How we can avoid the next Batman Massacre?

My prayers are with the family of the victims who lost their lives in Denver Cinema shootings.

 Below are  my two cents to suggest how we can avoid such sad incidents. The idea is to develop and use business intelligence tools that trigger alerts to local police- when legal but  suspicious gun purchase transactions are done with local gun stores.

What needs to be done:

1. All  Gun Stores - transaction inventory - should be connected to local Sheriff/Police database: Make it mandatory. That the police receives daily reports - who bought what gun where.
2. Gun stores - needs to create profile questionnaire for all buyers and feed it into a profiler software . Eg
• Whether the buyer is a  first time buyer or regular
• Quantity of ammunition
• Type of gun
• Demographics
3. The gun seller should run his "Profiler software" : to see if this buyer can be danger to common people
4. If the profiler suggest something odd an automated alert should go to local police that a suspicious  behaviour was "noticed" with buyer X and local police should question this buyer
5. Local police should visit this odd buyer and do their due diligence whether the gun holder deserve to keep the gun or not.
6. In local 

What is required:

1. Political will to ensure that buying gun is not easy
2. Develop this Profiler software (existing tools can be customized)

Disclaimer : I am not software guru so not sure what will be the technical requirements to develop this tool. But this is my attempt to see that we don't lose innocent lives because some crack-head is not happy with the society and found it easy to buy a gun.

2012: Make or break facebook  

I think 2012 will be the litmus test of facebook – sustainability not success. It is a success. Now the whole “privacy  issue” is going to be tricky for facebook to manage. With continuous breach of trust facebook is testing the limits of it 800mn+ users.

The fact is facebook is now too big to fail . A 100bn+ IPO in 2012 is a fact. Now why the rush or push? I think the IPO will act more as an “insurance cover” rather than an action to raise more money for facebook.

Why and how insurance cover?

• A public listed facebook will have more weitage and more credibility – when it makes new product releases or updates that affects our privacy. You will now have more transparency – as per the facebook spokesperson.
• As  a public listed company with millions of shareholders (I forecast) – if facebook fails millions of shareholders will fail. So by listing facebook it will not only raise some cash  but the more important thing is that they will now have – millions of underwriters in their retail shareholders  who will ensure facebook is not a forgotten story

So the IPO is good for facebook .

Steve Jobs - Apple Apps store - A Platform for entrepreneurs.


This week Steve Jobs CEO of Apple resigned. Most of the press and stock market gave a pessimistic verdict that Apple's market dominance is now limited to max 2 years. It will be dethroned from its market position as soon as the product vision of Steve is exhausted with iPhone 6 and iPad 4.

I am not interested in the perennial success of Apple as I hate repeat winners. But my blog today is not about the future of Apples market cap.

I have a simple observation. Steve Jobs biggest contribution to the entrepreneurial community is creating the app store. The iPhone, iPad and iNext? are simply the tools of consumption. But the Apple Apps store is the invisible glue which will help Apple evolve.

In all the mobile competition between Apple v Google v Microsoft - What's in for the entrepreneur - well today finance or sales or  marketing guy can come -up with  profitable business idea - build it and monetize it via app store. The store is perfect for small and sole-proprietary based entrepreneurs - who are not cash rich. App store is the quickest and fairest way to reach you mobile target audience.

I don't think Microsoft or Google (?) have till date created something similar to the Apple App store - that appeals to the small entrepreneur. Google has the Apps- Android Market, but I think it will be a second fiddle and people will struggle to monetize on it - in its existing avatar.

But thanks Steve and Apple for the App store!

A Friday for Japan !

As somebody who has seen the and experienced the pains of a natural calamity. I was moved by the Jason Gissing article in today’s London evening standard  where he shares the pain, agony and resilience of Japanese people, currently surviving multiple natural calamities and nuclear accidents.

As a man away from family in London, I miss home food. So every Friday I reward myself with $10 dinner at my favourite Asian restaurant. But this Friday I have decided that I will donate my indulgence fund to the Japanese cause through the charity Peace winds Japan. 

My best wishes with the people of Japan.

One of the grass-root thinkers of the Modern World is Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad better known as C. K. Prahalad.He left us on his heavenly journey on April 16 2010. The world lost one of its brightest brains. He gave us a gem in the form of a book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

One thing that this universally proved is that poor or the less privileged is not a burden to the developed nations or to the UN but rather an untapped market. The approach to this market is pay as you go.

A recent research by McKinsey & Company suggest that "Fully 2.5 billion of the world’s adults don’t use formal banks or semiformal microfinance institutions to save or borrow money, our research finds".

But it would be great if on this unbanked population geographic map we overlay the Micro-finance growth market.I am sure the maximum growth in Microfinance will come from areas that have the maximum density of unbanked population. The success of Micro-finance is a great academic and economic case study which re-emphasize the fact that the underprivileged is the largest economically untapped segment.
market.

Now something from the technology and services world. The theme of 2010 is Cloud Computing. Research estimates put that by 2010 approximately 2/3 of IT infrastructure services will move into in this virtual world.

But what this clutter is missing is that the quickest and biggest market for cloud in this recessionary market is the Start-up community. In this trying times when VC's are very selective in seed funding. Cloud computing will be the biggest compliment to Start-ups.

As the initial capital commitment is less the Start-up can use this Pay as you go services more effectively.The opportunity is for all large IT infrastructure companies, VC's, and vendors who shy away from start-ups. If the delivery model can be tuned as systematic investment plan keeping the operations cost low, the profit from catering to start-ups will be massive.But as in Micro-financing one has to due some basic credit assessment of the borrower so also in SAAS services one has to do the basic credit check. The idea is to sell less in quantity and more in volume.


The analogy is that Start-ups are at the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to financial attarctiveness of services sector, where as a SAAS model of hand-helding will be a massive boost to the community.

What is common in SAAS, Microfinance and CK Prahald is that they showed us the road to success need not be always in selling to the high and mighty.

The road ahead for companies will be to adopt and accept the fact that to be successful they cannot ignore the underprivileged in our case teh start-ups.

CK gave us an idea that has just scratched the surface of new ideas and we have miles to go...

What's the difference between Absolute and relative ? Most of us will say, its very easy to explain with some example. Let say as on 21.02.2010 my height is 175cms that's an absolute statement. My brother is 180 cms. I am shorter than him by 5cms that's a relative statement. So the summary is, an absolute statement is actually a fact and relative statement is a comparison .

But hold on. My height on 21.02.1987 was 90cms. Which is a fact, so this absolute. Now there cannot be two absolute statement i,e my height is 90 cms and 185 cms . But they are facts ,but they are dependent on another variable in this case time. So every absolute fact is actually a relative facts when it comes to time.

Lets extend this fact. Sun is at the centre of the universe this is an absolute statement. But just go back 500 years and most of the world believed in the opposite fact that earth is at the centre of the universe, till Nicolaus Copernicus showed us light .So when we compare the fact of 2010 with a fact of 1450, the earlier fact is correct relatively.
So the summary is a thing is absolute only when we compare it to another parameter.

Just observe things around you and you will start thinking all absolute things are relative in the long run.

The perfect world. Its amazing when we wait to do things that you want to do , but the elements are not perfect to do. Lets say I want to go to cinema ,but since we don't have the right group or friends circle who love the same genre of cinema , I will most likely avoid going to that movie.

So we wait for the perfect world when we want to do things , when every thing is as per my expectations. Unfortunately we will get such rare scenarios where every element will fit to your expectations. If we summarize it will be called a Lucky world.

We all know luck is a rare phenomenon. So if you want to enjoy the moment go and have it rather than wait for the that perfect world.

My personal experience, you will have a more perfect moment or lucky moment if you do that act rather wait for things to be perfect.