Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

S atya Nadella's story as Microsoft's CEO is a story of perseverance and belief. There are many things that can be learnt from his email by all young people having ambitions to lead a big organization or become a successful entrepreneur. Here are a few excerpts from his email to Microsoft employees at his first day as CEO.

Entrepreneurs spend so much time getting more visibility for their idea that there is tendency for them to loose focus from their long term vision. 

If your lemonade does not sell, would you switch to selling Viagra? Even more if you are passionate about making a lemonade.

Entrepreneurship is about innovation and the ability to tackle problems. Doing both means you have a successful venture. Redbus.in is a classic Indian example of a startup that tackled challenges through innovation. RedBus (redbus.in) is now India's biggest online bus ticketing company. Interstate bus travel in India was a highly unorganized sector with many private local players and government buses. A consequence of this was the selling of bus tickets through traditional brick-and-mortar agents. Another problem with bus travel was immediate booking of tickets before journey. There used to be few advance bookings. Travelling to remote corners or on an immediate basis through bus remained a cumbersome task. Moreover there was no guarantee that if you went to a bus stand, you would find a bus.

I recently had a chat with my friend who left his job to start his own venture. His venture is doing very well. It started as a passion but in my last talk to him, I heard the word ROI. He says that for every simple decision we make, we look at ROI and its role in sustenance. It has not been smooth sailing for him, but the important question is ROI. If an entrepreneur is into a venture since it has been a passion, what is the primary goal of the venture - Generate returns or do good work? For many startups cash flows are a big problem. Most don't survive due to this problem. Many budding entrepreneurs today are limited by cash flows. VCs are not the best bet in such situations. It is your own practical thinking and here is why the ROI focus becomes important. Passion on one hand is focus on the value proposition while ROI is sustenance. It is like a canon on a ship with the canon (passion) delivering the power and the ship (ROI) taking it to distant shores. If there are leaks in t...

A friend of mine is planning to start an e-commerce portal in an already flooded Indian e-commerce market .Ask him about how to get customers? The answer is e-mail marketing. It is cheap. Spamming people is definitely cheap. At the core is not a new idea. To survive with such an idea requires heavy capital investment. I am not saying the idea is bad. It is just not a new one. People have tried it before and some have mastered it. The problem is that he requires capital, which presently is not a luxury.  Fundamentally startups that require heavy levels of advertising hint to the fact that their service or product does not sell by itself. If your business plan is heavily banking on high levels of investment in advertising, maybe you need to re-look at it.

What happens when a guy who loves his work stops loving it? Or What happens when the work you love does not bring you success? You start to question. Here is one such question. I have no life. I never see any of my non-work friends, and I’m wasting away my one and only youth. I ought to be out doing fun things and active things, the kind of things I won’t be able to do when my mind and body finally decay. But instead I’m stuck inside under fluorescent lights, pushing bits around inside a computer in ways that are only interesting to other nerds. Startups are not about billionaires. Risks are not shortcuts to success. They are about survival. People who learn it young have a higher chance of making a fortune. So stop cribbing. Start working. If you are over-worked, start f#ck&ng. But get back to work so that you don't stop loving it. PS: Uncrunched has taken an interesting topic .

Can a university degree guarantee financial security? A re-look at the correlation between financial security and education. A recent popular article at The Economist prompted me to write this entry. The article bluntly says "A university degree no longer guarantees financial security". It gives the following two arguments: 1. Improvements in technology and the evolution of computers have reduced the demand in mid-level jobs 2. Jobs in medicine, law, academia that earlier guaranteed a secure future no longer continue to do so. Their point of view is correct to a certain extent. My opinion of the current educated class is no different from the popular view - "They are following a herd". And this herd is slowly being destroyed through a simple demand-supply mismatch. When the herd gets more than what is required many have to be culled or left behind. Recession and the dip following it have fomented this reduction of requirement. With growth in number of univ...

In the 65th year of Indian independence, we have a choice to either think about India's glorious past, its freedom fighters, its number one status, cinema or we have a choice to think about a mechanism to build a better future. I can safely say that India has built a very solid foundation, and is continuing to do so with the likes of Anna Hazare. But what next? This solid foundation with around 60% of population below 35 years means a lot of restless energy. Sadly this restless energy has to be channelized through a country run by old people. There is a discord between the demography of Indian leaders and Indian society. To grow we need to maximize this restless energy and channelize it. The phrase "Lets be practical" has to be dumped. Its time to think Big and think Honest. With some of the country's biggest business tycoons beings tainted with the "Dishonest" tag, the new generation has to think clean and still maintain the "Big Dream". ...

If you think all inventions, political campaigns, entrepreneurial ventures were successful because of a great idea, think again. Not all great ideas gain acceptability, and not all Barack Obama speeches are successful. Hitler was one of the few dictators in the second world war who had mass support during the initial phase. He lost it, and finally the war. The success of an idea does not lie in its greatness or its novelty. It becomes great because of a sound economic framework. An idea is like a variable, whose success depends on the mathematical equation where the success of the idea is a dependent variable, and the idea is one of the few independent variables.  Y- Success of the idea (Dependent variable) X1 - Idea X2 - Support from executors of the idea X3 - Support from the beneficiaries of the idea X4 - Processes governing the execution of the idea X5 - Social support for the idea X6 - Ability to generate monetary gains to support X2-X5 Y = f(X1,X2,X3,X4,X5,X6) Stil...