Google MY business – It’s called NowFloats!

So, Google just came out with a spanking new product for small businesses. It’s called “Google My Business.” It was launched on June 12, 2014. Give a day or two. I, for one, love the name. It’s so… smart. So… apt.

“But what about the app?” I hear you ask. Well, I would have praised it, had it not been somewhat identical (and still lacking) to the app that NowFloats has had for a while now. Hang on! Hang on! I am not even remotely implying plagiarism. No. I for one know that people can think alike. After all the most apt solution is the common one. It just feels ‘not-right’ that NowFloats came to this solution offering well over a year ago. And yet, because it is a startup, it will now seem like we copied the big boys. You know… history, written by the victors and search engines that control 67% of the web search traffic? So excuse us, but we’re not feeling lucky.

But how similar are the two apps? Let’s have a look:

 

Giving the right info to customers. Google v/s NowFloats [Click to expand image]

Would you rather update your G+ page? Or your own website? [Click to expand image]

Customers engagement enhanced and in your control. [Click to expand image]

Analytics for better business decisions. [Click to expand image]

Then there is the prime (objective) feature of being able to promote your store using Google AdWords. We hate to break it to you, but NowFloats uses them too. But for now, let’s talk about what’s different?

• With NowFloats you get a business website that you can create, update and manage yourself using the NowFloats Boost app.
• The NowFloats website is auto-Search Engine Optimised (SEO), so you don’t have to worry about keywords or tags or technology for that matter. If you can type a message on a smartphone, you can update your website.
• NowFloats ensure that your updates are found and optimised for search results around the location of your business. So if someone searches around your physical location or searches with your location in the search string, your website emerges better. It’s our very own home brew, boringly titled ‘Location-based SEO’
• Your NowFloats’ website/package comes with Relationship Intelligence Agent aka ‘RIA’ – a bit like your own woman-Friday, an automated entity that advises the business what to do to get the best out of the website. For instance when to update, with what, and how.
• NowFloats is more than a social network. It’s your website! Something you put on a business card and hand out.
• The most important thing is that NowFloats helps you establish your online identity – ORGANICALLY, which once done, doesn’t come undone easily. What that means is that unlike when AdWords stop, traffic stops, with a NowFloats site that is updated relevantly and regularly by the user, the traffic doesn’t whittle down. It maintains.

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Before we come across all young and restless, allow us to say this: Google My Busines – the product makes a lot of logical sense. Finally we see Google beginning to tie up all the loose ends – from Google+ to Google Places, AdWords, Search,  etc.

Google is an unescapable force in our lives now. In fact NowFloats’ product partly hinges on the rules that the mothership Google sets.

However, Google My Business is still not entirely focussed around the needs of the SMB, the bedrock on which NowFloats is built on. But that’s something we expect them to correct and get right as time progresses.

We just want to be ahead of the curve even then, even if we don’t have the billion dollar budgets. And therein lies the dichotomy of this post.

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In the meantime, we suggest you give both the apps a run, and see for yourself which works better for your business.

Google iPhone  |  Google Android  |  NowFloats iPhone  |  NowFloats Android

“Jugaad”: Aka a shortcut to failure!

I returned to India after 11 years. Deftly switched careers from advertising to tech.

To make something. To build something. To startup.

 

Two years in, I have a massive axe to grind and it’s all because of one little word.

It’s a word that goes around a lot in our industry. Wait, no. Not just our industry. In India. In fact now it’s being exported too. And when the word is used, it’s most often accompanied with a great amount of (misplaced) pride.

 

The word, in case you haven’t guessed it already, is “Jugaad”.

Jugaad is a Hindi word and as defined on Wikipedia:

“…can mean an innovative fix or a simple work-around,sometimes pejoratively used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such, or a person who can solve a complicated issue.

 

There are some brilliant examples of true Jugaad. Some even taught in B-schools, of how people overcame obstacles or even hardships with a very innovative fix. For instance the guy who used an old top loading washing machine to make butter milk for the entire village (the spinning action of the washing drum is ideal to get the right mix and froth.) You know, adversity overcome with ingenious fixes using the limited available resources. And I am fine with that. Really.

 

My problem starts when this word is thrown around for every shortcut taken to finish the job quicker. Quicker, not better (if not borderline illegal.) You will see far more of these in India than you will see of the former.

But the worst of all is when the word is used to represent a temporary fix. The one where you know the device, product or service will fall apart in a few trials. The semi-skilled labour in the city is prime example – plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. They will ensure your tap runs, wire don’t short and car rumbles along, long enough till they are needed again. Oh! I get it. What a jugaadoo economic model! Except that I end up paying for it.

 

I have seen this on the corporate side of things too. Using cheaper materials in production to keep costs low, or using whatever is available and not necessarily what is needed. Managing to put the product out without any guarantee that it lasts over time.

My personal favourite example is the Mahindra & Mahindra Thar (I own one). I believe that by making a vehicle a 7-seater versus a 6-seater, the company can save taxes (willing to be corrected on this). The fix? Put a 3-seater behind the passenger seat (and 2 behind the driver) that ensures that the passenger seat cannot recline – at all! Imagine going on a 2200 km long journey (I just did) and sitting straight all the way.  I could also speak about its fantastic canopy, but I won’t.

For the tech boys, ummm, Aakash anyone?

 

I am often perplexed by a lot of people asking why someone pays so much money for a branded bag or a designer shirt. Leave aside the brand conscious bourgeoisie who have to be seen with the right product adorning their sleeve, the true reason is the craftsmanship. An LV bag or a Tag Heuer watch will last you years and years and stay more or less in the same shape as you bought it in. That’s what you pay for. And for the economically minded – do the amortization table.

 

Back to the word, what we need to swiftly understand is that we can’t afford shortcuts. The world is judging harshly in this day of instant information dissemination. Especially corporate/entrepreneurial India. Be innovative. Employ lateral thought. But in the end, do the right thing which might take a bit longer or cost a touch more, but will last.

 

As we stand jugaad or ‘economical’ shortcuts are favoured and even applauded, but they have no long term benefit. In fact, these fixes fall apart and then you’re back to square one. With time lost, if not customers, etc.

 

Simply put shortcuts are the best way to take much longer to finish a job well.

And time wasted, as we all know, can mean death for a startup.

 

 

Game Over (aka Milk that Angry Bird)

So, I saw this trailer of the latest edition of Angry Birds, to be released in November. Cute. And to old timers like me (I have used rotary dial phones, so there), who followed Star Wars, there’s an appeal too. Needless to say, the animation is done well.

 

And then it hit me, “Wow, Angry Birds is dying.”

 

“Why” you ask?

Well, to be very honest with you, in the tech world, they haven’t really ‘innovated’.

They were, probably still are, the most downloaded game on planet Earth. I mean, everybody with a smartphone I know (including those who only use it to take calls and message: read my girlfriend and my mum), have played it. It’s had a brilliant run and inspired a lot of game designers (most of whom have had less luck than AB). But can you tell me what is the trend they followed over the last 2-3 years?

They got on to Rio, the animated film – which managed to garner the people who loved the films to download the new version. They also did Halloween and Chinese New Year amid other stuff. And of course spawned costumes, cup cakes and paraphernalia. A real money-spinner.

 

The latest, of course, is Star Wars. A legend.

 

Basically, the game has run out of its own steam (I wonder how Halloween and Chinese New Year did) and now is waning. The only way of holding consumer interest is to see how to marry the game with their interests.

 

However instead of applying imagination, they’re simply applying franchise. Or consuming it.

 

I guess milking it isn’t such a wrong thing. I am just bored of it. Moreover, it makes me think about the crossover of a ‘start-up’ into a ‘company’ and the progression thereon. It makes me think of how an app can become really visible and thus spawn into a company. And if the imagination doesn’t hold, can also decline from that status.

 

However with Angry Birds, just out of sheer curiosity, do I wanna see the next version already. Lord of the Rings? Indiana Jones? Matrix?

 

What do you think?

 

Dichotomy No. 4 (aka: “That’s great, but…”)

 

 

Science.

 

Established. Exact. Precise.

Science is certainly one way to approach your startup life.

And a highly recommended one.

 

Everything must be measured.

Every change, good or bad, gives clues to what you’re doing right, or wrong.

Every presumption must be played out in a controlled environment, dubbed an experiment, and an outcome recorded.

Science has helped us explain random things in life. A startup is not much of an exception.

 

You’ll get a lot of answers from the scientific experiments.

 

And perhaps even direction.

And if you’re lucky, success too.

 

 

Signs.

 

You don’t do a startup or join one because its scientifically proven to be better than a corporate job.

There’s a high level of risk involved and science would refute it as a rational choice.

But you read the signs. And take the plunge.

 

Signs are clairvoyance to some. Predicting the future to others.

But to me it’s just that feeling you get when something makes little sense or a whole lot of sense, even if it isn’t quite obvious.

Did Steve Jobs read ahead of the ‘signs’ of the times to predict the AppStore or the iPad?

Because the science would have told him there was no data to support that people wanted a “tablet” computing device.

 

There is some logic to the signs business, and a whole lot of ‘gut’ – something you develop over years of experience.

So it isn’t all ‘pulling it out of thin air’.

It’s that you have done some things many times over and you can tell the relative outcome.

 

So in essence, signs are science without the rationale and the experimentation.

 

And so, for me, signs become the basis for science to take over.

I might not be able to prove it to you, but trust me, I know ; )

 

In Conclusion: Good entrepreneurs know that numbers might add up, but if it doesn’t feel right, chances are they need to look harder at the problem/solution again. And to simply go on a sign might be pushing it too far.

So, put your gut to the test. Move fast. Build it. Test it. You’ll know how much to trust your gut in the future soon enough.

 

Dichotomy No. 3 (aka “Journey”)

 

Doubt.

 

Your startup isn’t necessarily yours alone.

 

Everybody has a point of view about it.

Be it your idea.

Your execution.

Your team.

Your scale strategy.

Your product features.

Your rate of innovation.

Your choice of colours for the company website.

Or even your choice of beverages you might serve visiting guests.

 

When I say point of view, I mean, a point of view that’s not necessarily aligned with yours.

Cross that. Make it – most likely not aligned with yours.

And when money gets involved, these points of views take a whole different weight and angle.

 

Those are the days you wake up and ask yourself, “Will we make it?”

 

 

Believe.

 

You came together with your friend from college because following rats in the race just didn’t appeal.

Or you were an industry veteran who decided quit your job because you knew there was most certainly more.

Or you simply believed there was a problem that no one had fixed so far, and you decided to.

You broke ranks, went on a limb, risked it, when nobody did.

You decided to change the world in your own little way.

You were the anomaly when you started.

Most likely, you still are.

 

And that’s exactly why you need to keep marching,and believe!

 

Believe in the reasons you started.

Believe in your convictions.

Believe in your idea.

Believe in it.

 

After all, your startup is yours alone!

 

 

Conclusion: It’s your startup, and you are the first and last bastion for the belief in it. Punto.

Startup Rant 001: The Merits of Reinventing the Wheel

 

In around the 15th century, a man named Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type printing. Something that would pretty much revolutionise culture, religion, science, learning or to keep a very long list, short, life as we know it. The impact of the printed word has been ‘documented’ numerable times. And rightfully so. Just in case you’re wondering here’s a look at the first book ever published on a press. Back then, the ability to produce 240 impressions an hour was considered right next to miraculous. This after the typesetter had set the page, laboriously, over an hour.

 

Did I tell you it was in the 15th century? That would be some 550 years ago, give or take a few.

 

Today you can do the same in 5 minutes (on the assumptions that (a) you’re on a computer and (b) you know what you’re doing.) Oh and today you could print over 40,000 pages an hour. But do you know what the real surprising thing is? The printing press is still getting better.

 

“You would still be driving cars with some very well sculpted stone wheels.”

 

Now why am I telling you all this?

Probably because I am often touted ‘well-established’ rules of the internet. You know the usual gamut of “use white backgrounds”, “navigation on the top”, yada, yada, yada.

I am sorry. But did I miss the mastering of the internet rules class? Are we so sure of ourselves in the 21st century that 15 years is all it takes to master a medium? Has  experimentation really taken a backseat to mainstream and mundane?

 

Well, I for one, refuse to oblige the so called internet pundits.

 

I will, most humbly, oblige the users of the internet. The consumers. The viewers. The readers.

I never claimed to create art. However that is no reason to not make things look better.

As for the people who keep telling me that there is no need to reinvent the wheel, well, dear Sirs, if it hadn’t been for reinventing the wheel, mankind wouldn’t have progressed as quickly as it did, the internet would have been a pipe-dream in the 20th century and you would still be driving cars with some very well sculpted stone wheels.

Time Out No. 001: Numbers. Crunched.

On a lighter note, it was budgeting week at our startup.

Yes, please go ahead and laugh.

But I say lighter – for me, as I wasn’t the one making the massively-super-linked-excel-sheet that had more numbers in it than pre-pubescent teens at a Justin Bieber concert. I was simply trying to follow it.

 

 

 

 

The founder in me says:

“Follow the numbers.”

The designer in me says:

“WTF?!!!?”

 

Conclusion: If you and numbers are like oil and water, ensure that you have co-founders in the startup who understand numbers well and you can trust them blindly. Just sayin’.