Behind the scenes of Truemors and the right conclusions

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 05 Jun 2007, 11:42 PM - 3 Comments

One of the talks at Silicon Valley Launch event (which was fantastic) today was from Guy Kawasaki. The title of the talk was “”How I Launched a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for only $10,918.09“. Guy was referring to his new startup (hobby business, of course) Truemors. Here is Guy’s latest blog post on this topic

I sort of disagreed with the fundamental theme of Guy’s talk today at the SVASE Launch event. My reason for disagreement was as follows:

The key message from the talk was that times have changed and anyone can now build an online company for a song. However, Guy also mentioned that he was able to do this for $12K because of his identity that was built over last 24 years. My dilemma was:

So, I started questioning what was Guy trying to achieve from his talk.

I have the utmost respect for Guy and consider his blog almost as an online university for entrepreneurs. I was confident of one of the two things – either my logic was flawed or I was not seeing something that Guy was seeing. So I sent a note to him asking for an explanation. Here is Guy’s response (presented here with his permission)

I agree with Guy and I hope that he will end the next presentation with these conclusions. There are not many guys (pun not intended) and gals out there who can think like Guy.

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Behind the scenes – Eventbee Network Ticket Selling and Event Listing

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 05 Jun 2007, 7:27 AM - 1 Comment

I get fascinated whenever I see the power of leverage in play. Recently I saw this with SimplyHired job boards. With almost no coding, you could create a job board on your blog or website and start making money.

Bala Musrif at EventBee has a new offer from his company called Network Ticket Selling and Network Event Listing. I am also interested in the people who are behind companies with interesting business models. So I had an opportunity to ask Bala Musrif a few questions about himself and his business. Here is the quick interview that will provide the “Behind The Scenes” view of the whole thing

1. RS: Bala, tell us a bit about yourself. You had a successful career at Sun. What prompted you to start EventBee in the first place?

Bala: I started my full time job as a Hardware Engineer when I was 19, since then I worked in National Remote Sensing Agency, Wipro, Imake Software and Sun Microsystems. I am always fascinated with new technologies and ideas. My quest for technologies made me work in many areas at Sun, from clustering to Portal servers. While I was managing portal server partnerships at Sun, I saw the opportunities Internet is brining to every industry you name it.  I evaluated many opportunities and found focusing on events market is not only rewarding, but also risk is limited with huge market size.

2. RS: EventBee was competing with many other registration systems out there. Apart from being commoditized, what were the challenges with EventBee?

Bala: Yes, there are many companies who provide registration software. The fact is events market is very big, and there is no clear established leader. That gave us opportunity to enter the market with new innovative ideas, and quickly establish our self as a most advanced web  based registration system. The initial challenge for us was to establish our self as a trusted partner as we deal with tens of thousands of registration payments. The next challenge for us was to educate Event Managers to tap state of the art technologies to promote and sell more event tickets.

3. RS: Network Ticket Selling and Event Listing seem to be the place where you are expecting home run. For the benefit of readers, tell us what exactly is “network ticket selling and event listing”

Bala: Network Ticket Selling allows Event Managers to sell tickets from third party Websites (or Blogs) that are part of  Eventbee Partner Network. By simply listing and enabling Network Ticket Selling at Eventbee, Event Managers tap “Network” effect to drive more ticket sales, and reward commission to third party Websites for each ticket sale they generate.

Using Network Event Listing, now Webmaster (or Bloggers) can monetize traffic by enabling premium event listing on their site with zero investment. By simply enabling Network Event Listing on their site, webmasters tap new revenue stream that was not there earlier, and allow Event Managers to reach website visitor community in a seamless fashion.

Network Ticket Selling combined with Network Event Listing allows Event Managers to create Viral Marketing effect, Distributed Ticket Selling phenomenon, resulting in maximum ticket sales with minimal efforts.

4. RS: Why should webmasters or bloggers be excited about Network Ticket Selling and Listing?

Bala: By joining Eventbee Partner Network, and displaying Evnetbee streamer (widget) on their site, webmasters (or Bloggers) earn money two ways -

This is completely new revenue stream for Webmasters (or Bloggers) with zero investment, does not conflict with other revenue streams they already have in place, such as Google Adsense or Job Boards.

5. RS: How did this idea come about?

Bala: Last three years blogosphear is growing explosively, but the audience have limited time they can spend online, that made them to stick to their favorite websites or blogs. This created a new challenge for Event Managers on how to reach this audience which is scattered across multiple websites or blogs, it is very time consuming and almost impossible for Event Manager to contact each webmaster and request them to  display his event on their site. That is when Eventbee saw new opportunity and came up with the idea of building Partner Network that consists of Websites and Blogs, and allow Event Managers to make use of Network Ticket Selling and Event Listing features to push event across multiple websites (or blogs) automatically, and reach wider audience with minimal efforts.

6.RS: How do you think your competition will respond?

Bala:
I am sure competition will come up with similar solution, the fact is
Eventbee has been in the business since 2003, we already established
our self as a trusted partner with over 6000 event managers. Apart from
being first to the market, we have the advantage of loyal customer base.

7. RS:  What were the lessons learnt during your four-year journey with EventBee (from inception until the launch of “Network Ticket Selling and Event Listing”)?

Bala: Well there are so many things I learned as a first time entrepreneur for last four years.  Most importantly one need to build great team that is flexible enough to adapt to new market conditions and deliver the results in half the time than competition can do. Most of the times markets may not react the way you expect, so be bold to recognize market dynamics and change the direction of the company if needed.

8. RS: If you were do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Bala: Having done one startup, now I can take more risks in my next ventures. Focus on completely new idea that has viral marketing built into it.

9. RS: What is next for Bala and EventBee?

Bala: My goal is to make Eventbee most successful company in events space, reach every event manager and become their trusted partner in promoting and selling their event tickets. Eventbee will focus more on leveraging existing customer and community base, and release more innovative features that tap “Network” effect to sell more tickets.

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The First Few Steps – Article published in BizTech Magazine

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 05 Jun 2007, 7:08 AM - Leave Comment

This month, BizTech magazine carries a short article by me titled:

The First Few Steps: Brand Building for the technology professional

It is a (very) quick extract from my eBook
Personal Branding for Technology Professionals (PDF, 40 pages, Free to download)

Personal Branding for Technology Professionals is the most successful eBook for me in terms of downloads. In terms of numbers, it has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since the time it was published. While my focus is on technology professionals, the principles outlined are applicable to all the knowledge workers.

Any inputs and feedback are welcome.
Personal Branding for Technology Professionals (PDF, 40 pages, Free to download)

Posted under Announcement, Main Page.

Behind the scenes of “Send” (a fascinating read)

By Rajesh Setty on Fri 01 Jun 2007, 9:01 PM - Leave Comment

I thoroughly enjoyed reading “Send“.  It is one of those books I will read many times in the near future. It is also one of those books that I (secretly) wish everybody that sends me an email reads

Here is a quick interview with the authors of the book. We talk about the book as well as

1. RS: Will, first of all congratulations on producing a masterpiece. What motivated you and David to write this book?

Will and David: Thanks so much for your kind support! The book actually grew out of a lunch that David and I had — at the Saloon at the Oyster Bar in New York. We are old friends and were having a purely social lunch — but complaining, as friends tend to do, about what annoying mornings we had both had. The more we talked, the more we realized that most of our annoyance — not just that morning, but in the weeks and months just past — was due to aggravating or vague or insulting emails we had received, and also stupid or thoughtless emails we had sent. We felt that we ourselves really needed a book like SEND — so we set out to write it. And we also felt that the time had come for more discussion about this great and incredibly pervasive technology that we were barely using at all a decade ago.

2. RS:  Please tell us the history behind the book. Give us the highlights from the day the book was conceptualized to the day it went to the market?

Will and David: After that, we spent some weekend writing a proposal. We then sent the proposal to an agent, John Brockman. He had some excellent suggestions for us — so we worked more on the proposal and sent it back to him. John gave the final proposal exclusively to an editor at Knopf — who immediately saw a need for such a book. Over the next eighteen months or so we worked together — side by side at the computer — on several drafts, with wonderful input from our editor. And the result is the book as it exists now. It was published this spring.

3. RS: I enjoyed reading every bit of the book. However, if someone had mentioned that there was a 200+ page book on email I would have been surprised. How did you and David and you scope this project. How did you decide where to draw the line?

Will and David: We tried to write about things that were unique to email, and not just applicable to all writing — electronic or otherwise — or all human contact. There are so many wonderful books about writing, books like THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by Strunk and White, or BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott, that we really wanted to make sure not to try to cover what they had already covered so superbly. Foremost in our minds was keeping the book focused on email, and trying to figure out in what ways email communication presents challenges that are different from the challenges of other forms.

4. RS:  What was the chapter that was hardest to write? What was the easiest? Why?

Will and David: The hardest to write was the first chapter, “Why Do We Email So Badly.” It was tough because we ourselves didn’t realize that we emailed badly until we started writing the book. The tendency is to think that everyone else does — but not us! And this chapter really forced us to think about the medium in a way we hadn’t before — as above, what is different about email than other forms of written communication and why?

The easiest was, “The Emotional Email.” It’s great fun to write about anger and sarcasm and duplicity on email, and there are so many wonderful stories and examples of it. We loved the investment banker exchange we found and featured. It devolves into a two word exchange with one participant writing, “Hubris,” and the other, “Laziness.”

5. RS: In our email exchanges, it was clear that you followed your own advice. Were you both always using email this way or did you change after publishing the book

Will and David: We both changed after the book. Will would frequently send emails he hadn’t proofread. Now he tries to proofread more carefully. David didn’t use to take advantage of the “subject line” and would send emails with no subject line, or an out of date one. Now, he’s scrupulous about that. Both of us try to be more specific. And we both now use “No Reply Necessary” on all emails where we don’t need to hear back. We find that saves a huge amount of email traffic.

6. RS:  Can you give an example of an email that made you say “Wow”. Please explain why?

Will and David: Well, there are good “wow’s” and bad “wow’s.”

The most recent bad “wow” had to be those Justice Department emails. What exactly were those smart, savvy, well-educated lawyers thinking when they made the decision to conduct such a sensitive conversation on email? (Answer: They weren’t thinking that email is a virtually permanent, easily searchable, archivable medium.)

And the good “wow”? We think it’s a good wow whenever we receive a wonderfully specific email that tells us exactly what’s expected of us, or one with a great subject line or — our favorite — one that says “no reply necessary.”

7. RS: What are your after thoughts? If you were to do this book project again, what would you do differently?

Will and David: That’s a terrific question. While one can always find ways to improve, we both couldn’t be happier with the way the book turned out and the conversation it’s started. It seems finally — after the Justice Department incident, and after the email problems at Enron and Boeing and Starwood and Wal-Mart, and after the years of email frustration that have built up, that people finally want to talk about email. They want to know why they keep making mistakes, why it’s the source of so much anxiety and frustration, and what they can do to do it better.

8. RS: Apart from gifting this book to everyone that sends us an email, what do you suggest we do to sort of “train” email senders to send us better emails?

Will and David:
We can all set an example.

We can acknowledge that email is an interruption. Doing so, will allow us to think twice before we send something. (It’s useful to ask yourself if the email you’re about to send will change anything; a surprising amount of the time you’ll find that it won’t, which is a really good reason not to send it.A lot of email is mirroring. Eventually, people will get the message. If we start sending well-formed, precise, specific emails, the people with whom we correspond will pick up on our cues.) Doing so will also remind us that we can control when we get on email. After all, do we really need to check our handhelds before breakfast? At a child’s soccer game?

We can be precise.

If we write with precision and specificity, people will respond in kind. (Eventually.) In the end, we won’t have to waste so much time trying to discern or divine the meaning of vague emails.

There are other examples. Most of all, we need to train ourselves to do something we just haven’t done enough of these last 10 or so years: To think about email. Once we begin to give it some thought — once we stop firing away madly — the electronic world will be a much nicer place.

9. RS: If there was only one thing that you wanted the readers to get from the book, what would it be?

Will and David:
Think before you send.

And send email you’d like to receive.

10. RS: Can you give us a sneak preview of your next project – together or separately?

Will and David: Great question. We don’t know. We love working together and really can’t imagine doing anything separately. But we’re firm advocates of the idea that you should only do things you believe in. We really believe in this, so we imagine that this will be our project for the days ahead.

RS: Once again, thank you for writing a much required book on email. Wish you both success on this project.

Will and David: Thank you. And thank you for the wonderful questions.

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