The martyr syndrome

According to Wikipedia, in psychology, a person who has a martyr complex, sometimes associated with the term victim complex, desires the feeling of being a martyr for his/her own sake, seeking out suffering or persecution because it feeds a psychological need. In some cases, this results from the belief that the martyr has been singled out for persecution because of exceptional ability or integrity. Does this sound familiar? If yes then you have been dealing with a startup or an entrepreuneur who runs a startup. Maybe it is because of our Indian mindset where failures and failings are considered to be taboo ( No, do not pay heed to that VC who claims that he is interested in failures, he probably has some reference check agency thats compiling a report about your life).

The problem starts when things begin to go wrong. When promises are not kept or when the business model that you so passionately put together does not make sense to most. The whining starts on a low note and grows and grows and drowns everything good that the startup and its team put together. I have been there and I have whined and am grateful to a lot of people who heard me out and did not throw their purse, shoe or a brick at me.

It took one kind investor who refused to part with his money since he firmly believed that the business plan would not work who called a swamp, a swamp and helped me out of the hell hole I was heading towards. He sat me down, made me buy him a doppio and a cookie and asked without mercy some 5 things that slapped me out of a day dream. First question was - did any of us ask you to start this business? Second question - why must we listen to your crap about how upfair the world is and how everyone is against you? Question number three - do you really think people have the time to plot against you with the sole intention of running you to the ground? Question number four - how do you know that what you have has not been tried before? Question number five - do you think you are incapable of getting a job to ride this tough time out or are you simple too lazy or scared or both?

Five questions that any of us startup veterans must answer. Must dwell upon and must lose sleep over.

Many a times, the demon we are trying to tame is only in our heads. We become martyrs inside our imaginations. We do not know when to stop and give the business we are trying to run / setup a hard look. We do not think beyond ourselves and run the people around us to the ground. We become toxic waste.

For every business that raises millions and goes public, there are a hundred that burns itself to the ground. It is important to see the signs and realign and survive. One of the cornerstones of being Steve Jobs or the latest flavor Elon Musk is to see what is coming and shed weight accordingly, being a martyr and wanting to be named such is not one of the strengths.

I see way too many startups, some with brilliant plans on paper getting bogged down, there is just one solution - cut the strings and start again, take up a job that pays the bills. Spend time with your kids, if you do not have kids, then get around to making them. Babies bring a new prespective to the way startups and people who run startups think.

No one will mourn you if you sink deep and never recover, and that is tragic.

( I was planning to call this post, The Nirupa Roy Syndrome, the bollywood fans will know why)

Zen and the art of washing the car and other such obsessions

Exactly two months ago I discovered that the fuel in the car seemed to have been depleted by half even when the car was parked in its bay under the building and I had spent the Sunday lazing and cooking. Then I started noticing things that I never bothered with - clumps of rotting leaves in the grooves at the back of the car, finger marks on the wind shield and an oily sheen on the car. And most annoyingly, unwashed and grimy car most of the days when I had to leave 30 minutes earlier than the 8 am schedule. I asked the Nepali watchman what the problem was and he refused to accept that he was doing a bad job. I let the matter rest and one night one of the watchmen was caught siphoning petrol from someone else's car. We leave the car keys in the lobby so that the cars can be shuffled if required. The culprit was sacked. The remaining guys were asked to behave. A week later I requested the guy cleaning the car to try to do a better job and his reply was that if you think you can do better then do it yourself. Something snapped inside me. I did not react then and after looking for an alternate solution, not finding any and a week of dirty car later, started cleaning the car myself.

Everyday after seeing off my daughter at the school bus stop, I clean the car. And in the last month or so discovered a great many things about the car and myself. I found scratches that I did not know existed, discovered a way to clean the wheels really quick and fashioned a routine that allowed me to focus on the areas that needed attention once in a way. You do not really need to use water to wash, it rusts the car considering Mumbai has salt laden air. I KNOW the car now, it is no longer a utility that I use to travel, it is an extension of what I am if you know what I mean. I feel good to know that I have a car that shines when it zips across the EEH on way to my office.

 As an added incentive I realized that I could reduce my routine of walking up and down 13 floors from 4 laps to 2 and still manage to get a sweat worked up.

The experience is similar to running a startup, unless you do the things needed for the startup yourself, you will always find someone willing to cheat you or do a shoddy job. Once you start doing things yourself, you discover ways and means to optimize and can apply it to other parts of the chore. I recently sent the car for its scheduled servicing and I for the first time knew what had to be done. Which part of the body had scuff marks and which mat needed to be cleaned on both sides, if the water level in the windshield spray was low. It is liberating. I feel enlightened. And I save around 1000 rupees a month.

Now I am obsessed and am thinking of car shampoos and waxes and such!!

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Another obsession that has gained in strength is finding coffee blends that go beyond the crap that is served in the CCDs in the campus. I discovered BlueTokai. They do a fantastic job of roasting, grinding and shipping coffee from some of the best single origin estates. I recommend their Kalledeverapura Estate Coffee. If you like it black and strong and with a nice fruit after taste buy the samplers and get addicted.

I brew the coffee in my office. And the coffee fragrance wafts across the entire wing. Discovered that politics can be interesting if one adds coffee to the mix.

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The last obsession is something that I recommend that everyone who has had problems with money should do. I write down every rupee I spend every day into a notebook (yeah, laugh!). It has not made me spend less, but ever since I started doing it from December 2010 onwards ( I joined Star TV that month, and got a regular salary :) ) I know where every rupee goes, I have an excel that has all the major expenses marked in and the expected funds every week. For every 1000 bucks I record I reward myself 100 bucks which I can use for anything. The fun part is that this reward is limited and has to come out of the savings and I have an upper limit.

Anyone interested in creating an app for this using Gamification is welcome for  a chat, will thrown in a cup of the above mentioned cup of coffee as an incentive.

Google = Skynet? and who is the new Neo?

With reference to Siva Vaidyanathan's work on Google  (I discovered this during my Coursera Session on Understanding Media by Understanding Google by Prof. Owen R. Youngman) where he says the following as part of his seminal work called Googlization of everything:

"Most of us are not Google's customers. We are its content. It sells our attention and our user data to its customers and they are all the businesses that advertise with Google. Google is not necessarily more secretive than Coca-Cola, but the difference is Google knows everything about us."

Read it from the point of view of today and please remember that Siva wrote this book in 2007. Six years later a lot of what was addressed seems to work brilliantly and becomes more scary than anything else.

Which bring me to the title of this post: Is Google and Skynet similar? Or Is google the machine controlled Matrix?

I have been teasing friends who work for Google about the firm being similar to Skynet - the fictional all controlling machine from the movie series - Terminator. And over the last few years as more and more of the Google products start to dominate our lives, work and as we feed it with minute details of our lives, I get a feeling that the Google guys know more about us than we know. We are the actors who live out our lives, whereas they can analyse and dissect everything we do and give us what they think is 'right'. 

When do you think this Google intelligence become self aware? and then what happens? Are we doomed to becoming like the humans in the movie Wall-E - fat lumps who are fed a constant barrage of information? or like the human battery cells of Matrix - living in the belief that what ever is shown is real. 

At what point will the rebellion happen? and who will be the Neo emerging out from the Matrix created one search result at a time?

My post might be out of context to the subject of the course here but am curious to find if anyone has done any study on the pop fiction of movies like Matrix, Terminator, Oblivion, and so on and overlapped the same with the progress made by Google, Amazon and Facebook?

Cheers


Sunil 

Rejoice - the long tail is dead (atleast for now)

Between 2006 and 2010 there was this surge of excitement about the long tail because of which google became what it is today. In an earlier avataar (role - for the uninitiated) I built a company using the principles of harnessing the long tail by allowing people to take content from TV channels and indies to their own blogs and websites. The idea was that people knew what their audiences/readers wanted.  And  hence would take the appropriate video content and embed the widgets that streamed the videos on their blogs, which in turn would be relevant to the audience who would watch this content - paid for by the preroll video ads that would get dynamically inserted. 

Unfortunately the business had to slowly move away from the indie - long tail video content and start working with the mainstream video content coming from broadcasters and movie studios. 

Looking back from a vantage position today, I realize that the business I setup would have failed anyways because it was addressing a mass audience which was used to consuming whatever was popular. Hence the question - is long tail of content relevant? I think that the very notion of people consuming long tail of content is flawed and archaic with larger organisations, broadcasters and twitter and facebook and google and pretty much everyone else pushing the content that sells to the top of the display. It is a incestuous cycle which feeds on itself and does not allow the non standard to  surface at all.

So unless you have a business that harnesses and keeps the audience locked in, do not even try to get them to consume the content that you have by spraying across the net. However if you do have the audience locked into your service then be nice to them and personalise what you offer or suffer in the long run.


Please do let me know if anyone else has any suggestions that shows that there is indeed a business that can be built using the long tail model.

Cheers


Sunil Nair

First published on the Coursera discussion forums on Understanding Media by Understanding Google by Prof. Owen R. Youngman

Unsolicited advice to VOD platforms part 2: get over the Youtube fixation

Thank you everyone for the amazing response to last week's post about VOD platforms. Continuing on the same topic....

Youtube is for the masses, your VOD platform is for the ones with the money. It is quite simple, over time the rabid class of mass audience takes over the viewership on the Internet. One has to just read the comments to understand what I mean. Youtube adds an additional layer to the confusing mass by having everything under the sun under one roof. The closest analogy is that of a fish market. On the other hand a VOD platform that is curated and has hand picked content is more like a fine dining experience. There is no jostling crowds and insane elements trying to derail your experience. My take always has been that if you want to advertise to the audience that is mass and your product includes soaps and shampoos, then please go ahead and use Youtube. Your VOD platform has the opportunity to address the other side of the audience - the non mass guy who has willingly plonked money to experience a good service.

While advertising can never sustain revenue and ad funded VOD services will forever bleed, you can augment by allowing sponsorship and branded programming that is not obtrusive or offensive. I have been called naive for suggesting this in the past, but my argument is that I am the kind of audience you are addressing and if I am ok with seeing / interacting with ads before my content, then there would be more like me. Yes, it is a  task to get the media buyers to see beyond CPMs and cost per transaction, but they see reason when you go back with data - with solid understanding of your audience. I am never saying that there will be a pile of money on this type of advertising in month 3 of the service. By taking the pressure off ad funded revenue streams, you would be able to start small and grow.

Invent ad options - allow the advertiser to choose between the kind of content he wants to associate with on the 3/4 screens. The content and its derivatives can be delivered with different ad options / sponsorship options. I have seen Hulu do this effectively but am yet to see and Indian VOD platform go beyond the usual. Be bold, sell inventory to the advertisers who are looking at experimenting.

Use your VOD platform to go beyond the main content that you are so obsessed with. Go and ask the studios and channels for content that is discarded and create interactivity with live TV. Instead of competing with the large screens everywhere, try to be the supplementary screen that the audience goes to when they want to go beyond the first screen, integrate with the advertising on TV for the shows, with the in film advertising and extend the reach.

Finally, listen! Listen to the buzz, listen to the gut of the content acquisition guys, and the content that's bubbling under the surface on the social media scene. And then use that intelligence to manage the needs of the audience.

Running a VOD platform is akin to running several TV channels at the same time. Talk to the guys who run TV channels often. They may be of another generation but I learnt a lot from what they know and am sure the VOD platforms can gain from them too.

Hope this helps....

Unsolicited advice to VOD platform: get your heads out of the sand.

Here is my list of tips that I think any VOD platform needs to survive:

Do you know who your audience is?

I know this is a very cliched questions but I must ask this one again and again. I believe that the common man on the street is quite some years away from becoming the audience for VOD services. There is no point in trying to be a single screen cinema when the audience you really want wants a multiplex. Your audience is much ahead of you and there is no point in trying to put large numbers in business cases and say that maybe you will get 5% of that number in the first year. Your first million customers are likely to be the ones who already are aware and understand what VOD is and are using it in some form. 

What is your real audience watching?

Surely not the Salman Khan blockbusters that you want to display out loud on the home screen of your app!!! People who have the time are getting their fix of entertainment via torrents already. The connected and aware audience is consuming entertainment even before the mavens of TV acquire them for Indian C&S audience. So if you segment the audience into slivers - the top thin layer would be the audience that you absolutely want. They are your evangelists - the first 1 million people who will sing praises if you just listen to them. The others usually follow in hordes when this first lot is happy. This slice is not watching Chennai Express, they are not watching the TV serials and are definitely not looking forward to Grand Masti.

This audience wants NH7 streamed live, they want content that is usually deemed too niche for the TRP fuel. I am part of that sliver and I do not watch TV, Hindi films do not excite me enough to go into the crowded multiplexes, but I do wish someone got me Ship of Theseus or The Supermen of Malegaon on my tablet. I wish I had easy access to the entire Godfather series. I spend a lot of time watching content between my work and while I am waiting for things to happen. If I watch a movie or an interesting series, I want to know more. I want an IMDB equivalent that I can go to when I want while I watch VOD on my connected TV. I want the same content in different forms on the 3 screens I am in front of most of my waking hours. 


Have you heard of Original Content?

Am assuming you do read the blogs and are aware that everyone from Hulu to Netflix is investing huge money into Original content. Do not get me wrong, am not even suggesting that you go to your VC with this plan – he will most likely throw a tantrum and ask for excels in triplicate.  The most common excuse that VOD platforms have is that original content is expensive - I say you have not tried hard enough. Not thought through the content ecosystem. There is content for the asking in all formats available if you look hard. The stuff that goes on TV is merely 5% of what is created. The rest is not available for audiences because of the existing structure. The day you stop calling yourself a VOD and start thinking as an alternate broadcaster who does not have the restriction of 24 hours time slots, you have got the secret sauce.

The art of enabling people

My crib with youtube is that there is way too much crap out there which they want me to sift through to find what I want, and when I find it is usually not available in my country.  If you want your audience to keep using your service then you need to enable and empower him to discover the things that he wants in 3 clicks. Ok 4!! Invest in a good discovery engine, a good recommendation algorithm, go find a bunch of IIT kids who can build it for you.  Find a system that enables you to allow people to tinker around with the app without requiring a PhD. Most VOD services assume that just featuring thumbnails on the home screen would solve the problem, please apply intelligence – get a human to map events, happenings and change that homescreen content every couple of hours.

Become an MVNO

This is a moon shot idea but the one who gets this correct will win the battle of survival. The biggest problem against the VOD services in India is the willingness of the audience to pay for the bandwidth. If a VOD goes out there and buys spare bandwidth and figures out a way to reconcile, they could do an Amazon Whispernet for VOD.

Stop paying MGs

There is no way anyone can sustain a business by paying MGs upfront for TV content – There are several examples of VOD services that are dead or dying because of the lure of the big TV channels on the service so that your investor is happy and valuation increases. Instead focus on working with the TV channels to expand their content beyond the 24 minutes that they currently work with. TV folks are not bad people, they just are greedy, don’t give in to them. Please get your heads out of the sand.

More tips coming soon …..

The coming age of Twitter

Every few years we have gurus and shamans predicting that the next big thing in ecommerce, human communication, innovation etc surprisingly close to the IPOs of these 'next big things'. Last frenzy and orgasmic rapture was around 6 months before the Facebook IPO. At that time we (yes me included) were talking about the Facebook social graph and the impact on advertising and ecommerce. What followed was amusing, debatable to death and like my younger colleagues say "Meh". So then why am I writing this piece about the coming of age of Twitter? Maybe it is because I believe this time we have some story that is heading towards that 'googlian' moment when there is a cataclysmic shift in the balance of power. I might have cake on my face in 2 years time, but I want to take my chances.

My good friend and entrepreneur +ashish bhansali has always claimed that Twitter never had a business model when they went around asking for money. It is his excuse for never wanting to write a bplan for anything he wants to do. Not having a business plan ( assuming Mr Bhansali is correct about Twitter) might have been a good thing for Twitter. All this while they were just a microblogging site where one ranted, after the Arab Spring they have earned their stars as a tool for revolution (We Indians are making a mess of how we use it for political gains, that apart).

Earlier this year they launched Twitter Music, Yesterday they say they have acquired Trendrr - a company that harnesses the power of  real time data for media and advertising. In addition they have launched the 'conversations' view which allows for people to read their tweets as a threaded view. Most importantly they announced that they have a new man on board for ecommerce - a new that seems to be well planned considering the movements Twitter has made in the last 6 months or so.

Ecommerce on Twitter would be absolutely great considering we users have a natural tendency to buy impulsively things like movie tickets and digital goods based on recommendations and conversations around us. Twitter for the last one year has been my sole destination when I want to read about reviews of movies - when Dark Knight Rising was released, I spent a few hours just reading what people were saying. OKListen can use Twitter to track the next concert of their indie artists and advertise and sell track right on Twitter. Today most of this means that there are 2-4 steps in between interest, intent and actual sale. With Twitter removing that middle layer, it can mean better conversions.

My prediction is that there would be a new way of selling that would come to Twitter through its program for retailers who would be able to target users who have tweeted in the past about goods or services. A sort of a Flash Sale exclusively available on Twitter that can be completed right on Twitter itself using payment platforms like Gumroad. So potentially since I tweeted about buying a phone earlier this month, Twitter could track the tweet and crunch that data to throw up a good deal when I am shopping next and tweet saying that I am in a mall, or I check in. Since we are already slaves to broadcasting our every move, it would be self serving to use it to the advantage of a product that wants to claim my wallet at the time when I am agreeable to spending. I guess the next stage would be to integrate with the offline retail stores and complete the fullfilment cycle. You can opt to buy the phone after paying via Twitter or by getting a discount at the local store. The potential is huge. 

My predictions for Twitter are as follows:

• Flash Sales becomes the new buzz
• Twitter will end up buying Gumroad ( +Mohak Gambhir - hat tip for pointing this out)
• A square like POS solution in the next 2 years
• A messenger service that leverages the conversations feature
• Buy a social listening company to help brands track the chatter better

Twitter has already shaken up the news business, with ecommerce and entertainment being next, the age of twitter has arrived. I hope they do not muck it up.

Maybe now Amazon must be thinking of entering the social micro chat space :)

Image courtesy: presta-ecommerce.com