Scary stuff...

The amount of data about us out there is simply phenomenal!

I have barely used Twitter. I have less than a dozen tweets, have a few dozen friends who follow me and a few dozen who I follow and yet this is what TwitterSheep can tell about me:



I have been marginally more active on Facebook (again primarily accepting friend requests or sending out friend request, pretty lame - I know). And see how well TouchGraph can describe me and my network.



With so much information about each of us and how we are connected, what we like/dislike, our political views, our brand preference, institutions we are affiliated with, places we have worked, lived and travelled to and a long list of other things... it is only a matter of time before Facebook, Twitter and other figure out how to monetize it.

Don't you think?

Highly recommend: Predictably irrational

Highly recommend reading "Predictably irrational".

Some random notes I made while reading the book

• Influencing choice: A and B being arbitrary options, creating and providing an additional option A' which is closer but inferior to A, influences people to chose A more often.
  
• First impression: First impressions count, initial anchors are persistent.
• Endowment effect: People value what they have more while selling, they focus on loosing ownership rather than gaining cash.
• Power of free: Free has great power and appeal. Free falls in a different mental account and is an order of magnitude more powerful than giving away something for cents.

E.g. iPhone Application store: Releasing lite/paid app pair results in higher revenue via paid app download and conversion from free to paid over revenue generated from releasing only paid application.

• Market vs. Social norms: Social norms and market norms often collide, market norm wins.

• Social norms: Social norms are very powerful and can be used instead of market norms in many situations to much better effect in less costly way.

E.g. Motivating employees bonus versus promoting culture of hard work by giving plaques to most hardworking employee.

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