Experiments with psychology that got us 4x Conversions on our website

Attracting potential customers on your website is always challenging. While you somehow manage to figure that out by SEO, Adwords and Social Media Marketing, the second challenge comes up – how to get those potential customers to pay. Getting customers to website is the tip of the iceberg, getting them to pay is the real …

The End Doesn’t Justify The Means: A Public Statement

[Given the course of events that have unfurled recently, iSPIRT created IGCC to investigate, and strengthen governance. Sharad Sharma, who has previously apologized and accepted responsibility on Twitter, has reflected further on the topic, and written this post. We are putting it out to ensure that this starts the right discussion inside iSPIRT and outside …

Time to decode the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Commerce’

“If I had to guess, Social Commerce is the next area to really blow up” – Mark Zuckerberg ‘Social Commerce’ or more simply ‘Social Payments’ has been a relatively new concept to come up in the last few years. And in most cases, it remained like the early days of big data – easier to …

Creating a company brand — outside a product brand

One of the top two responsibilities of the CEO is to ensure that there is sufficient cash in the bank at all times. That often requires raising money from investors; an unpleasant task for most people! This article discusses a mindset change that is useful for fund raising. The company by itself is a product …

Capability -> Functionality -> Usability

The capability to build something – a product or a solution – is, but, just the start of things. Capability is needed to build a product but capability is not what gets your product to be loved by your (potential) customers. One leverages capability to create a functionality (call it a feature, if you may). …

Two Years of iKen : Wins and Lessons.

When we launched iKen two years ago, (The Way of Successful Entrepreneurs and Launching Pre Entrepreneur Program) we weren’t sure if a “reality-focussed”, “deep-dive format”, “away from jingoism”, bootcamp would have many takers. More importantly we weren’t sure of the impact that we would have.  This was after all a side project for everyone involved. Two years hence, this …

Do we have the DNA to build great products in India?

For the last two decades I have followed global products and success stories, and a question constantly in front of me is why India has very few globally comparable products and even fewer category leaders? Despite India’s vast engineering resources, budding design talent, and our hustle mentality, we have not been able to create a …

What’s the TAM Chasm?

How one entrepreneur’s mountain looks like a VC’s molehill The apocryphal story of a newbie B2B founder, with deep domain knowledge, but no experience as an entrepreneur or in a startup. Note that while this example is not based on a single entrepreneur, it’s a composite to highlight the extremes. Amita was a deep domain expert, …

Explaining iSPIRT – ‘Olympic Gold Quest’ for India’s Product Winners

iSPIRT does not fit into known mental model for many folks, they often ask what exactly is it? Few say it is hard to pin it inside a known category or even describe it in words.   The 2017 annual letter contains thoughts on what iSPIRT stands for. Some more explanation below on the why …

Smart tools for SaaS founders to handle inbound & outbound sales processes – #PlaybookRT94

When #iSPIRT announced a roundtable on ‘Building & Scaling Growth Teams for Saas Founders’  with Ashwin Ramesh (Synup) leading it, I was thrilled to join it, assuming it would be a direct take off from Ashwin’s session at #SaaSx4. Well, we were not disappointed. I am sure the other participants share my feelings on the …

PNCamp#3 — Product Teardown UrbanPiper

Before writing something down about our experience at the recently held Product Nation Camp (PNCamp) product teardown session, I think it would be better to give a short perspective on the overall event from the viewpoint of a fairly reclusive startup in the B2B Saas space. UrbanPiper has been around for some time; however, for …

Customer – to listen or not to listen

  If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses There is a pretty high chance you have heard the quote and an equally good probability that you yourself have used it to support or demolish an argument on “customer knows best”. It is quite interesting to note how quotes …

Customer Feedback: How To Collect And What To Do With It

Customer feedback is gradually becoming the cornerstone of growth initiatives. A new research published in the Harvard Business Review found that the act of just asking for customer feedback in itself is enough to help keep customers satisfied and coming back for more — even when they do not respond to your request. Several theories of consumer …

The Making of #PNcamp3 #Hyderabad

Just came back, feeling happy, from Hyderabad after doing the #PNcamp3. The drive from the airport in the evening to Gachibowli was pleasant and I got to see lot of construction in the city. I felt like I was driving in the Silicon Valley highway with wide roads and people driving in their lanes. In …

The curious case of B2B SaaS Startup’s inside sales and marketing

Amazing but how? This question pops out of every startup founder’s mind while reading success stories. Persistence, determination & hard work, great to know, but nobody tells the real thing. Where are the techniques? With any magic, the logic behind is what a technician always looks for. So, where is the secret formula of startups …