Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Today I bribed my way in India.Alltop.Com. An awesome achievement I must say considering that they list only the best of the best. Off the 100 odd resources there, notable inclusions are Gurcharan Das, John Elliot, apart from regular ones like pluggdIn, Mutiny.in, WebYantra etc.

And I guess its about time I wrote about Alltop.

WhatIs Alltop?

Started by Guy Kawasaki (former Apple Fellow and author Art of the Start, bio), Alltop aggregates resources from mass niches around the world and displays them on one page. So they have innovation.alltop.com, cricket.alltop.com, marketing.alltop.com and a lot of other mass niche categories (complete list is on their homepage). They like to call themselves a magazine rack (I tend to disagree though).

Infact, just yesterday Dan Roam (Art of visual Thinking and author The Back of Napkin), posted his interpretation on Alltop here. He says that Alltop does the filtering for you by using human editors and recommendations (as compared to Google where all results are available in raw formats and you are left with tedious job of sifting for content you want to see). More details on Guy’s blog here.

So how does it help?

If you are a cricket fan and are looking for cricket related blogs and news listing, rather than using a Google search, you can head on to Cricket.Alltop and browse what real people are talking about cricket. Instead of using a feed reader and subscribing to 100 feeds on cricket, all you need is to point to a browser and you will have all the top news and websites on cricket on one place.

In effect Alltop helps you identify the content that you might be interested in and would reduce the search time and cost (read my earlier post on search cost here) for you.

For a blogger, Alltop becomes a platform where the blogger will find audience that he wants to target. For example if I write about entrepreneurship, I want VCs, startups, prospective hires to read my blog rather than any other netizen. On Alltop, as a publisher I am sure I would reach the right people.

Overall, the website is usable and solves a problem for both readers and publishers

More on Information and Search

As it is very commonly said, if the information is important for me, it will find me. From blogs I read to people I interact with to my contacts, I would most probably have contacts who know me well enough to pass on information of my liking to me. Alltop does the same thing. It becomes my default information source. However some tweaking needs to be done to become the complete information source but I am sure team Alltop are working towards refining this already.

What else is noticeable about Alltop?

1. Appeal to Ego: Alltop massages your ego. Take me for an example. I used to use Alltop to find content when I was bored. But moment they added me, I am now an Alltop evangelist. I am spreading word about it. And if you can get early adopters as evangelists, nothing like it.
2. Viral Effect: Just because it massages your ego and says that you are amongst the best, you start spreading the word. You post about it on your blog, you update on twitter and you talk to your friends about it.

Questions to team Alltop

1. Can one blog be a part of two sections? Say India and Entrepreneurship? Yes you can be a part of two or more. (Tip: Gautam Ghosh is part of three (HR, Careers and India)
   
2. How about further dividing categories? Something like Marketing.India.Alltop?
3. Are there plans of creating an iGoogle like website where people sign up and see only the feeds that they want to see? (Alltop already does this but using AJAX and cookies). Will this is be too far from the Alltop idea?
4. What is the business model? Where would alltop make money from? Inline advertisements? (there was some mention of selling ads but dont have the link. Can someone give the link)?
5. UPDATE: How about a social network for people features on alltop? These are the ones that are known to have a better than average opinion on things. If these guys got together, I am sure interesting things would come out of it.

Ideas in this post

1. Find an offering that caters to mass-niche.
2. Reduce the search cost for your target audience.
3. Let the users spread the word themselves. Make them evangelists rather than you doing the hard work.

What do you think of Alltop? Do you find it useful? And please note that my opinions might be colored :)

I have been blogging for quite some time now (infact I started writing in 2004) and tons of people have asked me this question. I think its about time I answered this one honestly. On a public forum.

So why do I blog?

1. Blogging is thinking out loud. When I write/blog, I actually put pen to paper and I think before I dare make my thoughts public. And hence when I write, it helps me think. Helps in ideating.
2. Blogging helps create an archive of thoughts. I have always made notes on notebooks of all shapes and sizes. A blog gives me a permanent place to archive them. I can now look at what I was thinking, what I was like way back in 2004 etc.
3. Blogging helps me connect to more people. Since the web is permanent, anyone, anywhere in the world can read my blog (with a bit of luck obviously) and can give me feedback on what I am thinking. This is simply impossible in a real world. My immediate circle of friends can only be limited and there is no guarantee that they would be interested in what I am saying.
4. Blogging Opens up minds. Before I was blogging, I was an arrogant and a mediocre person who lived in his own self created world. I thought I knew everything and I was above all. Moment I started writing, I realized that I need to learn a lot more and there are more people who can teach me things. I am still a self-claimed mediocre but no longer an arrogant one.
5. Blogging is fun. As simple as that. :)

I am often asked why do I copy-paste my posts on plugdd.in, venturewoods.org, mutiny.in etc. Again the answer remains the same.

1. Platforms like these give me a larger audience to express my thoughts to and more importantly get feedback from.
2. Writing is about reaching out and meeting more people. Independently, I can never reach the kind of audience these platforms can give me (and have given me).
3. Finally It is also about connecting to the people who share the same ethos and ideas. Wonderful things can happen when people talk. And blogging at these platform enables conversations.

In one line, blogging for me is that constant pursuit of learning and exploration. Why do YOU blog? Is it money? fame? connections? timepass? what?

In one of my email conversations on mental masturbation with a very interesting gentleman, he said

I call my approach - meditating about an issue,
as opposed to thinking about an issue.
Thinking requires knowledge and a time target,
meditation does not require either.
But meditation enables one to come up with unique solutions that thinking cannot.

I absolutely loved the idea. Thinking is about coming up with perspectives on a certain topic from your previous knowledge or acquired knowledge within a time frame and with specific results as the targets.

Meditation on the other hand is contemplating what can be. Meditation is breaking all the conventions. Its like being virgin. Its a fresh start - all the time. When you are meditating you are no longer logical and pragmatic. You become evolved in the way you think. You go beyond the obvious.

What do you do? Think? Meditate? Personally, I think I think and I need to meditate more.

Other 1v1s
- 1v1: Whether vs When
- Analyze vs Act
- 1v1: Excellence vs Mediocrity
- 1v1: Expert vs Employee
- 1v1: Popular vs Pertinent

Vivek posted a very interesting post on Venturewoods and here is my comment on the same.

Hi,

This post could be true for me I could change the location to Mumbai.

Comments by other people have been really interesting and here are my 2 cents on the same.

1. How do you balance the pay packet for a potential employee? Please give two scenarios - (a) You are self funded. (b) You are financially backed by an angel or a VC.
A: If I was self funded I would not have a lot of money to give away. I would be forced to look at things like equity or just share in profits. If it was a VC funded, I would have made adjustments for employee costs in my business plan and hence I would have money. Also my understanding tells me that most VC funded startups HAVE a lot of money.

2. Would you consider the prior experience of a candidate from a different domain, or would you simply consider him/her to be a fresher from your company’s perspective?
A: Tough one. I think depends on what person brings to the table. He could bring his experience, his learnings, his background, his perspective, his contacts, even things as intangible as his enthusiasm. If he brings something that I desire, I will make sure I will recruit him.

Talking about fresher or experienced, in a startup personally I dont think I need to have that kind of categorization for people. I want people for skills, not for showing off. Moment I start talking like that I become a lazy, slow moving company.

3. What kind of commitment would you expect from the new hire? What kind of notice periods/bonds would you look at?
A: No notice period. No bonds. Commitment - believe in the idea and evangelize that.

4. What are the legal aspects which you would look into before hiring someone? Would you do extensive background check on the candidate or rely on references or just hire him/her for what value they can bring in?
A: I would want to hire without checks. For me checks waste a lot of time and for a startup, time to market is really crucial. Once we start working, we can always figure out in due course if the person was appropriate or not. And if at a later stage, he is found inappropriate, we can easily part ways.

5. Would you have an age criteria to hire? In other words would you believe that a 21 year old could be as valuable as a 40 year old?
A: No age criteria. Yes a 21 year old can be very valuable. How? You just asked 5 questions that a 40 year old would have never asked. And when you are 21, you are not scared to ask those questions. And thats a huge things to have. There are more areas like understanding of the market from a teenager’s perspective, contacts with more fresh minds and top of everything else enthusiasm and confidence that young people have.

Ok. Focus 2.0. From now on I am only talking about Entrepreneurship, Starting Up, Innovations, Ideas, Communication, Technology .. contd ..

Social Media, Marketing, Digital World, Advertising, Business, Investing, Photography, Gadgets, Geekdom, Travel, Books, India .. contd ..

Customers, Engagement, Activation, Gaming, Politics, Education, Media. And I will try adding to that list.

P.S.: Messages on Twitter (1, 2, 3).
P.P.S.: I am serious.

Next in the 1v1 series. Whether vs When.

Today I will talk about Whether and When. Most of the times when you want to take a decision, there is often a debate between whether and when. You argue on things like “Whether you will do or not”, “When will you do it” etc..

I think the use of these words greatly affects the decision.

The WHETHER questions by its very nature brings along uncertainty and with it a possibility of not doing it. You might do it. You might not. You will ask more people about it. You will seek more approval for the idea. And in the end you might or might not do it.

Moment you start asking WHEN question, the whole paradigm changes. You have already made the decision. You are going to do it. If not now, later. But you will do it. And this decision makes all the difference.

What do you think you will choose when making decisions? Whether or When?

A friend emailed me following

The problem with the progressing world and the ever-evolving generations of human is the overwhelming assortment of information, thoughts and ideas thrown around with little care leaving many dumbfounded and many others thinking and analyzing those bits that came their way. While there are some who are simply left confused because they don’t know what exactly to absorb and what to ignore and worst still how to interpret and how to infuse it with their understanding of the world and life. Left behind as a result are ambiguous thoughts and confounded souls living unfocused lives with hazy dreams. As they say “ignorance is bliss” !

An after-thought:
Meet the new generation… aware and confused. Just as we were as kids and now as youth… just as our parents were at the prime of their life… the information burden just keep on increasing with the passing decades… as the generation passes by, there is more to know and discuss with ever-increasing pressure to know…

Meet the kids of today… overwhelmed with the burden of knowledge… burden imposed by us… accepted by them… given the increased level of their curosity… given the easy access to information sources. With the progressing world, every time we pass on a larger information dump onto our future generations causing them to think and grow much faster than their predecessors.

And I wonder, if this more knowledgeable generation will be better prepared to face the world out there and lead an enriched life or will it just lead to the loss of innocence much earlier than required without helping them to grow into better humans?!!

Here is my reply.

There is only one peril. With the democratization of information and things available at finger tips, everyone is expressing themselves. Most people are not really thinking. They are just paddling what others have said. And thus the noise increase. Its the classic battle between signal and noise and currently there is a lots and lot of noise around.

And this noise adds to ignorance. People think its enlightenment but it truly is ignorance.

As far as the next generation of India goes, thing is that burden is only expected. Darwin once said and I totally agree that the fittest survive. If you are not fit enough, if you are not knowledgeable enough, if you are not intelligent enough, you would be in the lowest rung of the pecking order and that is not an interesting place to be. Once you are there, you loose everything that a human being wants from life - authority, power, food, sex, control and other things like that.

Any feedback?