A Small Step Towards Overall Success

Three months of hard work came together for six days and we interacted with thousands; had meaningful conversation with dozens; met with some remarkable people and made new friends. For the first time we have hundred's of people seeing Majamba!

Very grateful to Sasan, Nicolas, Jamila, Jenny, Amelie, Elena, Carla, Arno, Ophelia, Cyrielle, Kimmy, Fed, Diego, Wen, Aslam, Chirag, Ana, Cedric, Gregory, Anil, Narendra, Mike, Francois, Samantha, Damian, Enea and Alex - we had a successful launch of Majamba at Paléo - now we have to decide where do we go from here!

So we will be pulling together a task force to chart the next steps. We are exhausted but relieved!

Thank you everyone for your kindness, encouragement and love!


We are currently preparing a new blog at - www.majamba.me/blog

One Thing You Need To Know

Here is a talk I gave at TEDx Geneva. Hope you like it.

Are you ready for Web 3.0?

In the mid 90's we saw the birth of Web 1.0, I still remember like it was yesterday. Suddenly computers were not boring anymore. There was so much new information that was now available. Information that was locked away in libraries and proprietary databases suddenly made its way on to the world wide web. The World Wide Web (WWW) was the phenomenon and the best brains were occupied with harnessing and displaying this exploding information. First, we saw Netscape and then a bunch of other companies and then Yahoo! and then Google. Apple during this time rose from the ashes to became the maker of devices best suited to browse the Internet. Bulletin boards and transaction sites were everywhere but king of the hill of the 90's were the Information sites. I enjoyed the 90's from inside major universities and companies. I saw hundred's of people jump the corporate ladder or drop-out of the schools to start their dot com. Oh, it was all so cool.


The DotCom bust was the first shuffling of the cards. I remember people forecasting Amazon may not be able to survive. Survive they did to become the biggest eCommerce company providing consumers with incredible deals but also we saw the strength of the eBay's of the world. But really the Web 2.0 belonged to Social Media, Social Commerce companies and Mobile companies. Look at Facebook, Groupon and of course the rise of Apple. Apple stranded the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 like no one could have imagined. If their Macbooks and iPods were primarily devices to consume and create media; iPhones and iPads became the devices to interact, yes they were the biggest winners of Web 2.0 by every single metric. Note that the things that became big in Web 2.0 were all present in the earlier years, just that they were not mainstream. Facebook leveraged the Bulletin Boards and so did Pinterest.


Now we are entering the remarkable Web 3.0 era. How do we know? Well look around you, people are becoming bored of just social networking. They are starting to look for something new. People are ready to dream once again because the reality is mundane for many and bitter for some. This is when color and design starts to appear everywhere. People are searching for new meaning. We are ready for the shuffling of the cards. Today in mid-2012, it is abundantly clear that the winners in 2014-2020 era will be companies that will allow individuals to mobilize the masses to get big and small things done. Things that are good for the society. This is a role that was the monopoly of politicians (and to some extent civil servants and consumer product companies). It is clear that the masses are not happy with the status quo and in time, instead of just talking about it, making and sharing beautiful infographics, taking part in shouting matches on the street or social media, people will start to do something. They will say it is time to ACT. This action will be captured by video and personal TV channels will thrive (this has already started). Yes, I believe that Web 3.0 will be broadcast live to your couch and will be so compelling that you will be jolted to act. Act from your couch instead of just browsing, socializing without meaning. Imagine reality becoming as real and entertaining as the best game you have ever played or the most engaging movie you ever watched.

The winners of Web 3.0 will be companies that make or enable this "Action", just as Web 1.0 winners were companies that made "Information" available and the winners of Web 2.0 were companies that made "Interaction"possible.

So are you ready for Web 3.0?

Majamba Missions: Get Good Done!

Imagine you are someone just trying to do something good for the society. You want to volunteer and help others. You will probably go to one of the websites like Idealist, Sparked, Catchafire, VolunteerMatch, Causes, GlobalVolunteerNetwork and look for interesting volunteering opportunities. They are all good sites. They are primarily one-way transactional sites. In essence, they are marketplaces that connect those who offer volunteer jobs with those who want to volunteer. You give your skills for free and the best volunteer jobs give you satisfaction, camaraderie, free lunch and a tee-shirt. 

Today approx. 140M people (only 2% of the world) volunteer in approx. 2M organizations, mostly NGO's or Charities or Foundations. Most people volunteer for organizations in their neighborhood or donate their service to religious or creative enterprise or undertake projects at particular stages in their life - student-hood, saint-hood etc.

Imagine if everyone could volunteer a few minutes of their time everyday to do good, to support start-ups, NGO's and good people. And the volunteers could build social currency, their social capital by helping others and use this social currency to get help from others. So imagine if we could expand the scope of Volunteering to include Start-ups and every individual involved in doing something good, it is safe to assume that we will unleash the DAILY GOOD revolution. 

That is exactly the goal of Majamba Missions. A mission is a task that needs to be done. Anyone can set missions. As a volunteer you undertake to do that task or solve the mission. And upon successful completing the person who set the mission gives you Hugs for a job well done. What makes Majamba Missions unique is the use of Majamba Hugs, our social currency. When you create a mission you give Hugs and when you solve a Mission you get Hugs. The more Hugs you collect, the more is your social capital score. You can also use your Hugs as discount coupons to get amazing handmade gifts for FREE from artisans around the world. 

We will be launching Majamba Missions on the July 4th 2012 to be in time for the Paléo Festival. Here is how Majamba Missions works:

Here are some examples of Missions or Micro-Volunteering from Jayne Cravens:

•  Translating one Web page, a flier, or a short brochure into another language.

•  Gathering information on one topic (identifying all nonprofit organizations in a large city focused on children, finding conferences in the next six months focused on human resources management, finding samples of volunteer policies online, finding samples of company social networking policies online, etc.).

•  Editing a press release, newsletter, or new Web site section.

•  Posting a request by a nonprofit to the volunteer's various networks (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), to see if anyone could answer or help ("We need a free meeting space for 30 of our volunteers to do a this Saturday, from noon to 3 p.m." or "We need a meeting table that could accommodate at least 10 people. Does anyone know of an organization that is looking to get rid of such? or "We have a survey for teenagers on our web site regarding what program activities they would be interested in. Please help us get the word out!").

•  Designing a graphic.

•  Setting up an account on an online social networking site for an organization, such as FaceBook, MySpace or Change.org

•  Analyzing information on a spreadsheet and offering a short narrative on what the data means.

•  Doing a Web search to seek out resources and activities that are needed for clients in a specific geographic location: summer camps, vocational training, child care, government programs to help a particular group of people, etc.

•  Checking grant proposal submission guidelines on the Web sites of various potential funders, such as foundations or corporations.

•  Creating a new Web page (putting up a newsletter article as a new Web page, for instance). Web site testing to make sure the site works on a variety of computers and Web browsers, and identifying any problems so that IT staff can take action to make a site more accessible.

•  Compiling a list of online communities relating to a particular field of expertise, a specific topic, a specific geographic area, etc.

•  Compiling a list of blogs relating to a specific topic.

•  Researching which Web sites link to your organization's Web site, and researching which Web sites should link to your organization's Web site but do not currently.

•  Identifying which groups on Flickr or another photo-sharing web site your organization might want to sometimes post photos to, in order to get the word about your work and events.

•  Adding new tags to your photos already uploaded on a photo-sharing web site, to ensure they will come up on a search of certain keywords.

Reaffirmation!

Imagine you are traveling on a very, very long road. Before you started you knew that the road was going to be hard. But now your family and friends are worried that you are so obsessed, so focussed and maybe too proud to admit that you are getting tired. Most encourage you but some are not sure whether you will reach your destination. Then someone who has travelled the same road and has been to the other side shows up and asks you a lot of questions and afterwards, says - you are on the right track! Your quest is noble and it does take time. Keep moving forward! And by the way, here are a few things you can do to survive and not get lost. Keep the faith! Bhade Chalo!


And as a result, on the 4th of July we plan to launch the next version of the Majamba.Me platform together with a multi-media campaign at the Paléo Festival starting on the 17th of July. 


My dear friends, keep the faith, you will be proud of Majamba.Me soon.

Majamba Web Agency: Powering Good.

Click Me

Today we have accomplished a major goal - launch a web agency that is focussed on providing really high quality web strategy, web design and web development to start-ups, high growth companies and turnarounds. This is the world's first fair trade web agency created to support good people and organizations change the world.

This is the foundation for the next step - the new Majamba.Me - which will go head 2 head against some of the biggest companies in the world with a very unique offer.

Check out our web agency site at - www.majamba.com

I believe in Good

Click Me

Whenever, I am in doubt I remind myself that Good always wins. Then I look for evidence. And then I thank everyone good for reaffirming my belief.

Yes, I believe in good.

I believe that the world can benefit from a platform that promotes good. That's why we are working on Majamba.Me. We will be launching a new version of Majamba.Me soon. And in the next few weeks we will be recruiting the team for the launch at Paléo Festival.

I believe that supporting good people and organizations with a fair trade web agency is a good thing. That's why with a few very kind and good friends, we will soon be launching Majamba Web Agency.

I believe that money comes and goes but what gives me the most pleasure is when I help someone achieve something good and what gives me the greatest pain is when I am not able to help a person in need because I am incapable.

The next few months are going to be crucial. I believe they will be good.

Get Rewarded for doing good

Click Me

Our new poster design is ready. Here is the first cut. Thanks to Diego for taking the time to incorporate the feedback. Thanks to Wen, Fed, Mattia, Enea, Fiamma, Maya, Seth, Jeannine & Alex for your valuable feedback.

Majamba will be launching at Paleo'12

Now it's not everyday you get a call - inviting you to launch your start-up at one of the biggest festivals in Europe that welcomes 230,000 fans every year! That's exactly what happened on Tuesday and today we signed the paperwork. It's official, we will be launching Majamba at the Paleo.

We have done the Majamba technical launch, the commercial launch, and other test launches to see whether the platform holds up. Now this is the real thing. We are ready for the BIG TIME. We will be going live with the Swiss launch of Majamba. The festival will start on the 17th of July 2012 and we will be there rocking with the fans.

If you are lucky enough to have a ticket already, we will see you at Paleo. We are cooking something special with Enea, Mattia, Maya, Fed, Diego, Nico, Rajiv and with Jeannine and Alex's guidance. We will be announcing something new soon...Free Hugs and Much, Much More...

An Awesome Sense of Accomplishment

Compassion: Norbulingka Institute, Dharmsala, India 

We have just completed a giant roller coaster trip of Northern, Central and Western India. Here is the route we followed - La Sarraz-Geneva-Zurich-Delhi-Dhramsala-Delhi-Jabalpur-Delhi-Mumbai-Ahmedabad-Delhi-Zurich-Geneva-La Sarraz. We met new friends, thanked old friends, received blessings from elders and reconnected with cousins. Overall, we are blessed with an awesome sense of accomplishment and here is why?

1. In every city, we received re-confirmation that what we are doing is something good: Building a global market for handmade goods is clearly seen as a positive thing. And building a platform where anyone can discover good people, projects and products is very challenging because creating the human network of social enterprises, advertisers, Majambassadors, developers, designers, marketing experts and support teams (lawyers, accountants) and early adopters takes time & perseverance.

2. We met with three incredible people in Dharmsala, Mumbai and Delhi, who have agreed to become Majamba Ambassadors (Fellowship Track). We will be announcing their names soon.

3. We met with five social enterprises in Dharmsala and Ahmedabad that will be publishing a part of their catalog on Majamba.Me

4. We thanked the development team in Ahmedabad for their hard work and valuable advice.

5. We were blessed by our family in Delhi who took the time to visit us for a dinner honoring my mother who also enjoyed the first of a kind party.

6. And we sat down with my Uncle in Mumbai who advised us to tweak the business model; create a sharper value proposition and complete the foundation (team and platform) before launching the marketing campaign. Currently planned for October 2012.

Wandering in India

Wandering in India!

In the next three weeks, we will be meeting people who are doing good around the world and are based in India. Looking forward to sharing some good stories with you. Our goal is to boost our fair trade catalog with more products. As well as meet people who can provide leadership to build a community of members who do good and get goodies.

Who are the thinkers behind Majamba?

Part of the Majamba team (who showed up for the photo shoot)

Thanks to Enea, Maya, Fed, Jeannine and Mattia (who are in the photo) as well as Nico, Diego, Shyam, Chandan, Deepak, Aslam, Narendra, Chirag, Anil, Jaldip, Nandini, Rahul, Fabrice, Bhaskar, Chris, Jeff, Damien, Timm, Marc, Tom, Noel, Joe, Mathias, Alex, Ramakrishna, Manish, Mike, Simon, Sebastien, Laurent, Dipankar, Caroline, Thomas, Sandy, Didier and many months of research, planning, development, user testing, partnership management, integration, more development, launching test campaign and polishing - I am pleased to report that Majamba.Me is fully functional. In the process I have invested all my life's savings, received recognition and investment from the Swiss Government, made some very good friends and found a way to end global poverty. 

What is Majamba.Me?

Majamba.Me is an innovation that turns social interaction into social good. Majamba.Me is the world's most rewarding way to introduce yourself. As a member you create a visual profile page. You select a photo that tells your story. You can add a few words and your social links. Your visual profile is the front page of your world on the Internet. Its your social resume, your social card. And the more views your profile on Majamba.Me gets, the more Majamba Hugs you get and you can use your hugs to get fair trade gifts for free. Thus creating jobs for the hardest working people on the planet. 

What is the Goal?

Once we achieve 100M active users, we will be able to have a direct impact on lifting 100M from poverty in a dignified way. The Majamba.Me platform is in open beta and I am inviting a few selected friends and family to try the platform, create a profile, share with friends. Our lead social enterprises is SEWA.ORG and our goal is to sign up hundreds of social enterprises. 

Why do this?

Today, 3,260,000,000 people try to live on less than $2.50 a day. Today, most of the ways of supporting them (donations or micro-loans) either destroy their dignity or burden them with a cycle of debt. Moreover the Internet revolution is passing them by because most of the 3.26 billion people living around the poverty line cannot read, write and most of them do not even have electricity. Sometimes, the only skill our friends have is to produce handmade goods. However, most of the time, they do not get a fair deal for their efforts, hence the cycle of poverty persists. I want to leverage my MBA, my business experience, the Majamba.Me platform as well as all my energy to make a dent on global poverty. 

What can we learn from the KONY 2012 Campaign?

Thanks to Nico, I had the opportunity to check out KONY 2012 video. Wow! Thanks Nico.

First of all, a little background - KONY 2012, is a campaign to bring an African rebel leader - Joseph Kony, active in and around Uganda, to justice for his crimes against children, whom he recruits for his rebel army. The campaign has various sub-campaigns - a twitter campaign, poster campaign and a petition campaign - anchored by a 30-minute video on YouTube. The campaign has been started by a San Diego based activist group called Invisible Children made up of three filmmaker friends.

Now why is this important? It turns out that these folks launched a video campaign on the 5th of March with a few thousand hits and then on the 7th of March went completely viral. We saw it it yesterday when there were 15M views and now there are 40M+ views. It is important because there are focusing on Peace, Love, Respect, Dignity and they are writing the book on social media campaigning with a very small budget. Well done!

What can we learn from them?

1. Do your Groundwork: For several months (even years), they kept an archive of all their videos and photos of their actions towards their chosen cause. They built a base of supporters at schools and community centers through a variety of awareness events.

2. Use Classic Building Blocks: They got the right building blocks - great logo, clear message, poster, flag, bracelet, website, Facebook page, Twitter account and of course the YouTube video! The numbered bracelet, missions, action day and action kit all add to the sense of community.

3. Make it Personal: By putting his own son in the video, the narrator of the film has made the story "real". It's a classic Hollywood ploy - used in Blood Diamond. Showing 30,000 children suddenly has more meaning when you realize it can happen to someone you care about.

4. Seed the Campaign: First the video was transmitted to the base. Then the base were encouraged to share the video with celebrities and lawmakers. All the building blocks were there. And the viewer (or celebrity team member) was emotionally ready to do something...and then LUCK happens. Oprah, P. Diddy, Justin Bieber and others and their twitter accounts started to forward the link to their followers. And the rest, as they say is history and fodder for the social scientists, the journalists and people like me.

What does it all mean?

We are now entering the new world of social activists as rock stars. Suddenly the guy or girl with a cause is the rock star, not just the guy with the guitar or just a pretty face. These are the activists joining the music, TV, sports, film, politicians and Internet entrepreneurs to truly change the world for good. One things is for sure, there will be more social activist stars. Because once the people like one, they want more...

From Curious Bystanders to Engaged Users: What did I learn for $20

The Journey

This week we completed our first product (Majamba Page) on the Majamba.Me Platform. And as planned we invested in a marketing campaign to launch this product. Yes, for the first time we invested $20 (Twenty US Dollars) in advertising. As you can see from the chart the traffic soared. Here are some major lessons:

1. Curious Bystanders vs. Engaged Users: We realized that there is a big difference between curious bystander (those who are interested in seeing how well we are doing or not) and engaged users (those who are interested in the utility of the site). We have to learn to engage the users by continuously improving the experience, enhancing the benefits and providing access anywhere (all devices).

2. Follow Your Path: We are now getting ready for building the VC Fund for Majamba. We now have the platform and the metrics. We need to get the financing sorted out for the next round. The next round will include recruiting good people. People who believe that there is more to life than just money; People who believe that a little start-up can indeed change the world; People who are good at what they do.

Now I finally get to use my super duper MBA!

Crossing The Bridge

Traffic Oct'11 - Feb'12

Today thanks to Federico, Diego, Aslam, Chirag and Narendra, we went public with Majamba Page, the world's most rewarding visual profile page. We started our marketing campaign. We are humbled by the response. Thank you. Moving forward we are going to focus on the following:

1. Best User Experience
2. Priceless Rewards
3. Access Anywhere

Who Are You?

Majamba Page

Are you the sum of all your tweets? Maybe you are the sum of all your status update neatly displayed in a timeline? Are you a Black and White resume with a serious photograph? Are you the blog entry? Are you what you share - a photo, a news clip? Are you the one waiting for someone to write your bio on Wikipedia?

We are currently preparing to launch the Majamba Page, the world's most rewarding page. Majamba Page is your profile page on the Internet. Here is the best part - the more views your page gets the more rewards you get!

Check it out - www.majamba.me

Do let me know if love it or hate it or want to improve it...

Insights from the Rich & Famous

Being a Billionaire: Gotta feel good!

What can we learn from some of the biggest and most innovative wealth creators of the past ten years?

I wanted to find out more about American Forbes 400 and understand more about Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Sean Parker, Eduardo Saverin of Facebook, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll of eBay, Mark Pincus of Zynga, Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com, Daniel Gilbert of Quicken, Eric Lefkofsky of Groupon, Peter Thiel of Paypal, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Reid Hoffman of Linkedin. So today, I did some analysis. Here are some insights:

1. Only about 10% (or to be precise 37) of the 400 Billionaires made their fortune in the past ten years. In other words, these folks went from almost nothing to being billionaires.

2. The three main sources of the billions were:
a. Internet ventures (18)
b. Investments in energy, retail etc. (10)
c. Inheritance (9)

3. The 18 Internet Billionaires were associated with just 12 companies - Amazon, Facebook, Google, Dell, eBay, Zynga, Salesforce.com, Quicken, Groupon, Paypal, Yahoo! and Linkedin. And 11 out of 12 companies focussed on providing a service directly to consumers and later expanded to serve companies. The companies which made lavish use of shares to motivate the core team members are the most successful.

Net-Net: This is a great formula that the world is following - focus on a consumer need, build a product that works and improve it together with a team that can directly benefit from the success of the venture and just follow your path, past all obstacles. What makes us different is that we at Majamba are building a global venture to do good!

The Economics of Compassion

Compassion is the key

Can a business be compassionate? Can compassion lead to business success? Are compassion and commercial focus consistent? My short answer is - Yes! Here are some thoughts regarding a possible framework of Social Entrepreneurship - the four C's of social entrepreneurship:

1. Compassion

2. Conviction

3. Courage

4. Commercialization

1. Compassion: I believe that the economics of compassion is misunderstood. I believe that not only is compassion the highest form of love, it is sustainable because the return on compassion is guaranteed. The longer the time for the return the higher is the return. The return is the support of good people.

2. Conviction: Believe in yourself, my Nana used to say and everything will follow. The bigger your ambition is, the more difficult will be the path. Believing in yourself especially when there are not many followers is the key. Go on, promote yourself.

3. Courage: There will be disappointments. That's OK! Having the courage to learn from every failure and trying again and again is a good thing. You need grand courage to start again especially when you have failed to achieve success several times. When you are successful, each failure will provide you an amazing story worth sharing. 

4. Commercialization: Providing a product or a service and charging for it is the only way to rapidly grow your social enterprise. Pursuit of profit is seen as selfish and compassion is seen as selfless. I believe the ability to discern when to be selfish and when to be selfless is the highest form of strategy. 

That's why we say: Majamba, do good today!

The road to the "Year of the Dragon"

It generally starts with an idea!

My mother-in-law is Chinese and she believes that this year - the year of the Dragon - is going to be good for us and our friends. So I started to think, how I got here and where am I going!

I really started thinking seriously about becoming an entrepreneur when I was 18years old. I wanted to start a company, so I asked around the family and discovered that no one, absolutely no one had started a company in our very big family. And only two cousins were studying business and everyone was focussed on becoming a doctor, professor, civil servant, lawyer, engineer and following other traditional paths. Since my parents were both doctors and both my grandfathers were in education, I was expected to follow a structured path.

Anyway, to make a long story short - I waited for many, many years before becoming an entrepreneur. I travelled, studied and worked around the world. To be honest, I had to be pushed. That push came two years ago in February 2010. As I picked myself up, I realized that the traditional corporate career had actually turned out to be a good thing as I could be my own Venture Capitalist. I could follow my dream. And that's exactly what I have done in the past two years. 

First approach was to build an Internet Access company (a Super ISP) that was going to provide free access to the bottom of the pyramid (the bottom 20% by wealth) in the world and make money by providing enhanced services to businesses. However this required major capital investment and I failed to secure the necessary partnerships and funding. What I learned was that I needed to first build a brand, a team, and then go for the big idea.

The second approach was to build a Social Currency Network that focusses on supporting people who are doing good. Although the capital required to kick start the venture was limited, but I still needed co-investors. So I searched almost a year going from pillar to post and struggled to find people you really believed in me and my ideas. Yes, after a hundred rejections I started to find other like minded people.

Support came from the most unlikely of sources. The Vaud state (one of the most open minded state in Switzerland), where we have lived for the past eight years, decided to give us a product development grant. However, the amount was very limited compared to the Silicon Valley standards and that also turned out to be a good thing. Because we were forced to find people who really, really, really believed in us and were not just in for the money. You can see the team at - http://www.majamba.me/about-us/

Once we finally completed the development of the core platform in October 2011 and I thought I will tell all my friends and the website will do viral. Big mistake! Because we found out that people like the concept BUT there were 3 things missing:

1. Instant Gratification: A PhD candidate at EPFL came to our stand on the Startup Day and said - great concept but you are missing the ONE reason for people to join and continue to visit the site again and again. He was right as this message has echoed! 

2. Credibility: After many face to face meetings, we were able to build trust but we found it difficult to get trust from strangers (for an Internet company to succeed, this is crucial).

3. Viral Hook: People are very, very busy - if they do not understand the concept in a few seconds and cannot see the benefit they will not share it with their friends.

Then we went back to the drawing board to focus on the one thing to focus on. We tested with some amazing and kind people and together we have finally found the confidence to launch our first marketing campaign. The current thinking is that we will start with the launch in mid-February 2012.

Looking forward to sharing the super duper new majamba.me with you!

Insight of the day!

You Rock!

I had my "eureka moment" today.

First, please allow me to present the context: Sometime ago, I read the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report and a statistic stayed with me - the total number of entrepreneurs trying to start a business is around 300 Million. And according to analysis done by Mr. Moya Mason the figure may be as high as 472 Million entrepreneurs trying to start a business.

Now, today most of these entrepreneurs do not have Internet access and most are not in developed countries. But let us think about the one thing they all need. They need to tell their story. They need to promote themselves. They need to build an audience.

It is true that the cost of marketing has come down tremendously in the social media world, but it is NOT free. Buying space in traditional media is expensive. Journalists only cover a small cross-section based on their interests. And everything else from Google to Facebook is quite expensive (although the first campaign is generally very cheap and gives you a rush as you attract an audience but that rush soon fades away - please talk to the thousands of souls who have built mobile apps).

Here is the insight of the day - what if we could invest in supporting millions of entrepreneurs promote themselves! Help them get supporters! Give them a fighting chance to succeed. Please allow me to venture a guess here - this has got to be good. Helping entrepreneurs succeed! Making them feel like rock stars! Cheering them on! Helping them change the world!

Think about it - 400 Million Entrepreneurs - most will be going online for the FIRST time in the next few years! Exciting times!

Why I believe that 2012-2014 will be the "golden age" of innovation?

Rising!

Before you label me as a super optimist, please allow me to state my assumptions regarding the context:

The overall economic horizon will remain very rough: The next two years are going to be very tough for medium and large companies who focus on European markets - especially France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and United Kingdom. 2012 and 2013 will also be tough for traditionally more resilient economies like Germany and Switzerland because they focus on exports to keep growth or rely on tourism from their neighbors and around the world. And aggregate demand will remain low as consumer confidence will remain shaky in most parts of the world.

Leadership will be more rhetoric and less action: Most incumbent CEO of large companies as well as political leaders will talk a good talk but do little to spur real investment, however there will be exceptions that will break the drudgery of incompetence and insincerity. The reason is "short-termism" as CEO's have to make their quarterly numbers in an exceptionally turbulent market and political leaders have re-election on their horizon. They will be forced to go to various talk shows, conferences and meetings to make grand proclamations but their opponents (in politics) and accountants (in business) will ensure that the real investment will not be made and job losses will be announced. This will further weaken the consumer confidence and further accelerate the viscous circle.

So why do I believe that the next two years will usher in the golden age of innovation in South & North America, Europe and various parts of Africa and Asia-Pacific?

The simple answer is: People will be forced to find new sources of income to live a decent life. And that will spur innovation. My goal is to play a part in this revolution.

Entrepreneurship is an art form

Entrepreneurship is an art form, ask any entrepreneur!

Many believe that entrepreneurship is a scientific process - business planning before you prototype followed by testing and then technical launch followed by market launch and subsequent success. This is almost like describing that a painter conducts research followed by mixing the paint and getting the canvas ready so he can apply his brush with harmonious precision. That is clearly not true.

What is true is that entrepreneurship is a collaborative art form. Here is why?

1. All art forms focus on self expression, so does entrepreneurship. All entrepreneurs see opportunity where others only see risks and by the time others do see the opportunities, great artists re-invent themselves and move on.

2. All artists collaborate with like-minded artists irrespective of age, race etc. This is so true of entrepreneurship!

3. Most artists struggle and have to overcome many hurdles, before they find recognition by their peers (hence the popularity of Oscars etc). And the ones who find success without a struggle find it extremely difficult to sustain balance.  

Now at Majamba, we are creating something very cool that you will love. Watch out for mid-February. I saw the preview today...amazing!

Rising in 2012!

Rising in 2012

During my winter break apart from meeting family and friends, I read newspapers, watched TV and hardly touched the computer. What I discovered is that there is a lot of fear out there. Politicians (especially in Europe) are leveling with their citizens that the year 2012 is going to be tough. They are certainly doing a good job in bringing down the expectations. There is so much fear, uncertainty and doubt that people are freezing.

Obviously, people are uncomfortable with the present situation and current leadership in Europe, US and Asia is distracted due to various reasons - reelection for one. As a result, half baked and disconnected statements about the future are doing more to scare the people instead of providing a clear way forward. That is really not nice.

So what does it mean for Majamba? Should we wait for others to provide leadership or should we pick up mantle and rise to the challenge. Well, we choose to rise! Here is the plan:

1. Team Focus: We now have a balanced team that is now cooking up more good stuff. We have learnt a lot over the past few months. It's not just about one person's ideas but complementing each other ideas and building something new which each team member can take pride in.

2. User Focus: We are focusing much more on our users, our customers. We continue to develop what they want. Over 900 people have used Majamba in the past 3 months. Our users tell us that they like what they see BUT they need more content. In 2012, we plan to rise above our capabilities to do something good.

3. Partner Focus: We are nothing without our partners. They have trusted us and provided us with all the support we could have asked for. Now it's our turn to support them meet their objectives.

This is the year, where we will focus on moving forward. Whatever the odds, keep moving forward (Badhe Chalo! in Hindi).