iPhone - 3G - worth it?

I recently pampered myself and bought the iPhone-3G. Prior to this, I owned a basic Nokia cell phone; so needless to say this was a big bump in features.

I love the iPhone for following reasons

1. The user interface is very friendly, intuitive and easy to use.
   
2. Key applications organized at the touch of a finger make it easy to get what you need rather than several key strokes searching for it
3. The 3G keeps you always online and always connected. I recently ventured on a 4 hour road-trip and far away from home, it's a luxury to remain in touch
4. Maps with integrated GPS provides you driving directions - so throw that paper and pencil and that printer. While it may not be as good as the navigation devices (no point-to-point directions, voice activated, automatic re-route), it is pretty useful none-the-less
5. iPOD comes integrated, so your favorite music library comes with you at no extra device
6. Locating your favorite POIs (points of interest) especially when you travel - e.g. finding the closest gas station or Starbucks coffee or Roundtable Pizza
   
7. And lots more

Issues with the iPhone

1. The 3G connection is not reliable and very slow once you leave certain hotspots. Caltrain does not have good connection. Apple provided a patch to fix this problem but for me, the problem still persists
   
2. Sometimes the phone is slow to touch and response especially when it cannot connect to internet
3. Don't know whose grand idea it is (Apple or AT&T) but international text messaging is not included in the iPhone 200 package which is a pain since I text family in India a lot
4. The battery depletes very fast when you use the iPOD or when you browse the internet - this is a pain when you are on the road. Ah! but that means one needs the car charger
5. Not compatible with Bluetooth v1.1 and below. Sadly I had purchased a Bluetooth headset just 6 months ago, so more wasted investment
   

Overall - a good phone but still for early adopters.

Gujarat Govt allows open book exam for Classes 8-10

Read here about a recent decision by Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) to implement open book exam for Classes 8-10 starting 2009.

The goal is to reduce student stress in exams emphasizing that exams should test for knowledge and not your memory power. A lot of toppers are fretting and might feel they have lost some competitive advantage with this move.

However, I am in the camp of open book policy - not necessarily because I think this favors some over others. I argue that open book policy in exams tend to make exams tougher than easier since examiners don't only test you on things that require a smart book index. Instead, most examiners test for ability to apply learnings to new problem spaces, so while open book helps alleviate pain around remembering formulas, theorems, history dates - it will still require students to come prepared to exams knowing how to apply their knowledge instead of memorizing and do it faster than everyone else.

So for toppers in Gujarat - don't fret, take this in your stride and look forward to a newer challenges in exams. Also, in the US, most MBA schools are open book, so no harm in starting early and getting used to this. As always, easier preached than done!!!

Dell Direct for India - is it working?

I shopped around for a PC this summer when in India. The contenders were HP, Lenovo, Dell, Wipro and HCL. I went to a local VAR who obviously did not sell Dell. I easily narrowed down to HP or a Dell. I called the Dell sales number and following was their process for a sale. PS: I was in Kolkata (Calcutta) and Dell Sales based out of Bangalore.

1. Customer to pay due VAT taxes at local Municipal Corporation
2. Get a receipt of this payment and fax/mail to Dell
3. Dell will ship to residence - no shipping charges

While this did not seem overly unacceptable to me, I understand the concept of Direct model which is not true of an average consumer who are mortally scared of this alien machine. As a comparison, if I were to buy HP, the VAR would deliver and do all the needy paperwork. On the flip side, Dell PC was ~Rs. 4K cheaper to a similar HP model - so it was probably worth it for someone who understands Dell direct model.

But that was not the deal breaker. Dell PCs did not come with any of the much needed productivity software. Local VARs install pirated software copies that can save thousands and lower the TCO of a new purchase.

I decided to buy HP. Here's what I propose for Dell

1. Educate consumers of the benefits of Direct Model through advertisements on TV, newspapers etc
2. Work with software vendors to bundle key productivity software (albeit for limited periods) with new PCs - I know this one's tough especially with MSFT and this is precisely why web based productivity software will some day eat into MSFT's belly. Alternately, MSFT should look into a SAAS model for SMBs where one can pay per use.

Improvements to LinkedIn

I am an avid user of LinkedIn and love this product. It is clean and professional. Have following proposals for improvements

1. Answers: Provide a way for community to rank answers and automatically filter by rank vs. date modified.
   
2. Answers: Recommended Answers on home page can be personalized by intelligent analysis of the profile
3. Introduce a new property called "Reading" - idea here is to have the community contribute freely available and quality good reads on multiple professional topics. The categories should closely mirror the jobs or answers etc. And then have a Recommended Readings from the homepage
   
4. Other: There are rumors they are planning to go public. Here are some ways to elicit new product ideas.
   

Generating new product ideas

Here are three different ways following have implemented to get new product ideas from their customers.

1. Google Android Developer Contest where ~1800 applicants vied for the top positions.
   
2. GMail Labs where developers can implement new functionality using their 20% innovation time and get to test drive their feature with millions of GMail users.
   
3. Starbucks asking for direct input

It goes without saying that you need to be a popular brand to evoke the response above have.

When Engineering and Marketing work closely

Prior to doing Product Management, I was an Engineer in VTune, a performance tuning product from Intel. Now Intel prides that it is an Engineering and a Technology company. Why is this relevant to the topic? Well you see, what this means is Engineers and Architects decide what are the features for a product release and this is often based on how cool the technology sounds vs. does a user really care or is the technology being presented in a useful fashion or does this impact the top line?

In the last two years I have done product management for three products. I have been very fortunate to be working with excellent Engineering Managers with whom I have gotten along very well. Why is this needed other than for obvious reasons that all functions are necessary to release a product?

My experience has been that while Product Management is good at saying - that feature would be cool to have because it differentiates us or adds value to users, only Engineering is best positioned to say whether it can be delivered and if so what is the quality (include performance)/cost/time? Also many times if I work in a solo, I make judgments such as "Nah - this is difficult to do in this time" etc. But if you work this closely with Engineering, they can suggest you technologies / research work / alternate paths that enable you to get more than you originally thought possible.

Also things are not really black and white. If Engineering and Marketing work closely, you can prioritize and juggle tasks in a more granular fashion (than at common touch points such as Alpha, Beta, Release) which means there is nothing to test until a very long time. Welcome to Agile development - but this is not only an Engineering term, it applies to Product Management as well.

But this requires the two functions to trust each other and recognize that over-arching goal of both functions is the same - product success. Trust is key because there are sensitivities if one function crosses over to the other and this happens far too often because there is a thin line that separates the functions. Transparency is key as well - when I was an engineer, I know my team has done features that Marketing never requested because we said "marketing just does not get it". Similarly it is important for Product Planning to work out product objectives and features with Engineering and ensure agreement on the rationale, priority, time-frame. It is also important to stay out of dictating how things get done.

Every time I tend to be in a difficult spot with Engineering - I step back and ask - there's got to be a win-win, why are we fighting when we have the same goal.

Thoughts?

Persistence pays off

We have been working over close to one year trying to get a design win with a potential customer. The process has been painful and frustrating to say the least but today it finally paid off when one of the key influencer's agreed to take our product and work with us to build the gives/gets that he could use to gain his management's approval.

Here's what worked for us. First patience. In our case, the customer first needed to buy the right hardware. Since we were approaching him for a software sale in parallel, he would use most of our meeting time addressing issues with hardware - this was frustrating to say the least. We all know how long it takes to set up time with customers. The hardware issues took over a quarter of talks. Then the influencer was pulled into other higher priority project and assigned a delegate. We worked with the delegate for another quarter or so and he agreed to take our product and provided the green signal to have Engineering teams collaborate and co-design. A quarter passed and the key person returned to his project but refused to accept the decision made by his delegate. He presented very valid and pertinent issues that made it clear that the earlier decision was a wrong strategy for them. But we were pissed to say the least. He brought us back to the drawing board - worse he still did not consider this priority enough. Meanwhile we kept hearing from other sources that he was formulating a strategy without our product.

So I applied my second strategy - listen and put yourself in the customer's shoes. The customer had voiced to us why he could not take our product. What if we could work through these issues? This is what we did - it took us another quarter worth of negotiations before we could come up with a win-win situation. We are still working the details on this one - but looks like this time will go through. We are looking to get the customer's senior management approval in next few weeks.

Have you had a really difficult sale? What worked for you?

First Design Win

Yes, it feels great. Anyone who says there are better things in life are probably right - but if you have gotten your first one for a brand new product you are introducing into market - the thrill is probably no less.

We were close to 18 months into the planning cycle - yes that is a really long one. 18 months of people telling you that you are probably out of your mind to be building this product. Recall I work for a hardware company, so software is a second citizen. No, software enabling is probably a second citizen, software product is clearly a third citizen. So you get the picture...

But this design win went fast. It is a small customer. I went and pitched the product - 3 hours straight. There were about 10 people in the room. I was standing on a podium and presenting to the audience (that felt funny). But the meeting went well - surprisingly. They asked about our licensing. I was baffled - well I had the licensing terms but not approved by management. We said we would get back. The account manager told me as we walked back - if a customer wants to know the terms, you know you have the sale - I should have been ready to seal the deal right there.

Next few days was quick - management approvals, what terms will work, what will not. Finally had something. Meanwhile the customer called back. Marketing wanted to hear the pitch again. Well OK??? I had already started my Holiday Season but a lesson learnt the very hard way - if a customer gives you a date, there better not be a higher priority anything.

I landed up again. The marketing meeting turned out to be a very technical meeting. And I had no engineering representation. Sigh! Plus he asked a ton of questions on hardware protocols and buses. What do I know. The account rep was extremely knowledgeable though. He was able to handle most of them. For others, we just said we have to get back. But rest of the meeting went well. He told us several challenges with adoption of our technology - I was familiar with each of them, he knew what he was talking about. But he also agreed that we needed to make baby steps instead of dreaming Nirvana.

Next we met with the technical representative to present the terms. He started off with saying - my engineering team in Taiwan feels they can build the product in-house, we are not sure we want to buy from you but would like to know your terms. Yes, I was literally shaking. It was my vacation and it was 6PM and I had slogged the last week. Well so what? I presented the terms. The customer said - wow, this is cheap. Can you share with me your specs? I said No, please make a decision first. I returned home and tried to relax by thinking of our upcoming Mexico trip.

1st week of Jan and I am back to work. A sweet one liner from the customer - We have decided to license your product. Please send us your documents so we can proceed to next steps.

How was your first design win? Write to me about it

Moving back to India

Over the weekend I attended the IIT conference in Santa Clara, CA. One of the panel discussions centered around the ever hot topic around whether it is a good time for Silicon Valley Indian professionals to move back to India and what are some considerations around this.
The distinguished panel of three speakers echoed in unison that the biggest deterrent to moving back was personal reasons as opposed to professional reasons. Often, family members are not on the same page with respect to the expectations and may not be prepared for the big change which makes the already difficult move tougher. Once this is sorted out, the panel felt that the opportunities for professionals were many, and the demand for mid-level IT managers with capability to manage P&L is very high. One of the panelists commented that if you have a home, then a salary of Rs. 40K/month is enough for a very comfortable living in Bangalore. Work culture wise, if you join a MNC or BPO, you would not feel any culture shock. The top concerns for employers is (1) attracting good talent, as I mentioned earlier there is a dearth of mid-level management (2) ability to retain talent, the young workforce has little to no loyalty and move around a lot seeking greener opportunities. Indian companies are striving to match disposable incomes between US and Indian salaries. All in all, the panel felt that professionally the opportunities are really good in India, so the decision to move or not is entirely personal.
Hope you found this useful, would love to hear your opinions on this.

Pricing Enterprise Software

We recently went through the exercise of pricing our new enterprise software product. Although there were similar products already in the market, bundling and discounting strategies made it difficult to assess the price. Our approach started by checking willingness to pay and testing various price points with the target users. This allowed us to narrow the range. We then attempted to quantify the key elements of our user validated value proposition. This set an upper bound for the price. We also looked at substitutes to our solution. In our case, the substitutes had poor price-performance ratio which allowed us to place this as a low bar on the price. We then picked a range of price points depending on the pricing objective. This was a very interesting exercise given that this was for a brand new product and hence we had no history to assess price sensitivity and also demand.
How have you priced your enterprise software? What methods have you used?