In India you can understand kafka best. He has a story where a guy is waiting outside court and he is stopped by the guard. Guy decides to wait, and wait he does-years pass by with both of them left waiting (and both he and guard are there).

The guy is about to die and asks the guard

“Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”

The recent RBI restrictions imposed on Paypal just make you empathize with the story. You want to earn your country some foreign currency. You work you ass-off trying to get clients to pay you. You don’t have any trustworthy system, especially in a country which has half of its ministers accused in scams. Still by just working on wafer thin profit margin you get the client to pay you through paypal, and you realize that you can’t get more than 500 USD payment form him!! He may pay in installments with every transaction less than 500 ? Wrong, he can cancel the order after first installment.

Will RBI reimburse me for lost business? NO!

It is not that you are using money to fund terrorists or any other illegal activity. Our PAN card number is linked with the account, statements are available to be assessed, your purpose code has been entered. But no, Indian government doesn’t like you earning money.

It may seem in this rant that I am illogical and don’t care about laws and reasons behind those laws. But sadly that is not the case. The RBI in the name of security and power to safeguard “Indian interests” are really destroying the system.

Seeing from a accounts side; I pay 5 percent to paypal to receive money on my behalf, I get 90 percent of market exchange rate, from Paypal; when I have to buy software from outside India Paypal charges my credit card which further charges me 110 percent of market exchange rate. I know we believe in Keynessian theory where we will pay people to dig hole and then to pay to fill it and economy will revive; but why should i be made to bear all the expense when I am paying all the taxes imaginable there over every iota of thing. Leave aside the fact that I am left exhausted as I have to constantly waste my time in trying to transfer money form this account to other!

Thanks RBI, may you rot in hell increasing base points further .

We have been hearing from last few years search is going to be social; all search engines in coming years are going to put more value to social signals from the searcher’s social graphs then the links obtained by sites from different places in the result pages. Google and Bing have already started to do so.

There is no denying Google has been a leader in the search space for almost a decade and all attempts from startups to big corporates have been either complete failure or feeble successes. This time Google have entered the social arena with their newest and by far the best attempt at social with Google+ to disrupt the current beat of champions namely Facebook and Twitter. The battleground is set across multiple devices and platforms. Google already has a big market share in mobile OS through Android. Microsoft and Facebook closeness might be fruitful for the latter to take advantage of users on upcoming Windows 8 mobile OS. Apple has already announced its plan to integrate Twitter on iOS 5. Google+ is definitely going to leverage its Android platform. Google might also start releasing versions of Google Chrome similar to Rockmelt which would have Google+ integrated all around the browser. But another very strong platform, on which Google has almost complete monopoly and nobody is talking about, is Google Search.

Google has started showing author images with articles on its search pages. The image of author is being fetched from Google Profile page. Image accompanying the search result is a definite boost to CTR. Every site, blog and portal; big or small will have no choice but to implement it. In very short time the SERPs (search result pages) will start looking like social pages with author images, +1 buttons and other social stuff.

We just came back from an off site recently - 3 days of awesomeness, lazing around, drooling over the sun & the sand. This was the first time both our offices (Noida & Shimla) got together, in fact this was the very first time a lot of people met each other (I am comfortably choosing to ignore the all day long coding sessions that take place through video conferencing)..

Today I had a long discussion with an old friend on economics of content in the Long Tail. Sharing some of the interesting points.

What is long tail?

According to Wikipedia - The Long Tail or long tail is a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. The concept was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article. The distribution and inventory costs of businesses successfully applying this strategy allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of “non-hit items” is called the Long Tail.

Every content network has walked this rope at least once – ad inventory optimization. Direct sales team can only sell 40-50% of your ad inventory at any given time. The rest is filled with different ad networks, big and small. The math is very simple; push those ad networks which pay you higher CPM all the time. However, the truth is, no single ad network pays highest CPM all the time. It varies a lot depending on geography, time, page/site context, readers, etc. And to top it all, with strict frequency capping and default ads deployed, ad networks leave you playing with pennies.

In my recent visit to Vienna, met a lot of interesting people from Norway. My initial impression of Norway’s online market was that of a small and passive market with few clones of popular global sites like Facebook, Digg, Craigslist catering to the local audience. But after interacting with my Norwegian friends, I realized not only Norway has a mature online marketplace but have aggressive online players pushing for audience share. Norway also has one of the highest ad spend per user of around US$207.

High-res image

Most of the start-ups as well as established companies in internet space primarily targets US audience. This is understandable as US Online Advertising market stands at a whopping USD 24 billion and is at least four times bigger than the second largest market that of UK.

In developing countries, it’s a rarity if an internet company gets funded, and most of the start-up visionaries here are not very bullish when it comes to internet space. Countries like China, Brazil or India might lead in number of internet users with around 33% of total online traffic, but their online advertising market is less than USD 2 billion. Though China has some exceptional online players but nothing close to US.

This list is entirely based on my personal experience, and can vary according to your spouse or girlfriend. So no guarantee that your geek wife would be as geeky as mine, but I can assure you that you will definitely have lots of fun having one.

Most of you know that we operate from Shimla. A small city by comparison with Silicon cities of India. Its very tough to find experienced or highly skilled people in these beautiful mountains. So we had no option but to build a powerful, aggressive and intense training system which can train freshers (with an aptitude) to be converted into marines.

These days we are training a new team. A team of freshers, from different educational backgrounds; commerce, science, MBA, mass-com etc. This team will be helping the content network move more aggressively. You might be surprised by our choice of team members, you might even argue on our decision of putting them in a single team. But we only hire on the basis of aptitude, not on experience or educational background. All of them might have different educational backgrounds; but they have lots of common things like hunger to learn, work under any pressure, no compromise for quality and a killer attitude.

During my college days, I took a small course in mountaineering. The lessons I took from there, have been the guiding force of my life.

Mr. Negi

We had a teacher Mr. Negi. I don`t know his full name, never asked, and never felt to do so.

Mr. Negi was a guy in mid forties with short height, thin moustaches and cold eyes. His rules were very simple – you can’t complain, and you can’t say no. He never told us about his rules, but we understood them in few interactions with him. If you asked him for rest, he will say – “Bahut acha kiya jo bata diya, ab yeh exercise aadhe ghante aur karo, jab tak fresh na ho jao”. (“Very good, I really appreciate your telling me, now please do this exercise for another half an hour, until you start feeling fresh.”) And if you told him about back pain, he will award you a dozen of back exercise. Similarly if you ask about lunch or dinner time, you are surely to skip that.

Once I was carrying a heavy rucksack, during one of the trekking trails. I was sweating profoundly, when he asked me if bag was heavy. Before realizing any consequence I told him, yes it was. He smiled very calmly and repeated the famous phrase. “Bahut acha kiya jo bata diya, ab yeh pathar utha lo, aur bag me daal do, halka ho jaayega”. (Very good, I really appreciate your telling me, now please pick these stones and rocks and put in your bag, your luggage will feel light.)

I tried very hard explaining that I spoke unintentionally and I never meant to complain. But it was too late; Mr. Negi has always treated all of us equal when awarding his famous remedies.

From that day, subconsciously I developed a feeling – that I can’t complain. Whatever happens, I can’t complain.

Forward a few years. Now I am running a startup.

Startups are also like Mr. Negi, they don’t accept complaints. You can’t negotiate. They don’t tell you the rules. You have to understand them. Whatever they give you, you have to take that. You can’t talk to them back. You just smile and appreciate whatever comes your way.

Pain is good.

Somebody once told me – running a startup is like testing your ability to bear the pain. But pain is good, as Mr. Negi would have put that. Pain tells you that your muscles are strengthening, and if you want to be a skilled mountaineer, this is what it takes. So when you feel that pain running your startup , smile. Because your startup is telling you that your venture is strengthening, and to be good entrepreneur, this is what it takes.

Mr. Negi, used to remind us that mountaineering is not something which you can buy in a market like your Nike shoes. You have to earn that. Running a startup is also a skill which no MBA school can teach you (yes, I am aware of all those new entrepreneurial courses), but you have to go through that cycle of pain, to earn it. I am still learning that art, but have started enjoying the pain.

Remember, pain is good. Pain tells you, that you are growing.