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History – A Mirror of Truth

Intellectual Honesty

Off late I have run into this term a number of times, leaders in various positions at different organizations talking about what intellectual honesty means to them and why is it so important.

It is one of those things which, once you have heard someone say seems so simple and obvious. If someone was to ask me what is that one attribute, one aspect, one tenet - whatever you want to call it, that I would want my team to embrace - it’ll be this one. Be intellectually honest, intellectually loyal yourself and respect the same in your teammates. Needless to say, it is important to incentivize this behavior right from the grass root level all the way up.

I don’t think I have ever come across anyone who has not encountered workplace politics in their careers. Whether it is a big corporation or a startup trying to find its footing in the industry, this happens all the time. A lot of it is because of the innate characteristics we have as species, so it is bound to happen. But we can strive to minimize it by trying to create as productive an environment as possible. And I believe being intellectually honest can help in making long strides towards that goal.

Marketing Woes and Wows

Marketing is an area which has always piqued my interest. This writeup is about a couple of ads that I ran into lately and found interesting.

The “wow” campaign that I came across this morning was Flipboard’s. While I was browsing through the feed, they injected a self-promotion (the look and feel of which was pretty much the same as any other article). Probably because of the way I have customized my topics and magazines, I come across a slew of articles on Flipboard which read like “X ways to do Y”, “N things leaders do differently” and so on. The self-promoting article was titled “N ways to give the gift of Flipboard”. I did spend at least a few seconds skimming through what they had to say (as opposed to someone saying “share this with your friends & family” or something on those lines).

As someone who worked at a mobile startup where we were constantly trying to come up with ways to encourage our users to share the app, I found Flipboard’s approach very interesting.

The “woe” ad on the other hand is that of HomeAdvisor, which I see often on television when I watch a certain set of television shows. This ad has a color theme to it which matches its brand logo - white and orange. So you would notice that they show clips of customer testimonials where these people are extremely prim and proper, dressed in orange and white and the set on which the clips are shot, is also decked up in orange. Their “celebrity endorsement” comes from the host of a reality show based on home improvements. So she appears in a mechanic’s outfit, with her toolkit belt on, which is in stark contrast to the makeup she has by the way. And, she is also on the same set I mentioned above.

The thing about customer testimonials is that they absolutely have to across as genuine, otherwise their purpose is entirely defeated, isn’t it?

Someone who has attended one of the best business schools in the world, once told me that marketing is all about common sense and creativity. So there is little that academics can teach you about it. I have to say, I second that thought wholeheartedly.

Instagram Rants

This blog entry is dedicated to something I experienced on Instagram yesterday.

As I have mentioned earlier in this post, push notifications are incredibly important for mobile applications. So any good mobile app uses push notifications to get its users’ attention and hopefully drive retention by using them effectively.

I am an active Instagram user. In fact, I use it much more than Facebook or any other social network for that matter. Yesterday afternoon, I suddenly received a flurry of push notifications (I think 90 notifications within a couple of minutes or so) from Instagram. It turns out someone decided to take an action on every post I have ever shared on Instagram, and boom, I was bombarded with a notification for every single one of those actions.

At my previous mobile startup, we paid a lot of attention to make sure we had all the knobs in place to throttle push notifications such that no user receives more than a certain number of notifications in a single day from us. We had push notifications of different categories weighted differently, and there were different caps for each of those categories. It was a significant investment given our size. But it was worth the bang for the buck since it had a direct impact on the user experience.

Push notifications are double edged swords - as effective as they can be in grabbing eyeballs, they are very invasive. So it is extremely important to know how and where to draw the line. I was surprised to see that a company like Instagram would flood its users’ notification center the way it did.

The irony is, if it would have been any other less frequently used app, I would have deleted it right away. But the luxury of being big and popular is that users are much more forgiving. So there I was today, sipping my morning coffee and browsing away my Instagram feed to glory as merrily as ever.

Branding Bruises

If someone were to ask, what were some of the biggest highlights of 2015, I would say that surge in gig economy would definitely make the list in my opinion.

A rather small piece of this story is a peer to peer car rental service, formerly known as RelayRides, recently rebranded as Turo. My husband has been using this service since early last year. We decided to try this service out more out of curiosity than anything else, and worked out a carpooling schedule. As it turns out, our experience with the service was nothing but great and we were pretty comfortable managing our routines sharing one car, so all was hunky-dory.

This service can offer some very competitive offers compared to renting cars from traditional car rental services. Unfortunately, I think this company has not done a good job of creating a brand for itself. Most of the people I have talked to had not heard about it, and the bunch I am talking about is quite tech savvy I would think.

Recently, the company rebranded from RelayRides to Turo. One of our friends is currently planning a trip for the holidays and wanted to check out this service. When he tried to go to RelayRides, he was getting redirected to Turo. He thought he was getting redirected to a spam website. He almost gave up and decided to go the rental car route. It was only when he talked to my husband to confirm if he had seen the same behavior as well, he came to know about the recent rebranding.

The company’s homepage does have "RelayRides is now Turo" on the it. But the sentence shows below the fold. It brings up the question - how many people are actually getting confused because of this rebranding and what is the drop-off rate as a result of this? Rebranding is an extremely expensive undertaking for any company, so I can only imagine how much deliberation goes into taking this decision. I am not sure I understand why this particular company had to do this exercise. Nonetheless, I hope there are'nt a lot of cases resulting in lost business for them.

Bernie the Land of Make Believe

So I watched the democratic debate the other night. To sum up the debate in one word – disappointing.

Every time Mr Sanders sung his “free free free” song, I would cringe inside. It is so sad that politicians like him try to exploit the common man by singing the populist agenda while hiding (or being oblivious about) the truth behind this “free free free” saga.

Honestly, is there anything in this world that comes for free? At least call it “state sponsored”, “government sponsored” or “tax-payer sponsored” because unless I missed something in Bernie’s campaign flyer, certainly neither his account nor a golden-egg-laying hen in his backyard is paying for it.

I can’t even begin to count how many times the dems said “just like all the countries in the world” with respect to paid leave, health insurance etc. I wonder who is accounting for all the innovations and economic growth that did not happen in those countries, and all the business costs incurred and opportunities lost because of these government policies in all the aforementioned countries.

Education and well-being of people is of extreme importance in any society. So the middle class gets hurt the most when sub-optimal and inefficient systems are implemented.

Such a sad state of affairs on both sides of the aisle this election season. Sigh.

“Why should he join our company - to work on XYZ? Really?"

Lets start with this well known fact - human resources are at the core of a company's success. This means that the importance of hiring the right people for your team and company cannot be stressed enough.

Hiring the right people not only means getting folks onboard with the right skill set and who are great at what do they, but also people with the right attitude towards your company, your product and your team.

Imagine having a person in the team who says - "I interviewed this guy who I think is really smart and has the skills to do justice to this position. But why should he join our company - to work on XYZ? Really?". Now imagine her saying this in front of a bunch load of people in the team. Not only did she affect the morale of the team by undermining what they do, she also led to the company losing out on a potential candidate who might have been a great value addition to the team. Attitudes and energies are infectious. Both positive and negative attitude gets rubbed off and has a trickle down effect.

It is challenging to make a judgement about someone's soft skills through the standard interview processes. It is also challenging to quantify how an employee is doing on these aspects once they get hired. But as a manager, you always want to identify and reward the right attitude. At the end of the day, it is about incentivizing the right things and steering the ship in the right direction, one step at a time.

Disclaimer: I have never been a people manager personally. So no, this is coming not from any personal experience but is more of an observation and hypothetical perspective.

New Kids on the Block

As people step out of colleges, with their shiny new bachelors and masters degrees, they are filled with boundless enthusiasm. I have come across a few myself, who step out of the academic world into the industry, with intentions of nothing less than making a dent in the universe. The world is their oyster. They have read stories of the likes of Steve Jobs and all the other frontrunners of tech industry, and have every intention of breaking the laws of the land and having zilch respect for processes.

While you might say this can be a borderline case for immaturity, it is a wonderful quality to have in my opinion, if there is a way to mentor and channelize this energy appropriately. If their potential is correctly identified and guided in the right direction, it can be the most fruitful and synergetic relationship for both the company and their budding employees.

It is needless to say then, how important the role of mentors is. People who fill in these shoes need to have a lot of soft skills - patience, empathy, intuition and foremost, ability to inspire. These people can have a lasting effect on entire careers of individuals. So for all the mentors out there, what a responsibility eh, (no pressure guys! ;) )

Just another one of my random musings...off to work now!

Dumb Money - Yay or Nay?

Lets start off with a cheesy analogy - start ups are saplings which need immense care and nourishment if they are to ever grow into giant fruit bearing trees everyone hopes for. And like everything else in the world, providing that care and nourishment is expensive. It needs a lot of resources.

Step in the angel investors - those guys with bug bucks, looking for the next big thing to happen and eagerly wanting to be a part of it. As a start-up founder, therein lies the big dilemma. In a utopian world, you would like to have an investor who is not just putting in money, hoping to show up 5 years later and cash out a big fat cheque, but is willing to take that roller coaster ride with you. She is not only a financial partner but a strategic partner - willing to knock on the doors for you if required.

But as I said, the catch is "utopian". So what should you do when you have people willing to throw some cash at you which might be change for them but might be precious fuel you need to move things forward? I would think that it is not an easy choice to make.

Is it about People? Is it about Ideas? Or Both?

Earlier this morning, I was watching an interview of a certain VC who was an early investor in Fitbit. A few minutes into the interview, it seemed to me that the key driving factor when it came to his investment strategy was that, he invested in "people". It felt like he took pride in his ability to spot the opportunity with respect to people and management teams rather than products themselves.

I always thought that it is important to have the ability to judge an idea for its merits and pitfalls objectively, segregating the idea from any preconceived notions or biases we might have towards its presenter. I wonder if these two philosophies are orthogonal, complimentary or completely opposite to each other. hmm...

One Costly Housekeeping

If you look at the list of American Presidents till date by profession, the proportion of lawyers in this group is very high.

Law and order in any society is, in my opinion, kind of like housekeeping. You need to do housekeeping in your abode to maintain it well. Similarly, law and order is for ensuring that we come up with right set of rules and follow them to maintain order.

There is no value associated with this function. Or, to put it in other words, this is more like a cost, rather than something that produces or adds value. The fact that we live in a society which has created such a convoluted law and order system, that some of the brightest minds we have, are using their wits to study and work on that system, makes me think that something is fundamentally broken here.

Imagine what would happen if all that brain power was channeled to create, to produce, to optimize. At the end of the day, this is what improves lives and creates a conducive environment for people to flourish.

I am not underestimating the value of protecting people's fundamental rights. But I would think that the system created to ensure them should not suck up the best of society's resources.

Water with a hint of Blackberry, Blueberry and Guilt

I recently got hooked onto drinking flavored water, and was telling one of my friends about the same. He looked at the bottle, noticed that it said "bottled on the west coast" and remarked "it better not be California".

So there you go, another problem to ponder about and see where your center of morality lies. I certainly have not been able to figure out mine yet. Looking at the bigger picture, it seems like focussing on bottling plants is probably not very fruitful, given that they are a teeny weeny fraction of the the water economy on the whole in California.

It might be hard to do, but I would think that this should be quantifiable right? Probably worth thinking about this long weekend...

Psyche behind Social Benefits

I was watching a movie the other day. The plot of the movie was about a small town, suffering from crippling unemployment. Majority of population in the town lived off of welfare checks provided by the government. The story revolves around the efforts of town's residents to get a factory setup so they can all get back to work. The bottom line is - the story works on the premise that "nobody is on welfare checks by choice". This is an argument which I have come across a number of times, especially from liberals - nobody likes to be on food stamps and unemployment money, and that is basic human nature.

Now lets look at the other side of the coin. In this case(different movie, different plot) the character is a young male. The requirement to qualify for receiving unemployment benefit is to show that you applied for some number of jobs, possibly interviewed at n places and if you fail to get a job, then you are entitled to receive the benefits. So our protagonist blows off all the interviews because he just wants to get hold of that free money. And there in lies the counter argument, that free benefits means there is no incentive anymore to work for resources.

You would think that we are talking about fundamental human behavior here. And it has to be either one or the other, since they are completely contradictory (barring the outliers of course). Once it is established which one of these it is, policy makers and society on the whole should be able to optimize for it.

Clearly, this is over simplification of the issue. But seems like a reasonable way to start thinking about it I would think?

A Red Notice by Bill Browder – Quick Book Review

I read this book while I was on vacation last month. This book is an enthralling read. Have you ever read the phrase “Fact is stranger than fiction” and wondered…how? Well, after you read what Mr. Browder has to say, you will wonder no more.

You feel like you are in the middle of some Jack Ryan Shadow recruit kind of plot, except it is REAL. You are reading about actual people and their horrific experiences. A sappy soul like me does not need much to shed a few tears here and there. So zero points for guessing my reaction after reading this story.

If stories of finance and banking world interest you, I would definitely recommend this one.

Push Baby Push

That is one inappropriate title isn't it ;) Oh well, here is what I have to say: Push notifications are a very critical instrument for mobile applications to drive retention. After all, it is so easy for apps to get lost in the forest of gazillion other applications on people's devices. Push notifications can provide that nudge to a user to open and check out what's hip and happening in your application.

First of all, the number of people who willingly opt in to receive push notifications itself is a subset of your total user base (on iOS platform). So there is a drop off right off the bat. Making the most out of this pool of people is vital. But unfortunately, a lot of apps miss this bus completely. They send the same notification, and by same I mean with the same text and at the same time, periodically. I might pay attention to such a notification once, twice, maybe thrice. Thats it. After that, they have completely lost me. So when Houzz tells me "The latest newsletter is in!" every third day, or Elevate tells me every day at 11:00 AM, "Remember to train your brain", I no longer pay attention to them.

However, if Ted gives a teaser of a new talk, or Saavn talks about a new collection, I at least read what they have to say, and even end up opening the notification sometimes.

So if Elevate sends a Math question and asks me see if I got it right, or Houzz talks about an incredibly weird new book shelf they have, the chances of me taking that call to action would be so much higher.

Its interesting how even the smallest of things like these can sometimes make a significant difference.

Random thought of the day

किसी कवि की कविता सुनकर हम सोच मे पड़ गये, की शायर के अल्फ़ाज़ दुनिया बुनते हैं, या दुनिया शायर के अल्फ़ाज़ बुनती है

Aptitude Assessment by Brain Training Apps

I tried my hand at a couple of brain training applications just out of curiosity. Generally, they do an initial aptitude assessment and then create a brain training program for you based on your test results. Or so they claim.

But this is what I don't understand. It is in their interest to say that your numbers are not-so-great after the initial assessment, since that is a perfect incentive for you to then sign up for their paid services. Isn't that right? After all, what are the chances that you will keep coming back to them if on the first run they tell you that you are in a pretty good shape. Am I missing something here?

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