LinOSX TechnoMash

I've been in New Delhi for almost a year and a half now. Though it's been difficult getting things going, I've been fortunate to meet some really interesting entrepreneurs, all at various stages of the business life cycle. A few of us have even formed a group where we meet every two weeks to discuss various issues that we're facing in each of our businesses. Though this is a small, private group, many other groups and events are beginning to take place in cities like New Delhi that can help foster the startup mindset.

Ecosystem

Building an ecosystem, for anything, is never easy. Building a tech startup ecosystem in India, is twice as difficult as it might be as compared to a city like NYC.

What goes into building a startup ecosystem?

1. Drive and Passion
2. Mentorship and Guidance
3. Free Sharing of Ideas and Community Guidance

Drive and Passion

The first thing and, in my opinion, the most important thing is the drive and will to take a chance and bring about a major change.

There's a great deal of energy building in India around the idea of starting a company. Folks right out of college are beginning to consider working for a startup or even having a go at their own startup. Unfortunately, these folks are still the exception to the rule. They are a very very small minority of graduates, but it's nice to see that students are even considering startups as an option.

These recent graduates provide an energy, drive and risk taking capacity that is missing in those that have been institutionalized (been at cushy jobs longer than they should). However, they lack the experience in building and running a business that's necessary.

Mentorship and Guidance

The second thing that is critical to an ecosystem is mentorship.

In places like Silicon Valley, there are hundreds, if not thousands of experienced entrepreneurs who are willing and able to provide guidance to the next generation of budding entrepreneurs.

In India, the land of small business, it's much harder to find effective mentors that have the experience building and running a startup - especially tech startups. In all of India, there are probably a few dozen entrepreneurs that have built, run, and in some cases, sucessfully exited the startups they founded or began their careers at. Fortunately, these 1st generation tech startup junkies have began "giving back" by advising/mentoring, and in some cases, providing seed capital to the next generation of tech entrepreneurs.

Many 1st generation entrepreneurs have formed angel groups, venture capital funds, Y-Combinator style incubators, and most importantly, these 1st gen tech entrepreneurs are active in local events such as BarCamps (though not in all cases approachable). Organizations like TiE are also heavily involved in providing mentors to budding entrepreneurs. However, from what I've heard, the results of the mentorship have been mixed. Nonetheless, this component of building an entrpreneurial ecosystem is gaining momentum and it's growing.

Free Sharing of Ideas and Community Guidance

The third item that I feel is critical to an entrepreneurial ecosystem is the free sharing of knowledge and ideas which helps to bring about community-based mentorship.

I have found people in India to be very open to sharing knowledge and ideas. Events like BarCamps, OSSCamps, OCC (Open Coffee Club), etc. are all examples of people taking the initiative to meet with other like minded individuals to discuss their businesses, talk about technology, legal affairs, share resources, etc. Newcomers and strangers are welcome with typical Indian hospitality. Most of the people I have met through some of these events were quite open and friendly about their businesses. They have also been invaluable advisors and full of resources.

Many times, talking to a mentor about hiring issues could be helpful but other times, the mentor could be out of touch with issues like compensation packages, finding office space, finding the right recruiter, working with the right vendors or knowing what technical skill set would be required for a specific job. In cases like this, sharing your needs with the community can be extremely beneficial. People in the community have, most likely, gone through and dealt with similar issues or dealing with them at the same time you are. They can easily share how they overcame the hurdle in front of them and give you an angle of attack that you may have overlooked or put you in touch with a great resource to help you move forward. Couple this with advice from your mentor and you could have a resource equivalent to an informal board of advisors.

There's still a long way before India can come anywhere close to Silicon Valley in terms of it's entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, changes are happening at a rapid pace. The economic boom of the last four years in India is fueling more ambition and passion than ever before. I believe the next five years will be an exciting time in the Indian technology industry with true innovation beginning to take place here, in India.

Much like India missed the industrial revolution, it is clear that India is going to miss the Web 2.0 revolution as well. There are many “Web 2.0″ startups in India and some have been doing well, e.g. Zoho and SlideShare but that’s mainly due to an international user base and not indigenous Indian users.

I’ve been hard pressed to find an Indian Web 2.0 company, doing well and making money by serving the Indian subcontinent. The simple reason for this is that there are just not enough Indian computer and Internet users. Most casual Internet users will check stock prices, buy an airline ticket, look for a job, check their email, hit a social networking site and chat with others. There is a younger Indian demographic that is heavily using social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut but the amount of time they spend on these social networking sites is questionable.

Beyond the tech-savvy in India, very few people have heard of Wikipedia, Digg or the power of social media. The social “web” is taking form in India but not as most of us from the West have experienced. I predict that India will mostly leapfrog Web 2.0 and go directly to Mobile 3.0. Mobile 3.0 being highly personal, highly location specific products and services that allow 3G+ phones and even lower-end phones capable only of SMS to become part of the social fabric of the Web. There shouldn’t be any distinction between the Internet and Mobile platforms. One is just an extension of the other. As innovative user interface designs are produced, India’s 250 million mobile users can be brought into the social web much more quickly and provide them with true value which, unfortunately, they aren’t aware exists on the Internet today.

The largest impediment to bringing these 250 million people into the social web is going to be cost and the carriers holding the golden keys. Expecting the carriers to work with these small startup companies will be difficult at best. Not to mention, Indian carriers have a very bad reputation of bleeding their partners dry. They also have brought the “walled garden” to mobile phones. Companies like Airtel try to push their “Airtel Live” services instead of unfettered GPRS/EDGE. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing right now to allow non-tech-savvy people access to a limited online mobile experience, the way AOL gave subscribers an online version of a walled garden in the late 80’s and 90’s. Users will eventually outgrow the walled garden and seek more.

Estimates put the Indian mobile VAS space at about USD 1 Billion in March of 2008 and predict that it could hit USD 2 Billion by the end of 2008. These aren’t numbers to sneeze at. It’s just the beginning of the mobile application usage. Today, over 40% of VAS revenue comes from SMS. As smartphones like the Nokia N96, Blackberry Bond, Nokia E71, and Apple iPhone penetrate deeper into the Indian market, the desire for richer mobile applications connecting people together will only grow.

I’ve recently gotten back into some development and needed to run MySQL on my Leopard computers. The easy way out was downloading and running MAMP (a great pre-built package of Apache and MySQL). Unfortunately, I hated starting the Apache and MySQL daemons manually.

I created OS X launchctl scripts to start Apache and MySQL but I hated the fact that I was maintaining two installations of Apache (the one that comes with OS X and the MAMP one). I wanted one simple installation of everything that would start automatically. Also, occasionally, weird things would happen with permissions and I’d have to shut everything down and restart again.

It’s been some time since I compiled my own software so I was looking forward to compiling MySQL from scratch. The first thing I found was this great post on Hivelogic about compiling MySQL. I’m not going to regurgitate what’s in the post but I’m going to highlight the configure flags for Leopard. Most times, when compiling applications, getting all the flags right is the only way to ensure your specific OS and architecture are properly supported in the compilation process and it’s the only way to squeeze out the best performance.


CC=gcc CFLAGS="-O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer" CXX=gcc \
CXXFLAGS="-O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -felide-constructors \
-fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \
--with-extra-charsets=complex --enable-thread-safe-client \
--enable-local-infile --enable-shared


Make sure you change your root (data base administrator password) by running:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h localhost password 'new-password'

Don’t forget to secure your server as indicated on HiveLogic.

My plist file for automatically launching MySQL under MAMP is here. Feel free to compare it to the post at HiveLogic or change it to suit your needs. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know.

Here's a great post on Pluggd.In by Vishal Gondal of IndiaGames (and my $.02)

A great post by Fred Wilson titled “Venture Fund Economics: Gross and Net Returns“. Do take a look if you’re even remotely interested/involved in a startup.

Preparations for BarCamp Delhi are under way. The date for the fifth installment of BarCamp Delhi has been set for the 4th and 5th of October 2008. Please join the BarCamp Delhi Google Group.