Five things to look for in a co-founder – Startup Skills

I started lobangclub just over a year ago with my co-founder Ronald Cheung. We are going through our third major pivot, and what we are pursuing now is vastly different than what we originally envisioned when we started the company.

Everyone talks about skills when choosing a co-founder. To me, there are other things that are just as important. This is the story of how Ronald and I became co-founders.

1. The best way to find a co-founder is to not need a co-founder
I’d had the initial idea for lobangclub in Sept 2009, I was new to Singapore, so I was figuring out how I was going to execute this idea here..I went back to Australia for a holiday over Christmas that year. I met Ron over lunch and told him about the idea. He was intrigued initially, but he had a high paying job, so I thought the chances of something happening was pretty low.

Following that lunch, I pursued Ron for a few weeks about working together and he continued to turn me down. I kept prototyping the product and found a way to get the initial product built quickly. I was fully prepared to start lobangclub solo. I kept Ron updated and, about two months after he first said no, he agreed to join full time as co-founder.

I believe what was crucial to Ron joining was the momentum of the idea. When he joined, our initial product was being built already. I was not waiting for him to start. Him joining increased our velocity.
I see so many people using the lack of a co-founder as a crutch to not start.

2. Select your co-founder like you would select your spouse
I’ve done two other startups with co-founders and for better or worse you are married to your co-founder. There are three must-haves in my opinion:

Perseverance – I had to be pretty sure that Ron was not going to give up when things got tough. I’ve had a startup where we got sued, and my co-founder essentially gave up.

Trustworthiness – The schizophrenic nature of startups means that you usually go through a gamut of emotions. I had to go into this having no doubts that Ron would have my back.

Divergent thinking – Both co-founders need to think about problems differently and bring different solutions to the table instead of always agreeing on the same solutions to every problem. OK, so this one is not like getting married…

3. You need to have been through shit together
You don’t know someone’s character unless he has been tested by adversity. This is why I am deeply suspicious of the trend of just throwing people together to create a startup Events like startup weekend or startup bus, to me, are “startup porn”. I just can’t see how throwing people together who have no commitment to each other will work. Friendships that were forged through adversity are usually the deepest ones. In the tough times of a startup, just like in marriage, it is often the promise that you will not let your friend down that keeps you going.

I don’t think anyone should be co-founders unless you have been through some shit together. Doing lobangclub feels like Apocalypse Now, and I am not sure if I am Willard or Kurtz after a while, so knowing that you’ve already being through shit is comforting.

4. Make sure you burn the boats on the beach
I was adamant about one thing: If Ron was to be a co-founder, he had to quit his job before he came on board. Ron was, quite logically, looking for a part-time role until we had traction. However, if we did this, and we hit a rough patch, as we inevitably would, then it would’ve been way too easy to just go back to the safe confines of a steady job.

Severing that safety net is a much bigger deal for us since we are not fresh out of university living with parents, both of us have partners, mortgages and children (OK, that’s just me).

5. No matter how well you think you know your co-founder, you don’t
Despite knowing Ron for 14 years, I think in this short time of being co-founders, I’ve learned so much more about him. The pressure-cooker of a startup basically reveals all.

I’ve learned that he is far more stubborn that I’d ever imagined.

He is also way more determined than I had given him credit for. Given that we are not paying ourselves any wages, he has serviced his own car, fixed his bathroom plumbing, rented out all the spare rooms in his house to exchange students and generally just found a way to keep going through all of our pivots.

I think the mere fact that we are able to make it to the third (hopefully final) pivot is testament to the importance of choosing a good co-founder.

Guyi Shen is co-founder of lobangclub, he writes about this experiences at insidestartup.sg.

Link to full article

Read More

Project: Holding Hands – Popular Characters Cheering Survived Kids

Teotsunago (=we shall hold hands) is a new project which many creators gathered their popular characters, to encourage people who suffered the East Japan Big Earthquake.

The big list includes some very popular characters such like Doraemon, Miffy, Shimajiro, Domo-kun, Cheburashka, Elmo, Toro, etc.

We are holding our hands hoping to deliver smile to everyone in Japan from small children to all the grownups fighting for survival in and also out of the disaster area.

“Project: Holding Hands” is a special project just launched to encourage people in Japan, especially children directly or indirectly affected by this recent disaster. Hope we can make you SMILE.

Please deliver our image to everyone, especially to where the children can see it.

Link to full article

Read More

ZipDial Funding: Raises Rs.3.5Cr In Series A Lead by Mumbai Angels

ZipDial Mobile Solutions, one of the Power Plugs finalists for the March edition, has raised Rs.3.5Cr in first round of investments. The investment is from a group of investors, including some US based investors, led by Mumbai Angels. The valuation of the company is unknown at this point.

ZipDial has a set of services based on the core idea of using Missed Calls as a call to action. The company had recently deployed a mobile number authentication service, ZipDial To Verify, with some known online players. They also have a popular service for cricket score updates on missed calls, for which the company claims to have received as high as 4Mn calls in a single match day.

There are a couple of known and unknown players entering this space and with this the challenge would be in maintaining a clear product positioning without letting missed calls be commoditized like what we have seen with bulk SMSes and short code services.

We are contacting the founders on details of the investors and valuations. Watch out this space for updates.

Disclosure: Naman, a Pluggd.in blogger, is part of the ZipDial Team.

Link to full article

Read More

An Innovative Freemium Model–Use Green As An Excuse To Weed Out Free User

I have been a regular user of Wordweb for the last few years – the product comes as a handy tool (with minimal memory footprint) to get to know meaning of a word (and doubles as thesaurus+word finder).
Today, I noticed a screen on the Wordweb that asks you a really funny question (good that they didn’t launch this on April 1st).

Ofcourse I chose the last option (why lie?) and this is what I ended up with:

That is, unlimited free use of the program is only available to people who fly very little!

And here is why:

WordWeb free version may be used indefinitely only by people who take at most two commercial flights (not more than one return flight) in any 12 month period. People who fly more than this need to purchase the Pro version if they wish to continue to use it after a 30-day trial period.

Global greenhouse gas emissions are currently around 5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year, and probably need to be reduced by at least 80% have a good chance of avoiding dangerous warming. Most computer users are responsible for far more emissions than is sustainable. For example two short-medium distance return flights can be equivalent to over 1 tonne of emissions¹: more than an average person can safely emit over an entire year.[from Wordweb licensing page]

So in essence, the company is taking a much higher position (i.e. Green/Environment Friendly] to drive users to transition to pro version.

Don’t you think this is a damn cool strategy to weed out free users – assuming Wordweb hasn’t seen significant conversion to pro and a time has come in the company to really define the future plans/call it quits? After all, beyond a certain point you’d just give up on free users and say “F.O” to them?

What’s your opinion on this strategy?

PS: You can still make the free version work with a simple hack, but I leave that to you to find out.

Link to full article

Read More

“The Best Failed Idea”–A Lesson From Ratan Tata’s Internal Contest at Tata Group

Ratan Tata has started an annual contest in Tata Group that will reward the best failed idea in the company. Given that Ratan Tata is nearing his term as chairman of Tata Group, his aim is to foster frugal innovation in the company and the “Best Failed Idea” contest is a step towards that.

“To spark innovation, the prize is intended to communicate how important trying and failing can be” [source]

“Even if the Nano proves disappointing, frugal innovation looks promising overall. Tata Motors is making small trucks that are replacing three-wheelers. TCS has co-produced a cheap water filter, the Swach, using ingredients such as rice husks. Tata Steel has made a prototype of a $500 house that can be bought in a shop. The hotel company is building $20-a-night billets for India’s army of commercial travellers.” [source]

In essence, rewarding failure and building a culture of try-frugally-and-fail-fast is the motto behind this contest.

Tata Pixel–The Next Generation “Zero Turn” Car

Move beyond those AC offices and come closer to animal sheds of startup farms and you will still see a lot of startup founders not promoting the culture of ‘frugal innovation’ in the company. In fact, many entrepreneurs tend to go slow on the experimentation part and do not empower employees to experiment on their own (though publicly they love to talk about innovation culture).

Some of the startups I know have faced exodus in the last few months, owing to founder being passionately obstinate (a.k.a. arrogant) about the idea and has stopped listening to suggestions from others. This inhibits employees to not question founder’s blinded focus and a smart employee worth his curiosity eventually quits (read: The Curious Employee & Seeds of Innovation).

Being passionate is different from being obsessed (i.e. not open to suggestions) and that’s where involving employees play an important role. Companies like Tata Group need to foster innovation in order to stay competitive, but as far as startups are concerned, they don’t have much of a choice.The option of frugal innovation, led by smart employees is the only leverage startups have and should be exploited to the max.

The question is how many entrepreneurs enjoy being questioned? How do you control how much to let go of?

What’s your take?

Link to full article

Read More

Want to Fake Size? Hire A Virtual Receptionist

We earlier profiled SuperFax, a service that enables you to Send Fax Without a Fax Machine. Knowlarity, the company behind SuperFax has now launched Virtual Receptionist, a service that gives you personal telephone number where your customers can call 24×7. Customer will listen to a welcome message about your company and can press 1,2 etc. to connect to the concerned person.

Features of the service include:

• Incoming calls are forwarded to your mobile.
• If your phone is busy, the next programmed number is called.
• List of all the people who call you is accessible on website – You never lose a business lead.
• Recording of conversation with customers.
• Get Fax on Email without machine
• Get Voice Mail service
• No setup cost or hardware.

The demo version is free and post that, 6 months/1500 minutes of call costs Rs. 3500/ – an affordable pricing meant for startups/SMEs who want to “fake size”.

Do give the service a spin and let us know your comments.

Also see: Free Call Back Service launched (by ZNI)

Link to full article

Read More

News Roundup: Watch IPL On Youtube

In partnership with Indiatimes, Youtube will webcast IPL matches they happen. Users can also view entire past matches and enjoy highlight clips of all 74 matches on Indiatimes’ YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/indiatimes).

There will be 5 minutes delay in the webcast [source].

DoT likely to cancel Idea, Spice licences in 5 circles

The Telecom Ministry is likely to cancel the licences of mobile operator Idea Cellular and Spice in five states for failing to roll out services within the stipulated time.

Telecom regulator Trai has recommended to the Department of Telecom (DoT) to cancel the licences of Idea in Karnataka and Punjab circles and that of Spice in Maharashtra, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh [source]

eBay India ties up with apparel brands to sell IPL merchandise

eBay India has partnered with the apparel brands such as Adidas, Reebok, Puma and Lotto Sports to provide cricket fans a one stop shop for the official Indian Premier League (IPL) merchandise from all 10 teams.

Micromax Launching bling2

Micromax is launching bling2 very soon and images of the device has already been leaked. bling2 will run on Android, will have capacitive touch screen and will have WiFi Hotspot.

Also see:

- Airtel and Aircel to launch iPhone4 in India

Link to full article

Read More

The Story of Visual Website Optimizer “Startups Are All About Markets”

Delhi based VisualWebsiteOptimizer won the first PowerPlug contest. Here is an interview with Paras Chopra, founder of VWO who shares the journey of the company which has managed to grab clients like 4sq, Groupon etc.

Tell us about your life prior to starting Wingify.

I did my engineering from DCE but had started loving programming since my school days (typical history of a geek!). In my college days, I dabbled with couple of webapps like Kroomsa, Precimark and MyJugaad.in — all of which were good products but failed to get traction. After 2 years of working at another startup after graduating from DCE, I decided to do a serious startup and that’s how Wingify was born.

You dabbled with few web2.0 ideas and got great press coverage. But it all failed. What was your major learning.

Major learning was this: startups are not technology problems, they are marketing and customer acquisition problem. Those web2.0 projects were all about ideas, but since then I have realized startups are all about markets. I write about this on my blog, a couple of relevant posts:

http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-startup-ideas-that-make-money.htm

http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm

http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/how-making-money-changed-my-perspective-on-startup-ideas.htm

How did the idea of VWO came to you?

I used Google Website Optimizer and it was very difficult to use and integrate even for a technical person (let alone for a marketer). I thought A/B testing should be marketing team’s responsibility, and not IT teams. Hence decided to make a tool that will dramatically simplify creating A/B tests.

What were few activities you did prior to starting VWO? Share some of those activities which you think led to VWO’s success.

I did not know that it was called “lean startup” approach back then but I now realized that I adopted it and it was very successful. For example, first version of VWO was barebones but I released it as beta. I then sought feedback from key beta users and iterated on it rapidly. The strategy that worked well was having an innovative product coupled with exclusive beta invites for bloggers to share with their readers.

How did you close your first sale? How have you marketed VWO?

As I said VWO was in beta for 6 months so I got a good database of users and naturally and we came out of beta a couple of them converted. (I was initially scared about the response from transitioning from free beta -> paid but surprisingly it was phenomenal.)

Most of your marketing has been mostly inbound. What metrics have you kept for yourself?

Revenue. Ideally if your revenue has been increasing every month, I believe that’s the best indicator that you have been doing good. Conversion rate by different sources is another important metric that can provide actionable information. If you find that visitors from your guest posts are converting the best, it is time to put more thrust on it.

Working from India, cracking the US market is a huge pain. How do you plan to solve that.

Webex and Skype have solved a lot of things. If you are willing to work late (say 1-2 am), most of your customers in US won’t even notice that you are not even US based.

You have built a global product – share some thoughts on what product aspects you have taken care of while building VWO.

The most important point is having feedback loops built into the product. We try to seek feedback from user from at least 5 different touch points. If you sign up for VWO, you will get emails asking for feedback, we have buttons screaming for feedback inside application, even the support replies have signature that asks for feedback.

In my opinion, it is vital to keep learning how users have been finding the product and keep improving on it. That’s the key!

Anything else you want to add?

We are growing extremely fast. Our revenue has been increasing 10-15% every month since last 1 year. Because growth has been fast, we are now looking forward to smart people joining us for positions of: software engineering, customer support and sales/BD. Link to careers page: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/careers.php

Link to full article

Read More