Software Product Development for Core sectors

You have a startup idea, good.
You make a revolutionary product on your idea, excellent.
Your competitors are some big companies trying to fit in their existing product to fix the exact problem that your product solves, not good.
You are pitched against these big companies in your first ever big deal with a big client, very bad.

Why bad? As a startup, more often than not the sustainability depends on cracking this first mega deal, while any large company would look at the sustainability of the software provider through the life-cycle of the product which is typically 3-5 years. So if the startup is pitched against one of the established player, inspite of having the better product it looses out on the point of sustainability in the final round of selection. This has been a story of many a startups.

The option of angel investor could help in showing sustainability, but then the funds from angel investors are most times not enough to sustain for that long. Also, showing support of angel investor may be taken as indication towards a yet-to-mature company, hence acting contrary to the expected help.

So whats the solution?

The solution is to sell your product before writing it. Let me explain. If the product solves a problem for a particular industry or domain, then you can contact any small or medium sized company in the domain and sell the product to them and build it as per their specifications. But the product must be designed to be fully customizable for the domain. Once the product is ready and live then selling it becomes a different ball game altogether. The best case would be when you can market the product along with your first client as it gives the sustainability. Likely the company, being a core sector company, won't have a software division capable of maintaining the product so as the software provider all future maintenance would keep earning you the revenue. The future revenues from the product can be shared with the client while keeping full revenue from customizing and maintenance for future client.

This is a win-win situation for both the startup as well as forward looking core sector company. The company gets an alternate source of revenue while the startup gets a kind of parent to nurture and support it. The deal can be made such that the product is initially designed as a custom made software at a discounted rate (to account for extra effort required in implementing a customizable design).

Once you have good product idea, all you need is some good salesman skill, a company looking to diversify to get a successful startup.

Best of luck!!

What's in a name? .. ipad

Shakespeare said "whats in a name..". Apple seems to be taking it seriously.

Yesterday when the "Applet tablet event live" was going on, there was more discussion on the naming than on the specs. My view is rather than going with their old nomenclature of iMac/iPod, they should have gone with iPhone like naming and called it iSlate. I hope they still change it before it becomes a total confusion in day to day life for women.

I think this is a big shame on apple that their most awaited launch since iPhone has been totally dumped by the audience. Out of 100s of tweets that I followed while the event was on, there were hardly any tweets on new features. Most people called it a magnified iPod Touch, some called it large iPhone without calling features.

The most important missing features was camera for video conferencing. If they have put iWork on it, do they expect the person to carry another device for video conferencing? I think there has been a major downgrade in the feature list by apple to take into consideration the business limitations of not conflicting with iPhone.

This likely being the last big launch of apple under Steve Jobs, I had expected much better.

The only real surprise for almost everyone was price, lets see if the price alone can sell this. Never underestimate the power of apple fan following.

Home loan overdraft calculation sheet

Okay, so blogger does not allow uploading attaching files but google docs does, its a cool new feature I think. 

Here you go. The excel sheet can be found here. The copy of the description from gharonda email is as below:

It handles max of 20 years of loan calculation. Does the EMI, pre-EMI calculation for you. For simplicity sake I am assuming the deposit is made on 1st, else one can calculate and put the number.

For basic users, please fill in the sheet with yellow color cells, rest will be calculated automatically.

For others who want to put in different amounts in different months can modify the blue colored cells.

In the given sheet a sample is already filled in, it shows that along with EMI of Rs. 9651 if we pay only 500 extra in this account for a 20 year loan of Rs. 10 lakhs, the interest saving is 2.15 lakhs, please note that at no point of time did we actually maintain a balance of more than 1 lakh (approx). After 207 months in this example, you can stop paying EMIs as it will be taken care by the savings you would have put in this account.

This sheet can be further modified to calculate interest for interest rate changes and part disbursal. Let me know if anyone needs these options.

The few things to try here are:

1) If you just put your monthly savings every month, how does it look. (Remember your saving is working hard for you)

2) If you just put your annual bonus into this account, how does it look. (Its better than pre-payment, as the amount is not gone away, if you need you can withdraw)

To take max advantage of this loan I recommend:

1) Take max tenure possible

2) Take max amount of loan possible, put the rest in this account and you have a ready emergency fund which works for you.

I call this account "magic" account :-). It’s a magic account for people who are disciplined, if you put some money and keep on removing it every month, then it does not get you that good a benefit.

 

Loan Amount	1,000,000.00
Interest	10.00%
Tenure	20.00
EMI	9651.00
Start Date	40200.00
Pre EMI	2740.00
Total interest	1316240.00
Net Monthly Addition	500.00

 

Effective Tenure	207.00
Effective Interest	1,101,606.82
Interest Saving	214,633.18

Cheers!