Tagged: Startup RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 1:54 pm on March 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Link, LinkBunch, MumbaiTwit, Startup, ,   

    Check Out My Friend Aalaap Ghag’s Really Cool Link Aggregator LinkBunch 

    Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!

    Quick Summary: LinkBunch is a nifty new service that allows you to bunch multiple long links into one tiny link.

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    Over the last few months, I have met many interesting people through Twitter, and the two @MumbaiTwit tweetups that I organized (1 and 2) and I’m amazed by some of the cool things these people are doing. Take Aaalap Ghag (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter), as an example. Aaalap, a developer at Web 18, is also India’s most prolific Twitter user (3400+ tweets!) and the creator of the really cool link aggregator LinkBunch.

    LinkBunch

    LinkBunch is a nifty new service that allows you to bunch multiple long links into one tiny link like http://linkbun.ch/3ox (which is a bunch of all my blog, feed and social network profile links). You can then share the link over IM, Twitter, email or even a mobile phone SMS. When the recipient clicks on the LinkBunch link, it opens up into a page that contains all the links that you have put in the bunch. They can then open one link at a time or all the links, all at once.

    LinkBunch Gaurav Mishra Profile

    Here are a few ways in which people are using LinkBunch –

    - Bunch all your blog, feed and social network profile links into one tiny link (here’s mine).

    - Bunch of all your open tabs in the browser using the LinkBunch Firefox extension.

    - Bunch all the links in a directory into one tiny link. For instance, I have bunched all the links from my directory of social media agencies in India into a LinkBunch.

    As of now, there isn’t a way to edit bunches, but Aalaap is working on a user account based system that will let you easily manage all your created bunches, favorite bunches, friend’s bunches etc.

    LinkBunch has an active official blog, a GetSatisfaction based support forum, and an easy-to-use API.

    LinkBunch has been getting a lot of traction on technology blogs and even mainstream media and I can see it becoming a really popular service very soon.

    Also see: CNet’s Webware, Mumbai Mirror, Download Squad, Lifehacker and more.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:08 pm on January 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Bell-Curve, , , Idea-Cluster, Influence-Curve, Insight, , , , Startup, Trend, ,   

    Big Insight for Startups: Monetize the Idea Cluster Influence Curve 

    Quick Summary: Businesses based on the influence curve of an idea cluster are likely to be more robust and less risky than businesses based on the influence curve of one idea.

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    Idea Cluster Influence Curve

    Ideas have a bell-shaped influence curve. Over time, ideas gain influence, reach a peak influence at a point in time and decline in influence thereafter. If your business is based on an idea, like all businesses are, your business is limited by the idea’s influence curve. To build a successful business, you would like to identify an idea early, build competence/ credibility before others during the growth phase, make money at peak influence, and exit/ diversify during the decline phase.

    Different ideas have different influence curves. You can think of an influence curve in terms of height (peak influence), gradient (rate of acceptance) and width (life of idea). To build a successful business, you would like to identify an idea that has a fast rate of acceptance, a high peak influence, and a long life.

    The bad news is that only a few ideas fit that description. Most ideas have a slow rate of acceptance, or a shallow peak influence, or a short life. What’s worse, it’s often not possible to identify which ideas will become really influential. That’s the reason why businesses built around one narrow idea are inherently risky, with high failure rates.

    The good news is that ideas evolve in interrelated clusters, with independent but overlapping influence curves. Each idea in a cluster has a separate influence curve, with a separate starting point, rate of acceptance, peak influence and life. However, influence curves in an idea cluster start off in waves, feed off each other and and build towards the tipping points for the really big ideas. What’s more, competence/ credibility built around one idea often results in, and is often a prerequisite for, competence/ credibility in other ideas in the cluster.

    The big insight is that the influence curves of individual ideas in an idea cluster add up to the influence curve of the idea cluster itself. The influence curve of the idea cluster has a sharper gradient (faster rate of acceptance), a higher peak influence, and a longer life than the individual influence curves in the idea cluster. Therefore, businesses based on the influence curve of an idea cluster are likely to be more robust and less risky than businesses based on the influence curve of one idea.

    The way to operationalize this insight is to identify and track all the ideas/ trends that are related to the core idea your business is built upon. As you track ideas/ trends over time, you’ll be able to visualize the influence curves of independent ideas. Over time, you’ll start seeing new linkages between these ideas, new intersections between their influence curves, so that you can almost visualize the idea cluster influence curve in your mind. You may decide to stay focused on one narrow idea — because of skill set, resource or market potential limitations — but visualizing the idea cluster influence curve will enable you to spot tipping points and seed new businesses before your competition.

    In the next post, I’ll use the idea cluster influence curve model to study the social media space. Stay tuned.

     

    • Ranjan 1:37 pm on January 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      The importance of an idea cluster is interesting. So is it better to talk about your idea rather than keep it close and under wraps? So that you build an idea cluster.

      On an unrelated issue, I was thinking whether there’ll be social media freelancers in India who use Digg, StumbleUpon, etc to build brands. Something like brand managers but freelancers! How can they quote for their services? No. of Orkut/Facebook friends??

    • Gaurav 4:00 pm on January 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Ranjan: Yes, it’s important to share your ideas because ideas have a life, they age, then die. So Ideas in bank a/c > Ideas in practice > Ideas on paper > Ideas in the head.

      I don’t think idea clusters evolve because one person, or a few people, talk about their ideas. They evolve because needs and tools come together in the environment at a particular point in time.

      Don’t you think it’s a big ask for social media freelancers in India to build brands using Digg/ StumbleUpon? The Internet itself is niche in India, social media is even more niche, and building brands requires a broader base.

      Here are a few thoughts on what social media can do for brands/ marketers: social media idea cluster influence curve.

    • Rajesh 12:27 am on January 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav,

      Interesting read.

      Any real examples to elaborate idea cluster. A business may start with ‘an’ idea (usually is more than just ‘one’) but then evolution is an ongoing process where a- the business evolves and b – the environment itself is dynamic.

      Cheers.

      Rajesh

    • ram 10:47 am on February 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      examples?

      i can think of itc…indian tobacco corporation….who initially was only into…tobacco products manufacturing…but since many other tobacco products evolved over the time…and the itc facing bans from various provinces…it realised it cannot survived on only one idea….hence the idea cluster…and itc…now own ..hotels,food products…and a lot more…it has diversified!
      hey pls lemme know if this example is correct…im a 19 yr old…n dis is the only example i cud think of…
      corrections welcomed!

    • Gordon R. Vaughan 9:20 am on February 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Could you give some examples? I’m thinking of one, if I’m understanding you correctly: invest in San Francisco retail, real estate, banking and so on rather than in gold panning itself (which mostly boomed just a few years).

      Isn’t that what Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker all did that gave them the $$$ to be able to then go into railroading?

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