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Walk down Silicon Alley…

Last week I had the opportunity to spend time with startups and tech companies in New York, aka Silicon Alley. The excitement in the startup and venture circles in the city was impressive. Previously where finance used to dominate all conversations, now its about ad tech, social/mobile and Pinterest clones. VC’s seems to around each corner – […]

Real stories of Startup Failure

Readwriteweb has a review of The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup . Based on extensive research of 10,000 startup founders, this book draws upon the reasons of successes and failures. Top reasons for failure – people issues, equity issues, and investor relations. Seems like a promising read.

Missing Link – the HR plan

Having managed HR departments for over 110 companies in last 5 years, I am amazed to see the consistent absence of comprehensive HR plan inside or even alongside the annual business plan. And this remains the top reason why goal alignments, reviews and resource agility remains perpetual challenge. Most managers end up reacting to situations […]

A Different VC Model

Having made a number of investments in very young technology companies in India over the years I came to the somewhat obvious conclusion that it is relatively easy for startups  here to become ‘ramen profitable‘, but relatively difficult for them to exit. Making equity based investments in this scenario is problematic for the obvious reason […]

Indian Microfinance – Infographic from Legatum

Interesting infographic from Legatum on impact of AP ordinance on Indian microfinance industry. 20120313 infographic indian microfinance View more presentations from Alok Mittal. Apart from effective blacklisting of millions of poor women in AP from access to private credit, the ordinance has impacted availability of credit across the country. All in name of protecting the […]

Brave new world…

Think about what role the mobile operator has been playing to-date: They own a pipe to transmit information (voice + data) They own a touch point to the customer (and hence impact the choices I make) They own a mechanism to charge the customer – either stored value or monthly billing Long-term which of these […]

Steve Jobs – Book Review

Just finished reading Steve Jobs’ Biography by Walter Isaacson — Great account of a genius. As someone whose only impressions of Steve Jobs are formed by this book, it is an amazing story of personal passion and entrepreneurial possibilities. At a more sublime level, its a story of a person who almost everyone would have […]

Visiting India

Folks: I run Tandem Entrepreneurs, a mobile accelerator in San Francisco Bay Area. I am visiting India and will be in Pune from Tuesday 7th Feb for about 10 days. I would be happy to meet with a few entrepreneurs if you want to use me as a sounding board. At Tandem we work with […]