Thought Garage

"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants" – Sir Issac Newton We learn lots of things from our own mistakes. But a few of us also learn from others’ mistakes. Some times, we can succeed just by following in the footsteps of successful and ambitious entrepreneurs. So, then a much better path to succeed is studying about successful people and their ventures. On this note,  I found a few blogs this morning that I would like to share.

Talking about failures at Feld Thoughts, urging Entrepreneurs to share their failures. So keep watching this blog for more posts on this subjects and its readers’ responses..

"While it’s often difficult to talk about failure, there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from it.  The cliche “I learn more from my failures than my successes” applies directly to entrepreneurship and creating companies.  It can be difficult to be self-reflective, but I’ve personally found it very cathartic to study my failures, understand what I did wrong, learn as much as I can from them, and move on.  Occasionally I’ll have a similar failure a second time or a third time – hopefully I learn eventually."

While reading Feld Thoughts blogs, I found a comment by Mark Crowne pointing to a paper he wrote on "Why software product startups fail and what to do about it -  Evolution of software product development in startup companies", discusses specifically about Software Startup failures and what to learn from them.

Also, there are two posts by Pamela Slim from Escape From Cubicle Nation that summarizes her decade long experience in starting and growing her business, offers what a budding entrepreneur is looking for. What she did right and what she could have done better. Here are links to those two posts; Thanks a ton, Pamela Slim.

1. Writing a Dr. Seuss business plan and other questionable things I did when I started my business – She discussed 10 things she could have done better and
2. Dr. Seuss aside, what I did RIGHT when starting my business – in which she discussed 10 things that she did right from the beginning.

Tags: entrepreneur, startup, tips, inspions

Videos from Software 2006: Unifying the Ecosystem held on 4th and 5th of April 2006 at Santa Clara Convention Center Santa Clara, CA. Most of the speakers from big enterprises or from top 10 consulting firms. Different voice, slightly from the big vendors, compared to what I hear from the new age web2.0 entrepreneurs. But great insights for Software startups, as these are the guys who were in the business for more than a decade building and selling software.

Here is a loooong list of Web 2.0 companies. Who says every product will and must try to solve a unique problem in the market?  Most of these are plain vanilla duplicates of others or something popular. But some of them are wonderful like Thumbstack which allows to create and share presentations right from your browser.

Web 2.0 Companies at http://baris.typepad.com/venture_capitalist/

Here is a list I recently got of all the web 2.0 companies out there.  Multiply the total by 10 to consider all the ones not included in the list.  Who says there is no hype?  There are some Web 2.0 Venture Funds in there at the end

Tags: web2.0, ajax, startup, inspions

Sony follows the online video buzz, offering its online Video service "MusicBox". Offers original video streams of artists by its own companies and affiliates like Shakira, Beyonce, Alicia Keys and likes. Pretty soon, the service allows you to embed those original video streams on your webpages. At this point, you can watch the videos and can send an email with the link to the video to share with your friends.

Sony Music Box Video

Tags: Sony, video, musicbox, streaming, inspions

When your spouse decides to go on shopping, I bet you don’t have a choice but accompany. At times, it is so much fun shopping and rolling around the malls. I enjoy shopping but I hate to go to the same stereotype mall every weekend. And some times, particularly if you are not interested, it can be so painful you swear to god that you will never go shopping. But you never know how that ‘never ever’ can turn out to be. In my case, it is quite often the next weekend. There is some thing new around the corner or some discount sale at a mall. 

Unlike some of my friends, I don’t have a choice  of not going. Ruled out. So here I am, trying to equip myself with some things I can do when shopping turns painful and boring.

• I love reading books. So I pickup the Mall directory and find a bookshop and in a flash I will be sitting in aisles reading like a kid. I tried skimming through magazines  even in Walmarts these days. If I get hold of an interesting book or a magazine, I never have to worry about for the entire day.
• I look for variety outlets in the malls and go and explore. Even in the most stereo type malls there will be some thing novel. I found that exploring some crazy shops is so much refreshing.
• I like watching how people sell things in the small outlets. Last time I watched almost for an hour how a Verizon sales rep was selling mobile phones. He was very good. He sold 3 mobile phones and medium rate plans but with all expensive accessories that I can think of. I found out that they earn more commission on accessories than mobile phones.
• I some times just watch how people are making buying decisions. I read so much about impulses. But watching those impulses in action is a wonderful experience.
• When I don’t feel like doing any of them, I pick out my iPod and then just relax listening to music.