Having started in September 2008, Dropbox today is a leading cloud storage provider (CSP). It has over a 100 million signed free users and about 4 million paid users (4% conversion rate as quoted often by Houston). Assuming the lowest payment tier (100GB at $99 per year), this translates into annual revenue of about $400 …
Why #Hashtags are the future of monetizing social media
You can’t invite people to a party and try to sell them stuff. Pretty much every starry-eyed startup that went after eyeballs gets it by now. Over the last seven years the web has moved away from a consumption medium (think NY times) to a creation-consumption medium (think Twitter, Facebook). But we’ve been very tardy …
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8 Truths why IT Services Organizations cannot do Software Products
The bread and butter of the Indian IT Industry has been IT Services. IT Services, as the terminology implies, is servicing a customer. A customer states his needs, the IT Services organization makes a proposal to develop / maintain / re-engineer / etc., and the deal is done. As offshoring and outsourcing has matured, customers …
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How to think about a product startup progress ?
One of the most difficult things in a product startup is to know when has progress happened and if it is in the right track. This is an even more difficult problem for first time product entrepreneurs. Not to say that it easy for a second time entrepreneur but in that case experience intuitively guides. …
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Crowdfunding In50hrs: India’s Idea-to-prototype Event Platform
I am in the middle of building two platforms. One being The Startup Centre, the older one, and its younger sibling In50hrs. In50hrs does get a bit of my attention, partly because I find my soul being there with entrepreneurs, teams, and ideas when they get that Aha! moment of breakthrough and build something. Its priceless being …
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Cybersecurity: Israel’s Innovation as India’s Opportunity
India is one of the leading victims of cyber-crime and the cybersecurity market is estimated at around US$218 million. Indian cybersecurity companies have developed indigenous products to address rising cyber-threats, but, with limited success. By contrast, Israel is famed for its prowess in developing innovative solutions for fields that encompass agriculture, medicine, clean-tech, hi-tech etc., …
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Why just ‘knowing’ your customer is not enough
Every customer support forum and blog has at least one post talking about the importance of ‘knowing’ the target customer. This is one of those well established cliche-stereotypes that David Foster Wallace points out in Infinite Jest – we talk about them so much because they happen to be true. The only question is, how …
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Stories are Better Than a Feature List
You’re at an event, and you’re ready. You know your product inside out. You know the competition. You know the licensing terms. The deals. The partners. The competition. Technical details. Market details. Detail details. Regulations. Strengths. Compatibilities. Your head is stuffed. Crammed, just when – A customer comes to you. “I’ve got sixty seconds. Why …
#PNMeetup – Showcase your Product & Get Advice from leading CIOs
We are pleased to partner with APAC CXO Forum to put together the 8th #PNMeetup in Noida. If you have a brilliant Enterprise Product and you just know that its the best out there, here is an opportunity for you showcase your product and get one hour of quality one-on-one time with the CIO community. In this one hour, …
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What’s your Sales Story?
Whenever faced by dilemma over any issue pertaining to sales and marketing, I recall a famous quote by Ben Feldman, who is considered one of the best salespeople in world history. Don’t sell life insurance. Sell what life insurance can do. Just by following this one mantra, Ben was able to insurance policies more than …
Action Plan for increasing M&A opportunities for Indian product startups
Indian product companies punch below their weight. Despite huge innovation and rising entrepreneurship, most Indian product companies are invisible on the global map. The reasons are many, but a big one is the lack of meaningful exits for companies that actually create value in their product markets. This paper focuses on a plan to address …
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7 tips to build a script :: a Step by Step guide
I wish it was mathematical. But it isn’t. There are unlimited combinations when building a story. That’s what makes it so much fun to consume – you never know how the storyteller tells it… So instead of giving you tips in a bulleted format – let’s build a script together. What we know (or must …
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Product positioning and sales strategy must be approached the way an army fights a war
To position the product, you must first have clarity on the addressable market and its breakdown in terms of different industries or user communities (let’s call both of them as ‘verticals’ for simplicity). Then analyze which of them can benefit the most from your product, where your maximum contacts are, and which has the least …
Where is my story?
Most startups talk about product features and how they are better than their competition in terms of their offerings. They really don’t tell stories, however people remember stories for long and not the facts and figures. Most often than not, people say we are a startup, we don’t have paying customers and we do not …
Quick Research / Usability Methods: Expert Usability Review
(Post 1 of a series on quick research and usability techniques. Start-up’s can use these techniques fairly easily to connect to and understand their end users better, as well as maintain usability standards on their products.) ProductNation in collaboration with a few like-minded design professionals, recently put together an informal forum for designers, engineers, product managers …
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