An invention from my Second Grader

My Son Vikram in Second Grade came up with a number that is bigger than all other numbers.
He said it is not countless, not google,
and similar to million and billion, it is Fillion.

Fillion is a number that we can keep filling up all of the available numbers.

It is an interesting thought, it is almost like a Black Hole which can absorb Infinite Mass.
Reason for adding this in the blog is to point out how this out-of-the-box thinking is.

Hats off to his teachers and school to
make him think Out of the Box!!

Analytics - Part 1

It is all about the Numbers.

I want to buy a decent camera. Also, I definitely want it to be a reliable one.
I want to go to a movie. I definitely want it to be a good one.
All I do is see the rankings and trends in that category.

America is tuned to think in terms of numbers, statistics and trends.

With all this said, if you ever want to build a product or a service, make sure people will love it.

• Show them snippets in the right context, make them touch and feel it, smell it.
• Ask the right questions.
• Record the answers and analyze it.

If you have a lot of prospective users liking it, there is a need for it.

In the next post, we will go over the "Analyze It".

How do we get the Best out of our Team

Teams of smaller and larger sizes, with various dynamics between the team members - mostly move forward.

Question is, How much does the team use the Team Power to move forward? What makes some teams work and some not work? Is there a simple solution to all of this?

Yes. it is about Me Inc.

If the driver of the team looks at each individual's success, and aligns the team memeber's success to contribute towards the teams success - then all the team members have a benefit in coming together, and be a Team Player.

This will lead to an extremely successful team.

Team Leaders: Look at each team members' individual goals, Me Inc. Your team will be successful.

Do one thing, Do it well; Focus

All of us are extremely good in somethings.
This is TRUE for Individuals, Small Companies, Large Companies.


All of us think - Some of us are extremely good at everything.
This is the root cause of problems for individuals, startups, and conglomerates.

A doctor trying to write code; and an writer trying to build a house;
are examples of "Some of us are extremely good at everything".


Coming back to startups, we can be an end-to-end solution provider
or be a value addition in an entire supply-chain of an industry/vertical.
Startups with FOCUS on a speciality beats the competition to death,
and comes out as a Success in Flying Colors.


Examples of Successful Startups include
Google - Focus on one speciality - Search - and then build a business around it
Intuit - Focus on one speciality - Small Business Accounting - and then build business around it

As an Individual or as a Company, if we find out our Strengths and Weaknesses,
and Focus on one speciality - we would all be so successful.

Wishing you All The BEST

Gadgets for ERP/CRM/Banks

Ad gadgets displaying relevant content is becoming popular in the consumer world.
This is so useful for the business world too.

A sales person reading an intranet page is displayed a relevant contact
from his salesforce.com contacts.

A gadget from Citibank displaying info on number of checks cleared today
without further details; bill pay ebills pointers; will be a good use of a gadget.

EBay: where are my next 100M users?

During search results, etc: Instead of displaying ads like "Buy guitar at EBay", EBay could as well display a listing that is ending in the next 10 minutes.

After all, EBay is big customer, and and any search engine will be ready to accomodate your request to serve hot URLs instead of pre-cooked URLs.

If EBay can display this during search results, target these results in social networking sites like facebook and myspace. Here are the next generation of citizens - Gen Y and Gen Z - ready to be hooked on to EBay.

Brag yourself, propagate your name - Yahoo

Hotmail: A signature line saying Free emails by hotmail.com helped Hotmail spread its name.
This is a great idea from Hotmail/Sequoia, etc...

Who copied this very well: Google. Any time we see text ads in this blog, or in linked.com, we also see the text "Ads by Google"

Look at Yahoo's ads in National Geographic, there is no mention that the ads are from Yahoo.