R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah

MBAs Vs Hackers war is always on and hackers win with creating Linux to Firefox internationally. But, in India, coding is always considered to be a lower end job . In the international hacker cult, they code, code and code even at their 60s. In India, MBAs always take a lead saying "anybody can code", so every programmer is forced to "switch" to leadership role. Another problem with India is that there is no "real hacker" comparable with International cult. I have been lamenting this for years and smelling the "gap" for years. I've consoled myself with "Learner, Hacker, Idiot" tag in LinkedIn profile. Recently I noticed some guys who branded themselves as hackers when they're bashing MBAs in Quora . Having impressed by their "attitude", I checked their product and found nothing better than StockFox . Some hacker chauvinistic links I'm fond of: The Hacker FAQ How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, ...

Disclaimer: This list contains some of our team's projects Sites that are useful and usable erail.in - created by a single person and serves useful to quickly find availability in Indian trains ClearTrip - seems to be inspired by many other sites like Vayama , but able to get better UI RediffMail - speed is the big boost Myntra - good idea, but poor UI redBus - good idea, but poor UI and execution Sites from The Times Group are also of good idea, but poorly executed/architected. They clearly try and target the web startup "gap" Sites that are innovative (world's first/never seen before kind) SocialAV - World's first and only antivirus building community (by our team) CSSilize - World's first and only project management tool for slicing works (by our team) jobreapr - World's first and only fixed price job search engine (by our team)

Recently I had an interesting conversation with someone who brought me a new theory that integrating sales team and development team "closely" will increase the productivity. Conversation went on like these: Someone: Sales team and development team should work closely for better productivity. Me: What are the IT companies having such setup? What are the IT companies that increased productivity through such setup? Someone: (No answer) Me: How have you arrived at that theory? Someone: 'coz the sales team will get more technical questions and only when they closely work with the development team, they can able to answer . Later I felt that the person is somewhat right, the problem lies with the customer base and the person's inability to bring better solution. Then, I come to an analogy of Waiter, Cook and customer base in a hotel. Waiter, Cook and customer base in Hotel Here, the Waiter can be compared with the IT salesman and Cook can be compared with the developer. F...

"If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school. After Warren Buffett, you don't hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. There are only 5 MBAs in the top 50. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business. So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA." Paul Graham in How to start a startup But, I'm very much amused, in real world, how such sane hackers are been ruled and overtaken by sales, marketing and HR guys. How those guys put the words into hackers mouth and outsmart? On a second thought, it must be for God's sake....

Of late, I'm quite serious to find some PR personnel to get media attention for our products and labs initiatives: Labs CSSilize - World's first and only project management tool for slicing works (PSD to XHTML conversion and WordPress theme works) SocialAV - World's first and only antivirus building community (start building antivirus online...) jobreapr - World's first and only fixed price job search engine Uboo - India's first full blown consumer portal (private beta) Products GroupDeal - powers many Groupon competitor group buying sites FPPlatform - powers many Fiverr competitor fixed price job sites SFPlatform - powers many Kickstarter competitor crowd funding sites Why PR? As I blogged earlier, our team has added lot of innovations and features. Recently our GroupDeal product/company got a mention in The New York Times . Similar or better coverage might give our team great energy to innovate further and may get good VCs. How Groupon is doing PR? T...

I have noted that there are decent voice for Indians in TechCrunch , the popular technical blog: Rahul Nihalani , Leena Rao ,... But, still there's no importance given for Indian entrepreneurship and Indian tech news. As far as I see, Indian companies that get the mention are just from NRIs, for example Micromobs . Unfortunately, these companies are not at all comparable with the Indian entrepreneurship spirit. This clearly proves that there's huge untapped potential on the startup and media in India.

Things learnt from interviews lately... Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish - book on entrepreneurship When people don't feel the growth of company in terms of headcount, they move. When people decided to move they're confused about the reasons and priority. Money is the only motivation. People who leave company can easily access the confidential information like billing, etc. When the people realize that their efforts can better be promoted by themselves than a sales guy, they move. Being "employee" alone is not sufficient for some; some expects partnership.

our team has developed popular FPPlatform (aka, fiverr clone) and SFPlatform (seed/crowd funding platform). I see, here we're facing huge crunch in terms of payment gateway solutions. The least closest here is the solution from PayPal called adaptive payments. But, due to their API design and approval process, there's gap creating (Not to mention that PayPal is working with us to improve that). Over the top of my head, thinking of creating a payment gateway provider on the top of PayPal or Authorize.net with improved API design (something like Braintree )

There's huge cry that MySpace--the site that was popular few years ago is kind of dead--kind of killed by Facebook. So, what's the problem?... Often startups start with the some "killer idea". The startups are usually started by a guy who is technical savvy or a sales guy who thinks he can sell it better or a marketing guy who thinks he can market it better... but, often these startups missing a person who is willing to scale it up (I think, such person's designation can be set as Scaler[sic] or so)--instead of just getting satisfied with his technical/sales/marketing ability. So far, I have noted in interviews that people move from company to company when it doesn't grow and scales up. Word of mouth and crowd power is essential to get the startups running. But, companies like MySpace's death are already predicted.