Inverted Passion

Be passionate about the territory, not the map

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A New Internet on the Anvil?

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Technology3 Replies

[Note: The following is a guest post written by Heather Johnson exclusively for this blog. If you too want to write a guest post, you are most welcome. Contact me at [email protected]]

In today’s scenario, is it possible to even think for a moment about life without the Internet? The web as we know it has evolved tremendously over the past 15 years to be used for purposes beyond sending email and its popularity has spread to every nook and corner of the globe. But has progress truly been made, especially in the way that it should have been? ...  Read the entire post →

How I built a web app in six days for Rs. 350 ($8.75) only

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal, Technology19 Replies

I just read this story where they talk about how they built a web app in 4 days for $10,000. Voila! It struck me that I have been equally competitive (if not better) in terms of building a web app. So, here I share my story of building a web app.

I recently built MyJugaad.in, which lets anybody create a slideshow from a set of webpages or RSS feeds. Following is the time line and the money involved during making this web app.

  • Day 1: Conceived the idea. Explored the idea space. Refined it. Drew user interface for the slideshow on a paper.
  • Day 2: Realized that Javascript is the way to go forward. Researched on Javascript Toolkits. Found JQuery to be the best. Learnt Jquery. Started programming Slideshow front-end using JQuery.
  • Day 3: Wasted a ton of time on sorting cross-browser incompatibilities. Done some more programming. Working prototype ready by evening.
  • Day 4: Wanted to make a system for user authentication and management, slideshow creation and management. Confused between Django, CodeIgniter or CakePhP. Chose CodeIgniter. Started Learning and programming the web app. (Used SimplePie for RSS feed fetching and parsing.)
  • Day 5: Finished Programming. Discovered that NYTimes.com was breaking the slideshow due to their iframe breaking script. Had a hell of a time trying fixing that.
  • Day 6: Looked for interesting free designs on the web. Chose this. Implemented and integrated the design with the web app. Wrote a basic ‘about’, ‘faq’, ‘contact’ page. Uploaded the web app on a shared hosting account free of cost (courtesy: my friend). Used a domain already purchased: myjugaad.in (cost Rs. 350). Seeded the app with a few initial users and data. Announced the web app on my homepage and status message on GTalk.

What’s missing?

  • Market Research: I should have done initial market research. Instead, I simply jumped into programming the web app. If I had done some market research, I would have discovered a product with almost the same feature set as mine’s. Nevertheless, I learnt a lot during my six day journay. So, I don’t regret making this app.
  • Testing: I just did some initial testing. But should have done a little bit more testing.
  • Users: I didn’t do any marketing for my web app. That’s bad and I am going to fix it soon.

Hope this post helps you write and launch your own web app in record time.
Any thoughts? ...  Read the entire post →

30 by 30

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal8 Replies

Update: 23rd November 2014. Struck a few more items (Only 2.5 years remaining to complete the rest. So. much. pressure.)

Update: 6th November 2011. Yay, striking off a few items of the list

The aim of this post is to list 30 things which I would want to do before I turn 30 (I turned 21 yesterday). Got inspired by this and this. So, here goes my list (in no particular order):

Learn to play Electric Guitar and start my own Rock band Write a novel on my philosophy of life (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance style) (Wrote a 100+ page book on ramblings on Philosophy, titled ‘Mind, will you shut the fuck up?’) Start a startup incubator (Ycombinator style) Start my own (successful) startup (see Wingify) Go to the moon (I know it sounds crazy!) Earn Rs 100 crore (I know this sounds naive!) Read thoroughly The Road to Reality Publish a paper in Science or Nature Reduce India’s poverty by at least 10% Produce something creatively viral (I guess some posts that I wrote will qualify for that?) Travel backpacking across Western Europe (Partially done. Did a road trip in Montenegro in Oct 2011; Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Italy in 2012) Make a truly creative Artificial Intelligence program that can learn and perhaps pass the Turing Test Make a short-and-slick movie that earns more than what it takes to produce it Sponsor my parents’ world trip (I really really would want to do this) (yay! they’ve been to many, many places now) Learn a foreign language (preferably Spanish) Live for a year or so in Silicon Valley (doing an MBA/MS at Stanford perhaps?) (was there for a couple of months; realized the oppurtunity is here back in India) Read entire Calvin and Hobbess collection (Bought the collection and started reading it) Do Skydiving and Bungee Jumping Spend a year or so at MIT AI Lab Buy a (small) country (it is not impossible) Read all the popular books on Philosophy, Psychology, AI, Sociology, and Cosmology (Ongoing effort…) (My secret wish) Spend sometime somewhere without spending a penny from my own pocket Produce a truly breath taking theory (in the leagues of Theory of Evolution, Relativity and Gravity Travel to at least 30 different countries Being featured in a good business magazine (Featured in a few already) Being admired by businessmen, scientists and students (

cough ...  Read the entire post →

Why (Most) Internet Startups Suck?

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal9 Replies

Inspired by WhyDoesEverythingSuck.com and learning from Kroomsa.com, following is why I think most internet startups suck:

  • They Give Away Things for Free
    When the business model depends on free, only a very few lucky companies can survive. Advertising, at best, should be a secondary source of income for a startup. How would startups keep on innovating their services when they are giving away stuff for free. Where is the motivation, dude? On the other hand, when you charge for what you are offering, there is a direct incentive to improve your services in order to attract higher prices or more customers, which directly translates into better earnings. Thus, charging for something you offer kick-starts a positive feedback loop which reinforces itself. And, that is good for a startup.
  • They are VERY easy to start
    This directly translates into absence of vision and low barriers to entry. When you don’t have to invest time thinking about why you are doing something, you end up doing a quick but messy thing. This is especially true for startups. Today, starting an internet startup is so easy that anybody, really anybody, with a basic knowledge of web can start a so-called internet company. People find it cool to have a company these days. And, successful startups are seldom cool. So, in a nutshell, either try to do something not-so-cool and/or try to do something hard, which will force you to think about the reasons for your motivation.
  • There are Gazzilions of Internet Startups
    While for the industry and consumers, it is good to have so much of choice, for entrepreneurs it not so good to have an idea and then discover that there are already tens of internet startups offering *exactly* the same service or product (and, chances are, for free). How is your new internet startup going to make money when some freaks are offering the same thing in a better package, at a better price and with a better marketing budget. So, get a little away from Internet and think if you can do something useful in traditional fields where there is a moderate amount of competition and where barriers to entry are higher.
    •  ...  Read the entire post →

    WTF 2.0

    Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Technology2 Replies

    Russell Beattie is really a very provocative and in-your-face writer. In his WTF 2.0 post, he writes about how deluded all those so-called entrepreneurs are who keep churning out amazing web apps without a slightest idea of how they are actually going to make money. If you are interested in Web 2.0, make sure you don’t miss his post.

    Beautiful Design by Jay

    Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal

    If you notice, I have recently (yesterday, to be precise) released my first ebook: How to Start an Online Business: 11,520 Free Resources for the Internet Entrepreneur.

    Now, as I have finished writing and publishing the ebook, it is time to promote it. I am looking at ways to advertise it on various blogs relating to this subject. However, with so many ebooks on the same subject (of making money online), how do I make sure that my ebook stands out from the crowd?

    The answer is design. I want the advertisement banner for the ebook to look killer, professional and cool. While researching on the internet about how to create such an advertisement banner, I stumbled across ScribblesAndWords.com, a design firm by Jay. In an instant, I was mesmerized by the banners he has created. They look so beautiful. In addition to banners, he also does Copywriting, Blog Header Design and Blog Consultation for a very reasonable fee. ...  Read the entire post →

    Finding My Passion

    Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal, Philosophy2 Replies

    Here I found an excellent post on how to find your passion. The article presents you a list of questions which you must answer. Let’s see what is my passion:

    1) If money was not a worry, what could you see yourself doing? What would you do for free?

    Well, I guess, I would work on interesting ideas for free. I wish I could generate ideas day in and day out and make a quick prototype of those ideas. That would be awesome.

    Philosophy Questions

    Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Philosophy

    A guy named Alejandro Barreto has emailed me asking me few of the [i]grander[/i] philosophical questions. They were quite interesting and challenging. I found it very enjoyable to express my views to someone who values it. Below, I am reproducing my repl...