rock chalk

Someone would have told me these 10 things when I was getting out of College !!

Sometimes I wish someone would have told me,

1) That I will miss those assignments, quizzes, midsems, classes and exams that actually made me frustrated for 4 years :-)

2) That People won’t be that nice in this outside world. You will rarely find people who will do something for you without expecting anything in return. Unlike my best buddies helped me to cheat in exams.

3) That I will never find 10 guys to have Cricket match in Basketball ground.

4) That Beer at OAT with few batchmates tastes better than in a Bar.

5) That I will die to organize new fests/events in campus again.

6) That Food of “Bajpai Dhaba” at 3 AM tastes far better than at Italian restaurant.    

7) That there won’t be Tuesdays when I used to shout “Aaj to Lab nahi hai”. Everyday will be of same hours.

8) That I won’t be as crazy as I was. Every decision will depend on many more things apart from just my craziness.

9) That I have to learn to dress up properly for few meetings instead of my usual style in chappals.

10) That Everyday will be fucking challenging.

P.S. : This shapeless soul tweet at @sbaghla 

“Mein Daalega” are not words but that’s an Attitude !!

I watched this video for 20+ times in last one week and posted on all the fb groups I am part of. Have a look if you have’t seen it yet : 

“Mein Daalega” is actually an attitude to do almost anything that you can do. I am not saying you should do almost everything in this world. Even I haven’t seen Tendulkar doing fast bowling on field. It’s just that you should be ready to give your 100% on whatever you can do.

No one can do everything. Even I can’t hack facebook’s open API graphs by tomorrow morning. It’s just that I am ready to give my 100% on whatever I am asked to do. We always welcome people with “Mein Daalega” attitude in our team at bluegape. If you think you have the “Mein Daalega” attitude, Just tweet me @sbaghla. We can a plan a meet over beer/coffee/tea and can think of possibility to work together at bluegape :-)

You would probably think I’m boasting but IITians are awesome !!!

In last one year, we interviewed 500+ people at bluegape.com and hired 20+ of them. I worked very closely with most of them. I love working with IITians (I never meant to say I don’t love working with other champs!) and here are my few observations about IITians :

1) They can pretty easily match with frequency of your brain waves and grasp everything going on there. It’s very easy to make them understand any complicated thing. 

2) They love numbers and you need to prove anything in front of them with numbers. They won’t accept facts without numbers. 

3) They can work for multiple days without sleep if you can just arrange proper supply of chai, sutta and beer. They are damn hard working.

4) They can wear multiple hats. One of them I interviewed for the position of web developer and asked if he need a designer to work with him on this project. He replied “Nahi, maine design khud se sikh liya tha. yeh designers 2-3 din le lete hai ek button bana ne mei jo mei 10 min mei bana leta ho”.

5) They will argue until they are satisfied. If they truly believe in something, they will go to any extent to prove their point.

I just wrote it from the point of view of an entrepreneur and working with them in a startup. They are just more than awesome in personal life as a friend :-)

P.S. : I tweet @sbaghla

There are two kind of mistakes in this world !!

People make mistakes at each and every level. Who knows it better than an Entrepreneur :-). Many people will advice you to learn from others’ mistakes but believe me I have rarely seen people who learn from others’ mistakes. Nothing teaches you more than your own mistakes. Your own mistakes will give you life time experience and even a story to tell/teach others for ages. I see people making mistakes that I have made earlier. Sometimes I feel like going to them and say “Dude, this is exactly what I was doing six months back” but sometimes I don’t. 

Now there are TWO kind of mistakes in this world :

1) You are doing something wrong and you are just NOT aware about that. Many people will tell you that this is wrong but you just don’t want to listen to them as you don’t feel it wrong. Believe me that’s perfect. If you believe whatever you are doing is right, I would suggest you to just follow your intuition in that case. You are awesome! Make that mistake. If it’s wrong you will get a lifetime experience but if it will work, you can kick thousand of those asses :-)

2) You are doing something wrong and you already know that. You still want to do that to experience it yourself. Have you ever met people like that. huh?

P.S. : I don’t know why you have spent your three minutes in reading this :-D or if this makes any sense. I just woke up at 2 AM and feel liking scribbling something so wrote it. Now please don’t hit me with chappal for wasting your time ;-) 

P.P.S. : I scribble most of the time on twitter @sbaghla ! Catch me there :-)

bluegape.com have to be a successful business because of these 10 people !!

Many times I feel low at work. Personal, Professional or whatever reasons. I always remember about these 10 people and get back to work. bluegape.com have to be successful business because of you.

1) Ayush Varshney : Still in his third year when most of his batchmates don’t understand the p of professionalism. He was writing code while everyone else is busy hitting on hot babes of DU at Antaragni (BTW, Antaragni is going on at IITK). 

2) TLabs : We were hardly doing any transactions, no business plan, nothing and they handed over cheque of 10 Lakh rupees to do business. Knowing the fact that we were still undergrads with no business skills. 

3) Parents : When a decision made not to sit for college placements my college seniors started feeling the trouble with this decision of mine. Seniors knew about sick corporate culture even then they were not convinced with my life plan. My parents got agree in couple of hours.

4) Uncle : We were almost out of cash to launch new products and give salaries and this guy, whom we call uncle handed us another cheque so that we can continue our business.

5) Everyone else in team : There are n number of people (I actually can’t name them all as I don’t want to miss one or two. More than 20 people) who went sleepless for many days while writing code, making designs etc to make it a great startup.

6) All vendors : We initially worked with multiple vendors in Kanpur and Now in Delhi. They helped us while we were doing 1-2 transactions a day. They were not making any money in those transactions but were just helping us to see a great startup in front of their eyes.

7) My rockstar girl : I just broke up with my last girl but I guess I have to fall in love for atleast three time. ;-) (Why? Read here)

8) All the well wishers : I know many people who are promoting bluegape.com in all the possible conversations and everywhere they can without any personal incentives. They just want to see it big.

9) All the aspiring entrepreneurs : I know more than 100 aspiring entrepreneurs who are following bluegape.com to decide if startups just after college is a good thing or not. I don’t want anyone of them to die. (Why? Read here)

10) For myself : What should I say?

P.S. : I still tweet @sbaghla

10 things to do just after break up

1) Try to convince her for 1 hour and say sorry for all of your mistakes.

(If she is still still not okay…)

2) Block her and all of her friends from your Facebook/G-talk/Twitter.

3) Delete her number, her Mom’s Number, her’s Friend’s Number etc.

4) Through away any gift you ever got from her.

5) Delete all photographs of her from your desktop and cellphone.

6) Clean up your message box of phone for all incoming as well as sent texts.

7) Have a beer with your single friends and tell them how awesome their life is.

8) Break two or three items at your home. (Make sure they are not expensive)

(If you believe life is too short to do all this. Just start from here :-) )

9) Wake up next morning after a hangover. Check out all rockstar girls on your Facebook and figure out that girl you liked before your relationship and is still single. Propose that girl and go on a date.

10) …and buy this poster from bluegape.com :-)

P.S. : I still tweet @sbaghla

Most frequently asked questions by Entrepreneurs

• When is a good time to start working on your idea - When you can’t stop thinking about it in a shower.

• Single Founder vs Co-founders - Don’t wait ! You can start alone, but you definitely need smart people to grow your business big. Prove yourself and Rockstars will join you.

• When should you start talking to the investors - Smart guys always stay in touch with their investors. Famous saying is : When you need money ask for advice and when you need advice ask for money.

• Where to find co-founders - Please don’t go to co-founders dating events. Great businesses are built when few friends sit together in a dorm room with open minds.

• Where to find tech co-founder - Either in your facebook friend list or sit in a CCD with codecademy.com

• How to generate Entry Barrier for your business : Chuck it man ! When you start building your business with love and passion you will definitely differentiate yourself from somewhere. Don’t worry about this term at initial stage. Copycats will always be there. Service is only the differentiator in the long run.

• What Investors look for in a pitch when Ideas are like buses - Your Idea defines you. It defines what problem are you solving and how are you approaching for that problem. That will tell all about you. They mostly look for your execution skills so it matters a lot if you are presenting it in a ppt form or as a demo product (An ounce of action worth ton of theory).

P.S. : I still tweet @sbaghla and run an awesome startup bluegape.com (India’s Biggest Personalization Store)

[Hiring] Looking for a full time php developer at bluegape

At bluegape.com, We are looking for a full time php developer.

Here’s what we expect from you :

1) You wish php to be your mother tongue.
2) You should have a strong opinion about all tech products of India.
3) You believe that Techcrunch is the best porn site ever.
4) You believe that github is the best dating site ever.
5) You prefer to order it online when your mom asks you to get vegetables from the market.

Here’s what you can expect from us :

Decent_Salary+ESOPs+ Accommodation +Fooding+Beer+Movies

How to Apply :

Please send a mail at sbaghla@bluegape.com with link to your github profile and all live projects. We will get back to you within 24 hours.

P.S. : We are based out of delhi so you should be willing to relocate to delhi.

NOT AN EASY GAME – Profitability vs Economy of Scale in E-Commerce !

From day one at bluegape.com, our strategy was to build a profitable company. Even I wrote down a post at Pi that how I want to build my e-commerce company. After six months of hard work we somehow reached to 10 transactions a day. But even then that profit was not enough to support our bare minimum expenses of food, beer and rent of flat.

We started up with couple of lakhs in our bank account and even after making every transaction profitable, the money in our account was going down. I sat down with pen and paper to calculate that how many transactions a day can take us to profit that can cover our expenses of food, beer and rent of flat (Provided my rockstar girl bears all the expenses of our date, Thanks to her!). I figured out that almost 25 transactions a day can make a team of 4 rockstars self sustainable. Believe me, without spending dollars on marketing, it will take 3 more months to reach to 25 transactions a day. Even then we will be just self sustainable (My rockstar girl still have to bear expenses of our date).

Last Week, we changed our strategy from being profitable in each transaction to build a scale. We ran a marketing campaign with freecharge for Satyamev Jayate t-shirts. We did on an average 70 transactions a day in the last whole week. Let me tell you what has changed in this week :

1. Energy in the team was phenomenal. It looks like a new customer is getting registered on site every moment. Everyone was cheering up.
2. Tone of our vendors was completely different from when we used to go to them with 3-4 T-shirts, posters and mugs to print.

We acquired many new customers in one week and then we reached them all with a follow up call. What we realized is that some of them will never return to our website because they just came for the discount. But there were almost 40% of customers said that they would love to buy again if they like our service.

I am still with my point that value creation is the only key to build a great business but may be one has to use such marketing campaigns to take the word out quickly. If they will like our services, we will get our loyal customers and that’s the whole game.

The last whole week led me to think if it’s good idea to focus too much on profitability or focus on reaching to a scale. What’s your thought?

P.S.: I still tweet @sbaghla !