singapore. Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association and the German Digital Media Association BVDW.

About EDBI

EDBI (EDB Investments) is a leading investment firm headquartered in Singapore with worldwide presence. EDBI invests globally in the innovative and dynamic sectors of Biomedical Sciences, Clean Technologies, Digital Media, as well as key industries in Singapore. As a value adding investor, EDBI works closely with its portfolio companies, leveraging on its extensive networks and experience to help bridge and drive the companies’ growth strategies for Asia.

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Asia Panel at LeWeb | Top Speakers Sharing Ideas

This year I had the pleasure to be invited to moderate a panel on Asia at LeWeb – Europe’s largest Internet conference.

For this panel and despite the difficulty in representing fairly “Asia”, I did my best to get speakers from all key geographies: Japan, Korea, China and South-East Asia. The result was a quality of shared knowledge rarely seen on a topic that is already mainstream in Asia, but still avant-garde in the Western world:

“Asia: Digital Life, Real Billions”

Panelists:

Naoki Aoyaki, Senior Vice President, Business Development & CFO, GREE > GREE is a mobile SNS making over US$500 million revenue this year with only 22 million users, in Japan only!

Yiqun Bo, Vice-President & Co-Founder, Great Wall Club > Organizers of the “LeWeb of Asia” in China, and a recognized expert on mobile and web in China.

Steven Goh, CEO, Mig33 > Largest mobile SNS in SE Asia with 40 million registered users.

Chang Kim, ex-CEO of TNC, Product Manager, Google Blogger > Entrepreneur & expert blogger who was first to sell a company to Google in Asia.

Jimmy Kim, CEO, Nexonova > Nexon has 15 years experience with online gaming in Korea and overseas, and is on track for $1 billion revenue this year. No need to say more!

Takuya Miyata, Senior Vice President, Global Business, mixi > Closest SNS to Facebook in Japan. Miyata-san is also a serial entrepreneur.

Video of the entire panel for your enjoyment (45 minutes with Q&A):

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Revealed: Apple iPad’s Official Price (Rs. 27,900), BSNL Data Plans

Alright Apple is launching iPad in India tomorrow, i.e. Jan 28th and while we debate on whether the company considers India a dumping ground or not, Apple has officially released the price of iPad in India.

Base version (WiFI, 16GB) starts at Rs. 27,900 and WiFI+3G, 64GB goes up to Rs  44,900.

BSNL Data Plans for iPad

BSNL has 3G data plans for iPad – the starter pack is Rs. 100 (free usage of 1GB/month for 6 months), though postpaid has only 1 plan, i.e. Unlimited monthly plan for Rs. 999/month.

Alright. Are you buying an iPad?

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