thodi fight hai ...

Over the last two days i've been on the receiving end of a fundoo hearing from my friend ... not her fault at all ... even while we hang out somewhere, my cell phone refuses to stop ringing ... and guess who ... investor seth ka call ... :)

dekho bhai ... first of all, since i started working on the startup instead of making a fat paycheque elsewhere, she has been treating me and i have been quite shameless about it ... if on top of it i keep talking to junta while she treats me, meri thodi fight hone waali hai ... :P

-Kashyap

asking for too much?

there are atleast a million things that need to be done to start off a company ... i'm saying to start off a company, whether its a success or not ... just to bloody do business there are a million things.

u register a company ... and then you go and get some wierd clearances ... voluntary registeration, which is apparently not voluntary at all ... proffesional tax, when we left our proffesions to do all of this in the first place ... VAT and CST ... the guy who is doing it for us cooly said that we have to bribe people at the VAT office with a predecided figure of 1875. this 1875 is apparently split up nicely from the chaprasi to the top official ... then you have IPR management ... and funding to look for ... and offices to rent ... and ... and ... and ...

which actually gives me a new idea for a company ... there should be a one stop shop for startups ... anyone who wants to startup can go there and get everything from office space to cheap phone connections to hardware to software to lawyers to CAs to company registerars to .. to .. to .. to ..

get the idea? is it asking for too much? why cant the government do something like that? say set up such a center at an IIT campus or something and give it to them to manage.

anyway .. back to work for me ..

.com versus .in

We were quite kicked about having registered just the .in domain name that we wanted, when the web junta came in and crashed our party!

Some guys said that internationally google will not display .in domain names. Some said within India google will show .in names last in the list. Some said the .in domain name has not taken off at all. Some said people will make faces if they are told of a .in domain name.

Whatever yaar ... ye sab item log pehle nahin bataa sakte the kyaa? ... now we are out looking for another website name.

lo kar lo baat ...

The beginning of the end?

For the first time, I saw a public (in a sense) demonstration of the growing agony with Yahoo services. A registration form that I was recently filling up online had to say this:

"yahoo.com and yahoo.co.in mail servers are unstable therefore confirmation mails shall be sent to your secondary email id as well. Kindly restrain from entering a yahoo id as your primary email"

A recent report I read mentioned that Yahoo's performance in 2006 was way below analyst expectations. I wonder if it has to do with Yahoo trying to do too many things at once. Maybe it should just focus on a small set of services it provides and really get cracking on them a.l.a the concept of 'power brands' followed in many organisations.

It's beginning to really hotten up for Yahoo now.

-Sushant

Gnome Land: Welcome to Gnome Land guys ...

Hi all,
Its time we answered some FAQs, so that this blog makes more sense to first time readers.
1. Who are you? We are a bunch of IIT/IIM graduates who went slightly nuts over their idea and decided to try it out.
2. Why are you doing this as opposed to something more conventional? Every person has the desire to create something that he/she can call his/her own. For us this is our way to create something that is unique and our own.
3. What exactly is Gnome? What is the brand going to do? Gnome is more than a brand. Gnome is a person. He is that bit in you that wonders about anything and everything unknown. He is curious, intelligent, adventurous and craves to know more about anything that looks different and exciting. In terms of products that Gnome brings to you, they will include anything and everything that you might need which can be an expression of what Gnome stands for. Gnome will start with Casual wear for you. What you wear is a direct expression of you. It not only influences what others think of you, at times it influences even what you think of yourself. Hence the choice.
4. So what is this blog all about? This blog is about the people behind Gnome and their lives. You can read about who we are at http://gnomedforever.blogspot.com/2006/10/welcome-to-gnome-land-guys.html
Some of our friends keep wondering and thinking about starting up themselves. We know this, because before quiting our jobs we were in a similar state. For all such people, this is a place where they can get a flavour of the weird ups and downs in a startup and enjoy the ride with us.
Happy reading guys. Just one request. Please keep posting your comments on whatever you see. Anything at all ... jokes, quotes, your thoughts, advice, brickbats, praise ... We will love all of it.

Of names and colours....

Yes yes! it's been a long long while since we contributed to this blog. Kindly excuse us but we have been swamped with work many times over than anticipated. It's been a lot of fun nonetheless though and I am sure will be in the future.

The last couple of days, the three of us have had some discussions on the management structure of the company and the titles that we will hold. Now, I will not try to bore you with the mundane details of what we spoke about but this got me thinking - "How important are these titles for an organization, any kind of organization from a startup to a multi-billion enterprise"?

And this though took me back to a book I read a long time ago. 'Maverick' was written by the CEO of Semler S.A., Ricardo Semler. Semler S.A. is a company in Brazil that during the 1980s manufactured ship-building products under Semler Sr. It was only towards the beginning of the '90s that Ricardo Semler took over the organization and the book is about how he took the organization in unexpected directions (the company started manufacturing meat-slicers, employees decided their working hours, employees even decided their remuneration!) and how in 6 years the company went from USD 35mn to USD 215mn in revenues! This during the worst of times for the Brazilian economy.

Part of Ricardo's work at Semler S.A. dealt with flattening the organizational structure to the extent where there were just three levels of management and people were free to decide their own titles. The book states how once this was announced, several people got new business cards printed saying, ‘Sultan of Operations’ (for an operations guy), ‘Sheikh’ (for a finance guy) etc. It just made the entire hierarchical setup redundant with use of such ‘lame’ titles. And it conveyed a message to all the stakeholders – that titles didn’t mean squat when it came to running an organization successfully (as proven).

So how important are titles in an organization. I believe they are relevant for one reason – for employees who gauge the success of their professional careers by the title below their name on the business card, these titles can make such employees feel happy about their role in a particular organization and keep them with the company longer. But then the question that begs to ask itself is this – “should an organization with its vision set on high aims and objectives be tied down by the whims of such people?” And let me clarify, by employees I mean the entire bunch of people working in an organization from the CEO right down to the other end.

I personally vote for titles that don’t make any sense at all ‘cause they don’t need to. I would personally like to be introduced as the ‘Marketing Maverick’ of a so-and-so company rather than ‘Marketing Director’! Gives it that nice touch, don’t you think? And I also vote for the board of directors to be called the ‘Sultans of Swing’!

But alas, we will have to wait and see what Kashyap and Navneet have to say about this. Will keep you all updated.

-Sushant