I wear it as a badge of honor. Unethical and unsustainable companies like Uber get USD 40 Bil valuation by being led by arrogant misogynistic CEOs when they condone looking up user data including journalists
While they claim they have extensive background tests for drivers. Investors reward with a 40 Billion valuation, which is more than Infosys valuation a 33 year old company employing 200,000 people, bringing a lot of poor people out of poverty and into middle/upper middle class (and many such companies like TCS, TechM etc)
SV VCs and in general VCs if you are focussed on companies which are cool and provide high growth and high rates of signups (the new eyeballs) refer to what happened to secret https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ and pile on in news companies (dude you guys are like retail investors, Zynga, Groupon...unsustainable companies but a pile on)
I believe in building sustainable businesses which provide employees, founders, and eventual shareholders consistent returns over a period of time
I will never put a Zynga founder Marc Pincus in the same league as NRN. The difference they made to the world is levels (think exponential) apart
I would rather drill, toil, sweat it out than just hype out, I say with conviction as many companies in my space (mobile, cloud, Big data) did fail or sold out after creating a hype
@Uber with 40 Bill ur not going to make a mark in India.
Uber has had so much bad news over a month. Add to to this they still got a funding round at 40 Billion valuation, they have been frivolent about their practices and unethical about their devices. The BD attitude is prevalent of Wall street (Read Pokers Liar and other Michal Lewis)
Consider Infosys an IT company built in India 33 years ago having a market cap of USD 75 bil and employing 200,00 ppl http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=INFY
Infy is decried and 'defamed' as a company which does just 'services' while all innovation happens in valley. OK, agreed
What has happened in valley recently is that arrogance and growth (at unprofitable means ) value more than creating successful businesses which are sustainable but which whip up media frenzy, Groupon, Zynga. Businesses like Infosys, TCS have created more shareholder value by being humble than all of these so called hot Silicon Valley (flip to the greater fool) companies. You would have heard about Andrew Mason, Marc Pincus but many surely don't know NRN, Nandan Nilekani, Ramadorai,Vineet Nayyar, CP Gurnani, Chandra and Azim Premji. Someone do an analysis how much shareholder value these guys created over a period of time
Ex Alumni of these disciplined companies are starting to build the new generation of product companies (no services BTW sorry folks) and we/they thing big while maintaining financial discipline and efficiency.
With this kind of financial discipline, long term approach, and growth over a long period of time these companies will beat this culture of hubris and arrogance in SV which is prevailing right now. How is Groupon doing, someone please put a graph of there mentions in press over the past 5 years. Same with Zynga, and I predict Uber
Lets revisit after 5 years. Let the SV valley VCs on Sand Hill road remain, while the world is disrupted with tech they cannot understand yet.
Joseph Schumpeter said creative Destruction. SV and Sand Hill road is gonna get disrupted very soon.
This makes me so angry and sad. I see such corruption happening everyday.
Uttar Pradesh is a state of 200 million people and one of the most backward and corrupt states.It is another fact that Uttar Pradesh due to the sheer number produces some of the best talent in India and the world. Most of these people migrate out of Lucknow and UP. I wish more of them would come back and try to build companies so that more jobs are created. We just watch from far and lament but do nothing about it.
We have made a small start by being based here, and hope we can make an impact.
I would change the statement to 'The US Visa laws are broken'. Empirically H1-B demand is tied to the demand for highly skilled people. There have been years when it was allotted via lottery and there were years when the quota was not filled up.
The companies using H1 already pay a high penalty in terms of the very high fees, which is non refundable even if the visa is rejected. It is a source of revenue to the US govt
Yes, this is true.I know a lot of companies that are hiring more in the US and opening offices. This trend is going to continue. USA has some exceptional people and skillsets, and so do Indians. It will be a win win situation.
This is what the term "negative externalities" was invented to cover. It is a win-win situation for those who successfully outsource - getting good work at lower cost.
It is a win-win situation for those who get decent work. However, it is not a win-win situation for those who cannot get a job or who take a big pay cut or worse conditions because so much of the work in their sector has been outsourced. Perhaps you could say it is a win-win-lose situation.
I disagree. The app economy has changed that and is creating jobs. Let me give you an example. An American has a great idea, but does not have the money to hire an expensive or the skills to develop an app. He gets the app developed in a lower cost company, and the app becomes hugely successful.
Now the same person ends up hiring more designers and marketing folks in US. That person has more discretionary income that is spent locally. The technology companies like Apple, Google and a lot of smaller ones end up hiring more people.
We have had a lot of clients who have done well and had the same path. I was deeply moved when one of our US clients told me that the app we had developed helped him pay the bills during the darkest days of the 2008 recession.
People need to understand this debate better
1. The app economy has democratised the idea to customer strategy. Outsourcing here provides a huge leverage. This is not like some IT department cutting down jobs and moving them to lower cost places.
2. The world is flat now, in terms of skills and not costs.
3. More non US companies are hiring in America and setting up offices there. We are doing the same.
Like you describe, out-sourcing generally provides a net-benefit to society by providing cheaper goods here and jobs in India. But it does not necessary produce a net-benefit to the US, since the trade off is cheaper goods but fewer American jobs.
As a global citizen, I'm not concerned about the latter.
Problem is, other countries aren't necessarily as open as we are to outsourcing and foreign labour. For instance, Western universities have many Asian professors, especially in Math, Science, and Engineering. But South Korean universities very rarely employ foreign professors, at least not full professors.
This goes for many jobs in South Korea -- they simply don't want foreigners to do it, because foreigners aren't Korean. The exception is teaching English Conversation, because the Korean teachers very obviously can't do it well enough themselves. The government is trying to limit South Korea's reliance on foreign ESL teachers though.
This goes for outsourcing too -- the UK government is happy to consider having foreign companies build nuclear power plants or railway lines in the UK, but the South Korean government would rather have everything in South Korea done by South Korean companies, even setting up a company to do it if necessary.
When Westerners open their labour markets to foreigners and foreign companies, what can they do if the foreigners do not reciprocate?
The worldwide median standard of living is a hell of endless hard labor and famine. It would be more egalitarian for outsourcing to continue until everyone is reduced to a level near that, but I'm still concerned about it, partly because nobody would have the luxury of accomplishing anything meaningful.
We are developers with deep expertise in technology and have developed many award winning apps and solutions for individuals as well as F500 companies. info@newgenapps.com
Wow, this is a great question. I run newgenapps.com We have been developing apps since July 2008, since the iPhone SDK went public.
We have seen the whole app economy grow from zero to what it is today, and we have seen some really interesting business models emerge.
1. The iPhone and iPad have opened numerous possibilities to develop some really amazing apps. Angry Birds was a game waiting for iPhone to happen. So if you are able to find a space that fits your idea, you can make some real money.Education, Music, Productivity are some really cool categories where a lot of innovation is happening.
2. A me too app seldom works
3. In app purchases is a brilliant way to monetize. This model lets an app go viral while also making revenue through good segmentation
4. If you have a successful app, the Return on Investment can be quite huge. Hence it makes a lot of sense to have a 'Portfolio of Apps' and reinvest.
5. Localization is an under appreciated feature. Many apps can double or triple revenue after being localized.
6. Apps have become an integral point of presence for any business
7. Apps also augment a number of products or services. They may not generate revenue themselves, but can help sales of the product or service
8. A successful app, designed well in a manner to provide recurring revenue stream can easily do USD 10 to 20k in revenue every month supported and maintained by a single developer.
And yes, developing apps is a highly enjoyable and satisfying job!
Me too apps are the least-risky way to make money. You are going into a known market with little technical risk. All that remains is to beat the other guy, and the smaller the market, the bigger the chump the other guy is likely to be.
Want to make a billion dollars? Don't make the 100th bible app.
Trying to pay rent? Don't make your new creative photo-sharing app.
Depends on the kind of apps. Japan and China are huge markets, but a western oriented app may not work there. While that same app can work when localized for France, Germany etc
These are the major languages I would look at
1. Spanish
2. Portugese
3. German
4. French
5. Chinese
6. Japanese
I've used gengo.com, icanlocalize.com, and also random sources - sometimes users help, our head of support speaks French, and our intern speaks Mandarin.
I wear it as a badge of honor. Unethical and unsustainable companies like Uber get USD 40 Bil valuation by being led by arrogant misogynistic CEOs when they condone looking up user data including journalists
http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-fa...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/emil-michael-of-ube...
Two reputed (understatement) publications decrying them, while CEO is arrogant and still does not fire Emil
And then this happens http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/indian-wo...
While they claim they have extensive background tests for drivers. Investors reward with a 40 Billion valuation, which is more than Infosys valuation a 33 year old company employing 200,000 people, bringing a lot of poor people out of poverty and into middle/upper middle class (and many such companies like TCS, TechM etc)
SV VCs and in general VCs if you are focussed on companies which are cool and provide high growth and high rates of signups (the new eyeballs) refer to what happened to secret https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ and pile on in news companies (dude you guys are like retail investors, Zynga, Groupon...unsustainable companies but a pile on)
I believe in building sustainable businesses which provide employees, founders, and eventual shareholders consistent returns over a period of time
I will never put a Zynga founder Marc Pincus in the same league as NRN. The difference they made to the world is levels (think exponential) apart
I would rather drill, toil, sweat it out than just hype out, I say with conviction as many companies in my space (mobile, cloud, Big data) did fail or sold out after creating a hype
@Uber with 40 Bill ur not going to make a mark in India.