enventure

Mobile Advertisement - Landscape

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:43:00 +0000

This was the topic of my presentation at Mobile Monday, Delhi.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: india sunilwirkle)

IPhone getting midnight launch in India

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:13:00 +0000

I recieved emails, smses from Airtel today about IPhone 3G launch today from Airtel. This confirms the price tag that had been hitting each and every IPhone lover!! And I guess it would be the first technology product, that is getting launched at midnight !!!

At Rs 31,000 it looks a lot pricey. I had thought the price to be between Rs 20,000 - 25,000. It's priced more than a laptop. I guess there would still be lot of apple lovers who would buy iPhone at such a price level. But it might take some time to be a mainstream phone. I remember similar stuff happening with Motorola Razor in India. Moto Razor was launched with a big price tag, it made a style statement. Even being expensive, lot of people bought it. Then over the next months, the price dropped significantly and it became an instant hit.

Lot of guys would be waiting to get the price dropped.
Below is the email, that I recieved from Airtel:

The moment you have been waiting for is here. The new iPhone 3G premieres August 22, 2008. iPhone 3G will be available in 2 exciting options:

8 GB (Black) for Rs 31000
16GB (White & Black) for Rs 36100

To celebrate the launch of the iPhone 3G in India, we will be opening three of our Airtel stores, one each in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore at the stroke of midnight 12.00am (Friday Morning) on August 22nd.

Join us early on the red carpet as we camp out throughout the evening.
We are expecting some long queues, so plan your day and reach the location as soon as possible. Remember, our stock is limited and will be available only on first cum first basis.

So, gear up to witness the biggest launch event on August 22, 2008 and be a part of history at

Airtel Brand Shop
S-45, Ground Floor, Sahara Mall,
MG Road, SEC- 28, Gurgaon
Haryana

Ps: Can’t make it for the midnight launch!

In case you can't make it you can still get your iPhone on priority. Just visit one of the select Airtel stores & confirm your booking by paying Rs 5000 on August 20 or 21.You'll get an appointment to collect your iPhone after paying the balance amount. For list of the select Airtel stores log on to www.airtel.in/iphone3g

Koshish ... for a better tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:25:00 +0000

Today had been a remarkable day for all of us at Wirkle. We always wanted to contribute to society, and time always get the better of us. But, today we partnered with Literacy India based in Gurgaon and made a beginning in this direction.

We went to a small village school in Bijwasan just at the outskirts of Gurgaon. Coming back to this school, made us remember our own school times.

So what did we do?
We were there for around half a day to put smiles on some of the faces. And I guess we succeeded in that. So we had lot of games, quizzes for kids from 3rd standard to 9th standard.

Below is a picture of a small girl who is doing a prayer. She won a prize in one of the events and when we asked her to perform/sing a song, she made this prayer ..

We asked one student, who is the first man to step on Moon? And of them answered "Kalpana Chawla". The answer is wrong, but I don't think the word Kalpana Chawla appears in any textbook. Role models like Kalpana Chawala make tremendous influence on young kids.

Private institutions today fund a lot of labs, but village schools are not able to get quality teachers/volunteers. I guess atleast we made a beginning and as we go ahead Wirklities would be proud of their initiatives and could help in educating the uneducated in India.

Inteviews for an IT startup - practical approach

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:01:00 +0000

We at Wirkle always keep looking for passionate guys, people who want to make a mark.

And we often debate, what should be an interview process for a startup? Who's an ideal candidate? Do degrees like IIT make a difference? Working in companies like Infosys, TCS make a difference? Or, working in another startup makes a difference?

My ideal candidate is the one who is very passionate about what he has developed in the past. I love guys who can show demo of a working product that they have made in the past and are very proud to show it. I have had experience where guys with little experience showed very impressive demos. But make sure you verify the genuineness of the person. You can see passion flowing through the eyes of genuine guys.

But such persons are not easy to figure out. So what's your best bet?

Make an interview more of a discussion and keep it "practical" e.g. if you are recruiting a Project Manager, ask him to make a project plan; if you are hiring an HR executive, ask her to define a HR policy and put it in a document. Analyse what are the pain points in your organization and ask a candidate to figure out solutions for those tasks.

We at Wirkle have often been recognized by the candidates for keeping the interview "practical".

For software technical interviews, look for guys who love programming or have a flair for programming, have participated in programming contests and won awards. Look for guys who are very strong in core computer science concepts. I have often seen guys who have worked in struts/j2ee for 3-4 years but if you ask them to write a fibonacci program, they would fail. On the other hand if the guy is logically strong, picking new stuff is a breeze.

The interview process gets more complicated if you are hiring guys at technical lead and architect level. One would assume guys at technical lead or architect level to understand core computer science concepts. But if in a telephonic interviews you ask some basic logical questions, they might get offended and even put down the phone. This is the state of the current IT industry.

A startup needs to be very practical. Amongst all these positives and negatives, a startup needs to navigate smartly on a bumpy road full of potholes.

So, if you are taking a technical interview, make sure
- make people write simple logical programs
- ask them to solve practical programming problems in software projects/products
- make them debug a piece of code
- see their past history, does he want to stick and learn or wants to change jobs every 1-2 years.
- team fit, make sure he/she works for the success of the team.

Make interviews real-world and one could clearly judge weather that candidate is suitable for the job.

iPhone at Wirkle

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Currently on Apple's appstore as of August 1st 2008, there are around 1200 applications. And amongst the top 100 selling applications , around 45-50% are games. Applications in the Entertainment, Music category are the next ones and Business applications haven't yet made much of an impact.

On the other end, devices like RIM's blackberry, windows smart phones are geared around business users. Sites like handango that distribute applications for smart phones are more geared towards business users and this landscape might change with iPhone becoming more and more popular.

My belief is manufacturers like Nokia, RIM, HTC for windows smart phones would bring in lot of new devices to compete with iPhone and one would see their shift of focus from business users to young and happening crowd.

And I guess India would also see a bigger jump in this context. The iPhone cost is not going to be a barrier, Indians are used to paying a lot for their handsets. If cheaper data services are available, that's going to get Indians crazy!!

We at Wirkle have also been doing iPhone development and it is simply cool.

Developing native applications on iPhone is a breeze. And I think much of it is also because of the development tools that are based on Mac. Apple as a company has always been strong in usability and that also clearly shows up not just in the application but also the development tools.

For building native iPhone application, one needs a mac system or one could also install the latest Mac OS X (Leopard) on an Intel machine. Installation is a bit tricky but once installed it works with a breeze. The OS is much more responsive than windows and linux. After that one just needs the iPhone development kit from Apple and one is ready to go..

Developers not used to Mac would have an initial difficulty as the development is in Objective -C, lot different from C and java world, but for smart programmers it's just another language. The concepts are similar.

Building application is easy but distributing them is going to be tough. Apple is closely guarding it and the applications can be installed only from its appstore. The license is cheap $99 , but as of now Apple has opened it to a very few developers. So once that becomes a main stream activity, there's going to be a massive activity.

I am just waiting to see some real action here in India. Airtel and Vodafone have already announced plans for iPhone, till then need to have some patience!!

Semantic Web - Salzburg Research a look back

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:26:00 +0000

While googling on the internet, I came across a Report on various semantic web technologies that I myself prepared while working at Salzburg Research.

http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/DRMITIT/metokis_d10_kcca_final.pdf

I remember working, reading tens of research papers, writing and reviewing this 90 page document. This was one of my first big and professional deliverables and being the lead was a hard time :-). In meetings I was perhaps the youngest guy and here I was talking to experts, researchers, professors, industry folks and trying to make them understand and build use cases, tools for Semantic Web.

But I owe all this to my mentors Sigi and Wernher. They boosted my thinking and always were very appreciative of what I did. They were one of the best guys that I met in my life.

Another interesting experience was a RDF graphics tool that I built along with a smart guy Rupert. I didn't realise when me and Rupert became great team members and made this tool for viewing RDF graphs. And this all started as a pass time weekend hobby.

http://semweb.salzburgresearch.at/apps/rdf-gravity/

But all this looks way back in 2004. At times it looks I have become really old :-)

Proto4 at IIT Delhi

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:46:00 +0000

Last weekend I was at Proto4 at IIT Delhi. It felt great to be back both being an alumni of Proto and IIT Delhi. The event was great, met some great guys and interesting companies.

There were some great presentations in the fast track session. One interesting part in Proto is most of the audience is very young, dynamic, students and entrepreneurial. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense looks like the young India is becoming more and more entrepreneurial. The bad part is most of the stuff that is talked about is very basic in nature. Most of the people talk about how to get VC money and don't focus on how to build a big business.

As a pass time hobby I used to watch a lot of Demo videos in the past. And they are really superb and one could see break through products in Demo. Nevertheless Proto has been a great initiative and the team behind Proto is to be appreciated for all the hard work.

I have a lot of debate with other colleagues about most of the people in indian IT industry are out there for money and job prospects rather then interest. We started using computers only in our engineering college and most people in US are using them when they were kids. My personal belief is the next generation would make a much bigger impact in the Indian IT industry and will change the landscape forever.

Intern Startup Challenge at Wirkle

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:01:00 +0000

We at Wirkle have been taking interns every semester. And they have played a very important role at Wirkle. Our primary goal in the past has been to take an intern through all parts of software development lifecycle from design, architecture, testing , documentation - whatever it takes to develop a software product.

This time we thought to do it a bit differently. Rather than giving and defining requirements, we thought to make it more interesting; where the guys can on their own lead and define a product.

So if you are looking for an internship, don't forget to reply us back. And if you are not , you can help us spread the word around so that guys who want, can reach us!

Check out the complete details at http://www.wirkle.com/startupchallenge.html

DARE TO TURN THE WORLD AROUND?

THINK 6 MONTHS IS ALL IT TAKES??

Welcome to the
Intern Startup Challenge @ Wirkle

Almost every single day in your college life you come across a successful idea and think “This is something I could have done, something much better than what it is today.” NOW is the time to PROVE YOURSELF!

At Wirkle we are looking for simply the finest minds in your college – people ready to set a trend for others to follow. If technology thrills you, internet is where you live and your mind works faster than a super computer then we invite YOU to take our Intern Startup Challenge.

What is it?
It’s a 6 month internship program where you choose what you want to do. We would provide you mentors, resources, infrastructure, stipend and whatever it takes for building a software product that YOU believe in!!

Who is eligible?
Any team of 2 students currently enrolled in college/university or final year students that are graduating in May/June 2008 should apply together.

How to apply?
You need to apply as a 2 person team. Please send in the following documents to [startupchallenge at wirkle dot com]

- A single page write up explaining the product that you would like to build in your internship. The domain should preferably be mobile /web.
- Resumes

Last Entries: 28 May 2008

Wirkle at Startups.IN

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:12:00 +0000

Wirkle sponsored Startups.IN Tshirt at Megabucks , International Business and Entrepreneurship Festival held at IIT Kanpur.

Wirkle at Bikaner

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 04:49:00 +0000

Had a great lunch together, it was a long (not long just a week :-) ) pending birthday treat from my side. I was at home in Chandigarh for my this birthday. But you know the team never spares you, even if you are the CTO :-)

Above you can see the Wirkle team, a lot more enthusiastic, a lot more healthy :-) Hey guys you all are doing great work. Hats off to the team!!!

Who wants to hire this guy ?

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:53:00 +0000

We have been doing hiring at Wirkle from some time and once you start landing into a services business, hiring is a constant phenomneon. But one good thing with services business (if you are developing products with other startups) is that you have smart sharp teams working in a charged environment and you work hard and have a constant challenge.

Today we got a funny email from a funny guy:

Forwarded email (credentials of the person are kept confidential) :

I would like to explore opportunities to establish
employment relationship with wirkle.
My brief introduction-
Name: XXX
Education: B.Tech.(IT) from a good institute (but not an IIT)
Current Employer: some big software consultancy firm
Job Philosophy: Optimize ratio of input and output
1.Work ex- More than 1.5 Years
2.Current CTC - 4lacs (expected to be 6.5+1 after
promotion in April or June)
3.Expected CTC - 10 to 12 (According to job profile
offered and company profile, Flexible and Negotiable)
4.Earliest joining date - (Max 3 Months from
offer,Flexible towards lower end)

So this email is Funny because, I don't know what this guy expects but I guess guys like these are interested more in money than in work. Startups need sincere dedicated guys and I have seen guys technically more sound who just love their work. Normally in startups I would like to have guys who have put in lot of self-initiative, contributed to open source projects and are community people rather than just being money driven. My advice to guys like this is - join some other area like real estate - you might make much more money in that than being a software engineer!!!

So if someone has a requirement and wants to hire this guy, let me know!!

Wirkle demonstrates at Proto.in

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:28:00 +0000

Wirkle was selected as one of India's top 28 product technology startups selected to present at Proto (http://www.proto.in). Proto is India's first serious attempt to showcase new products, technologies and startups to the forefront. The event aimed at providing innovators a space to attract mindshare, finances, and the attention of the VCs.

The event took place on 20th & 21st January at Chennai.

Wirkle demonstrated the capabilities of its "patent pending" Mirage platform - a middleware along with a mobile application that dramatically simplifies building and deploying custom enterprise scale mobile applications. Middleware enables tracking and delivering customized information in the form of updates. The mobile application helps tackle the mobile device fragmentation for each individual customized mobile applications. The platform empowers its customers to interact with various enterprise applications and back-end IT databases using their mobile phones.

Wirkle at Comsware

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:51:00 +0000

This is a pic of Lomesh and Varun at Comsware!! They look techy don't they :-)

Wirkle at Comsware

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:01:00 +0000

Beginning tomorrow (10th and 11th January) Wirkle would be presenting itself at Comsware being held in Bangalore. So be ready to check in the Wirkle stall there. http://www.comsware.org/demo.html .

COMSWARE is a premier international conference dedicated to addressing emerging topics and challenges in Communications Software. The goal of the conference is to create a world-class gathering of researchers from academia and industry, practitioners, business leaders, intellectual property experts and venture capitalists, providing a launch pad for new innovative business and technology.

There are a couple of startups presenting there and Wirkle would be presenting its enterprise products. We have been gearing our platform for the enterprise market and you can have a look at how Mirage is powering the enterprise service helpdesk industry!

Proto - the Indian DEMO

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:01:00 +0000

Proto.in - india's first technology roadshow is being held at Chennai on 20th and 21st January 2007. I have always been fascinated by companies presenting at DEMO . I have seen their online videos and it's great to see the technology initiatives in US. Kudos to the Proto organizers who must have put in lot of efforts in organizing such an event in India. Though I guess it will be hard for Proto to match Demo but nevertheless it's a great start. Events like this will boost up the product technology culture in India.

MomoDelhi is back again!

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 08:46:00 +0000

MomoDelhi is back - a new year, a new beginning. So mark your calendar for 20th January. The momo delhi event welcomes all mobile enthusiasts, so if you have a mobile phone and are fascinated - be here to see what the future of mobile holds. From discussions on hard core technology to business to a way common man interprets mobile - this is the event to be in!!

And if you have your own perspective to share, we welcome you to present your perspective of mobile to the world!

Just add your name to the wiki http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

Gmail Up

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:24:00 +0000

This weekend brought a good news with my gmail account finally working !!

It feels good to get that data back!! But I am quite surprised that there occurred such a serious bug within gmail that kept my account down for almost nearly a month!! I feel good that they looked into it and finally resolved it out but they asked me all sort of weird questions to get this thing up.

I was a big proponent of keeping all data online and just accessing it via the browser but this one situation is seriously making me rethink!! Email has become so ubquitous and if you loose it; you feel like being handicapped.. Perhaps one should have a fault tolerant service for something as important as EMAIL.

So guys you can now email me back on gmail but I will be lot more cautious using it this time.

Gmail Down

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:48:00 +0000

My Gmail account is down from more than an hour.

I keep getting this message:

Server Error

We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem -- please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.

I have never experienced such outrage!! And my friends are able to login, it's just that I am experiencing this trouble. I used to forward my emails from other accounts onto GMail but now I am having second thoughts about it....

GMail is a great service but if it doesn't work - it's of no use...

Sunil & Tina

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:44:00 +0000

It's been more than a month since I got married with my beautiful wife Tina. Ever since I met her, it's been a new phase and a new beginning. I met her none other than independence day (15th August) to perhaps loose my independence :-)

So how long did it took to decide?? Days, weeks, months .. hmmm - not even couple of hours... we decided (actually God knows who decided) to tie the knot. Quite unusual for love marriages and perhaps even for arranged marriages these days in Delhi.

From 16th August, our Roka to 23rd September to our engagement and finally 29th September, time just flew by.

I haven't written blogs for days, marriage makes you busy man!! Had a beautiful honeymoon in austria, met some old pals in Salzburg, we had our first Karvachauth, had a great Diwali at my home in Patiala and currently enjoying my first few moments of happy married life :-) Lots of dinners at lots of places, gives enough reason to put up weight !!

I guess it gave me enough reasons to be away from the online world!

Enjoy the marriage video below..

LinknSurf Beta 1.0

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:35:00 +0000

Do checkout the latest version of LinknSurf Beta 1.0

- Enables you track your favorite blogs
- Share blogs via email, sms
- Share blogs via creating your own mobile communities

You can also recieve emails on LinknSurf, just forward your emails to username@linknsurf.com

LinknSurf now runs also on blackberry, so if you have Blackberry 7100G, you can enjoy tracking blogs and sharing them with your friends.

Download LinknSurf from the following links:
General MIDP2 Application (Nokia, SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung etc.)
linknsurf.jar
linknsurf.jad
Motorola Razr V3
linknsurf-moto.jar
linknsurf-moto.jad
Blackberry 7100G
linknsurf.cod

Or just point your mobile browser to http://linknsurf.com/download

So if you have a gprs connection, you can try the app out and can email me your feedback!

MomoDelhi Flashback

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:25:00 +0000

On 5th August, we had Mobile Monday Delhi chapter kick off and the first meet went off very well. We had people from all walks of life - mobile enthusiasts, NGOs, venture capitalists, mobile carriers, content developers, content aggregators, entrepreneurs, students,.... - so what more could you expect! It was a charged audience - around 90 people turned up!!

The meeting kick started at 10 with everyone giving a brief overview of themselves and one killer feature they would want in their mobile phone. After that we had an enlightening talk by Mr. Naresh Gupta - VP Adobe, Managing Director India. His take was SMS and Voice are the two killer applications and perhaps Location based Services might be the next - but wait and see...

And then we had a series of talks till lunch:
- Nishant Kavi from iGate presented their solution for content adaptation on mobiles, gave a demo.
- Lomesh Dutta from Wirkle Inc. gave a presentation on LinknSurf - product focussed for building community around media.
- Prerna Gupta - cofounder Yaari.com gave a presentation on Social Networking on Mobiles via SMS... I was surprised to see my name appearing in her demo :-) Sometime back I got an invite for Yaari.com and just made a brief profile.. Didn't give me stardom but may be one day :-)
- Rajan presented his thoughts on Mobile 2.0

And after that we broke up for lunch.

After lunch we had two parallel sessions:
Track one had the following presentations:
- Saurabh Jain presented his talk about Convergence in mobile world..
- Nimesh Bhandari from ValueFirst gave a talk on Business Model Innovation in Value Added Services
- And then it was my turn , and I gave a talk on Mobile 2.0 - I guess I asked too many questions trying to analyze what's mobile 2.0 :-) But got a great response from the audience.
- Mr Chirag Jain, VP Webaroo, gave a talk describing Webaroo's offline search solution.
- Milind Nimesh gave a talk on Pervasive Computing..

Track two had the following presentations:
- Kunal Bajaj gave a talk on Telecom policy
- Joshua and Ashok Datar from Koolpool talked about their SMS based solutions for car pooling in Mumbai
- Sunadini and Ekta from ACL Wireless gave a talk on Usability on Small Screens
- Girish gave a talk on tools for mobile development

And finally we had an open panel session. The panelists include:
- Mr Manoj Dawane - COO Airtel
- Mr Alok Mittal - Partner Cannan Partners, Band of Angels
- Mr Vish Bajaj, CEO ValueFirst
- Mr Kiranbir Nag, Silicon Valley Bank
- Mr Arvind Jha - VP Monsoon Multimedia
- Mr Chirag Jain - VP Webaroo

The star attraction of the panel, atleast from my perspective, was Mr Manoj Dawane. Even though I have been against the walled garden approach of the carrier, but the way Mr Dawane handled all the queries and presented his perspective, all hats to the man..

I missed completely the track two of presentations and even with other presentations, I was quite occupied with getting things streamlined - always happen when you are part of the organizing team.. But nonetheless we have been able to capture some of the videos and we will be uploading them to youtube..

Presentations will be uploaded onto the wiki, so be sure to check http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

Just posting down a pic of me and lomesh captured by Prashant. It was captured at the very end of the event, I was really exhausted....

Me and Lomesh

You can see other pics at flickr.

Mobile Monday Delhi

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:30:00 +0000

Finally Mobile Monday Delhi is on the rolls.. We are having the first meet of the delhi chapter of the mobile monday event on 5th August 2006 at Adobe's office in Noida.

Mobile Monday is a gathering of mobile enthusiasts, developers, carriers, VAS providers, VC's - anyone who is enthusiastic about the next digital revolution - Mobile!

So if you are in and around Delhi or may be far away, Mobile Monday is a must visit. We would like the initiative to carry on every month where people can meet, discuss and share their ideas, beliefs and technology. Adobe has been very kind to sponsor its conference hall and lunch facilities. It has taken over all the headache in arranging the event..

You can find details at http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com/

This mobile monday is unique in the sense that it's being held on Saturday,!! Yeah 5th August is Saturday and not Monday!!

Mobile Monday on Saturday - not many can chew it. So why not mobile saturday ? I guess mobile monday has an active community around it, secondly in indian context arranging on saturday makes more sense. In India, tech community mainly works quite late in offices and asking them to keep their Monday evening free looks hard. Companies have problem sponsoring the event on weekdays. So we thought why not do it on Saturday! I guess its an experiment and like any experiment we would learn and make the necessary corrections but at the end we would like to have an active community keep going on.

Details of Event are given Below:

Mobile Monday Delhi : “Mobile 2.0: Future Trends and Technology”

When?

05 August 2006 ( Mark your calendar ,it’s a Saturday)

Where?

Adobe Systems India Private Limited
Adobe Towers
I-1A, City Centre, Sector : 25A
Noida - 201301
Tel # 91-120-2444711

Want to participate ?? Register yourself at our wiki !!

http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

To keep you updated on latest developments Pre and Post event Please join our mailing list .

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/momodelhi/

Startups and Team members

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 08:38:00 +0000

I came back to India in September 2004 and from then I have been involved in setting up Wirkle with my colleagues. We are still an early stage company but have passed through different phases. From our initial half room office (3 people could barely fit in) to a bedroom and finally towards our current office, life has never been the same.

But this post is not about me or co-founders, this is about experiences of a team and its comparison across the borders. The experience I share is not yet mine but includes lot of my other friends who have been running their own startups from a while.

While everyone agrees the thing that makes a startup different is the team. VC's might call it a proven team with serial entrepreneurs, past experiences but my take is - at the end of the day its the developer's game. Well proven management teams can fail if the product/service is not just compelling enough. I am not undermining the role of management but both are equally important.

Though most of the initial startup team is technical, given today's circumstances its hard to get and manage high thrill enthusiastic startup teams. Any people who join startups should realize:

- Persistence: Startups take their time to become companies. No quick returns. Have patience and persistence.

- Fun/Hectic: It can be fun to work in a startup, at the same time it can be quite hectic. Tight deadlines, too much work pressure - only hard work pays. If you want a cool 9-5 job, startups are not perhaps your cup of tea.

- Responsibility: Work in a team but be personally responsibile for your work. Realize the importance of deadlines.

- Professional: Programming is not just about writing new code. Aim is not just to code but to develop a product/service. Build a finished product. And when a user gives great comments on your product, that's your greatest achievement.

- Domain experts: If you are working in a particular domain, try to be an expert in that. In India, I have seen people hop a lot amongst different technologies but no one ever tries to be an expert. Secondly, no one can make you an expert, you have to be the master of your own destiny.

- Insecurity: Finally don't feel insecure. Even if startups fail, you are going to win at the end. See my earlier post: Is joining Startup really a RISK?

For guys who join startups because of money :

I remember interviewing a candidate with around 8-9 months work experience. He was getting a package of around 3.3 - 3.5 lakhs. And I asked about what kind of renumeration package he is looking for? His answer was: After 2-3 months, I will get a bonus and my package will become 4.3-4.5 and if I join another company I might get 5 and since you are a startup, I am expecting around 6 lakhs. This kind of behaviour is totally ridiculous on part of the candidate, if he wants to join a startup.

I and most of my friends have had experience working abroad and then setting up a team in India. One of the contrasts that we all have seen is people aren't professional enough. Perhaps we ourselves weren't professional enough when we graduated but the environment changed us. It's very important for every team member in a startup to realize , at the end of the day what counts is professionalism. Will you use a broken television set or read a local magazine or buy sub-standard products ? If you yourself aren't going to do that why will someone else use/buy the product/service that you are developing if it has concerns. Be professional in whatever code you develop or debug. And if it implies, as some call it "dirty work" (testing and debugging), you are personally responsible to do it.

You will grow and mature much faster in a starup. So even if it appears to be a risky venture, that risk will pay off. Have fun!

Busy Busy Busy!!

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:28:00 +0000

Last few days had been quite hectic. We all at Wirkle had been quite busy from participating in a candle light procession against reservation at AIIMS to writing software code to releasing new version of LinkNSurf. Life has never been the same from the time when we all started the entrepreneurial journey.

Do checkout the new version of LinkNSurf, atleast guys that don't have a mobile phone can checkout the website! We have done a complete makeover of the website and will be putting up new things much faster.

With LinkNSurf you can TRACK and SHARE your favorite:

Blogs (MySpace, Xanga, Blogspot,LiveJournal,TextAmerica, MSN Spaces),
MySpace profile comments,
Flickr Photos,
Hot or Not, Sports, Movie Reviews, Celebrity Gossip, News and content from hundreds of other web sources.

MIDP2 jar and jad files are available here.
linknsurf.jar
linknsurf.jad
Looking forward for a feedback from all the audience out there.

Flickr photos - reservation policies

noreply@blogger.com (Sunil) — Sun, 21 May 2006 13:54:00 +0000

I have started uploading photos related to anti reservation demonstrations currently on my flickr account.

Please check out the account at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/30095434@N00/
Link
If anyone wants to contribute any pictures, please do email me at sunilgoyal (at) gmail (dot) com.

You can also subscribe to the Flickr RSS feed here.