God wants us to use technology

Whatever are essential for human race to survive and grow are abundant in the nature. The most available and free resource on the earth is air, which is absolutely free, without need of any effort to collect. That’s the most important ingredient for us to live. The second most valuable thing for us is water. This is also fairly available, but not as much as air is. After all that’s the second most required ingredient for us to survive. The list can go down to carbohydrate, to protein, to fat, to mineral, to cotton, to silk and so on.

How about the least most important element for us to live? Diamond? This is mostly used as ornament, as a luxury item. Unsurprisingly extremely rare. Uranium, or gold for example. Not that essential, not that abundant either. Iron, on the other hand, is very essential mineral. Moderately available too. And iron is recyclable.

How about electronic goods? The hardware those are required to push the civilization in this information age? Elements of information technology? Ingredients to make silicon chips? Hmmm, they are fairly abundant, too.

So, I was thinking on the other day, maybe God wants us to use technology. It was all in His plan, I guess.

Well, I am just suggesting. Think about it!

Entrepreneurship is like painting: Interview of Richard Branson

Here is the bullet point take away from the 40 min rendezvous with Sir Richard Branson.

• Entrepreneurship is an art. Painting on a huge canvas, filling up the blanks and combining the bits and pieces. Similar thought was expressed by Mohammad Yunus recently. He said there is no legal relationship among the different concerns named as Grameen and founded by him. He just had to build different ventures to fill the gaps. And here Richard founded 300+ businesses under Virgin group to fill in the blanks on his canvas. A ‘wow’ is even an under statement!
• Entrepreneurs are not managers, save Steve Jobs. Entrepreneurs should be good at delegation, and move on to grabbing the next opportunity.
• The cheapest way of promotion is to make sure you have a good product to talk about.
• The inspiring way of promotion is the Chairman to talk about the product from the forefront! Who does it better than Richard Branson and Steve Jobs?
• It is an easier and faster way of knowing people in a fun environment than in formal meetings. Joe Polish mentioned form Peter Drucker: “Either you are working, or you are in meeting.” That’s bold! Richard said that he makes sure his employees have fun in work and after. By the way “don’t drink and fly a plane” rule applies to Virgin Airlines, too. No wonder!
• Creating business is one of the best ways to solve problems in the modern world. So do think Mohamamd Yunus (Social Business and Creating World without Poverty) and NR Narayana Murthy (A better India: A Better World). For some of the issues, however, business might not work. That’s where Virgin Unite plays role for Richard. For Yunus Social Business works.
• Prepare for the worst. That’s the most common preparations startups fail to make. 8 out of 10 fails, remember? Keep and exit strategy handy. Be flexible to sway from your initial plan.
• Use modern communication to stay close to your dear ones. That means, stay close physically to your family, and stay connected to your business using technology; as much as is practical. That’s the secret recipe form Richard for work-life balancing.

That’s it! It meant to be bullet point, right?

In case you are hungry for more, go ahead watch the the full video. You might have a different set of take away. If you do, share them on the comment box.

Richard Branson with Marie Forleo, Joe Polish and Yanik Silver on Necker Island talking about entrepreneurship at large.

5 Tips to Build a Successful SaaS Product in Bangladesh

Form my previous post, Internet Products or SaaS in Bangladesh, it looks like bdjobs is the only celebrated success story in this area.

Why? What is the catch? I think the catch is to

A. Start in time. You start too early, your cash is dried up before you turn the business to a profitable one. You start late, too many players don’t allow you to gain enough customers. Customer acquisition cost shoots up.

Make sure customer acquisition cost is lower than the lifetime value of your customer. Now, what is that? If your total marketing cost (includes sales, marketing & advertising cost) is Tk. 1o lac and if you acquire 1000 paying customers with that money, you per customer acquisition cost is tk. 1000 (=10 lac/1000). On the other hand Customer Lifetime Value is ARPU * Customer’s Average Lifetime. ARPU is Average Revenue Per User (User is synonymous to Customer here). Customer Lifetime is the time a customer stays with you. So, if your product’s subscription charge is Tk. 1000 per year and if a customer stays with you on an average  for 3 years. Then your customer’s Lifetime Value is tk. 3000 (= tk. 1000 * 3 yrs). So, you have to make sure Customer Lifetime Value > Customer Acquisition Cost.

Sounds good? But you might like to discount the paybacks and apply the time value of money as well.

B. Start with deep enough pocket to sustain long enough and to acquire enough paying customers to reach break even.

C. Ensure you are strong at both ends: IT and marketing. You have a great IT team, and you think you can build a better product than bdjobs in a couple of months. Great! But do you have the marketing budget and expertise to bite a share from a company with tk. 6.5 cr yearly revenue, or from a group like Transcom (prothom-alojobs)?

Equally important is your IT team. I think Prothom-alojobs could do better had they have an IT team with better know-how in design, usability and performance.

D. Possess business domain expertise and connections. Not for all product it is crucial, but for some for sure. For example you are thinking of building amazon.com in Bangladesh. You need to have connection with publishers, writers and courier services for that matter. Well, you can build those over time, but that turns out to be a fancy idea if already a couple of strong players exists in market.

E. Ensure you have a competitive advantage. Well, it is true for any business. For IT product starting early is a huge competitive advantage. You ride on the network effect. Having a strong brand to piggyback is another advantage that is utilized by Google, Apple and even Prothom-alo in Bangladesh. Strict government regulation can be another one, as enjoyed by baidu.com as opposed to Google in China.

That’s pretty much it. 5 tips delivered as promised :).

So, what are the last words? Last words are This is the time for Bangladesh. I wonder if Akhoni.com has came up with its name from this concept! You delay more only to see some global giant or a tiny Indian company grabs your cherished market left you beholding.

Internet Products or SaaS in Bangladesh

Recently our team is contemplating on some of the ideas to launch a SaaS (Software as a Service) product or a simple internet product. Some of the successful  internet products in Bangladesh I can name are:

bdjobs: job site, successful both commercially and on popularity index. bdjobs registered tk. 65 million yearly revenue last year. Not bad, eh?

prothom-alojobs: a late follower of bdjobs, but piggybacking on its popular Bangla daily, gained some popularity. Its main revenue source is earned from training rather than from job ads.

Somewherein Blog: Started early, and enjoying lion’s share as a Bangla blogging platform. I doubt it generates enough revenue to maintain and sustain global competition. What I presume  Somweherein has other business that ensures cash flow. Aawaj and custom software development are two I can think of.

Contenders of somwherein are prothothm-aloblog, Sachalayatan, amarblog, nagorikblog and myriad more. Obviously they are not commercially interesting.

Champs21 launched with big budget and huge media hype leveraging on its partner The Daily Star. I am sure they are generating some revenue. One thing is good that they did not offer free from the beginning, thus following model of lean startup. Sure Champs21 is yet to recover its investment, but that’s fine. You don’t expect to reach break even in the first year of your launching.

KhanAcademyBangla developed by Nascenia in partnership with the world famous Khan Academy is yet to launch commercially. The content is great and licensed under creative commons, but they are yet to come up with a business model.

Stockbangladesh is hugely popular, at least it was during the heydays of share business. Stockbangladesh earns revenue from advertisement only. Not a very sustainable model, I would say. It probably leverages its popularity to sell trainings and other stock related products to business organizations. OMO is such a product.

A second most popular stock related product is bdipo. Nascenia is the developer an owner of it. It gets revenue from ad and subscription through Freemium model. No, not really a commercially lucrative product yet.

The Ebay model is followed by CellBazaar (acquired by Telenor) and Clickbd. Both are strong players and show all the signs to sustain and make a successful business. Cellbazaar being the partner of Grameenphone sure has edge over others, and sure generates some revenue from mobile platform. Clickbd on the other hand, being a Bangladeshi company, is in an advantageous position regarding issues related to government regulation, permission and expansion.

The very recent addition is akhoni.com selling online discount coupons. Wannabe Groupon in Bangladesh. Stellar start. Time will say how long they need to hang around before becoming next bdjobs.

There are many news sites those are among the top hit site in Bangladesh. They are far more popular than most of the sites I mentioned above. I am confused if I should mention them, as they are more of sites and less of internet product. Especially those who ride over their print editions (e.g. prothom-alojobs, thedailystar, newage). The first notable purely digital news site is bdnews 24.com. The followers are banglanews24 -- created by the mighty and (in)famous Basundhara group and sheershanews.

Is that all? Of course not, but these are the names come up top of mind (ToM) of mine and sure many more like me.

Stay tuned to catch up more about SaaS.