Focus on your competition to FAIL!!!!

A lot of people think that keeping your competition in view is necessary for your business to succeed, a majority of this lot thinks that focusing on them means focusing on yourself.. in turn your too much focus on competition leads to SHIT your own quality...

Today I tweeted about something and could not stop myself from focusing on writing this blog away... I put my tweet below

When your focus is on competition, your quality is going SHIT. 5 yrs later#wadeshwar seems to have lost touch#pune #foodie

Yes.. After a long time, I took my time to shop for kids on the other side of the city. We happened to spent all our afternoon shopping hence hungry stomach's we decided to take a food break. Eventually of the Fergusson College Road specials like Vaishali Restaurant , Roopali Restaurant we chose the Wadeshwar (The first time I had been here was almost 5 yrs ago). The first few times and the few years later whenever I had been to this place I really enjoyed the food.

Now that the area surrounding this restaurant has further been crowded with several fast food restaurants, it seems that the competition on this road has tremendously increased. Eventually the competition has also changed the menu and the service.. in order to attract and accommodate crowd the sitting arrangement has been compressed, menu changed to challenge the competition... Finally I see that the authenticity and the ethnicity of this restaurant has been converted to a mix of the whole lot of restaurants that surrounds it. Terrible I must say.

It is no different to what is happening in the world of Internet... Google in attempt to focus on competition created by Facebook ended up investing and failing Buzz, Orkut. Facebook in order to take up the location based market ends up building Facebook Places (I believe this will fail). The Apple Ping is up to tackle change possessed by Twitter and Music world...

The result of all this focus is copy-over of features , unrequited competition, Race to cover market share and what not... but surely they don't realise that

1. Over the years Google is no more the ONLY favourite for people

2. Facebook grew but the growth is nearing the beginning of a negative line

3. Twitter growth is no more rocketing...

4. Be it Microsoft or be it Apple they are not sky rocketing or going to stop rocketing sooner or later...

Many such examples where it is clear that if you are busy keeping your focus on competition, you are going to end up creating a SHIT for yourself.

Read More

How do I learn "How to Fail?"

One drawback of my entire career has been that "NOBODY TAUGHT me to FAIL" Yes nobody taught me how to fail, like several others I learnt it on my own... some say it is great, you get your experience "hard way", some say "that's life".. I always felt and wanted to know if there was a way to learn how to fail... Its very important to know this as we keep on failing in our own way and that too in an untrained way...

So for those curious minds in there who are looking with a cross eye and for those of you who think that why in the age of "Learning Success" somebody wants to learn "How to Fail". Here is why I feel so:

Years ago when I founded TechShepherds, there was a vision "Success". Years later when I defounded TechShepherds ( around 2 years later) I realised that I was late to fail. Those days were the most painful days, because you stopped your company for whatsoever reason but there was a label of Failure, There was some money gone and there was a credibility that was at stake. Years later I worked for a company that spent millions and millions to work on a product, they spent years before they realised that it was time for them to scrap it as they were too late. In other words they were slow to fail?

Now you get the point!!!!! Yes it is important you know how to fail, if you know how you would decide when... I had a friend who co-founded a company 2 years ago, he went ahead with his partners and a investment of $20K to start working on a product... they built a Rocket in terms of the work they were doing.. a social network with enterprise base... They spent 3 months before they realised that the idea was too old and not fit for the market... they changed the product to move away from Enterprise Social network to a Local Social network. Result they saved the troubles to build and sell something that they saw was moving towards an end. In other words they saved a few hundreds of Bucks, They saved some partners and some money of Investors...

So how to find out that you will fail and then decide to fail fast?

1. You are working against a force that is well equipped financially, technically and in terms of value drive.

2. Things are no longer the way they used to be. You are in the 60's and the world has moved to 2010. Markets have changed, people too.

3. You can grow but your growth can never be of 200% for a period longer and consistent.

4. You are depending too much on your ideas without exploring debates , discussions and suggestions from outside world.

5. You dont like new Ideas anymore

6. Your Product is not improvising anymore...

Wait a while... Review yourself.. Identify the Failure that is coming to you... And Fail...

Yes Fail. So that you can take the lessons and improve, but at the same time you avoid making blunders...Earlier you know about the failure, earlier you learn and earlier you improve... In other words you learn how to fail... In a way that will help you and others with you...

Read More