Gyaan Sutra

Cgi-bin and the '500 Internet Server Error'

2008-06-05T23:30:00.004+05:30

I never knew that the world of cgi-bin was so cryptic.

Cgi-bin has always been a good neighbor. Ever since I started developing, this folder was always somewhere in the vicinity. Even though we never had anything to do with each other, we always recognized the others presence. For all these years, things were good, but today suddenly everything changed.

I have worked at length with perl on the command line, and quite like it as a language. As a matter of fact, I chose to start with PHP because I liked perl a lot and strangely php and perl looked a lot similar to me in the beginning. (Ofcourse I had never heard of PHP's mysql_real_escape_string till then)

But today was different. I was runing perl through Cgi-bin and it turned out to be quite a different experience. Everything was fine till the perl script was running through the command line, but as soon as I ran it through Cgi-bin, all I got was this :

500 Internal Server Error

I wasn't quite sure what had I done wrong, but no matter what I did, it just didn't work. After long hours of silent dedicated effort by Abhinit and me, we found a few thumb rules of working with Cgi-bin, and I wanted to share them with you :

The Golden Rules

1. For a .pl file to execute on Cgi-bin, its permissions should be set to 755. Not 744 or 777 or 644, but 755. That's the only known way.

2. For a .pl file to execute, the permission of the Cgi-bin folder it resides in, should be 755. Again, not 744, not 777, and definitely not 644. It has to be 755.

3. Unlike PHP or other regular languages, when perl can't read or write a file, it will give you the dreaded '500 Internal Server Error'. Yes, this error represents not only that the file is missing or if you haven't heard about rule 1 and 2, but also the case where the file you're trying to read or write to does not have the proper permissions.

4. Be very afraid of SuExec. It is designed as a security measure to make the hacker and YOUR life miserable. What it does is quite simple really, it runs all files in cgi-bin from a different user and group than the other files. This means that you cannot read/write files lying in the cgi-bin folder with PHP. You can't chmod or add or delete any file either. SuExec is designed to divide and rule your program. (After all even after years of existance, Apache still does not include it in the default installation).

5. Don't be afraid. Yes, it is frustrating and it depletes your morale, but no matter how hard it tries, it will eventually give in. As soon as you get the '500 Internal Server Error', pack your bags and run to the /etc/httpd/logs folder (or whatever on your machine) and dig through the accesslog, errorlog and if you're really unlucky to have it - the suexec log.

Cgi-bin can hide everything from the browser, but not from these three files. They are like the God of Apache, they see everything and note down if a file is behaving properly or not.

In the end, I feel better after having found out so much more about the ever present cgi-bin. Maybe we will be able to help each other better the next time we interact.

PS. I also found out that you can run c files via cgi-bin. Its the Common Gateway Interface afterall. We plan to run a website written in C soon. Let me know if you have tried it before. And finally, we are also looking to hire developers who find issues like this mere jokes. If you've beaten the sh** out of cgi-bin before, and you can do it with other stuff too, we would love to have you.

Three things from IPL missing in our business

2008-06-04T22:38:00.004+05:30

Nobody really believed that the IPL would turn into a money making machine.

But in just 45 days, with the help of some of the smartest men on this side of the world, they succeeded in turning one simple idea into a massive-mega success. In less than two months IPL scripted the change of the Indian cricket story. In about six weeks, Lalit Modi executed almost the one idea to perfection and managed to make it one of the biggest money churners this year, and that too in a sport where people were already making so much money that it seemed impossible that you could make even more.

Now that its all over, its time to think about what did IPL have that my business does not. And maybe there is something there which can help our businesses as well. So here are the top three things in IPL which I think are missing from our business:

Unsung Heroes

The IPL wasn't about Sachin Tendulkar. I quite adore the man, but I think the best thing that happened to the IPL was that Tendulkar was hurt. If he had been there, we know what everybody would have been talking about. But the IPL, this year, was about the tall Gony and the short Asnodkar, it was about Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma, it was about Piyush Chawla and Sohail Tanveer, it was about all those men who turned from nobody to the latest stars overnight.

We went in drones to watch these men, to root for Shane Warne's inexperienced Rajasthan, and to watch Pathan hit Murli for sixes. We went to watch the underdogs beat the stars.

And this is when we realize that there are no heroes in the software industry. Say what you will, but this is where our businesses lack, we have no Pathans people can talk about. What about your business? Do you have any heroes in your team? Who are the faces of the Indian Software Industry, and why are they almost exclusively not developers?

The Controversies

The controversies ruled the television and the blogs. They pulled people to the matches because so much was going on and it became difficult to leave all of that out of your life just because you thought that cricked was a waste of time.

I know, I know, it's a cliche. But we found again that there really is no bad publicity. Just think about it, why don't we have any publicity? when was the last time that you featured in the newspaper? The last time somebody called you for a TV interview.

Here in India, all ideas are borrowed. Heck, we don't even have our own conferences, even Barcamps are ideas borrowed from the US, and we seem to enjoy them so much. Sometimes I think we're so busy picking up the scraps from the US that we forget our right to have ideas of our own.

So don't sit here reading. Go on, make some news. Let me read about you in the papers, in the magazines, let all those blogs talk about YOU rather than which company got funded for how millions. That is and always will be, the only way to get famous.

Lalit Modi

Need I say more? He doesn't have style, but he makes up for it with his energy. He was the source of all the energy in the IPL.

Can people see your energy flowing in your company? Do you even have that much energy every morning?

Recruiting for Starups

2008-05-30T22:00:00.004+05:30

A company by definition is a collection of people.

This means that every company, no matter how big or small, will always be looking for people. This was the very idea that made one of the biggest web companies in India - Naukri.com.

Now when you think about it, there are so many sectors where an internet company could have made its mark, then how come the job sector became one the biggest successes in the Indian Internet History?

The answer is easy. Looking for the right people, is hard. Earlier, there was no easy way to get them to come to you. You had to rely on your headhunters and friends to refer people. Jobs in the newspaper were not indexed. So if you missed a paper, you'll never see that job again. You had to wait for The Ascent every week, the other employment magazines and what not. Naukri.com changed that drastically. Naukri.com was the 'search' of the Indian Internet Industry. And they laughed (are still laughing) all the way to the bank.

But if Naukri changed things so drastically, how come we still hear echoes about how it is so difficult to recruit in India. I just read up about it on startupdunia. So I thought that this was as good a time as any for me to talk about the hiring process at my company.

From the day that I decided to hire people (I was freelancing for over an year), I knew I had a few choices. One, was the good ol' way to put out an advertisement in the newspaper and wait for the replies (Like I had done, to get my first job). Second, was to get in touch with a couple of headhunters. Third, was to post an ad on Naukri or Monster.

The first didn't seem like a good choice. I was quite sure the kind of developers that I wanted were spending more time on the internet that reading a copy of the Ascent every Wednesday.

The second, seemed like a good choice initially. But then I realize they were a little too expensive than the option that I finally used. So I decided to drop that option too.

The last was to advertise on Naukri/Monster. So I decided to go with that choice. But as I was looking through the options, I realized that they were giving out a one week access to their database for less than a third of the amount you would pay a headhunter. And I just signed up for it.

In three long and tiring days with the database, I checked out over 500 resumes, took telephonic interviews with about 70, and then called 7 for a face to face interview. All seven were smart, knew a lot about working on the internet, weren't too experienced, but quite made up for it in intensity. I'm sure that in a few years all of them would be doing really well on their jobs. All I had to do now was find out if they could code, and if they could fit in here.

In retrospect, I think I really found a great bunch of people. I can feel the energy growing in the company. And if god permits, soon we would have excellent products flowing out of the company too.

In the end, I think we should all try to be like Shane Warne. Never give up, create new 'roles'. There are a lot of really smart people who were just born to work for startups. Just because we aren't trying hard enough to reach them, they end up playing TT in the biggest company they get to. They good ones do well at bigger companies too, but being in startups is in their DNA. They would really blossom if they were here, and it's our job and duty to make sure we find them.

Maybe we just need to look hard enough.

Update : I just read something interesting on Zoho Blogs about recruitment. Do check it out. Afterall, they are one of India's biggest success stories, and they must be doing this right.

One Year in Business

2008-05-26T21:15:00.002+05:30

I was just reminded today that Vercingetorix Technologies has now completed one year of existence. At the very least, now we can't be one of those companies which die in the first year. And considering the way things are going, I don't think we're going down soon :)

And I know that you wouldn't be surprised if I tell you that there are so many projects, which came our way through this blog. If you are still considering if blogging really works, believe me, you get the best of clients from your blog. I have.

A big thanks to all of you for coming here.

And by the way, if you're in Pune this weekend, do join us for drinks. :)

Mbakarma Redux

2008-03-21T15:50:00.003+05:30

How long does it take to completely revamp a web application?

Mbakarma needed a few major changes and I've been waiting for way too long to do them. So last sunday, I decided to start work on it again. I wrote down the features, walked through the details, and finally decided on a list of features and improvements which I think are essential.

Now I didn't want to spend too much time on it, because you know you can spend forever with it and it would still not be complete, so I chalked down a small timeline in which I could add everything I needed.

To make sure I'm doing things on time, there are a couple of really cool applications I'm using this time.

One is Bean Stalk App, which is an online SVN repository. And with a few clicks it integrates with Twitter and the other project management application that I'm using. I'm still using the free account on BeanStalk, and if it all goes well I'll shift to the paid account soon. If you are a startup and thinking about starting work on your application, I would suggest you get an account right now on beanstalk and start using it. You can try running with a local svn repo, but you know hard disk failures are not that uncommon. Also, BeanStalk provides you with fast backups, so that in case they have a hard disk failure, your data doesn't get lost.

The second application is a really a masterpiece. It is called FogBugz. It uses evidence based scheduling to calculate how long it would take to complete the project. Behind the big name, what it really does is this - It asks developers to estimate how much time would each feature/bug would take to complete. Once you allocate a time, and start racing against the time, Fogbugz tracks how much longer you took compared to the estimate you had given. After you've completed a number of feature/bugs, it calculates the probability in which you would complete the fix. So if you always take double the time, and you estimate 2 hours, Fogbugz will count that as an estimate of four hours. Once you add all the developers working on the project, and their probabilities, you have a probabilistic model of how long it would take you to complete the project. There are a number of other really awesome features there, so do check it out when you have the time. They have a 45 day free account, which is long enough for you to find out if you like it.

Still, those are just accessories. You can't rely on them completely and so you are still very important in the whole process. My overall estimate, which I'd rather think of as saying that it is my word, that I would have completed everything by the 15th of April. I know we are all suckers when it comes to estimation, so let's just see if I'm able to stand by my word. After all, what distinguishes us as humans, is our ability to keep our word.

If you want to keep track of how well I'm going with my estimates, (so that you can blast me later) you can follow me on Twitter.

Also, once I'm done, I'll be back with good long posts about what I like and what I do not like about these two applications, and what hot and happening in the brand new Mbakarma.

Till then, Cheers.

Of Code Rewrites and the people who do them

2008-02-27T04:26:00.003+05:30

Paul Tyma, previously the Chief Scientist at PreEmptive Solutions, now a Googler, is back to blogging after long. And his latest post reminded me just why I haven't been able to remove his feed from my reader. The Feed Readers have changed, but the feeds still go on. And that's just the way it is.

Paul mentions that your customers are the most honest people that you would ever find. In his own words, "They vote with their credit cards and their attention." The success of our websites and applications comes only from their honest appreciation. It is not a refreshing new thought, but old wisdom, which needs to be said over and over again so that it stays fresh in our memory.

But what I actually wanted to talk about was code rewrites. Every developer always finds himself better than the last one, and better than they were two years back. So every two years, given a chance, they would rewrite all their codes with the latest hip language using the most state-of-the-art design and coding philosophies.

But they are usually wrong.

Huge organizations have made the mistake of believing that they could write a better software in six months time, and make it catch up with the old one in two years. But it can never be like that. Softwares like people, have lives. And with life comes experience. This experience is shared between the people who maintain the code, the people who run the hardware and the people who use the applications, and cannot be transfered to the new software.

We are born with our imperfections, and we have to learn to live with them. Sure, we can learn new tricks here and there, but we can never change completely. If we do, we would never be us again. And that's just the way it is.

So Forget about changing the code and go read Paul's Blog, it would be a much better way to spend your time.

The "Demigods" defending themselves

2008-02-27T03:43:00.002+05:30

Mike, from the 37signals blog, demystifies the myths perpetrated by the latest edition of Wired to 87367 people following their feeds, and 75000 who come there everyday.

Another great reason for having a company blog

2008-02-25T21:31:00.005+05:30

Gautam Ghosh pointed out on Twitter today that google is showing results from bloggers in a slightly different fashion today. I checked it out and it sure looks great.

This is definitely another great reason to start a company blog. Just replace my name in the picture with that of your company, and the posts by the services that you offer.

So the next time somebody searches for your company, they know exactly what do you do, without even coming to your website. How cool would be that!!

It's probably the best advertisement you can ever get.

iPaper and the end of pdf as we know it

2008-02-20T18:47:00.006+05:30

The iPaper is here.

Scribd, one of the hottest startups of last year, has just released the Scribd Platform. This would allow developers to integrate documents into their websites, with a simple and clean flash interface.

I have loved Scribd from the moment they came on the scene and have covered them a number of times. But this time I think they have exceeded my expectations. The iPaper is an advanced version of Adobe's Flash Paper, and is specially created for the web. So its a lot faster and efficient, and I believe has the power to replace pdf files from the internet with this great technology.

Since now you don't need to have pdf installed on your machine to view these files, I am sure iPaper is going to make a real killing on the internet.

But the best part about it, is that Scribd managed to see something even mighty Adobe could not. 'Flash Paper' was originally created by Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe because they felt the competition. Now, when Adobe got Macromedia, apparently they just didn't think that 'Flash Paper' was that cool, and it just lay in the dust for over four years.

That was the story until Scribd came along. Scribd initially started out by using 'Flash Paper' to serve the documents. And once it was proven that it was a successful idea (even GigaOm agrees with me here), they started writing their own interface for it, which just got released as iPaper. Adobe could have done it too, but alas they were too busy making AIR.

The mission for Scribd, is not that they can be as viral as YouTube, but if they can completely replace pdf in the long term.

In the end, I think this is as good a strategy as there can be for a successful startup. In just about two years time, this 10-member startup has reached a stage where they can challege Adobe.

Update : Brian from Box.net just informed me that they have already implemented iPaper for all pdf, word and excel files on Box.net. So now before you download, you can watch and read the file before you download it to your computer. Now how cool is that!!! This is going to be great news for Scribd as well, as box.net has been steadily growing towards being the most used online storage website. Do check it out in case you haven't yet.

iPaper and the end of pdf as we know it

Political Entrepreneurs?

2008-02-20T16:47:00.003+05:30

There is a new startup on the political scene.

The founders include 8 energetic men, aged 28-45, with degrees and business experience. The startup is still in beta, and you can't yet cast a vote. The priorities and mission statement has been defined, though the last one seems a little absurd, the other two are worth fighting for.

There was another one of the kind, though it started down south. They could not pick up much traction and went down fighting amongst each other a few months later.

We surely need more like them. I would like to wish them the best of luck. Their portal is up. Do check it out - Jago Party.

So do you think you would be willing to bet on them?

(found via Atanu Dey's Blog)

Lessons in Bootstrapping

2008-02-20T13:46:00.002+05:30

The internet is full of advice, both good and bad, and most of us keep running through hundreds of feeds every day, to make sure that if there is any good in there we will find it.

So when you happen to reach a place where you find tons of excellent posts, it's hard not to talk about it. This is why I though I should be talking about Bootstrapping in Bangalore.

Started by Saurabh Chandra, founder and CEO of Neevtech, this blog is exactly what it's name suggests - Bootstrapping in Bangalore, and if you're one of those bootstrappers, you are going to love it. And yes, you can read it even if you are bootstrapping elsewhere.

Like all good things in life, the wisdom (read post) comes in slowly with enough time in between for you to digest and assimilate the information. Now, if you're just starting out, take care, read maybe half a post a day, or you're going to get a lot more than you'll be able to handle.

Now, I might say that it is quite like Ask the Wizard, which is written by Dick 'The Wizard' Costello founder of FeedBurner.com, but in reality it is much closer to home, and hence much closer to heart.

And for those who would prefer the wisdom (again read post, didn't I tell you that already) to come to them rather than clicking your way through the blog, don't worry, I'm here to grant your wishes. Here are some of the best posts, not in any particular order : Keep Jumping, What are we starting, Start Early, Doing Events, Some Basic Accounting.

Go on enjoy the posts, and when you're done, come back here. I'll be here granting more wishes.

Why don't we shop online?

2008-02-15T19:37:00.006+05:30

Online shopping will never pick up in India.

Atleast not the way it is currently designed.

It has been 14 years since Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com. And for the last 14 years nobody has really tried to change anything about the way in which Online Shopping is conducted. Ofcourse every year hundreds of startups with loads of funding try to tell us in different way, why they are better and why they give us a real choice. But the fact remains that even though the technology has been advancing for the last 14 years, nobody has really made a killing in the domain.

And that is in the US. India is different. And all startups want to do here is to localize the services offered in the US. Yes, they say, that is the key. So we have India centric search engines, India centric social networks, India centric everything. As if a nation of a billion people doesn't have needs of its own. As if we don't know what we need.

If we need to send flowers, they show us tiny 30x30 pixel photographs of flowers and tell us that they can send it to the ones we love, and show us the way to the billing. But is it what we were looking for?

What we are looking for is a good deal.

We want to pay for something that seems worth the price.

And then we want to bargain a little more.

That is what we want, and that is what we need to get. We want those old time salesmen, and we want to drive a hard bargian for every ten rupees. That is shopping to us and our fathers, and no IIT IIM graduate is ever going to change it. Only when we see a website that can give us something even vaguely similar, would we go there again and again, and swipe our credit cards to share some of our hard earned money with you.

(Ofcourse most companies also forget that it took Amazon 9 years to show some profit, and people are not just willing to wait that long anymore. But that deserves another post so I'll leave it at that)

Twitter Shortcode for India - 5566511

2008-01-18T06:23:00.000+05:30

Twitter Mobile is now really here in India.

You can message to Twitter directly by sending it to Shortcode 5566511.

Happy Twittering.

CAT results out - Servers crash again

2008-01-08T18:38:00.000+05:30

Like always, the IIM servers have crashed again.

As expected, the 240,000 students and their parents and friends are busy opening the same page and as a result the servers have not been able to handle the pressure.

At peak load, I would expect no more than 240,000 x 10 requests over the one hour period when the results come out. A rate of about 650-700 requests per second.

I haven't been able to get the exact page size of catiim.in site yet, but I would expect it to be less than 20kb. Hence the required download rate would be about 13.5 Mbps.

Now, I have heard that IIMs usually outsource this part to a private company which can handle the data. So I did some checking up, and catiim.in site resides on a websrvr.soft.net server, which is believe it or not, from Software Technology Park of India, Bangalore.

I find it strange that even they have failed to design a system which can handle the traffic. Either the budgets are too low, or there isn't enough technical expertise to handle the same. Though I am sure that none of the above is an issue which can't really be fixed.

So why do we still have to make the students keep trying again and again. Even with the coming of the IT revolution in India, do we still lack the infrastructure?

UPDATE : Even though the capacity I have considered is taking the worst case factor into consideration, it is possible to use service which scale to that level.

I had expected a download rate of 13.5 Mbps which translates to about 1139 GB of data transfer per day.

I was just trying to find out if Amazon Webservices are able to scale to that level and I found something interesting

Within the next day, the news was covered by both SlashDot and Boing Boing, sending a tremendous amount of traffic to its web site. With its media files stored in Amazon S3, it was able to instantly scale and handle the 3.5 million requests and 758 GBs in bandwidth in a single day.

Hmm.. So it might work. And what about the cost? Here is what the article says

Blue Origin’s total charge for Amazon S3 in January? Just over $300.

$300 is equal to almost Rs 12,000. Now thats really not that much is it!!

UPDATE 2 : I just checked again. It's 5 in the morning, and the site opens up quickly. But surprisingly the home page is about 94KB in size. Our of which about 77KB (82%) are images.

After the home page one needs to go to an index page which is about 13KB in size. Finally you get to the final result page which is about 8KB.

All in all, a user needs to download 115KB to view the result.

This means that we need to edit our calculations, and at the current rate, IIM would require a maximum of about 6550GB of bandwidth.

The sad part is that the small images on the home page, would consume about 4385GB of data.

Building a widget / ecosystem of programmers

2008-01-08T05:26:00.000+05:30

QuarkRuby, one of the hottest shopping startups in India has a new post about building widgets. It is a great post and they talk about all sorts of widgets one can possibly make.

On seeing a post on programming, it is surprising that most developers at Indian Startups hardly ever talk much about the technology they are using. Maybe it's because none of us here are really innovating all that much, and most of it is not already available on the internet. But I am sure there are a lot of really good programmers out there with loads and loads of tricks up their sleeves. Somehow none of it ever comes out in the open.

There are some like Vikas Patial of NGCoders, who is literally a God. Everybody always wanted RSS on Orkut, but he was the guy who actually brought it out. I know what everybody is thinking now, but no, that's not important. I don't care how much money he made off the script. What's important is that he made a script which worked like a charm, and he just put it out there for everybody to use.

There is so much talk about how much funding each of the startups are getting, how much business they are doing and what not. But the most important stuff gets left out in the middle. Something that we all love doing. Programming.

Until we start talking about it with the same dedication and emotion as we talk about our big idea, it would be really difficult to build an ecosystem of quick, smart and experienced programmers who create the next generation of applications.

Is there anything like this which is already happening and I'm unaware of?

CAT 2007 Results expected today

2008-01-08T03:40:00.000+05:30

The CAT 2007 Results are expected to be out today.

Out of the 2,30,000 students who appeared for the exam, about 5000 would receive calls for the interviews. One in every 46. And then the next stage of the battle would begin.

I have started a new blog as an experiment which talks about the CAT 2007 Results. Depending on the kind of traffic google generates for this blog, I would be able to really understand if SEO actually works. Even though I guess it should have really been started earlier. I would share the results after a few days.

How much does your company need to spend to acquire a new user?

2008-01-07T06:34:00.000+05:30

Recently heard over at AlooTechie, that BharatStudent.com, an Indian social networking website for students is planning to spend about Rs 25 crore over the next two years.

About Rs 6.25 crore would be the capital cost, while the remaining 18.75 crores "would be infused into scaling up our human resources pool, creating visibility of the portal and brand recalling involving online, TV and print media advertisements".

I'm just a small time entrepreneur doing small gigs here and there, and I would love to get involved in big businesses like BharatStudent sometime. After all, 18.75 crore is over Rs 78 lakh a month, which is probably what 78 startups our size spend every month.

Even though BharatStudent has been accused of spamming on Orkut, they have built up a huge following in a very short span of time.

Though it's disheartening to see that the rate at which they are getting new users has been going down considerably over the last few months.

The reason I say this is because I found another post on Alootechie which states that BharatStudent picked up 1400000 users in the four months till July 07 (At a rate of 350000 users/month. Though the recent post says that they have crossed 2 million now, so over the last 6 months they got another 600000 users (100000 users/month)

It's strange that the number of sign-ups have gone down by over 71% in the last few months. Is it a sign that they are not picking up, or that they have reached the upper limit of the Indian student segment?

Suggestions are welcome..

PS.
It was also stated in the article that they expect to double the strength till Sept 08. Now that means that they would add another 2 million over the next 8 months, which is about 250000 users per month. Considering that they would be spending about Rs 78 lakh a month.

Therefore, going by averages, BharatStudent.com would need to spend about Rs 31.2 per user. So, to restate the question - Does your company spend more or less per user that it acquires?

Wikia Results not available

2008-01-07T05:34:00.000+05:30

Wikipedia's new Google killer search engine - Wikia is going to launch today.

It works on an interesting concept. It allows users to download a desktop application which you can find at Grub.org, which it uses to index the internet.

Along with the download link for the software, there is a link to use the results of the indexed pages where you can search the status of web pages.

It just checked it and it seems to be throwing a nasty error.

Hmm.. So it's not just the Indian startups...

The Desi (Martini) Deal

2007-12-20T01:43:00.000+05:30

Getting funding is easy.

Recently, I had read Sujai Karampuri, founder of Sloka Telecom (henceforth, the Sloka guy) ranting about the fact that VCs were shying away from funding his company. I felt bad for for about half a second because it looks like a great idea, but then I moved on hoping that somebody on VentureWoods would give him some good insight. But it wasn't until today that I found out the reason why this guy has this amazing idea and no funding.

It just so happened that as I was flushing posts from my Google Reader, I managed to read a few of them. And everywhere I went, I heard about the hot new deal in the Indian Web 2.0 scene. (I don't what the scene is, we're still on something like Web 0.5, just have a look at mbakarma). Anyways, so it was a hot new deal, and as you would expect this social networking site was sold for an undisclosed price.

The site in question was desimartini.com (deap ubhi, the burrp guy, is*coughing*). Sine the price was undisclosed, somebody talked to an HT Media exec (no one knows who), who said that they had been paid less than $10 million for the right. Oh yes, that's right, less than $10 million. $9.9, $9.6, $5, $1, basically something less than 10.

According to watblog (I'm sorry, what blog? hah, just kidding),

Vivek Pahwa, a 26 year graduate from the Hyderabad based prestigious Indian Business School, had borrowed $76,000 to “do something” in the Internet space and thus setup Desimartini.com (Indian Martini) to make it look like Orkut.

which is interesting because if he was trying to make something like Orkut how did it become a facebook ripoff. Maybe they were aiming for the middle path, anyways that is not important. What is important is the watblog analysis which follows

Vivek had a target of registering 1 million subscribers which he missed, and therefore sold Desimartini.com to Hindustan Times Media for $10.00 Million (an estimated figure) on Nov 20 2007 even though Desimartini.com has only 2,50,000 subscribers and just 2.5 million monthly hits.

How convenient. I had though mbakarma would get more subscribers than Ten-A-Day in two months after launch. Now that I've missed my margin maybe I should sell it to somebody too. But oh, I didn't borrow the $76,000. Don't get me wrong, I love desimartini, it's innovative, it's well designed and works like a charm, (also shabby, half-ass, semi-defunct rip-off)but I'm a little sarcastic right now because the next line is an absolute bummer

Meanwhile, he has setup another website called SecondShaadi.com for re-marriages and is also funding (emphasis mine) Antya.com

Hmph..

I had a rant on Antya here which I have removed from the post because as I think I had gone a little overboard.

So it was not until today that I found out the real reason why Sujai (the Sloka guy) has this amazing idea and no funding. Its because of two things. One, he didn't create a facebook ripoff. And Two, he did not have friends in the right places.

After all funding means that you are trying to sell equity to the VC. To sell it to her you need a product she likes, not something you believe would be valuable to your eventual customers. She wants a piece of what's hot now.

So maybe the answer is that you need to go with the times. But that would mean that you cannot always be true to your idea. The answer then is wait for your time.

PS. If just found that Antya.com is the Gold Sponsor at the Content Sutra Mixer. And maybe I'm taking it a little too far, but Vivek Pahwa is funding Antya, and the guy who runs is ContenSutra is Nikhil Pahwa. Any idea if the two Pahwa's are related?

UPDATE: It turns out I am right, they are cousins.

Marketing for startups

2007-12-19T14:35:00.000+05:30

Over the last one year or so, a number of Indian blogs have come up, which cater to upcoming webapps and entrepreneurship.

I remember that when I had started there was only AlooTechie.com and WebYantra which I read almost everyday. But now there are really a lot of them - Trak.in (the latest of the lot), Watblog (major competitor of alootechie) and of course WebYantra (by the CEO of infinitely successful slideshare).

But the one blog which has suddenly become a must read for me over the last few months is Pluggd.in, which is run by Ashish Sinha and his team. On more than a few occasions, Ashish has called it India's Techcrunch. If it was somebody else I would have liked to slam them for it, but somehow Pluggd.in manages to come up with some great posts every few days, and you get the feeling that if they are not there yet, they will definitely get there one day.

For example, there was a post on Pluggd.in yesterday by Prashant, one of the new bloggers in the team, and it was far from regular. Prashant went on to explain a few guerilla advertising tips for entrepreneurs. He maintains that it's not the amount of money that you can spend, but if you can use your head. He added the example of a web IM company who asked their SysAdmin friends to advertise the products

So founder called one of his friend who was a SysAdmin at a big IT service firm, showed him a basic demo (of their web based IM) and requested him to tell people about it .

Surprise ……server log showed that in next 3 days 500 people logged in to their service from a single building of that company. Very soon, every branch of that company started using it . Truth was that they were using Lotus Notes messenger to tell their colleague about this cool new Web Based IM . That SysAdmin probably had told it to few guys, may be out of sense of obligation.

But he started an avalanche

Smart. You just have to go and check out the original post to get the rest of them.

I can actually think of a couple of similar examples. One of them is from Seth Godin's excellent write up for his book 'Be a better Liar'. He talks about a couple of Harvard entrepreneurs from the 1980s who sold stereo speakers with the story that they were stolen.

In the 1980s, a few entrepreneurs came up with a great business. They bought some name-brand stereo speakers (last year’s model) and packed them into a U-Haul truck. Then they parked the truck behind a dorm at Harvard and started whispering. "Pssst … Hey! You wanna buy some speakers?" While they never actually said that the speakers were stolen, it seemed to passersby that they were—and so had to be a great bargain. Harvard students shouldn’t have fallen for this. Of course, they did. In droves. The entrepreneurs sold out in no time. The story the students told themselves made the purchase incredibly appealing, even if the speakers cost about what they would have at the local stereo store. The local store spent plenty of money on advertising and real estate. These entrepreneurs made it easy for people to tell themselves a story. They both sold speakers for the same price. Who won?

Yeah I know, Harvard guys are smart. But that's not all, smart entrepreneurs everywhere are doing this. For example back home, MouthShut.com made themselves really popular when they decided to start advertising on auto rickshaws. A lot of companies have followed them, but they were the ones who came out with the idea.

But now you say, what now? These guys did it find. But tell me something my company can do.. All I can say about that is either you get Prashant onboard (I have offered him already :)) or you find some exciting new medium to advertise, maybe like this one.

UPDATE: I just forgot about ContentSutra, by the awesome Nikhil Pahwa

ActiveMobs : Conferencing on Mobiles

2007-12-19T02:00:00.000+05:30

While surfing across the bid bad internet today, I came across two really cool mobile products. I believe both of them are amongst the pioneers in the Indian mobile market, though it waits to be seen who really is going to dominate. But till that time comes, we as the customers should know what these guys are really doing.

The first one in the list in Activemobs. The registration process is simple, you send an SMS to the activemobs number (9844622848) with your nickname. The second step is to create a group where you will be able to receive group sms. Finally in the last step, you invite friends to the group. Now when you send an SMS to the number stated above, it goes automatically to all of your friends.

The sad part is that it is currently available only in Karnataka. But the good news is that they are already looking for funding, and possibly it might be available in other parts of the country soon.

Activemobs have been quite hot in Karnataka, and over 30,000 people signed up in about 8 weeks. (Latest figures from their blog). They have also been covered by a number of newspapers including the Economic Times.

Interestingly, they have already launched an advertising network on top of the community which they have. The network was launched about three days back so we should be able to see the results pretty soon.

On the whole I think Activemobs is ready to explode. The founders do find themselves sitting on a hot new idea, and time will tell if they can execute it to perfection.

If you have started up or get to hear about a cool new startup which isn't only into services do let me know. Chittr.com, Ilaka.in, MyWalkin.com and 160by2 are up next.

Do you have a platform that I can build a business on?

2007-12-19T00:54:00.000+05:30

If you plan to start working in technology, this is the first and the last question you need to convince your customers about.

As always, Seth Godin is right on target.

More on the company voice

2007-12-17T18:28:00.000+05:30

In the last post, I was talking about how big corporations need to have a human form while talking to customers. However, there are different kinds of companies and not all of them are always big. So like us, you are not one of those big companies with the multi-billion dollar revenues, how should you talk to your clients and users?

The best way to answer that question is to quote a book by probably the best web development company around, (associated with 5 terrific products, and one exceptionally famous framework called Ruby on Rails). If you can't guess the name of the company yet, you need to do some more research before you start your online firm.

To a self imposed question, it says

If our tone seems too know-it-allish, bear with us. We think it's better to present ideas in bold strokes than to be wishy-washy about it. If that comes off as cocky or arrogant, so be it.

Yes, that is what you need. It should be clear, concise and authoritative. The big corporations just over-do it a bit, but you can still be human, you can still be authoritative, and you can still talk to clients and give them just what they need.

In case you haven't guessed it yet, the company is 37signals.com. You can read this excellent book titled 'Getting Real' online at gettingreal.37signals.com

Writing customer service emails

2007-12-15T20:53:00.001+05:30

We hear about it all of the time.

The age of monopolies is over. Your organization will never have the same kind of power over its customers ever again, because they, have now found a voice of their own. We hear that the customer now has some real powers in the relationship, and they strive to get more. If you can't give it to them, you are going down, and fast.

One aspect of providing a more usable customer service environment is to talk in a language which people understand. Unlike the regular, we will get in touch with you soon, you need to come up with something much more human, if you want that customer to stay.

Though it is the common belief that as companies start getting larger, they start losing their humanity, and start becoming corporations. But today I had the chance to view a beautiful email sent by one of the biggest of internet companies - Amazon. The customer went on to call it the 'Best Customer Service Email' they had ever received. So if you need to write emails for your company too, do read it. It might give you a much better idea about what we really should be doing.

Dear Mr. Hildebrandt,

Hello from Amazon.com.

My name is Autumn Walker of Amazon.com's Executive Customer Relations. Jeff Bezos received your email and has asked me to reply on his behalf, taking any action necessary to assist you.

I understand and fully empathize with your desire to write epic novels using the "HP Pavilion TX1305US Notebook PC" offered in the "Amazon Customers Vote" promotion. I had similar hopes of producing my own work of greatness when I cast my vote.

Perhaps fortunately for the general public, neither I, nor any of my colleagues whom I was ready to beg from, won this round. (Come to think of it, I don't think we won *any* rounds.) It is important, however, that your genius be heard.

I am unable to take one of the fully claimed and purchased laptops away from its winning owner to provide you with this deal, nor will we be discounting other $1000.00 items to the fire-sale price of $299.00 offered in our "Amazon Customers Vote" promotion. As I'm sure you are aware, promotions are for a limited time only and cannot be extended.

I share your wonder that neither you nor any of the other 18 bloggers participating in your thread did not win the "Out & About" round. As a matter of fact, I was quite vociferous in like-minded protest. Perhaps the response I received to my own objections may clear this matter up somewhat: when I stoutly declared that some member of my voluminous family should have statistically won something, I was reminded of a common thread in our "Customers Vote" forum which states buying a lottery ticket only marginally increases one's chances of winning the lottery.

Take heart; Norman Mailer wrote all of his novels by hand. And you've surely heard the phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword"? It would sound absurd to substitute "laptop" for the word "pen."

In the meantime, since fate has conspired against me as well, I will continue the process of gathering material for my novel, (also known as staying employed.) This means that I will certainly be on hand to help you find exactly the right Sharpie should you wish to persevere in your brilliant endeavor. That is, until next year's "Amazon Customers Vote" promotion...

Despite this setback, I eagerly await the publication of your novel, and can assure you that I will be among the earliest purchasers at the bookstore.

Here's wishing you the best of luck in next year's promotion!

Regards,

Autumn Walker Executive Customer Relations

Amazon, I love you.
Read the whole post here

This is just what we should be doing. Talking to our clients like the people that we really are.

But this is the question that you really need to ask yourself. Can you do this at your company? If not, you have something new to do.

Using Blogger with Blogger Gears - Hosted Blogger is now as fast as Wordpress.

2007-11-21T00:38:00.001+05:30

I have been really excited for quite some time about Google Gears, the hot new plugin by Google which allows offline capabilities for website. Of course cookies have been there forever, but there was always a need for more advanced technology.

So when today I found the blog gears implementation via the Google Code Updates, I was more than willing to try it out. Using this example, which uses Google gears, you can write/edit/delete posts even when you are offline. The interface is still very simple but it is awesome to try it out.

I'm not too sure it works well with the hosted blogger blogs (like mine). But we are about to find out.

On a similar note, has anybody worked it out for wordpress yet? Or would you have me built it myself. Come on guys, somebody pass on a link, I'm waiting...

UPDATE : This thing is really awesome, now you don't have to wait for the whole thing to upload on your site. In less than 3 seconds after clicking the publish button, the post was sitting on my hosted blogger blog. If you would like to try it out, go over to Bloggears