Delivering Happiness..

Reading about Tony's story of building a successful enterprise leaves me feeling amazed and determined at the same time. It made me realize the scale of commitment that is required to succeed as an entrepreneur, and all the finer technical details that you would never think of while ordering shoes online; the perfect symphony that must take place so that you receive your order on time. I found the book quite engrossing and an enjoyable read due to his almost-conversational style of writing.

The highlight of this book was the passion that Tony had in everything he did; right since his childhood days he had the drive to make money and to keep going after challenges that he was passionate about. His experiences with the worm factory, the button making experience, the Microsoft job; he made a point to learn relevant things from each of them and build up on them.

The process of having your own startup doesn't just suddenly begin one day, although the idea may hit you from out of the blue. The actual act of owning your own business is a long process which needs to be thought out and planned carefully. His detailed descriptions of the financial risks involved at every step gave a thorough picture of the tough situation that most startups must face. His ability to trust in what he believed came forth when he found out that his business plan might need to be changed in order to keep Zappos from disintegrating. The decision to hold their own inventory instead of just drop shipping the orders was probably the trickiest and best move that they made which saved Zappos at a critical stage.

 I particularly liked his thoughts on networking, building a relation with people with the intension of gaining trust and not just seeking immediate profit from it. The importance given to inculcating the right culture amongst the Zappos employees and hence creating the brand was remarkable too. Taking the effort to create a brand through your company's culture seems perfectly logical since that is the right place for it to begin. Talking more specifically about Zappos, as an online e-commerce company which basically thrives on customers' happiness, to focus on the customer service is an extremely important factor which was recognized by him and suitably taken care of. What I learn from that is, find out what is going to set you apart from your competitors and go the extra mile in that direction, and make it the focus or the core of all your activities.

It was intriguing to go through the entire process of building a successful company right from scratch through the perspective of an accomplished entrepreneur. I will definitely carry the information contained in this book a long way in terms of all his advice regarding entrepreneurship and all the planning that goes into it. 

Visit to eMusic.com

Visiting the office of a successful online music-selling company and conversing with the CFO and CTO, turned out to be very much informative. You might think, being such accomplished professionals they would have certain sense of aloofness or pride, but Max Smith and Richard Caccappolo were so down-to-earth and open to all that we had to say to them.

Richard started off with the topic of how to make money in an online business. The three main ways would be Advertisements, Commerce and Subscriptions. He introduced us to the advertisement pricing strategies of Cost per Thousand (CPM), Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per Acquisition (CPA). The CPM method would be the most profitable since the publishers are paid for every 1000 ads and he also mentioned that once you go to CPC, you would have a hard time getting back on to CPM method. He talked about the Ad Exchange where Ads are considered as unsold inventory and they place those ads for the maximum amount possible.

He discussed the example of the NY times to elaborate how many people actually pay for the online news or generally any content. Not surprisingly, most of our class did not. Although the statistics might say that a lot of people do pay for stuff which they might get free otherwise, I believe that most of us wouldn't want to pay if we knew that we can get the same thing for free. So I find the fact, that companies such as eMusic are popular to such an extent, very much intriguing and its great to get a perspective into their marketing strategy. It almost seems to me like a battle wherein they have to strategize perfectly in order to not give in to the surge of free music available online.

Max spoke to us about the basics of the music industry; how the obsolete music players have paved the way for more compact ones and how technology changed the marketing strategies for companies like eMusic. Earlier, if you liked a particular song in an album, you would end up buying the entire album, that implies selling 10 songs when actually the buyer is interested in just one. Whereas today, you can purchase single songs and hence it has become tougher for the artists to profit. This change brought by technology has led to change in the marketing strategy too. Each song has 2 rights sold, one to the recording artist and second to the writer.

The five dimensions of the music experience would be discovery, buying, owning, listening and sharing. Max spoke to us about the different consumer types and the one that they focus on consists of those 'off-beat leaders' as well as followers who like to explore new music, not just following the mainstream and are passionate about the music they wish to own. The fact that so much planning and research goes into the functioning of a simple music-selling online company amazes me. It gives a great perspective as to what is expected of any business which is targeting a niche audience and is competing with several others offering similar services.

Visit to the NYU Poly Incubator

My very first interaction with established entrepreneurs in the media industry, was nothing less than inspiring.  For a beginner like me, listening to their experiences, their advice and the stories of their individual journeys gives a great perspective into the industry that I plan to be a part of in the near future.

Steven introduced us to the Poly incubator and the companies within. He described the pros and cons of beginning a startup as compared to a comfortable lifestyle working as an MNC employee. Having worked with an MNC, I understand the comfort offered by a steady but boring job very well. However, the joy of working on ones own terms and reaping the benefits of ones own efforts, is something that fascinates me. The fact that every employee plays more than one role, elaborates the level of experience one can gain working in a startup. He also stated the 3 criteria applied while filtering startups for the incubator - commercial viability, scalability and potential for job creation.

Baba Apps, a mobile apps development startup founded by Sai, is now a 5 people strong company. Sai, an MIT graduate, talked about his background and walked us through his journey till date of setting up his own company. Based on his mistakes and successes, he offered valuable insights about business strategies and planning. I completely agree with his opinion, that product based industries are always better as compared to service based ones since the employee has the complete authority over the output of his/her efforts; having worked for a service based IT company myself, I have experienced it first-hand. Sai highlighted the importance of performing a thorough market research before jumping into anything because one needs to think of making profits from day one itself.

Amanda from Brainscape told us about the eLearning software company which mainly offers test-prep material on its website brain-scape.com. Since she is in charge of the marketing aspect of the startup, she described her contributions towards advertising strategies and using free promos to increase their popularity, was one of them. The idea for this startup started off as an excel macro, and now they offer a wide collection of study materials ranging from GRE prep to languages.

Philip, the CEO of LocalUncle, introduced us to his perspective on the media industry. He believes that an entrepreneur has to be prepared to face ups and downs throughout his/her career, a chaotic lifestyle as compared to that of an employee working for an established MNC. The best advice he put forth was, 'look around you, you might find the partner for your own startup within this classroom'. Finding people with similar passions to work with definitely creates better chances of success.

I would say that the key take-aways from this discussion were 'looking for partners with similar interests, to manage ones funds such that one is not at a loss putting in ones own money, finding and optimizing the right market for ones product and most importantly, to have passion for what you are working on'.