Tag: Apple

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Learning by Proxy

Learning by Proxy | Anger

I was watching the formula one race last weekend; it was a useless procession of cars. That sport has never been as boring as it is not. Despite having a commanding lead and having won by a huge margin, the victor could not even feign happiness for the others. Sports is not about enmity but an adversarial contest. I see this not only in Formula one but also in several other sports. Money has ruined sports!

In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 as I was waiting at home for my semester to begin I used to endlessly watch CNN. There was an ad that would repeatedly play for the promotion of the 2002 Winter Olympics. I remembered it and wanted to share it with you.

You are my opponent, but not my enemy,

for your resistance gives me strength.

Your will gives me courage.

Your spirit ennobles me.

And, although I aim to defeat you, should I succeed,

I will not humiliate you, instead, I will honour you.

For without you, I am a lesser man.

Watch it here.

It should be true not just in sports, but also politics, business and every other sphere that we engage with one another in.

Where has that spirit gone?

Anger

When a lot of energy is suddenly released in the Earth’s atmosphere, the release of energy causes a shockwave that pushes the air molecules. The shockwave accelerates past sonic speed. As this happens it causes all the water vapour around it to condense, which we see as the mushroom-shaped cloud. It is true not just for nuclear explosions; but for all explosions of high magnitude. 

Most recently, we saw this in Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion became an emblem of governmental incompetence. To compound matters, the people saw the French President Emanuel Macron at the site of the devastation rather than the Lebanese Prime Minister. Lebanon has since been rocked by protests. Anger spewed out onto the streets; the government capitulated. 

The explosion has fueled outrage and protests against top political leaders and led to the resignation of the government Monday. The Cabinet is now in a caretaker capacity.

Parliament is due to discuss whether to extend the state of emergency in Beirut declared August 5 by the government before it resigned. The law requires parliamentary approval if the state of emergency lasts more than a week.

Source: Indian Express

Almost 6500 km south of Beirut, deep in the Indian Ocean, a Japanese vessel, the Wakashio which was en-route to South America, beached up and spilt out. Not crude oil but fuel oil which is the lowest grade of oil. In a place known for its bio-diversity, this has unleashed an environmental disaster. 

These were the two UNESCO Ramsar Protected sites of Blue Bay Marine Park, Pointe D’Esny Mangrove Forests, as well as the nature preserve of Ile aux Aigrettes that contained some of the rarest species in the country, such as Mauritius’ last remaining low lying ebony forests, not found on any other location on the island. 

[…]

Small organisms readily absorb an array of chemicals from spilt Heavy Fuel Oil. Once inside an organism’s tissues, when some of these chemicals interact with ultra-violet (UV) rays of sunlight, energy is released from the chemicals that cause damaging chemical reactions. These reactions lead to tissue death, with very small organisms falling apart. 

[…]

Whilst the entire world hopes for the best recovery of this critical habitat, it is important to start preparing for the worst. This is at least the lesson taught to the entire world from Covid-19, and from Heavy Fuel Oil spills around the world that continue to leak their deadly poison decades later.

Source: Forbes

The article referenced above has some devastating analysis of what the oil spill means for the region and its bio-diversity. But disbelief is fast turning into anger at Mauritius.

Thousands of volunteers pulled all-nighters gathering plastic bottles and skimming oil into barrels, while salons donated hair and children collected straw from fields to help soak up the oil. Mauritians abroad began social media campaigns to raise awareness, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were collected on fund-raising platforms.

[…]

“The reefs protect us from waves, and the seagrass belts and the mangrove play a critical role in absorbing carbon dioxide,” he said. With their roots covered in oil now, he said, “It’s a tragic story, which brings sorrow and anger.”

Source: New York Times

If you are interested in understanding the extent of the damage caused, I would recommend reading the article linked above.

Moving back 8700 Kms north, in the country of Belarus Presidential elections just took place. Belarus has had the same president since 1994. He won again by a landslide – 80% – according to “official results”. The opposition candidate left the country as soon as the results were announced. She vowed to protest peacefully against the results. 

The protests grew and the authorities inspired by the USA – sent the police out. Then inspired by China – over a 1000 protester were detained. This only made the protestors angrier.

Belarusian authorities have released about 1,000 people detained amid demonstrations contesting the results of the presidential election, in an attempt to assuage public anger against a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests.

Source: Tribune

and then…

President Putin is offering help. Sending in the Russian army!

In the neighbourhood, protests have been tearing through Bulgaria. The people, tired of corruption, have been out on the streets seeking a constitutional overhaul. But they want it done right!

Three-times premier Borissov promised to resign if lawmakers approved his call for the election of a grand national assembly tasked with voting on a new constitution that should improve the efficiency of the much-criticised judiciary among other changes.

But protesters, as well as opposition, left- and right-wing parties who support them, dismissed the proposal as a ploy by Borissov, who has dominated Bulgarian politics since 2009, to win time and stay in power.

Source: Reuters

Meanwhile, a place that is known for its cool beaches, drugs and sex – Thailand is seeing large protests. Like most other countries run by right-wing leaders, Thailand has not taken to dissidents too well. They have been putting them down with an iron fist.

At least 10,000 protesters, many first-time participants in political rallies, gathered in Bangkok on Sunday, demanding change in a country where military tanks have tended to shape politics more than the ballot box has.

[…]

A state of emergency instituted because of the coronavirus made the demonstration technically illegal, and every participant could have been arrested simply for showing up. The police stood by, however, some idling behind a Mercedes-Benz showroom.

Source: New York Times

Under normal circumstances, these incidents would not have resulted in such a sudden and intense anger. The current economic circumstances, combined with the fear and uncertainty sowed by a virus that we are struggling to fight has left very little patience in people to suffer foolishness silently. 

America has similarly been roiled in protests over Black Lives Matters for the last few months. Hong Kong over its sovereignty. India over the death of an actor – yes, we roll like that.

The Nuclear Reactor and the Nuclear Bomb are the same things in theory. The former operates in the narrow range of self-sustenance while the other goes far beyond. A societal equivalent would be a protest and a revolution. Will these protests go far beyond self-sustenance?

Epic Battle

A couple of editions ago, I had written about the antitrust hearing against the four large Tech companies in the US. App developers listed on the App Store dislike paying Apple the 30% commission that it takes. Especially, if the app developers are large companies. 

Trying to take advantage of the current situation [the hearings], Epic Games, one of the largest gaming companies in the world played with fire, using their most popular game – Fortnite. To turn the discussion into one of the consumers forced to pay more, Fortnite started offering its ‘V-Bucks’ at a discounted price on the app if the user picked a payment gateway outside the Apple eco-system. A clear violation of Apple policy, which they were aware of. Apple promptly removed the game from the store and Epic Games filed an antitrust case in the court. Google did the same citing the same violation.

Apple will terminate Epic’s inclusion in the Apple Developer Program, a membership that’s necessary to distribute apps on iOS devices or use Apple developer tools, if the company does not “cure your breaches” to the agreement within two weeks, according to a letter from Apple that was shared by Epic. Epic won’t be able to notarize Mac apps either, a process that could make installing Epic’s software more difficult or block it altogether. Apple requires that all apps are notarized before they can be run on newer versions of macOS, even if they’re distributed outside the App Store.

Source: Verge

Apple has decided to go thermonuclear with this one and ensure that Epic is not using this situation to milk more media scrutiny into this. Epic is no saint here. They pay the same 30% to Nintendo and other console makers – which they argue is a fair price. It is just that the income that they get from Apple users is far more. It would heavily buttress their bottom line if Apple is forced to reduce the commission. They are not going to be selling at a discount if Apple were to reduce their fee; they would just put it in their wallet.

In the anti-trust case, Epic Games is arguing that they should be allowed to run their own app store.

Sleight of Hand

When a magician tries to attract your attention towards a hand, you need to watch the other one.

Last year ended with protests disrupting life in Delhi. The government wanted to implement the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. The protests lasted 101 days till the lockdown came into effect on the 24th March this year. Let alone that fact that nobody seems to be concerned with CAA anymore, 50 of the protestors who were at the Shaheen Bagh joined the BJP this week!

Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta said over 100 people from the community had joined the party as they support the Prime Minister’s effort to reach out to every section of society and end triple talaq: “These people were influenced by BJP’s effort to reach out to everyone, and not use them as a vote bank. Today’s event shows that Muslims’ faith in the party has increased.”

Source: Indian Express

If Shaheen Bagh was the smokescreen, what was being hidden?

Flying High

I have often cited Swiggy as an example of how financially fraught the idea of scaling a people dependant business can be. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that India would be one of the first countries in the world to deploy drone fleets for delivery! 

A couple of years ago, India announced its first drone policy and there is a second version in the works. The first drone policy had something called the Digital Sky Platform which would be able to track every drone in the Indian sky. All drones would need to register on this platform before taking flight.

On August 15, when India celebrated its 74th Independence Day, the country’s drone policy silently took a giant leap. Now, over 70% of India’s landmass of 3.28 Mn sq Km is open for drones to operate. Under the Digital Sky plan, companies can now get single-window clearance for drones which comply with India’s ‘no permission, no take-off’ (NPNT) protocol to operate in areas demarcated as green and yellow zones.

Source: Inc42

As mentioned earlier, for many of the hyperlocal delivery startups which are reeling under the blow that COVID has delivered this is a godsend. They are not wasting a moment. Dunzo was the first one to jump on the bandwagon.

Dunzo, alongside Alternative Global India (AGI), claimed to have started a drone delivery trial last month. After Dunzo, Bengaluru-based B2B e-commerce startup ShopX has now collaborated with aerospace and robotics company Omnipresent, to kickstart its last-mile drone delivery trial from September 1.

Source: Inc42

For a country where according to statistics 19 Million have lost their jobs since April, this does not augur well. Over some time, this will cause further job losses for those who can ill-afford to lose their jobs.

Showing Love

What if someone professed a lot of love for you. Then took away your right to do what you liked and sent you to solitary confinement. Just the right metaphor to describe what we did to Jammu and Kashmir. After professing that the land was an integral part of India; we turned it into a Union Territory and cut off the Internet. Businesses suffered and startups that depended on the internet tried VPN and many other tricks before either moving out of the valley or giving up! Finally, the solitary confinement is over.

“High-speed mobile data services in the districts of Ganderbal (Kashmir) and Udhampur (Jammu) shall be restored forthwith, on a trial basis, while in rest of the districts, the Internet speed shall continue to be restricted to 2G only,” Principal Secretary (Home), Shaleen Kabra, said in an order. “While postpaid SIM cardholders shall be provided access to the Internet, these services shall not be made available on prepaid SIM cards unless verified as per norms applicable for post-paid connections,” the order added.

Source: Indian Express

There is a need to return normalcy to the Kashmir Valley and allow commerce to drive growth. This is the only thing that would cause the locals to strive for its continuity. If we play disruptors ourselves, we are playing right into the hands of the terrorists.

Silicon

A few weeks back, I had written about the investment being made by the US government to bring silicon fabrication back to the US. Given the strategic importance of chips and microprocessors in our electronics; the extent of its penetration in a variety of applications including defence; there is a need to safeguard it. The US is investing several Billion to create this capacity. 

India realises the same and is throwing open a challenge with prize money of USD 600,000.

In an official statement, Prasad said the challenge calls on innovators, startups and students to use microprocessors to develop various technology products. “This initiative is aimed at not only meeting India’s future requirements of strategic and industrial sectors but also has the potential to mitigate the issues of security, licensing, technology obsolescence and most crucially cutting dependency on imports.”

As part of the challenge, which will be conducted over 10 months, the government will offer financial support of INR 4.3 Cr at various stages of development of the hardware prototype. It will also support startups through an incubation programme.

Source: Inc42

A few years ago, I had met a group of Intel engineers who were seeking to start a company fabricating silicon in India. They told me, they would at least need USD 10 Million to get started. I told them to shift to the US, they did.

Also

Inflatable Scooter – It is important to reduce our ecological footprint, would an inflatable scooter be the way?

Speaking of smokescreen earlier, do you know what a real smokescreen looked like?

Slippers made out of Algae

Signing off…

Categories
Entrepreneurship

The evolution of IoT

There has been a lot of work that has gone into IoT devices and I often find startups which pitch consumer facing IoT solutions to me. Apart from the fact that there is zero differentiation and high reproducibility, my questions often hang around whether people feel the pain or not?

Do you ever WANT to switch off the fan using your smartphone but are unable to?

I get a lot of round about answers but nothing really convincing has ever been said.

My next question surrounds implementation. The need to find and bring in an electrician in order to install any of these devices means the friction is just too high.

 

If this then what?

I was reading a fascinating blog by Ben Evans over the weekend where he postulates that the smart home will start with smart devices like your fridge and TV and so on. In fact we are already seeing many of these in use across homes. The trouble – how do you interface with them? Voice based devices like Alexa might be the answer.

As the behaviour sets in, you may just WANT to tell Alexa to switch off the lights.

I am extremely skeptical about this, as I explained in detail here. Essentially, I think this mischaracterises the nature of the breakthroughs that machine learning has given us in voice recognition: we can now transcribe audio to text, and we can turn text into a structured query, but have no scalable way to be able to answer more and more kinds of such structured queries. ML means we can use voice to fill in dialogue boxes, but the dialogue boxes still need to be created, one at a time, by a programmer in a cubicle somewhere. That is, voice is an IVR – a tree. We can now match a spoken, natural language request to the right branch on the tree perfectly, but we have no way to add more branches except by writing them one at a time by hand. If Alexa or Siri or Google Assistant can give you cricket scores but not rugby, it’s because someone wrote the cricket score module, by hand, but hasn’t written a rugby score module yet.

Worse, even if you do create hundreds or thousands of such queries (which Amazon is trying to do with Alexa Skills), you haven’t solved the problem, since there is no way for the user to know what they can ask, nor remember what skills Alexa does and does not have. The ideal number of skills for such a system is either 3 or infinity, but not 50 or 5000.

This means voice can work very well in narrow domains where you know what people might ask and, crucially, where the user knows what they can and cannot ask, but it does not work if you place it in a general context. That, I turn, means I see these devices as, well, accessories. They cannot replace a smartphone, tablet or PC as your primary device.

This has quite possibly been the undoing of the general purpose smart assistant that Apple wanted Siri to be. While at the same time might be the impetus for creating a device that can do very predictable things. If you are doing anything in the area of IoT, I would advice this as mandatory reading.

 

My thoughts

The more I think about it, the more it feels like the IoT revolution will actually start out from TV, Fridge, Microwave Oven, Etc. The things that we are used to having around at our homes already and are behaviourally more likely to buy. As these devices get connected and the habit of controlling them through voice becomes more natural to us, we will then think about moving to smart lights and so on which takes a bit more effort to setup. But the advantages of voice based interaction would far outweigh the friction of setting up the smart power plug.

This transition will be years in the making. Because we do not tend to purchase a fridge, a TV or a microwave every other year, we buy them every 5 or even 10 years!

For a startup, consumer IoT does not look like the right place to be at this point in time. Many of them are just too early to the market with the wrong product!

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Certainty

In life the things that you do depend on the degree of certainty.

A few days back Salma mailed this image and asked me which company seems to have the best revenue split.

The instinctive answer was to say – Microsoft. They seem to the most diversified. They are not dependent on any one stream of revenue for their survival. Facebook seems the most skewed; If anything was to disrupt advertising altogether, their business would be in turmoil.

Yesterday, I was reading Zero to One by Peter Theil and he made a very pertinent point in there. If you had the opportunity to do something that you knew would not fail, would you put all of your efforts behind it or would you diversify and pursue multiple opportunities. Most successes are a result of determined people acting with belief and putting all of their efforts behind it to make it a success.

He defined the category of people as:

  • Definitely Optimistic – Is certain of a great future and works towards it
  • Definitely Pessimistic – Is certain of failure waiting around the corner and is always bracing for it
  • Indefinitely Optimistic – Is unsure of the future but thinks it will all work out fine
  • Indefinitely Pessimistic – Is unsure of the future but thinks there is a surprise waiting around the corner

Now using this categorisation when you look at the above graphs, the one thing that becomes clear is Facebook is Definitely Optimistic – They are certain about their plans and they think they know what is about to come and are ready for it.

At the same time Microsoft is a clear example of confusion. Given that it is an American company I would say that they are Indefinitely Optimistic. The graph is a clear representation of the fact that they do not know which segment is going to be their cash cow. They are doing everything and  hoping something will go on to become big. At the same time they lack the conviction to say which one and focus more on it. If you make a graph for Microsoft of the early 2000’s, I am sure it would not resemble this. Windows and Office were the flag bearers for Microsoft and they put all of their efforts behind it.

Google and Amazon still have a high skew towards one of their revenue channels because they are Definite about it. Apple looks diversified but a large portion of their services revenue is all thanks to the iPhone that their users use every day. If you look at it from that perspective in all the three cases almost three quarters of their revenue comes from one thing that they do very well.

As a startup it is even more important not to diversify into too many revenue streams since it is very hard to be great at too many things. Be great at one thing and expand that revenue stream as rapidly as you can. You may undertake support activities but a majority of your income will come out of one or two things you do really well. This is also referred to as Pareto Principle – 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause. In business 80% of the income comes from 20% of the clients

Would you put all the wood behind one sharp arrow or many blunt ones?

Categories
General Thinking

What would our grand children consider classics?

It is safe to say that; content is in a state of 911.

I find very few sources where I can get content, where a great deal of though and analysis has been put in. Interestingly, I find many more sources where I can get cat videos and snarky two liners. Truth be told, not too many people are reading thoughtfully written stuff.

Why?

Quantity is opposed to Quality

The advent of digital mediums has meant that it is possible for everyone to create content. If you wanted to write a piece like the one I am writing and distribute it in 1900, you needed a newspaper editor to feel that your article was going to be interesting to the readers. With blogs, today pretty much anyone is able to put out their thought for public consumption. But the problem is much worse that anyone being able to write a blog.

This is statistics that the IBM Watson team put out; In 1900 the content available to mankind was doubling roughly every 100 years. By 2020 it will double every 11 hours. This is insane. The amount of content that would be at our disposal is being estimated at 44 Zetabytes. All of us have limited time available to us and the amount of content at our disposal is fast accelerating.

The consequence of limited time at our disposal is limited attention span. We want content that can be consumed quickly and without extending too much effort. Reading a well thought out piece forces us to think and understand; this is not primed for fast consumption.

How many of us have read the Iliad or Plato? How many of us have seen the latest trending video?

When you think of content that can be consumed without much effort, video ends up on top of the charts. Youtube is making money hand over fist, not by accident. Over the next 20 years, ‘text’ is going to move to the lowest rungs as far as content format go. Video is already moving up and this trend will gather pace in the coming years with formats such as Vine finding more and more traction.

Read the responses to this one… People know.

 

Advertising – A Boon or a Bane?

The other thing that is simultaneously destroying content is the fact that most of the income for content comes out of advertising. This implies – firstly, you need to make sure people arrive at the content (click-bait headline); secondly, you need to make the content super easy to consume (so they keep coming back and/or spend the next century clicking though the rest of the stuff). The more time they spend on the site, higher are the odds that they will click on an ad, at least by mistake. Most of what qualifies for this in entertainment and not analysis.

Given a choice between an 8000 word essay on a subject which would take 20 minutes to consumer; and a sequence of 15 videos of guys getting hit in their nuts; which would garner me more clicks and therefore more advertising revenue? The choice for the content creators is clear.

Advertising as a business model has done everything to destroy the quality of content. Thanks Google. Thanks Facebook.

 

Thanks to all this Music has gone to dogs

Songs have been a means though which emotions and stories were communicated. What makes a song beautiful is the poetry and the metaphors, which make several interpretations possible. It automatically implies that you must give it time to grow on you, for the interpretations to set in and for the songs to get internalised.

With the lack of time and attention, musicians are forced to produce music that is catchy and will hook you up soon. This also means that most songs do not have a soul. Most songs use a particular word repeatedly to get you to like the song.

Count the number of time the word ‘Hello’ is used by Adele in her song ‘Hello’.

Taylor Swift is popular not because a lot of college girls sit around listening to her, although that may be true. She is popular because she makes an attempt to tell a story. At the end of the day a song will stay with you if it connects with your soul. The issue with most of the songs written today is that they have no shelf-life, they are meant to grab attention.

Often I go back and listen to some of the songs I had been listening to a couple of years back because of their popularity and I am genuinely ashamed that I had considered them good. If you do not understand what I am talking about, check this link.

The low shelf life means nobody wants to own any music. Hence Streaming.

Take a great song from 20 years ago, you can still enjoy it. Not the same with a song which is 3 years old.

 

Everything is about Entertainment

The proliferation of content and the ad economy has resulted in what can be best described as the attention economy. In fact this article beautifully lays out, how scarcity has evolved from food, to land, to labor, to information, and now to attention.

Consequentially, the only thing anybody is vying for is attention. News reporting is going down the drain. The world has a lot of real problems to deal with, inequality, poverty, terrorism, climate change, etc. but all the news is about things that will be entertaining.

Why?

Ads.

The news has been a part of the entertainment industry for a fairly long time now. Look at what praying at the alter of entertainment has brought us – Donald Trump might be nominated to fight for presidency.

 

If this trend were to persist, and I have no reason to believe it would not, 100 years from now the classics that our great grand children will be reading would be some shit Kim Kardashian wrote (Or worse shot in her bedroom)!

Categories
General Thinking

Apple showed me how it cares

Today, I had to transfer the contents on my old laptop to a new one. Fortunately both the laptops were Macs. About 5 years, back when all of my computing was still being done on windows; if such a situation had arisen, I would get a sinking feeling in my stomach because I was near certain to spend a good part of an entire day involved in the activity.

The typical work flow would involve the following:
Backing up all the existing files onto a drive (plus spring cleaning)
Install the OS (If it was not pre-installed)
Find and install all of the drivers the system requires
Setup all of the peripherals
Reconfigure all of the mails IDs and other such configurable things
Re-install all of the applications that you had
Copy the data back onto the system
Most importantly – Pray that it all works out as imagined!
I had developed a level of expertise in doing this, not because I used to buy a new system every now and then, but since Windows would never fail when it came to crashing. My last Windows laptop which I used must have been formatted 2 dozen times in 4 years.
So, safe to say, I was not really looking forward to learning this exercise with the Mac. In the past 3 years, I had never had any reason to screw around with the Operating System. The Mac just works!
Migration_Assistant
But I had to migrate my data to a new laptop since I had acquired a new Mac. Enter Migration Assistant. I had to backup my Mac using Time Machine and then just connect the new system to the backup and point the Application towards the correct backup. Voila! An hour later, I had my new Mac restored with all of the files, setting, applications, mailing configurations et al. It was ready to roll and took no effort from my part.
In fact today morning when I connected the system to the printer, the print window prompted me that some the print could not be processes because the printer software was missing. The system asked me if I wanted it to find and install the software and when I asked the system to go ahead, it went ahead found the drivers and installed it all by itself in a matter of seconds.
A month back I had to negotiate a Windows 8.1 system and the few moments that I did spend with it were not the happiest part of my day. It still made me jump through hoops finding various drivers and software needed to get the little things done.
This is a fine example of showing your customers, you care. Taking the pains out of a process that is known to inflict a lot of pain. The point here is not whether it is difficult or easy to device this, or if the Apple eco-system enables this to be done (Hardware + Software); the point is that someone cared enough to make it work. To take the friction out of the task so that I as the user could have a better experience.
When you care, it shows.
Categories
General Thinking

Why Apple is in a different league to Samsung

Apple launched the new iPhone 6 in larger screen sizes. The moment the launch event ended, the entire web was abuzz with jokes about how Apple had done exactly what Samsung had done years ago. There were comparative picture, which were circulating all over the web.

Samsung just could not withhold their exuberance! They even released a TV ad within a matter of days.

As the dust settles on the event one things is obvious; Apple can sell 10 times as many (profitable) phones as Samsung can ever manage to.

In fact it is high time that Samsung should shut up and watch how Apple sells its larger phone like gangbusters, at a price much higher than itself and in quantities that it can only dream of. Apple keeps serving them a masterclass in marketing and they keep ignoring it.

Well how does Apple do this time and time again? It is called community building.

Apple has a loyal community

Apple has a loyal community that supports it. Community building is a long drawn process and it takes years of hard work and commitment to build one. Apple probably has one of the biggest communities in the planet. The sales reflect that!

Why can’t Samsung build a community? In order to build a community, you need to stand for something. Take an argument between an Apple fanboy and a Samsung user, each will favour the brand that they own, but let us twist this a bit. Let us say the argument was between a Samsung user and a Nexus or Moto user, things get a little more muddled. A Samsung user might concede.

“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”

Samsung is the kind of company that does not have a plan. They have no stand. Look at what they are doing with their wearable line up. There is one running Tizen and one running Android. Standing for something?

They spend their considerable Billions on marketing talking about Apple products in the hope that people might buy their story about the inferiority of Apple products, instead of highlighting the strength of their own. I would suppose that it is a sad state of affairs, when you need to necessarily compare yourself with your biggest competitor to even be able to remotely highlight the superiority of your product.

Care and find customers who care

Build a product that 100 people can love, really love. That is the advice given by Sam Altman, the founder of Y Combinator to startups. When you get people to love your products, they go out and sell it for you. The effort that needs to be extended towards marketing is lower, they get more involved and are willing to forgive you when you make mistakes.

Well, Apple did that when they started; and, they never stopped. This is the precise reason why, they have a massive loyal user community who would stand up and even promote the brand whenever the need arises. Apple was the reason, the term fanboy came into existence. You may have heard Apple fanboy a lot, have you heard Samsung fanboy as much? Android fanboy perhaps, but not Samsung fanboy.

So how did Apple build this community of lovers? It has taken decades over which many of these pillars have been established.

The Pillars of Apple Community

Platform – Platforms make it possible for people to build on top of it. People perceive the benefits and shortcomings of a platform in the way that they treat them. By the time Steve Jobs came back in 1997 to Apple, he was clear that Apple had lost the platform war to Windows and acknowledged the same publicly. This did not necessarily mean that he had given up owning a platform. He knew that the Platform is the only place for a company to take a stand, all hardware could be copied. Even his entry back into Apple was facilitated by the platform that he sold to Apple.

OS X & iOS – The Mac ran the Mac OS till version 9 (Mac OS 9). OS X was actually the rebirth of NEXTStep as a the Mac OS. OS X was Steve Jobs bringing his cumulative work done at NEXT to Apple, which was launched in 2001. OS X was modified to iOS for mobile devices. Since both the operating systems are closed platforms which Apple owns, they have been able to provide a set of features that “Only Apple” can provide.

You can argue about the merits and demerits of iOS and Android or Windows, Linux and OS X; but one thing that you cannot take away is that these platforms tend to polarise people. This polarisation is what leads to love for a particular platform against others.

There are two quotes from Steve Jobs that comes to mind.

People who love their software build their own hardware ~ Alan Kay (which Steve often repeated)

63a            xin_3221004181127406166209

 

Picture of one of the first buyer of Windows 95                     Picture of one of the first buyer of iPhone

 

For me the only difference between the two pictures is how the software was being distributed. Apple kept Alan Kay’s quote in mind and decided to distribute their software through their own devices which is at the heart of spurring all of the profits. Microsoft stuck to making money by selling the software directly to customers and OEM.

The Second quote from Steve Jobs came at one of the ‘All Things D’ conferences. He said “ The  iPod exists and Apple is in that market place because these really big Japanese consumer electric companies, which created and owned the portable music player market; could not write the appropriate software. They couldn’t conceive of and implement the software and if you look at the iPod, it is just software, software in the iPod itself, software in the PC/Mac, software for storage in the cloud and it is in a beautiful box but it is just software.” He said Apple views itself as a software company.

But the secret he did not let out was that it was still all about the Platform.

Apple Stores – Apple has arguably redefined electronics retail in every way possible. Back when Apple was planning to start its retail stores many said that they would fail without question; sighting the Gateway retail failure. The one thing that nobody had foreseen was that for Apple, the store was going to serve as an alter of worship for all things Apple. Apple Stores were never going to fail because the ultimate goal of the Apple Store was not to sell products!

Apple did not open their retail stores to sell Apple products, although that was a welcome consequence. The Apple stores were meant to be, for the lack of a better way to put it, a university. You came to an Apple store and learnt about all things Apple. You got to try out all of the products that Apple had, get rid of your inhibitions and got really comfortable. Windows was the dominant platform of the time and there were several inhibitions against switching.

For those who loved Apple, there was a place they could drag their ambivalent friends to, to show them how great Apple was. They themselves could come every now and then to learn about the newest and coolest things Apple was doing. They could just come and hang out when they felt like they needed to be close to what they loved.

Second lesson in community building; once you give your users a reason to love you, give them a place they can meet others like themselves. Give them a place where they can get people who do not love you; to sow them why you are awesome.

Music – The next pillar which brought a much larger following was their entry into the music business. People love music. Music inspires a range of emotions, whatever your taste might be, there would be a particular type of music that you really love.

iPod was a device through which you could carry your music anywhere you wanted and enjoy it.  The biggest achievement of iPod was to put your entire music library in your pocket. This was a huge breakthrough at a time when most mp3 players could hold only a couple of dozen songs. But more than the device itself, it was the platform which enabled the device that won them legions of followers

Few realise, but Apple actually built an entire platform for their music strategy which is called iTunes. iTunes made it possible to manage all of the music you had, buy music that you loved and manage the device on which you loved to listen to your music. It was a platform that offered ‘Music’. Not only users, even musicians loved the platform, which resulted in many of the musicians loving and supporting the platform.

For several Millions of people, including myself, iPod was the first Apple device that they ever bought. I am pretty certain that for almost as many, including myself, iTunes was the first platform on which they ‘bought’ digital music.

People who really loved music, which is a large group of people, eventually started gravitating towards iTunes and the iPod which brought more and more people into Apple stores and made them discover all the other things that Apple did.

iTunes is viewed as just a software, an app and many have been recently complaining that it has got too bloated and heavy. True, iTunes was meant for music; Apple has been lazily using it for all kinds of content; movies, TV shows and even book distribution. They need to go back to the basics.

iTunes (music) sales seems to be declining though, I do not think Apple would give up on Music that easy. They will most certainly take another swipe at it, because it is important to ensure that the artists who are creating quality content are rewarded for their efforts.

Fitness – There are so many people across the world who are either into fitness or require help with fitness. Fitness affects people more personally than anything else. Apple is slowly courting this segment and seeking to make a dent. Most importantly it is a little difficult to look at fitness in a isolated way, it involves the food you eat, the doctor you consult, the activities that you perform, etc. Seems like an excellent segment to build a community around.

Apple has not done much in this area as yet. Though looking at the roster of people that it has been recruiting over the past year, it is very clear that they are focused on building a compelling offering in this area. You can rest assured that they will build a platform. The Apple Watch, Health app and such are just ingredients which are getting tested in the real world before they bring out a more well-rounded offering to the market.

 

At the end of the day, people love what you are doing when you care about something that they care about. If you care enough about something, it shows.

Look at what Google does, does it seem like it cares about its customers; well yes, but its customers are advertisers, not you and me.

As long as Apple cares about the things that it works on, there is nothing that can stop their community from growing.

The only way to compete is by caring more. Do you see any company caring more?

Categories
General Thinking

Trolling – Who Benefits?

Flipkart Vs Snapdeal

There is a lot of discussion currently about the BigBillionDay campaign which Flipkart had run. Flipkart decided to make a splash about certain sale/discount/offers being available on their website on the day in order to generate shopper interest and therefore sales. Given the numbers that the company has ben publishing, we can only conclude that the campaign was a glorious success. They seem to have pulled of a $100 Million worth of sales in 10 hours, which translates to Rs. 1 Crores worth of goods sold each minute. I am not sure what you think, but I think its a big deal!

On the day of this sale, Snapdeal and Amazon were quick to jump on Flipkart’s heels to effectively try and piss on their parade. Both companies by the looks of it seem to have effectively trolled Flipkart, but who got the mileage at the end of the day?

We live in a world where marketing is about eye-balls. It does not matter how those eye-balls arrive. Look at Buzzfeed; crap journalism, but who cares?

Trolling is all about poking fun at your competitors weakness and exaggerating it. Its more like an ambush; wherever you seem to go, you come up against the same jokes. The trolls forget the basic human instinct. When somebody is getting beaten everyone likes to stand around and watch.

Have you ever been in a situation where some team is giving another a drubbing; even if you have no particular interest in the sport, you just tune in to see how the drubbing is taking place? (I have watched a lot of 8-0 football matches and almost none which ended 0-0) How many of you watched or talked about the Germany Vs Brazil match in the World Cup while not having watched all of the WC matches? Same psychology at play.

When you start trolling and poking fun, people want to see the action first hand.

We live in a digital world where every business has a web presence; 50 years ago trolling might have been useful since it was hard to check the veracity. In the digital world we live in today, any such story results in a hit to the website of the company being trolled.

It gives the trolled an additional opportunity to convert the skeptic into a follower. In the world where eye-balls are all that matter, any publicity is good publicity. Trolls are also part of the publicity.

The problem is not when people talk bad of you, but when people stop talking about you.

I, for certain believe that Snapdeal put in considerable resources to make sure that the Flipkart #BigBillionDay was a raging success.

Even Internationally in a similar vein, Samsung keeps trolling Apple all the time. Things have come to a point where I feel Samsung cannot make an ad without mentioned Apple. In fact, when the bendgate broke out; Samsung, LG and others could not hold themselves back from trolling Apple, the moment the whiff of the story came out. iPhone 6 Plus seems to be selling like gangbusters. (4 Weeks+ wait list)

iPhone6

Apple cannot seem to produce enough iDevices to meet the demand; Samsung published their expectation for last quarter yesterday; 60% down on profits does not look very pretty.

So we arrives at the question, who is helped by all of the trolling. I think if we are to go by numbers, the end results are clear.

May the Trolls rest in peace.

Categories
General Thinking

What I learnt from Beats

beats_by_dre_logo

Beats, the company that is famous for their headphones and who also have a fledgling music business recently got acquired by Apple. I have been absorbing all of the commentary surrounding this right from the time that the deal was still a rumour. I really do not know if this acquisition is a good thing for Apple or not. But I do have a few thought about Beats which might be useful for most people to keep in mind.

These thoughts came to me while I was having a recent conversation about career planning and job-hunting, but the same applies for any startup that is looking to develop themselves.

 

Be Focussed – First and foremost; the eventual goal that you wish to achieve through what you are doing is extremely important.  Our performance is extremely dependent on the degree of focus that we maintain on the goal that we seek to achieve. If you are focussed on achieving a goal, all of your efforts, all of the connections that you make are towards ensuring the goal is achieved. Find the one goal that you wish to achieve and chase it.

Persevere – Success does not come easy to all. Also, you never know when success arrives at your door. If you believe in something and have the passion to pursue it, you need to persevere. It is important not to give up the moment challenges seem insurmountable. If you lack the knowledge, learn; if you lack the ability, prepare; keep cracking at the problem.

Keep seeking opportunity – While you focus and persevere, keep looking for opportunities. Keep seeking ways by which you can get in the track you want to drive on. If you wis to get into a particular industry or if you are seeking out a particular kind of partner, keep your eyes open at all times. Keep meeting people, keep asking for opinions, keep seeking.

Don’t stop doing what you are good at – While doing all this, it is very easy to think; ‘Let me finish learning and them I will get to work on this’. When it comes to focus, perseverance or seeking opportunity; there is no finish line. It is a life long job of an entrepreneurs to do these things. If you have a skill or a passion, pursue it even though you may be learning, preparing or seeking out opportunities. There is never a better time to do what you love, that time is now!

 

Categories
General Thinking

Ramblings on Perseverance

SJ
Steve Jobs is considered one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our times. He was involved in three ventures, Apple, Next and Pixar; of which two can be considered bonafide successes. Next was more of an acqui-hire and we really do not know if it would have been a hit, stand-alone.
But if we were to consider the other two enterprises; Pixar was eventually acquired by Disney making Steve Jobs the largest shareholders in Disney. Apple, well I do not think that I need to detail that out.
Pixar was one of the biggest bets which Steve Jobs made post Apple. For those who love to study pivoting, Pixar made the mother of all pivots going from being a high end computer maker to being a animated movie studio. The value that they were able to unlock through the pivot was extraordinary.
Roll back to 1994, all of the three ventures that I have mentioned above seemed to be on the verge of failure. Apple had not delivered a single hit in a long time (agreed Steve himself was not a part of the company). Pixar had successfully chewed through $50 Million and there was little to show expect for a Disney deal to distribute the movies it made, and it is said that Steve Jobs himself was looking to sell the venture. Next had faced failure upon failure and the entire tech world was certain that the latest operating system which the company had been developing was not going to be any match to Windows.
It was sheer perseverance which pulled these ventures out of the abyss that they had got themselves into. The patience to wait and see through the release of Toy Story in 1995 changed the fortunes of Pixar. Next was bought by Apple and Steve Jobs embarked on a slow an painful march towards revitalising Apple and putting out products that the consumers would love to use and admire.
I write about Steve Jobs because I have read plenty about him; although the same argument can be made for some of the biggest successes in business including Richard Branson, Thomas Edison, Sam Walton, Bill Marriott, and many more… More than anything else, it is pure perseverance that has resulted in these successes.
I feel creating a business is like preparing a dish whose recipe you do not know. So if you add a thought like “Fail Fast” to the mix what is going to be the likely outcome? The idea is to iterate with the absolute minimum ingredients to be able to realise whether a model works or not; ‘Fail Fast’ is by far the worst term coined to describe this. ‘Iterate fast and learn from failure’ should be the actual term that should be used.
Persevere.
Don’t put everything that you have at risk, the first time around.
Develop a business on the basis of firmly grounded insights.
Don’t give up if you fail. If you had to give up, might as well have not started in the first place.
It is not wrong to fall, it is wrong to not get up after the fall. It breaks the human spirit.
Categories
Entrepreneurship

Vision and its role in achieving success

I travel a lot and I drive very often. I always try to reach the destination as fast as possible.

I use to think that the speed at which you drive is related to the width of the road. The wider road affords you a lot of room to make errors and therefore allowing you to drive faster.

As I drove on the narrow road to Hyderabad, I realise that speed has nothing to do with the width of the road, but is the function of how far you can see. The further you can see with certainty, the faster your able to proceed.

photo copy              photo

When you think of businesses, the same principle translates into an extremely clear vision behind which you are ready to put or commit all of your resources. If the vision for the business is extremely clear than, you have the ability to throw all your weight behind achieving the same. Not only that, you also have the added ability to push forward against all detractors, of which you may find many.

Apple did not come up with an idea of a tablet, but they were the first company who had a clear vision and the belief to commit to the vision. There were many other competitors who came up with the same form factor, but did not have the vision or the belief to pursue it. In fact the success of the iPad is just due to that belief, you can see the difference in the results achieved by Apple and a competitor like Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, et al.

Clarity of vision is by far the best gift that you can give to your business.