A name for the venture...

I have harassed many friends about a suitable name for the new venture and they have obliged. After discussing many candidate names, some thinking, a little philosophizing (along the lines of what is in a name...) we decided to go with 'Appletics'.

We have something to do with mobile applications... hopefully that draws some connection.

We have the company website at www.appletics.com and the company blog to go along with it at - so head over there and add it to your feed reader if you are interested in my exploits. I plan to mix my my personal observations and commentary with the typical company announcements there.

A new venture...

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

-- Confucius

And that step is leaving the sheltered existence of a well defined job and plunging into the unknown... (in spite of warnings).

The journey begins from the ominously named conference room called "Swinging Doors" at Sharpcast which now is a sparsely furnished office of 'yet to be named' mobile venture.

I am working on some exciting ideas in the much hyped mobile application space. I am looking for a co-founder with following attributes/skills:

- never-say-die attitude, bias towards action, hands on
- passionate and exuberant about evolving mobile landscape.
- smarts and deep technical chops
- experience with iphone sdk/android sdk, objective c, c++, java, python, linux, mysql.
- bonus traits: sense of humor, humility

If this piques your interest and you fit the profile or know someone who does, drop me a note at ashishchordia AT gmail.com

Ominous...

Sequoia presentation to the portfolio company CEO's.

Must read for every start-up CEO. Very ominous...


Sequoia Venture Capital Warning to CEOs - Get more Business Plans

The threat of a TB pandemic

It should be a shock to most in the Western world that TB (short for tuberculosis) an ancient disease can raise its ugly head again.

I learned about XDRTB while reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, the bibliographical sketch of Paul Farmer (a must read by the way).

The fact that the disease is taking its toll with over 1.5 million people dying every year is shocking, specially considering that most people die within weeks of being diagnosed.

Doing my bit here by linking to a short slide show put together as a TED prize.

Apple drops iPhone NDA

Apple's NDA has been causing iPhone developers some headache, today apple dropped the NDA, IMHO this is another small step that helps foster innovation.

From the apple iPhone Dev Center

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter."

I will buy it if it is free

I wonder what do people mean when they say they will 'buy' something?

Quoting a review from iPhone AppStore...

A reminder to self:

Failure and fallure. The difference is subtle, but it is all the difference in the world. In fallure, you still do not get up the route, but you never let go. In fallure you fall; in failure you let go. Going to fallure means full commitment to go up--even if the odds of success are less than 20%, 10%, or even 5%. You leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped. In fallure, you never give yourself a psychological out: "Well, I didn't really give it everything. . . . I might have made it with my best effort." In fallure, you always give your full best--despite the fear, pain, lactic acid, and uncertainty. To the outside observer, failure and fallure look similar (you fly through the air in both cases), but the inner experience of fallure is totally different from that of failure.

Leadership Lessons of a Rock Climber by Jim Collins

We are on CNBC!

We are on CNBC!

Check out New York Times technology columnist David Pogue raving about SugarSync!

Long time no post...

Over the past few months this blog has fallen to the way side... and that's bad, but a few good things have happened since.

I have joined Sharpcast in the product management group. We have a fantastic team and have been working on the 'future of sync' which we are very close to launching at SugarSync.

If you are curious about what SugarSync can do take a look at this. And if you still need more convincing this should do it. (-:

I will keep posting on this blog for sharing interesting tid-bits and things outside of work, to follow the progress of SugarSync head over to the official product blog where you will find me chiming in from time to time.