Workleaf

After some changes internally within Alef Solutions, we will be taking a break this month. 2007 has been a good year for this fledgling idea. We had some crazy ideas, traveled various paths – won some and lost some.

It is that time of the year, when you step back and take a look at your life from a different perspective (at least, thats what the Hallmark cards say!). Well, then why should it be any different for Alef Solutions? We will be taking a break to step back and take a look at how things are going. We’ve had some loses and we need to figure out how to manage those.

Alef Solutions will be back for sure. But in what form and nature, we do not know that yet.  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank our “vast” reading community for their support via the comments board. In the meantime, do check out the blogs in our blogroll. They continue to roll fast and they still provide interesting insights into outsourcing.

Hasta la vista

BusinessWeek published an article in its latest edition titled “Outsourcing Heads To Outskirts”  providing a great example of how exactly outsourcing is resulting in the social/economical uplifting of rural India. It may not be the great turn-around story of the century but it is definitely  a start. If we start seeing more companies like GramIT using outsourcing as not just a mode of capitalizing on the current trends in outsourcing, but also to serve a social cause, then we may start seeing a whole new paradigm of outsourcing. Probably social entrepreneurship will see a renewed spurt when such success stories are given more exposure in the media.

Update (Jan 05 2007) – Apparently, the link mentioned in my post is incorrect. Please find the blog here – http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_120_day_won.html

Thanks to Dian, the editor of Sourcingmag.com, for pointing that out. If you are interested in outsourcing inn general, I highly recommend www.sourcingmag.com. It also has an active discussion forum, where some very good people answer questions posted on various subjects related to Outsourcing.

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The last few days of 2006. I was taking a break from reading all the (already) cliched predictions for 2007 & beyond in the blogosphere when I ran into a blog authored by the one and only Guy Kawasaki of Garage Ventures (I did not know that he had a blog!). And what do you know… he has a list of his most read posts!

So, here I was, pondering about the launch messaging campaign that has been planned for sometime in January and how to market the message over blogosphere, and I see this blog. This is a great piece for people starting to blog, especially for start-ups that are focussing on blog-based launch marketing. You can find the entry HERE, a great post on how to market your blog.

P.S. – Yes. We have finally figured out what ‘exactly’ we will start doing! You can expect to hear about it in January, ss soon as we settle some of our logistics & administrative issues.

Apparently, according to a recent survey report, 47% of current venture backed start-ups have immigrant founders. I knew that immigrants had a significant impact on the American economy. But this is probably the first time I am seeing numbers on this. Wonder what makes people perform better outside of their home countries?

The survey apparently found that 25% of venture-backed, public companies that were established in the last fifteen years were started by one or more immigrant founders. Within the high technology sector, that percentage rises to 40%. The aggregate market capitalization of these companies, which includes Intel, Google, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems and eBay, exceeds $500 billion. The study also found that immigrant founders are responsible for building a high percentage of the most innovative American companies, with 87 percent operating in sectors such as high-tech manufacturing, information technology and life sciences. These companies are headquartered across the country but are concentrated in five states: California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington and Texas.

Fifty-six percent of the emerging companies founded by immigrants were headquartered in California, followed by Massachusetts and New York. Sixty-two percent of the companies were in the high technology or life sciences sectors. India was the most prevalent country of origin with 28 percent followed by the United Kingdom (11 percent), China (5 percent), Iran (4 percent), and France (4 percent).

Interesting… isn’t it? Download the full report here

Start-up costs are tumbling down these days (Yes… it has almost become a cliche these days!). Some of the reasons are – Open Source, Offshoring, Online Marketing, Cheap Hardware.

All that is fine, but how does a person actually get to these resources and see what is the most cost-effective way of ploughing ahead with her/his ideas? My recent discovery as an answer to this question is the “now famous” tech blog – http://www.techcrunch.com/

Apparently, there are so many start-ups out there providing services that could, in turn, help other start-ups cut down their initial expenditure significantly. Recently reported start-ups were – Amberjack and Weebly. Amberjack helps you build a “site tour” for first time visitors pretty easily. Weebly helps you in creating Web 2.0 ready sites.  I will personally give these sites a try and see if it helps in my attempt moving forward with Alef’s product development. Till then, I strongly recommend subscribing to TechCrunch’s feeds. You never know what start-ups are out there that are providing exactly what you need to get moving!

I was talking to Jason yesterday. We were discussing different ways to move forward with the Alef Platform. During the conversation, Jason talked about the primary challanges in any sales process, irrespective of what you are trying to sell. I found it good enough to become blog fodder, so here it is -

1. No Need – The customer does not have or does not feel the need for the product/service. Here, the sales person should focus on making the prospective customer realize the need for the product or service
2. No Money – The customer’s current budget is already committed to other initiatives and hence, there is no money to spend on this product/service. Here, the sales person to devise ways to make the payment part easily fit into the customer’s budget and spending plans.

3. No Urgency – The customer realizes the need but the need is not urgent. The sale gets postponed indefinitely. Here, the sales person should focus on “quick wins” that the product/service will generate for the customer, hence making him/her realize the urgency of the need.

4. No Time – The customer does not have the time to evaluate the product/service to assess if he/she needs it or not. In other words, the prospect does have time to listen to the sales pitch. Here is where a sales person should focus on relationship building and get a time from the customer to make the sales pitch.

Have you faced some (or all) of these challenges during your sales process? Are there more? Do let me know.

Welcome to the Blite (Blog + Website) of Alef Solutions

This blog will not only track the progress of our start-up, but this will also act as a place for the founder’s musings. This place will also be used as a forum for garnering feedback from everybody interested in commenting on what we are doing (whatever that may be!)

Lastly, this is also a place to have fun! Apart from being international MBA students with entrepreneurial aspirations, we also want to induce some fun into the whole proceedings!

So… here we go!!

- Vinod

Founder (not officially a CEO yet)
Alef Solutions