Define your own “Success” – Must See

Filed under: entrepreneurship, Personal, startup, success, TED

Yahoo’s New Ad – Uncanny similarity?

This is Yahoo’s new TV spot which is being launched today. When I saw the ad, it just rang a bell in my head – Where have I seen this ad before? It’s uncannily similar to something I have seen before – Where?

And then I replayed this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAdfYgEapT8
(Embedded Disabled so you have to click to watch the video)

Do you see the similarity? It has a similar tone, tries to appeal to the human emotion and talks about the changing world

Didn’t Yahoo Marketing see this before? Did Yahoo use the same agency?

What do you think?

Update 09/29: It’s confirmed that Yahoo used the same ad agency Ogilvy to create the new marketing campaign. Read it here

Filed under: technology, ad, yahoo

Google’s MIT Puzzle – the bigger question!

It seems like Google has posted this banner at MIT hoping that some students would be able to decrypt the message and call a telephone number hidden in the code. According to Techcrunch, none has called yet. Then the Techcrunch readers took over trying to solve the problem with the added incentive of a Techcruch t-shirt. The most obvious one is counting the number of characters for each word which will give you this number: 617-274-866X. People theorized that “X” should be “0″ (IMHO, Google is not dumb. If the last digit was 0, there would have been 1-2 spaces after the last character J) and called that number. The funny part is that some other organization is taking advantage of the Google banner and doing recruiting of their own (I rate them higher than Google – is that Microsoft or Yahoo?): “Congratulations, you have solved the second more difficult problem. Unfortunately we have to confess we are not with Google Jobs…. Leave us your name and number, you won’t regret it.”

Then 2 readers named Scott Kyle and Hakan did a simple substitution cipher. Scott thought the word “Congratulations” is hidden in the message and Hakan found “Jobs” revealing:

0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
456789ABCDE2FGHIJKL0MNOP1QRS3TUVWXYZ

“Congratulations Keep Searching or Call 617-639-0570 x10″ .

Most importantly, my question is: Why none of the students responded back? Is Google losing its luster? Are people getting tired of this elitism culture propounded by the web giant? OR the economy has bounced back from recession, the students already have multiple job offers and are too lazy to solve a riddle?

According to one of the MIT students:

“As an MIT student in EECS, I found the sign/flier annoying. Why would I waste my time? If someone wanted to crack the code and could, then he should could also create technology to bring down Google. It only takes one person to create disruptive technology. What makes G so great that they can pick and choose with an obnoxious flier that doesn’t even guarantee a job. (you “may” have job with G). Therefore, even though it was intended as a kind of ‘challenge’, I found it to be pretentious, and hard to respect the lack of effort than went into it.”

Anyway in the spirit of puzzles, this is one of the most hardest puzzle to solve, created by Raymond Smullyan:

“Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are ‘da’ and ‘ja’, in some order. You do not know which word means which.”

Filed under: technology, Google, MIT, puzzle

TechCrunch50 – A summary #tc50

While I was watching the demos at TechCrunch50, these questions kept popping:

Where is the business model? What is the pressing need? What’s the purpose – are you raising money? Looking for customers? Advisors?

Maybe I am not an expert or maybe I am old school. I still fail to understand how all these companies will make money. I don’t think I should make a blanket statement but honestly it applies to most of the companies on stage.

And then I see a twitter valuation of a $1B – no, you are not dreaming. You heard it right. A billion dollars valuation before you are cash flow positive or make a single dime.

Seriously? I am just curious what VCs look for, before they invest. How can you do a positive valuation for companies without a business model? Is this similar to the bubble of the dot-com eras? OR am I hallucinating?

Don’t get me wrong. Some of the companies had some real cool products. There were some, which I think would really go far like RedBeacon, DataXu, AnyClip, CitySourced or Udorse. But none created the excitement, which I expected to get at least once. Like the Aha moment when I first used Hulu or Youtube or Yahoo.

I am sure the company is out there – I am wondering which one?

Filed under: entrepreneurship, startup, technology, web 2.0, valuation

TechCrunch50 Day01 #tc50

Are you watching TechCrunch50? There is a live stream on their homepage at http://www.techcrunch50.com.If you are not, then you are really missing out on the future of web. Google launched Fast Flip and Bing launched visual search all on the same day.

There are also some interesting start-ups launching their products on stage. I was pretty stoked to see the IIT KGP self proclaimed geek giving a demo of the imo controller – one of the most gutsiest presentations I have ever seen. Very excited by the fact that real innovation is happening in India and especially, talented engineers starting companies of their own at such an early age.

There were some other companies that need mention. I really liked udorse and healthygame. Both companies are founded on great ideas and are doing something really different. Udorse being backed by Peter Theil and Founders Fund have already scored some points with the critics.

Though I was initially confused with Rackup; I was impressed by their business model which provides a win-win for consumers. DataXu had some very interesting “rocket science” technology that can be of very high value to enterprise CEOs.

I am really looking forward to Day 02.

Here is the entire list of companies:

Penn & Teller Story Something Clasemovil ToonsTunes.com Sealtale iTwin iMo FluidHTML Toybots Woozees Spawn Labs Clicker 5to1.com DataXu SeatGeek HealthyWage RackUp Udorse Redbeacon Yext localbacon RefMob TheSwop.com MOTA Motors DemoPit of the Day: ODesk DemoPit of the Day: Yourversion

Filed under: entrepreneurship, startup, technology, techcrunch50, web

MIT’s Sixth Sense

Filed under: technology, MIT, pranav mistry, TED