I am late here, but about time. Yes, I am again building stuff and doing a new startup. Those of you who don’t know what I am working on, check out RingAd.

At RingAd, we are building world’s first ringtone based advertisement network. I decided to work on this idea, because I liked that what we are doing is something, which no one has done before and can create great value for people and businesses.

I am glad to announce that things are looking good at the moment and also I am looking for the first hire at RingAd. So if you are amazing at technology and love to work on something that you can own, do ping me.

Till then, happy hacking.

Suddenly I am seeing lots of events happening all over India, in which you are supposed to make a startup over a weekend. Initially I liked the idea that it’s perfect for people in jobs and have idea to work upon, they can jump in, try if it clicks and decide to carry on. But now that there are so many of such events, I decided to do a background study of how are these performing,

Startup weekend delhi – They list a number of startups created over a weekend ( http://delhi.startupweekend.org/2011/04/11/final-presentations-from-startup-weekend-delhi/ )-

www.kaarigar.org ( site down)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Reminiscence/197568926928687?v=wall ( just a facebook page )
http://lsasoftware.com/qrazybuy/ ( couldn’t guess what it does, looks like dead)
http://dealstud.com/ ( site disabled )
http://www.foodknock.com/ ( bit working )
http://talk2geeks.in/ ( can’t say if it’s a startup, looks like just a hack )
http://restmydata.com/ ( coming soon )

Startup weekend gurgaon (http://gurgaon.startupweekend.org/2011/11/13/heading-to-the-demos-here-is-the-list-swggn/)
http://www.analyz.in/ ( not working )
http://bharatprice.in/ ( yet to launch )
likeitsme.ankisoft.in ( not working )
http://theplaylist.in/ ( just a hack )
http://www.ahoy.co.in/ ( looks like something, but didn’t get it )
http://www.mlabs.in/ ( coming soon )
http://uberpay.in/ ( coming soon )
http://webinstitute.in/smartcareer/ ( nothing there )

From the above data, I tend to believe that these events are not working, at least for participants ( might be working for organisers ).

I hope that these events should change the format or at least make it clear that what they want to achieve during the weekend. I am all in love with startup events, but these things are just not working.

Other than startup weekend, there are events like iWeekend, in50hours, unpluggd hackathon, which are also based on the same format.

What’s your take on these events? Do you think that it’s just another, you-did-it, i-will-do-it-to sort of event among the Indian Startup Community? I feel so.

I have started to believe that Internet at large and social networks in particular can solve any problem world have. I was thinking about why I get so many proposals from people who want to make social networks, every other day. Some of them are actually interesting, like creating community of plantation awareness, literacy and likes. When I sat back to think about it, I realized how powerful these online communities could be. The biggest thing is that, online communities put a huge impact and behavioral change in people, which was never earlier possible in the history of human.

Lets take a couple of examples of big problems which were solved by social networks-

Removing a Government? Facebook has done it in Egypt already – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/11/egypt-facebook-revolution-wael-ghonim_n_822078.html

Improving education system? Khan Academy is doing it so brilliantly. http://www.khanacademy.org/

There are other big problems that are yet to be solved, like pollution, population, traffic, literacy and what not. Most critical problems that world has can be solved only by behavioral changes in humans, and only social network can do that at such a large scale and so rapidly. Also, the changes resulting through social networks are long lasting and almost zero cost. Take an example of traffic problem in a city. To some extent we need to create infrastructure to solve it, but social networks can also play a big role in solving this. If we could create a social network where people can get information about current traffic state of various routes, can update their routes, can share cars, this could result in a better traffic situation and with such a low cost.

Internet is powerful and it will become more poweful in future, all we need to do is to put our efforts to shape services which could help the movements to come in the future, for the betterment of humanity.

I think the notion of using a contact us form is so 20th century, this is one of those redundant element from web 1.0 that is still into existence, but with no reason.  A masked email id, at your contacts page is enough. All other filtering, categorization etc. can be done at your part, then why adding this extra layer for user to get confused?

Earlier these contact us forms might be a useful thing, when email clients were not so advanced, but with current state of email clients, gmail, I don’t think these are any good than a turn off for your visitors. Also I think CMS like drupal, joomla, wordpress should abonded this feature, so as to help the web grow.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzUY8nwqQfA

 

I am in my pursuit of becoming a better designer of things. I have found that, two things are very important in any design work or rather in general, starting things well and finishing things well. But since, at the start we have lots of energy, ideas and a blank canvas and work looks exciting and challenging. Hence, starting well is relatively easy. On the other hand, finishing is 10 times tougher because at the end, the work is less challenging, you are drained and it’s all very unfancy stuff. Finishing well becomes very very tough. There comes the role of determination. You have to be determined to finish things well, you have to stick there, keep doing, iterating, convincing yourself to keep going until you reach the point where you find things exceptionaly well.

To be determined to finish things well is the thought, poping into my mind since last few days.

pyar agar hai mujhse pyar jata ke naach..

I have always lived life the way I wanted. I listen to people. I speak less. I do more. I suck. But this is how I live my life. If you look at my life, it may not look very interesting from outside. But believe me, the fun of being Shree Kant is enormous. Right now I am sitting alone in a large room inside a huge chair, writing this, working on the User Interface of Iddhis, listening to a very famous, old, sad song by Lata Mangeshkar, which literally says that everything gets broken, be it a glass or a heart.

I have just came back from Delhi, meeting with an Investor along with Paras. Learned a lesson of life in last couple of days. As I have said earlier, I kind of peeled off another layer of myself.

I have never yelled on any stranger in my whole life. It’s not that I am so much nice but it’s something that I don’t have courage to do. Yelling, fighting, crying are I think very important part of life and should have some existence in our life.

No one other than a Hacker would understand what is a Hacker. It’s just that. Whatever you say about it, I believe this, I just believe it more than anything else. I really liked this phrase ‘Been there, done that’. If you haven’t been there and done that, just don’t speak about that. It’s as simple as that.

Being Hacker is a state of mind, where you disconnect yourself with everything unnecessary to your life. It’s like stopping all those ‘services’ which work in background and consume lots of resources. Disconnect is the word. Like pulling off the plug. Don’t wait, just pull it off. The sooner you do it, the better it is for you.

If you don’t need something almost immediately, just don’t take it.

Agreement means converting the ‘feel’ of being ‘agreed’ into an ‘action’. But being ‘agreed’ on something should be a feeling and never be an act. So the point where you need to sit down and get agreed on something, you should realize that something is not right, something needs to be fixed.

If you want to see some plant grow, you give it water, you give it minerals and try to keep it safe. While you are doing it all, the plant would never know that you are doing it and should never do. It’s the beauty of love. And you do it because you like it, not because the plant wants you to do this.

Love is not an act, it’s a feeling. You need not to make the person you love realize that you love, the moment you do that, love vanishes. Startups are like love affair. It has the pain of love, pain of separation, as some has said, ‘ye ishq nahi aasan, bas itna samjh lije, ik aag ka dariya hai, aur doob ke jaana hai’, stands 100% true for startups as well. In fact, any thing written about love is 100% true for startup, just replace the word love with startup and you are done. Try it, it’s that true.

In this post I have not made one point, but lots of disconnected point. Just bear with me.

Last night, we went out to have something for dinner. These days we eat out daily for the reason we are moving out from bikaner and we don’t have anything left in our own kitchen. So it’s an interesting observation. I see people coming to restaurant mostly with their families. It’s an occasion for them, while for us its a requirement. Things change when they become requirements.

While coming back I had discussion with my friend about restaurants and how they work. Amazingly no restaurant in Bikaner does anything extra ordinary. I don’t know why no innovation happens anywhere. This is kind of a fundamental problem here in this part of country. Everything starts with a business and revolves around it. Think of restaurant, which isn’t about business. Having food is the most sacred thing to do. Why make it so commercial. All restaurants are run for profit. How nice it would be if they become place to share thoughts, create ideas, and spend great time with someone you like. Restaurant chains, are the worst thing happened to this world. They become pure business.

I don’t know where this idea came into my mind but its quite interesting, restaurants and cafe should be run by women. This is something that they can done greatly. Because women can’t think of business in food. It’s their natural instinct. Women has been feeding the mankind ever since. The problem is that everything starts with business and that actually kills all essence of anything.

Café’s are awesome. Ask me how to bring life to a dead city, and answer is open a great Cafe at the heart of city and it will start changing the youth of city. Ideas develop when we share them, when we talk about them and cafe’s are the best place for them. An ideal cafe would be run by a great lady who herself is a great thinker and who loves her work, it should be at an easily accessible place in the city with enough silence around, it should be well maintained, with great coffee, tea, music, air conditioned and wifi. To start something like this you have to stop thinking about business. You are bringing a revolution. This isn’t just about tea or coffee its about making a new culture. Its about bringing life to a dead city. Its such a noble cause.

Café’s are more important in a small city than in a large city. Because small cities have very few places where people can actually talk freely. It’s so exciting to imagine a small city with a nice cafe run by a lady ,full of life. The more I think about it the more fascinated I become about it. Paul Graham talks about cities and what they say, in his essay, that is so true. Every city says something, and how that happens? It happens by history, people. And we are the people, we can bring some good thing to our city.

After initial thoughts about cafe’s and how useful they can be, and how important it is to be run by women, I thought of brining this in my own city. I am from phalodi, a small town in the heart of Thar Desert. And we have some great culture there. But with time things have changed, and for things to go in a better way people from city need to think.We need cafe now there. And I want my mom to do this. My mom is the best person I have ever met. Full of ideas. She is the one who can bring this on. This sounds like crazy. But I am going to tell her to do this. For the sake of her city. And the name of the cafe would be ‘Indira’s'  Ofcourse on her own name.

However it goes, I think every city should have its own cafe. Think about it.