Category — organisations

The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use. That lets you design what you know—and you’ll figure out immediately whether or not what you’re making is any good. – Jason Fried & DHH in Rework

(Image courtesy: topnews.in)

“Scratching your own itch(SYOI)” is a popular phrase amongst many startup circles. What it essentially means is to build something that solves a problem you face. The case in point cited by many is the fact that when you are solving your own problem you know what exactly the problem is and how it can be addressed while on the other hand if you are scratching someone else’s itch you are sort of taking blind shots at both the problem and the possible solution(s).

Apart from the obvious fact of knowing the problem a bit better what works for SYOI is

1. Immediate & Direct Feedback: You can directly feel the impact that your solution creates. If for example one builds a product to manage his food expenses, the utility/futility of the product can be judged directly and immediately. One doesn’t need to do a long trial run/demo to see if the product works.
2. Extra Incentive: You + Customers > Customers. Working on a problem that benefits oneself directly has additional incentive because of the direct personal impact. Not just this, the beauty of this scenario is that one doesn’t need to think about the customers all the time i.e one can be content by just solving his/her problem. Other customers become secondary and this is a good thing because you don’t have to worry about what they might/might not like and just focus on what works for you, simple.
3. Passion: SYOI also makes one more passionate about the problem they are working on because they can relate a lot more to the problem and the issues that arise because of it. The direct impact of the solution on you also adds to the passion.

However having said all that, Is ‘Scratching your own itch’ the only way out? or Is ‘Scratching your own itch’ better than ‘Scratching someone else’s itch’?

While SYOI might have it’s own benefits, it certainly isn’t the only way out for entrepreneurs and not every invention/business is born out of it. For ex: A closed social networking platform for Chief Executives (CEO’s, CXO’s etc) of Fortune 500 companies built by 24-25 year olds can still work or a dating platform built by a married man is no less likely to work because he’s not scratching his own itch {assuming he’s not interested in finding himself a date through this platform }

Also, not all’s good with SYOI and it also has its fair share of negatives

1. Small Market: What bothers you which might not be bothering others. Thus some SYOI businesses also stand a risk of solving problems for a very small market segment. For ex: A friend of mine hates to wait in queues for getting CNG for his car and is ready to pay someone extra amount to take his car and get CNG filled in it. So if he were to start a service based just on this then it’s quite likely that there might not be a lot of people willing to pay extra money to get CNG/Petrol.
2. Financial Feasibility/Business Model: SYOI might work great for Open source where all developers are constantly writing/modifying code to meet their needs and in the process helping scores of other fellow developers it might not work that well when it comes to doing a business. Not all personal itches and their solutions can have business models. This is not to be confused with the previous point on Small Market as having a solution for small market can still be monetized but monetizing something that appears to be a problem to you but no one else might see it as a problem can be an issue.
3. Domain Knowledge or lack thereof: Needless to say, while starting a business it makes a lot of difference if you have enough domain expertise in your team and it might hurt if you are trying to solve your problem without having enough domain knowledge. For ex: I probably won’t land anywhere if I were to try to solve my itch of building a car that flies instead of crawling on Delhi roads. It’s worth noting that lack of domain knowledge is also likely(a bit more?) to hurt when you are trying to scratch someone else’s itch.

S0 are you scratching your itch or someone else’s? How’s it going?

Links:

1. http://archipreneur.blogspot.com/2010/03/scratch-your-own-itch-rework-by-37.html
2. http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Whats_Your_Problem.php
3. http://www.instigatorblog.com/scratching-your-own-itch/2010/08/12/

This is a classic dilemma that many entrepreneurs(especially the offline one’s) are likely to run into. Customers as we all know come in all shapes and sizes(and mindsets). While there will be some customers who will talk nicely to you and your employees, pay their bills on time and offer you a piece of advice or feedback whenever needed, there’s also a bunch of customers that’ll act as if they are doing you a big favor by using your product or services, they’ll negotiate endlessly on the price and keep getting into endless debates about the most minute(and irrelevant) issues possible.

As an entrepreneur and consultant both I too have run into the thought of segmenting customers into good,bad and ugly but I am not completely convinced if that’s such a good idea. I mean on one hand there’s a thought of optimizing the whole thing for a better ROI on other hand there’s this idealistic thought that customers/clients should be treated fairly and equally irrespective of their spending powers and other behaviors. I for sure would like to get a fair/equal treatment in all the products and services that I use irrespective of the segment I belong to.
If you are committed to offering a delightful customer service the non-segmentation of your customers is highly likely to come in your way. As pointed by Seth Godin here

If you’re going to be obsessed with delighting customers, it’s a lot more efficient to focus on customers that are able to be delighted.

A case in point being if a particular bunch of customers is impossible or way too difficult to delight/please why waste your resources on them when you could focus ‘em on some other set of customers that are more likely to be delighted by what you are offering?

A few things I could think of that one needs to keep in mind if such a situation arises are

1. Is the customer bad or your offering?
   A situation like this can also be a opportunity to give your offering another in-depth look. Maybe the customer is right and there’s indeed a scope for offering a better solution at the same or reduced price or maybe the customer service offered isn’t up to the mark. So before branding a customer as a bad apple, give a second thought to their feedback and see if there’s a genuine problem there.
2. How would it affect the Word of Mouth?
   While not giving the same time, attention etc to a not so good customer might be a good utilization for your resources it might have a spill over effect. In cases like these it is also pragmatic to ensure that your segmented behaviour will not spiral into a bad WOM loop. To avoid that ensure that this bunch/segment are not influencers/thought leaders or highly connected individuals from your target segment. For ex: If you are targeting a product or service aimed at doctors and for some reason you decide to segment them, try to ensure that your segmentation policy will not spill over to other doctors and doctors as a community tend to be highly connected to each other
3. Customer Segmentation != Spending power segmentation
   While you’ll find plenty of real life instances in which retailers/suppliers and many more tend to treat customers with high spending powers differently, it’s not the most wise thing to do. When I started this discussion though I included “paying bills on time”  and negotiation I never mentioned spending power as the deciding factor. I strongly feel segmenting your customers based on just their spending power isn’t such a good idea
4. Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you
   One should always keep “The Golden Rule” in mind before taking any call on customer segmentation. This will most certainly save you from some bad decisions

What do you think about treating different customers differently?

Building a brand, product or an idea is like raising a child. You need to nurture and protect it during its early days and slowly set it free to grow. Sounds simple and obvious? Trust it me it’s not, at least for most people.

I’ve seen numerous cases of product(primarily web) founders, small businessmen and more falling into the trap of holding their product/business/idea too close to their hearts to let it grow, grow beyond them. Things are quite easy (in this context) during the initial stages with people putting their blood and sweat into their business and helping it stand on its feet and start walking. The real problem occurs in the next stage in which the business needs to start running not just walking.This is the stage where all sorts of conscious and unconscious forces come into play that tend to prevent the owner(s) to from letting their business/idea take the leap.

During the initial phases the business/idea is known more by the people behind it, both are synonymous with each other and that’s all that there is to it because the business is mostly driven by it’s promoters/founders, it’s known mostly in the promoters’ circle of friends  and is yet to grow and have an independent existence of it’s own. Once the business has firm grounding and more people start nurturing it directly or indirectly the pace and scope of its growth depends on how the core group of promoters loosen their strong ties with it.

Essentially it’s all about loosing the tight control and dependency that once the business had on its promoters because these factors now become the limiting force in its growth. The conflict that thus arises is a peculiar one in which the promoters still want to be involved as much as they were some time back in almost everything related to the business, while the business itself strives to outgrow its promoters. This is the stage where like a growing child the business needs to venture out, meet new people, develop new relationships, try new and different things not necessarily within the scope of its founders, in short this is the stage where the business needs to start getting a life of his own.

For some businesses it might mean raising funds, for some it might mean getting more people on board (not necessarily as employees who merely execute the promoters plans/ideas) and outsourcing a part of your business to someone else. The idea of loosing control is what troubles most promoters but the hard fact is that in order to make your business grow beyond you, you need to loose some control and this is what smart people realize.

The goal rather than trying to have your business as integrated as possible with its founders should be to let it loose as early as possible as only then the business can have a life of its own and it can grow into something big, much bigger than its promoters.

It isn’t often that you get a chance  to listen to the likes of Alok Mittal and Pramod Bhasin and TiEcon is one of those very few platforms that offers you a chance to not only listen but also to interact with successful entrepreneurs and connect with them.

On 18th and 19th of September I attended my first TiEcon at Delhi’s Taj Palace. Being a first time attendee I wasn’t really sure of what to expect from the event which looks as serious(boring?) to a 26 year old as it can be but thankfully I gave it a try, for it was well worth it.

Five minutes into the registration I happened to bump into Amit Agnihotri (Director-Exchange4media) and there was no stopping to meeting new and interesting people. As mentioned in my previous post I was invited to the conference as a blogger and as it turned out we were to register(and enjoy some privileges) as press which included reserved seats in the second row, dedicated room with continuous beverage supply etc.

Day 1 had quite a few interesting and relevant panel discussions on

• Starting Up – Is there ever a right time?
• Biggest “Marketing” Bang for the Buck
• Smart Innovation

It helped that the panel members were experienced entrepreneurs and professionals from big brands like Pepsi, Samsung and Microsoft.  The session on Smart Innovation led by Prof Anil Gupta was particularly interesting. It was wonderful to learn about various innovations happening in the country at the grass root level.

In parallel to the main sessions/panel discussions there were small ‘Guru Sessions’ happening in another hall. These sessions had 2-4 VC’s or Successful entrepreneurs answering questions to a small bunch of 25-30 people. These session due to their small size were more personal and gave the attendees a very good chance of networking with the speakers.

If you thought the event was all about successful people sharing entrepreneurship gyan with young entrepreneurs or wannabe entrepreneurs, you couldn’t be more wrong. While learning a thing or two from seasoned entrepreneurs would definitely be on the agenda the real deal was NETWORKING. Acting on the feedback from last TiEcon the TiE folks had smartly booked a separate hall(or two?) for just networking and there were other small sessions happening in parallel to the main panel discussions. So sitting through a session which you aren’t finding interesting for whatever reason is not mandatory and there are about 5 other halls where you can go and randomly bump into someone and get talking.

In just a matter of minutes you can sense the fact that TiEcon 2009 was designed to facilitate networking and to be honest it did the trick. A look around any hall will confirm the same, you could see numerous 2-5 people groups scattered across the Taj Palace(even in the Lobby) interacting and/or exchanging business cards. I too tried a bit to meet some new people and ended up collecting some 40 odd business cards(gave lesser cards than that).

The exchange of follow up mails has begun, let’s see where things  reach eventually.

All in all TiEcon Delhi 2009 was worth every bit of energy and effort spent. Shall look forward to the next years conference.

Charity: water is a charity started by Scott Harrison that provides clean water to save lives in poor countries. Charity: water has successfully raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors, thereby providing clean water to nearly one million people in Africa and Asia.

Here’s how Charity: water is using Social Media to be more effective

1. Creating Relationships: Charity: water (CW) is using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to connect with people who share the same concerns as them. CW also adds value by sharing relevant information and content with their friends/followers in these social platforms. Relationships are the key currency for nonprofits and social media is a great way to build and maintain good relationships.

(Charity: water on Facebook)

With social media it’s also relatively easy to ask people for small contributions or motivate them to volunteer for a task or just spread the word by say putting a badge on their blog.

(Charity: water on Twitter)

2.  Maintaining Transparency: For nonprofits to scale beyond a level, transparency is very important and to some extent the rate of their growth also depends on how transparent they are. In this sense too, social media and nonprofits are made for each other. Charity: water shows donors the specific impact of their  contributions. They post photos and G.P.S. coordinates so that donors can look up their (Charity: water grants naming rights to wells) wells on Google Earth. Come September and they will have a new web site that will match even the smallest donation to a particular project that can be tracked online.


3.  Experimenting with new things:

During Twestival (meetup for twitter users in twitter lingo), charity: water raised $250,000 this spring.

Viral video campaigns by charity: water are also a hit among its supporters and play a significant role in motivating people to contribute.

4. High Stakeholder Involvement:

When was the last time you were asked to by a charity to engage in conversation?

Hmm…Never?

But that’s not the case with Charity: water, during Twestival CW invied donors to get involved by

• Watching four daily short videos of the drilling as charity: water goes from village to village drilling wells.
• Following the drilling updates via twitter.
• Asking questions of the local drilling team via email or twitter. Also, The local charity: water drill team answers the top five questions on video

I’d like to end this case study by quoting  ”communityorganizer20.com”

Charity: water is giving its donors exactly what they want: success stories, videos of the impact of donations, and  information about financial accountability.

If you know of something else  that Charity: water or some other nonprofit is doing to leverage social media, share with us

Most people start their businesses in partnernships/collaboration with some one they know. It could be a family member, friend, relative or just a known too. Trust is the first thing that people look for before getting into a venture with other things being what the other person brings to the table; money, connections, skill set etc. It’s commonplace to find businesses being run in a fashion where one or more partners put the money(or maybe contacts) and other(s) put skills and effort(or maybe contacts).

Due to inherent nature of the factors in place(time, effort etc), things get a bit difficult at times as contributions start to vary from what they were initially agreed upon. For example: If two people start a business with one person putting the funds and infrastructure and the other bringing in clients and contacts needed to get the job done. Now in this case it’s easy to quantify the funds spent on infrastructure and other activities but it’s a bit difficult to quantify other inputs like efforts, time spent etc. What further makes the puzzle difficult is when both partners feel they are doing their share of the job as initally agreed upon.

A situation like this can easy reach a deadlock with both parties proclaiming to be doing their bit of the business. What further makes matter worse is if both the partners have agreed upon equal share in the profits. The matter gets really complex if  say the guy who was supposed to get business and contacts with his effort isn’t doing his part efficiently but believes he is doing it right and thus deserves and equal share in the profit(which they make due to the efforts of the other partner who was just supposed to put funds for infrastruce etc) as mutually agreed upon initially.

Human Ego is another factor in play in situations like these as even though a person might know that he isn’t putting in the required effort in the job but his ego will prevent him from accepting it and agreeing to get an unequal share in the profits. I’ve had a few direct and indirect experiences in this regard which have forced me to think of a way to reduce the possibility of such situations.

A couple possible solutions that I could think of  are

1) To partner with someone who is as equal as you are

If both partners are equal in most respects like finances, contacts etc then I think the scope of running into situations where  one feels the other isn’t doing enough is reduced. By quantifying one’s contribution in terms of money, contacts or other resources, the factors which could cause confusion/dissatisfaction are reduced. Also, I feel with equal partners it’s a bit easy to find out and accept if one isn’t doing his bit properly

So it’s a good idea to find out in the start what the other person is bringing to the table and ensure that it’s not too high or too low for your contribution.

2)  Decide on a profit sharing model based on one’s contribution:

In case of partners with unequal inputs, it’s a good idea to decide on different profit sharing models based on situations with varying contributions. For ex:

a) For every deal where person X does this and this and person Y does this, X gets 66% of the profit and Y gets 33%
b) For every deal where person X does this and person Y does this and this, Y gets 66%  of the profit and X gets 33%.
c) For every deal where person X does this and this and this and Person Y doesn’t do anything, X gets all the profit and vice-e-versa.

I feel predeciding things like revenue/profit sharing in various situations where there’s a possibility of unequal contributions will serve as a base and reduce the number of potential conflicts.

What do you think?

This post is a reply/comment to Gaurav Mishra’s post .

Before starting I must admit that Gaurav has done a great job in compiling and categorizing the list. I mean what are the odds that any individual or company/agency mentioned in that post knew about all others ?

All it takes now for any web company to become a social media company is just adding “social media marketing(smm)”  in their list of services offered or probably opening a Twitter account and following everyone mindlessly, but this is just the beginning. These are truely interesting times as we are not only observing but also shaping the growth curve for social media industry(If I can call that) in India. Our approach towards the core domain as well the business and social aspects of it will determine how things take shape.

By observing the figures(25-30 agenices in 2008 and 35-60 in 2009) it’s easy to slip into “The Pie Fallacy“, but as Gaurav rightly points “we haven’t even scraped the surface yet”. Social Media is yet to percolate into the way our organizations work.

While most Indian brands are still apprehensive/unsure about social media, those who’ve taken the plunge are still experimenting and trying to figure out what to make of it. Non Profits and Government are largely untouched by the social media wave. It is quite some time before Corporates start realizing what’s at stake if a social media disaster happens or individuals/govt etc learn how to handle social media with care.

What we face now is a classic “Whether or Which Dilemma“  and we need to pause for a minute and ask ourselves

“Are we trying to make the market bigger, or just grow our share?”

There are two ways to it.

1) Everyone just thinks about themselves and if their share is getting bigger or not(which’ll eventually lead to crab mentality)
2) Everyone tries to make the market bigger and in-effect making every/deserving one’s share bigger.

What’s interesting in the case of Social Media is that it’s about YOU or We and not ME.

The Scope of both individuality and cooperation in this space is immense. All that needs to be figured out is if,

You want to work towards a bigger ME or a bigger WE ?

because  “He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.”

People love connecting with others who share the same tastes, goals, beliefs, lifestyle, social status, locality and even dislikes. Essentially (most) people  are on a lookout for new groups to join and satiate their innate desire of belonging, of being a part of something along with others for all sorts of reasons.
Brands are one of the many possible threads that connect people in many ways and it’s not limited to just those who like the same brand of alcohol or the same brand of cigarette but even to kids who like the same brand of candy.

Brands, because of the way they are intertwined in our daily lives offer tremendous ways(even unconsciously) for their customers to connect and luckily for  them, people want to connect with the brands they love. They connect to find like minded people, to know more about the brand and their latest offerings, in hope of availing some offers/discounts or just to broadcast their choices to the world. Since the advent of social software , the grouping  of  people into communities/tribes has peaked a new high.

Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs. Now that group-forming has gone from hard to ridiculously easy, we are seeing an explosion of experiments with new groups and new kinds of groups – Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody”

What does all this mean for brands ? Yes, if you are a brand that people love/like and you’d like to take your relationship to the next level then you should also think of  having your community.

Here are the top 5 reasons why your brand should have a community.

1) Feedback:
According to me, the most important thing a brand can get from a community is honest feedback. Be it a new product or a new ad campaign, it’s extremely important to know what your customers feel about what you are doing. Forget market research, a community gives you a direct channel to know more about your customers, what are they like and what they like. This can be immensely helpful in improving the existing products and services and building better ones. This group can also be used to beta test a new product/idea.

2) Audience:
Community, means audience that likes your brand and wants to stay connected. A small but focused audience is a lot better than large but unfocused audience. The difference here is that this audience wants to know more about your brand/products/services as much(if not more) as you want to tell them. This means the conversion rates for any campaign here would be higher than that of a campaign aimed at a randomly chosen lot.

3) Brand Image:
Everyone loves a social brand, a brand that’s closely connected with it’s customers scores better over one that isn’t. Having a community around a brand will better the brand image in general and lend more trust and loyalty to it . If a brand is spending resources to build and foster a community it shows that it cares. Cares for its customers and is willing to give them back some love.

4) Buzz:
Will you feel nice if you get a birthday greeting from your favorite brand ?
Will you feel nice if you get a discount offer on the latest product from your favorite brand ?
Will you feel nice if you get a sneak preview about the upcoming range of products from your favorite brand ?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, you are highly likely to talk to your friends(online and offline) about it and that’s how buzz starts to build and spread.  The way communities work naturally supports word of mouth. In a group even small things aren’t small. Also, there are other factors associated with a brand’s community that add more credibility and virality to the buzz ,which in turn helps it to spread faster and wider.

5) Crisis Aversion/Management:
Think about it, would things have been a bit better had dominos already been on Twitter or Youtube ? I am sure things would be been better(even though slightly). By having an account on any of these services would have helped them in connecting with a small fraction of their customers who spend considerable time online and if there online interactions with the brand had been good, they would have definitely(on their own) taken on the task of dozing the fire and maybe prevented it from snowballing and this is just a small community on a third party tool.

I am by no means suggesting that every brand should have a community, these points are just to share why I feel it’s important for brands to have communities. What do you think ?

Pic Courtesy: http://www.ccfa.org/

It’s been a few days since that appalling video of Domino’s employees tampering with food at their outlet got attention of social media users and started spreading in a viral manner. A crisis like this can easily get worse if things are not handled correctly and in a timely manner but luckily(mostly) for Domino’s that’s not the case. Despite the huge wave of disgust that the video generated, it feels like things are under control now and the negative buzz which was generated will subside in the next few days.

While we tried to discuss what could be done to handle a social media disaster let’s see what Domino’s actually did and is still doing for damage control post this Social Media fiasco.

1) Initiate action against the culprits:
The folks at Domino’s were quick to realize that “actions speak louder than words” and thus their first step was to initiate an inquiry into the matter and punish the guilty. Not only were the employee involved terminated from their jobs, they are now in custody and face felony charges.

2) Stop the negative content from spreading:
Stopping new people to talk about negative content and trying to control the spread of negative content should be next on the agenda. Domino’s got this right(though it took some time) and got the video off YouTube.

3) Participate in social media conversations:
Domino’s guys were decently quick to realize that they were getting a lot of bad PR in Twitter and thus they jumped into the scene by creating an account on Wednesday afternoon and started engaging with disgusted people. This works well for various reasons including pumping out positive things which otherwise don’t spread that virally as the negative one’s.

There is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customer’s trust

While the firefighting efforts had started on Twitter, Domino’s guys opened another front on YouTube by posting a nicely drafted public apology by Patrick Doyle, President of Domino’s U.S.A. The apology helped in re-affirming brands commitment towards it’s customer’s trust. Patrick also mentioned the steps they plan to take to avoid future happening of any untoward incident like this( sanitizing stores, tighter recruitment process, daily audits etc)

While Domino’s did open communication channels on a few Social Media Tools they didn’t announce anything on their official web resources and didn’t do a press release as they feared this will lead more people to know about this debacle and invite more embarrassment for the brand  said Tim McIntyre, Dominos spokesman. So domino’s websites remain the way they were, as if nothing happened. While I see the point, I would have still preferred an official “what we are doing about the incident” channel.

Update: Domino’s site has an official update for their customers

While these efforts will definitely help in dozing the fire, it will still take a lot of continued effort on Domino’s part to keep the fire from spreading.

For example: It will take them a while to realize that while they have removed the video from YouTube, goodasyou still has that video and a few even gross one’s and some explaining for this(assuming it’s not fake)

and ensuring that people don’t start talking about other things which can further take down their brand value

The next few days would be interesting, let’s see how the situation stands then.

“Please reset your email notification settings.

Unfortunately, your email notification settings have been lost. You can reset them on the Notifications page. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

On logging into Facebook a while back I was greeted by this message. I had to read it again to believe it that Facebook has lost some of my settings data, yes, lost it. My first reaction on seeing the message was to check out Facebook blog for more on the latest happening but since I didn’t have the URL for the blog I searched for it in the footer only to realize that there isn’t a link for the blog in their footer(it has invite friends link there which I like, though not sure how many people use it). So get to the Facebook blog I had to Google “Facebook Blog” , BAD . Upon landing on the blog I am disappointed once again to find no mention about the “data loss” at all. Though there is some other post which was published today.

FACEBOOK == FAIL !!!