Lunch 2.0 at Minekey

We are hosting a Lunch 2.0 at Minekey on Thursday, September 6th. Started as an informal and regular gathering of Silicon Valley tech workers in corporate cafeterias, Lunch 2.0 has rapidly evolved through word-of-mouth into a national series of events.

In a recent article, Wall Street Journal said that Lunch 2.0 “has grown into a social-networking phenomenon that now draws hundreds of engineers, venture capitalists, and even summer interns to various companies for free meals and conversation.”

If you are in the Bay area and can join us at this event, please RSVP at: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/257418/. Facebook users can RSVP at the event link on Minekey’s Facebook group.

We already have more than 200 people who have confirmed participation and over 150 people have indicated may be. Perhaps, this could be one of the most attended Lunch 2.0 events in the Bay area. So, come check it out.

 

$ 3 Million Series A Funding

I am pleased to announce that Minekey has closed a $ 3 Million Series A Round of financing with NEA IndoUS Ventures. Vin Dham, acknowledged as the father of the Pentium chip, joined Minekey’s board back in December 2006, when NEA IndoUS invested part of the money in the first closing.

Let me tell you why we chose to work with NEA-IndoUS. Vin Dham and Vani Kola (founding partners of NEA IndoUS) are topnotch Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They both have strong operational track records and understand what it takes to create a company of enduring value. As a serial entrepreneur, I understand how important it is to have investors who have been there, done that.

Interestingly, I first met Vin when I pitched the Minekey opportunity to him in July 2006. We were joined by Dr. Sudeshna Sarkar, Chief Scientist and head of the Minekey IIT research team, who was passing through the Bay Area on her way to a conference in Seattle. Vin accommodated our schedule and met with us at his home in Fremont on a Saturday afternoon. He was thoroughly persuaded by Minekey’s vision and market opportunity right from our first meeting. Even amidst their own efforts to fundraise for NEA IndoUS and Vani’s India move, both Vin and Vani took the time to visit and meet with the Minekey research team at IIT Kharagpur.

As a strategic financial partner in the venture, NEA-IndoUS team is taking an active role in helping to steer Minekey through the most critical stages of our growth path. We’re looking forward to collaborating with Vin and the NEA IndoUS team towards to create a world leader in the content discovery and recommendations space. Well, who knows – with the Father of the Pentium chip backing us, could we be the next “Intel Inside” for blogs and websites? Stay tuned.

 

Presenting at the AlwaysOn Stanford CEO showcase

I will be presenting at the CEO showcase at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit taking place at the Stanford University July 31^st through Aug 2^nd. My presentation is scheduled for August 2^nd at 2:00 PM in McCaw Hall. Immediately following the presentation, we’ll be hosting a demo station in the Fisher Lobby. If you’re at the Summit, please stop by.

If you can’t make to the event, here’s a link to the live webcast. Some 35,000 people are expected to be participating online.

 

No more excuses!!!

Well, it has been 8 months since I last posted on my blog. As a Founder/ CEO of a company that provides a widget for bloggers, I have run out of excuses to defend my inconsistent blogging behavior. I realize that most good things in life need some discipline and getting into the habit of blogging regularly is no different. Perhaps it’s never too late to get that going, especially NOW, when there are so many interesting things going on in my life and there is no way to share them all with each one of you other than to post on this blog. How else, can I explain my tardy responses to some of your emails and phone calls :-).

Past 8 months have been the most interesting in my life. While, things were very hectic with my 2 startups – they were quite exciting too.

My personal startup has been a great ride so far. I am really fortunate to have been married to a wonderful and supportive woman.

My professional startup Minekey, which I have been working on for the past two years, has come a long way. During the past 8 months, we have made tremendous progress at Minekey.

During this time, Minekey got its own existence and identity. We set up our offices at Sunnyvale, California and Gurgaon, India. We were able to attract a great entrepreneurial team at both Sunnyvale and Gurgaon. Some of the former team members, who had been part of the early Minekey team at IIT but had graduated and since then been working for leading global companies in India, came back and joined us – Umar Shah joined us from Symantec, Gaurav Sahni (a.k.a. Rave) joined us from Lehman Brothers and Himanshu Baweja (a.k.a. Frosty) joined us from Trilogy. During a time when there is a huge talent crunch in India, we have indeed been very lucky to attract top IIT Computer Scientists to our team. Between our IIT Research Centre and the Gurgaon Development team, we now have around 15 top quality Computer Scientists working to put together technology that lets Minekey users discover the most relevant content. We are fortunate to have Gaurav Bhatia who relocated to India after living an working in the US for 15 years. Gaurav leads our team in India. In Sunnyvale, California, we have assembled a highly entrepreneurial team with great experience in online media. James Ryan, Alex Gault, Raymond Rouf and Rajiv Doshi have joined Minekey team to spearhead our Marketing and Business Development initiatives.We also completed a beta trial of Minekey Product with over 1000 bloggers during this phase and we have received some really good feedback. Our Engineering team is really working hard to get all these implemented over the next 2 releases coming up in August.

Minekey was also selected as Proto’s Asia Top 25 companies. Check out the detailed coverage about this event by several leading bloggers from India.

Even, without any marketing efforts Minekey was able to attract some level of attention from Analysts and Media during the past 8 months. Also, several bloggers from all over the world talked about us.

We are getting ready to launch Minekey finally next week. We are really looking forward to exciting times ahead. Stay tuned for updates.

 

My startup adventures …

It has been a while since I posted on my blog. 6 months exactly. Yes …I was quite busy with my 2 Startups.

1^st one: I have blogged about this in this past. It is obviously Minekey, the startup that I have been incubating out of IIT Kharagpur for a little over a Year now. Past 6 months we have made some good progress and witnessed some interesting twists and turns. Over the last one year, I have been closely working with an academic and research team at IIT Kharagpur to productize and bring to market some of the academic research innovations in the Personalized Search and Recommendations space. By May this year, we had developed an Alpha version of a Personalized News Portal based on this technology. We spent the next 3 months talking to Alpha Users, Potential Investors, Customers, Partners and Analyst. While every one was quite impressed with the technology, usability and the features the product offered; invariably every one suggested that we should look at a potential business model of licensing this technology to Publishers and Content Portals to help them surface most relevant content to every user thereby improving the user experience and maximizing their revenue.We took the feedback quite seriously and went back to the drawing board to develop a Content Surfacing/ Recommendations Web Service that could potentially be used by the Publishers and Content Portals. We’ll be launching the service in early 2007. Good News: We just closed VC funding and the First Customer.

2^nd One: I have finally found some one who I have decided to spend the rest of my life with. Yes …I am getting hitched on December 27^th in India at Bangalore. If any of you folks are going to be around in Bangalore and can make it for the wedding, please let me know your address and I’ll send across an invitation. Look forward to seeing you there.Unlike the 1^st one, we intend to boot strap this startup all the way through and the 2 major share holders are committed to see through all the different phases of evolution of this startup.

I’ll be off to India for business and wedding from Mid December till mid January. Now that these 2 startups are slowly getting off the ground …I am hoping I’ll be able to post more from time to time hopefully in 2007.

Happy Holidays and Wish you all a very happy 2007. 

 

An Inconvenient Truth

Over 13 years back, I remember a debate that I had participated in, back at school on a topic that had some thing about whether the world was getting better or worse. I had spoken way too much about Global Warming back then. I remember I had spoken of a situation where some of the Polar Ice caps could melt and the water level could rise up and there was a possibility that some day the room in which the debate was being held could be submerged under water. One of the opponents had come up with an argument that Global Warming wasn’t true at all and there was enough data pointing against it. Well, even though I spoke with a lot of passion, I didn’t have much data back then to substantiate my claims. Of course, I had lost the debate back then …never mind!!!Al Gore did a fantastic Job exposing this inconvenient truth. It’s quite alarming to see where we are taking this planet. If you haven’t watched this movie yet, go ahead and rent a DVD and watch it soon. Each one of us knowingly or unknowingly is contributing to the Global Warming. And yes …if the Scientists are right we just have 10yrs to avert the imminent danger and destruction ahead of us. There is so much that we can all do to save the planet and make it a better place. Check out this link to see what difference you can make: http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/. Let’s start acting on it right now!!!!

 

TiEcon 2006 Update

I attended TiEcon 2006 held at Santa Clara on May 12-13. TiEcon is the World’s largest Entrepreneurs Conference. Over 3000 delegates attended the Conference this year and the theme was “Disruption and Convergence – Entrepreneurship Unlimited”.

TiEcon 2006 featured several distinguished speakers and panels covering a variety of topics in depth and breadth. I attended the Keynote speeches by Shashi Tharoor (UN – Under Secretary General), John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Governor of California) and David Lynch (Hollywood Producer).

Shashi Tharoor spoke about Disruption and Convergence in the Global Political Scenario. Shashi emphasized that the primary reason for terrorism today is the fear induced by lack of awareness. He was quite up beat about the role technology can play to improve the situation. He urged the entrepreneurs to work on delivering technologies at the bottom of the pyramid to bridge the digital divide. In this context he mentioned about Nicholas Negroponte’s initiative at MIT to deliver a $ 100 lap top.

John Doerr, the World’s most famous Venture Capitalist was interviewed on the stage by Michael Malone, an ABS News Columnist and a Silicon Valley Veteran. I was very impressed with John’s Social focus in the areas of Education, Social Entrepreneurship/ Micro credit, Pandemic Flu Prevention and Green Tech. He presented some interesting pics forecasting what Global Warming could lead to …Gosh!!! There were very few areas in Bay area and Mumbai I could spot above the water in those Pics. John urged Entrepreneurs to really focus on areas that they can make an impact on the Society and solve some Global problems than building yet another inconsequential Enterprise Software Company. He emphasized on the need for Innovation in the Clean/ Green Tech areas relating to Energy, Drinking Water etc., John pointed out that while about 5% of the World’s Population lives in the US; US accounts for over 25% of the Global Energy Consumption. If developing nations like China and India were to start consuming Energy in a similar fashion, the planet would be at the brink of a disaster. He spoke about the inspiring work by Muhammad Yunus in the areas of Micro credit. John also quoted Tom Friedman extensively. One of the quotes I really liked was that the Solution for Global Terrorism will most likely originate from Silicon Valley (than Washington DC), when entrepreneurs come up with a technology that would reduce the demand for Gasoline globally and bring down the prices to $18 per barrel …Well, I said to my self …Long live Innovation …Long Live Silicon Valley …

Arnold Schwarzenegger enthralled the audience with his electrifying presence and spoke about making California the World’s preferred destination for entrepreneurs. While I often heard a lot about the “Great American Dream” – Perhaps, here was a live example. Arnold spoke about his story from being a Teenager in Austria to a World’s Body Building Champion, Successful Realtor in LA to the best paid actor in Hollywood and to top it all becoming the Governor of California, the Fifth Largest Economy in the World …all this in a single life time and that too being an Immigrant!!!! Isn’t that very inspiring? Arnold said this is only possible in California!!! I was impressed with his Passion and understanding about the current situation in California and what’s needed. Arnold spoke about he turned around the Debt situation in California; how he would like to improve the Infrastructure (like Roads etc., which is currently under capacity) to gear up for the Population growth. Some thing interesting he pointed out was currently we can not unload the Cargo fast enough at the Ports in California because that would increase the traffic and block all the roads …He emphasized a lot on the value of Education and improving the Education Infrastructure in California. He also spoke about his mission and travel plans to Market California to the Global business community.

Some of the Panel discussions I attended and liked are:

• “Ramping it up with Low bucks” moderated by Jeff Clavier from Softtech VC which featured Entrepreneurs, VCs and Angels discussing about Bootstrapping and early stage investments

• “Web 2.0 – Why now” moderated by Mike Arrington from TechCrunch which featured Entrepreneurs from hot Web 2.0 startups

• “Internet Search” moderated by Bill Burnham which featured leading Search veterans from Google, Yahoo, Ask and Efficient Frontier

Guy Kawasaki mesmerized the audience with his presentation “The Art of the Start”, even though he over ran the allotted time. The concluding Keynote was by David Lynch, who spoke very passionately about the power of meditation and its practical value in daily life. The panel touched up on several areas relating to Creativity, Consciousness, Quantum Physics, Neuro-Physiology and Psychology and the connection with the ancient Indian Vedic Sciences. My take away from David’s speech that will stay with me for ever: “If you keep searching for Happiness around; you’ll never find it in any place – because Happiness is not in any place, it is inside you. Meditation is that technique which helps you discover the bliss with in”. Thank You David for such an enlightening and passionate speech.

 

 

Blogging and it’s impact on the Media and Entertainment Industry

Few weeks back I had an interesting email discussion today with my friend Bala, Director of Green Card Fever (among the top movies in Indo-American genre) about the impact of blogging on the Media & Entertainment Industry. 

I first met Bala 2 yrs ago when he just started researching on the plot for his next movie project. He came down to Silicon Valley from Hollywood to interview a bunch of us (Indian Immigrants in the Tech Industry). His new movie project seems to be named Blind Ambition.

While the value of Face to Face meetings can not be underestimated – blogs can be effectively used as a good tool to poll the audience and get some good insights while researching on a new movie project. Yes – that’s really true. I recently attended lectures on the New Media and it’s impact on Journalism by John Battelle (the search guru) author of The Search and Dan Gillmor (former San Jose Mercury News fame and a Citizen Journalism evangelist) and the author of We the Media. Both John and Dan mentioned that they used blogging effectively to interact with their audience while writing their books.

News Papers present News as a finished product. Journalism is really an on going conversation and not just a finished product. 24hr News channels have understood this very well and hence they focus a lot on getting the Voices of the man on the street into their News coverage and conversation. New Media tools like blogs enable interactive communications in a much better way. Interestingly News Papers are working to cope up with this trend and are giving a significant face lift to their Websites. NY times recently revamped the Look and Feel of it’s website to make it look like a blog. San Jose Mercury News is trying to bring the readers to participate in the interactive discussions online. I am sure a lot of News Papers will join this band wagon and bring in more interactive features, forums and blogs into their Websites to have an ongoing conversation with their audience.

 

Things have been quite busy as usual …

Past several weeks have been quite busy with lots of stuff happening at Minekey. Hence I didn't post anything on my blog. I am hoping to blog more frequently going forward.

We have made good progress on Alpha. Just recently we moved the Software from an Intel Desktop at IIT to couple of Servers in a Data center in Texas. Now we can do all the needed rigorous testing over the next several weeks to see if the Software delivers the promised results.

Also, I attended a few Lectures, Events and Conferences during the past few weeks. I will summarize my take aways in couple of posts shortly.

 

Information Overload …

Information Overload certainly seems to be a key problem most netizens are facing today. Read my earlier posts "What have I been upto lately" and "And finally" where I have touched up on this problem at a high level and I have also talked about some of the experiences/ learning curve some of the early bloggers have gone through.

Bubba Murarka, seemingly a great technology enthusiast (one who is out there to try new products and services) has just posted his experiences/learning curve about reading blogs and feeds at Robert Scoble's blog.

Let's say you are beginner in the blogosphere and have some interesting stuff to talk about on your blog - but, how can you get your voice heard - when there are dozens if not hundreds and thousands of people talking about the same issue?

Blogosphere today seems to be heavily in support of links. Meme trackers like Memeorandum, Tailrank and blog search engines like Technorati rate you higher up when you have a lot of incoming links to your blog. That can often be a test for your persuasion skills and not always a best indicator of how good the content or the opinion you have presented on your blog is. How many friends can you blog roll and how many can you ask to blog roll you?

And then there are user rating/ social approaches like digg for example - where the bloggers can digg the article themselves and hope enough people read the article and vote for it to move it up the chain of authority. As the blogosphere continues to evolve there will be several interesting techniques and methods that would continue to evolve to rank the authortiy of the blogger and the relevance of the post.

On the other hand, for the blog/ feed readers how many blogs and feeds can you subscribe to and actually read win the limited time that we have? How do you keep track of all your friends blogs and also at the same time track some interesting posts from authoritative sources like scobleizer? This is certainly a big challenge for most of us today.

Don't be diasppointed !!! This is the problem we are working hard to nail down at my new start up Minekey. We will be launching to the public in the next couple of months. So, stay tuned.