Ketharaman Swaminathan

Tradeshow SAAS Provider Digs Into The Trenches

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Here’s our latest success story: Tradeshow SAAS Provider Digs Into The Trenches Product management inputs enrich product Coming from the advertising industry, the founders of this startup were deeply exposed to the tradeshow business. They were fully familiar with the pain areas faced by tradeshow exhibitors and desired to use technology to solve them. At … Read more

Why Do People Lie With Charts?

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In Three Ways To Lie With Charts, we saw the following tactics: Slippery Slope Slide Floating Origin Fraud Dual Axis Deception The most common reason for people to lie with charts is that they are shilling some product, service or ideology and run into facts that derail their pitch, so they need to lie to continue … Read more

Blockchain – Calling BS On Decentralization & Resilience

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Since I wrote Flight Delay Insurance – Why Blockchain?, I’ve come across several updates that have reinforced my skeptical views around the claim of decentralization and raised new doubts about the touted advantage of resilience. UPDATE #1: SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE Let me take the following remark in my original post: Data is distributed across multiple … Read more

Social Media Customer Service – Use It But Don’t Abuse It

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Frequent readers of this blog and people who otherwise know me would be aware that I’m a big fan of social media customer service. Many years ago, I wrote Customers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But The Call Center Hold Music to explain why I found the channel very effective for reaching out … Read more

Five Ways To Stand Out In A Highly Competitive B2B Market

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: Given below are five things that you, as a seller of a B2B product or service, can do to stand out from your competition in a highly crowded B2B market. Respond to inbound leads received via your info@company.com email address. From personal experience … Read more

Regulated Blockchain – Oxymoron But Killer App

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There are many business relationships where trust is one-sided. Let me give a few examples of such relationships in which the contract between two parties A and B is such that A needs to trust B but B does not need not trust A. #1. METERING Mobile phone subscriber consumes data. The consumption is measured … Read more

How Do You Find Early Customers For A B2B SAAS Startup?

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: This question reminds me of a Patek Philippe ad in which the luxury Swiss watchmaker says, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”. The tagline of the ad is “Begin your own … Read more

Angels Or Demons Tax?

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In the past few days, several startups in India have received notices from the Income Tax Department threatening penal taxes on the angel investments (“Angel Tax”) raised by them during the past few years. Angel tax demon is back! Number of entrepreneurs have received I-T notices over Angel funding. This even as FM @ArunJaitley & … Read more