Save Seconds! Save Lives!!

We are a group of volunteers who have come together to create awareness and train auto-rickshaw drivers, traffic policemen and general public on basic life support system in emergency situations.

We strongly believe, this is a need of the hour for our people. We have almost one accident happening every minute on Indian roads and one accident death happening every fifth minute. This is by far the highest number of road accident deaths in the world according to recent WHO report.

Apart from various counter measures by government to tackling road mishaps to reduce accident deaths, the necessity of emergency response during the golden hour at the accident spot would be a saviour for many lives.

Saveseconds has a unique model to train auto rickshaw drivers, traffic policemen and general public with the help of various corporate companies and network of hospitals to provide emergency aid. Saveseconds is looking for volunteers for handling various activities. Should you be interested in volunteering, please leave your details at Guestbook.

My new ride!

I have been wanting to have a bicycle for years now!

Finally i bought it! Its Hercules ACT105 from TIcycles.

I have started commuting to office by this ride! It feels great to cycle 25kms daily!

Sure enough, i can predict exactly my time of reaching office, reagrdless of unpredictable Bangalore traffic!

Bootstrap Group @ Chennai

Bunch of guys in chennai are planning to form a Bootstrap group to help startups. Interesting part of it is that we have decided to have meetings in OpenCoffee format
http://www.opencoffeeclub.org/

Here's the blurb:

The Chennai OpenCoffee Club is a place for people involved in the startup ecosystem to meet in an informal setting. Anyone involved with startups - entrepreneurs, developers, lawyers, investors - is invited to come and join the conversation.

Date & Time:

3pm on Sunday, 5th August

Place:

Subway
New no. 147, G.N.Chetty Road,
T.Nagar.
Landmark: Opp Murugan Idli Shop.

Anyone interested can drop in at the above place and time. If possible, send me an email with an rsvp so that we can gauge the approximate size of the gathering. Send a mail to Guna Sekaran or siddharta@gmail.com.

Better ways to sustain the(in a) startup!

I was talking about ways to sustain in a startup in BCB4 that was held in IIMB, Bangalore last week. Primarily, I talked on four major elements of the startup - would like to call it as 4C rules - the Customer, Company, Citizenry(people) and the Cash flow. Here is the summary of it.

Customer

1. Understand the target customer well.
2. Do the Customer profiling before you venture into the company.
3. Look at what customers benefit from your product/service – do not look at your product features!

Company
1. Ask yourself - What is that you want to change in the current system!
2. Do not venture into anything, just because you wannabe an entrepreneur!
3. Be unusual! Think big.
4. Go for a High risk high impact strategy! You are lucky if you have a low risk high impact strategy!
4. Always have alternate options!
5. Everything is urgent and important category - Do it now – Sense of urgency is a must!
6. Don’t expect to fly – Have a long term plan.
7. Crawl, walk, run – Fly strategy works out very well.

Citizenry
1. Too much passionate of your idea is too dangerous – Look at the flip side of it.
2. Complement your team - If you are a techie geek – don’t think that you can sell also, have a real sales man.
3. Add people, who is very passionate about your idea and ready to go for Marathon in the startup carrier.
4. Fire people – If he can not take forward the company's passion.
5. Be wary of expanding suddenly!
6. Do not take prejudiced decision – on people


Cash flow
1. Plan well according to the depth of the pocket!
2. Invest in inventory carefully!
3. Predict the fume date!
4. Maintain tighter cash flow.

why should you startup?

I received a link on reasons why you should start a company in one of the discussion forums. The excerpt that I liked the most from the article is here.

One of the audience members asked if the founders were able to work from 8-5 to Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. He sort of sighed and had this to say:

“Before you get profitable and establish yourself, you’re basically walking dead and you have to realize it’s more of a marathon than a sprint.”

He then went on to say that you can expect to work over 70 hour work weeks to get the product out the door. If you’ve run any type of long distance race, then you’ll understand the importance of mental focus. For example, if you’re mentally ready to run five miles, and at the fifth mile you’re told to run five more, that’s much harder than mentally preparing for ten miles at the start. The only way to train for a marathon is by running, and the only way to train for a startup is by starting.

You can refer the complete article here.

Why hit “start” button to shutdown windows!

A hilarious and entertaining talk given by New York Times technology columnist David Pogue on simplicity, is one of the best TED speeches I have listened to.

Doing things simple for the customers is hard for architects. But, that is where the challenge is for any product development companies. He clearly spells out that when it comes to tech, simplicity sells.

The great example he has given for the cult of simplicity is the Apple’s iPod. There were many products that were priced less, had more features, and backed up by Microsoft but the iPod won stupendously in the market. It is simply because of its simplicity!

Don’t miss watching this…here! You will also know more about “Type a word Wizard” in this amazing speech!

Am a fan of Frisbee!

I've heard of "Frisbee" in Chennai runners group and immediatly googled about it.



Interestingly, I found that I had played this game couple of times in my school days but never called this game by this name!

I have been thinking for a while of doing cross sport and made my mind to give a try on this game. Last Friday I got hold of a Frisbee disc in lifestyle showroom and planned to try out in Marina with my colleagues.

I have to say, this is THE next cross sport with my (ir)regular running and swimming! Really an awesome one!

If you want to try this game, you can join us on Wednesdays at Marina beach and on Saturdays at Besant Nagar beach at around 5.30 am.

You can also sign in to chennai_ultimate_frisbee group for more updates!