My summer at Sourcebits

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Sourcebits was founded by Rohit in 2006, as product company building Flex and iPhone applications. Luck = opportunity meets the preparedness, Sourcebits built a right product at the right time. Night Stand was such a phenomenal success, it opened world of opportunities for Rohit. Not to take away the credit from his vision or hard work, but the success of Sourcebits was just magical to say the least.

The company has reached 200+ developers and expanding fast. When I first decided to join Sourcebits over other offers I had, I was not very sure of its growth trajectory. It seemed like a big risk at the time, but I am glad I took the leap of faith and leaving an opportunity to work with India's fastest growing mobile company was difficult to walk away from. Leaving aside the great experiences I had in India, the Sourcebits opened up wonderful opportunities for me.

I started of as a VP - IT and with time role clarity resulted in me finally settling down as VP - Engineering. Sourcebits has Service, Product and Game division. I run the the delivery team for the Service Division. As is common with any startup which experiences an exponential growth, it is not always prepared to handle the complexities of scalability. Scaling an organization for expanded operations is a complex undertaking and I have seen very few entrepreneurs have had the vision. I would not claim Sourcebits was any different, but I do have to agree that they realized the issue earlier the most. Bringing in senior management, be it VP, CTO, Delivery Heads and creating a organizational structure was a first step in the right direction.

To attain scalability for any organization, specially the service organization, it has to invest in People, Systems, Process. Hiring the senior team took care of one aspect of People, but culture or DNA of an organization takes time.

Rohit has also given me a free hand in deploying IT systems to handle the scale problem. We are building some amazing systems using open source tools. The last aspect, process is a change management challenge. I think it is going in the right direction.

Overall, I would rate joining Sourcebits as one of the best decisions I took apart from deciding to go back to school for MIT. I think this company has great future, if it can successfully navigate the Chasm(from the book "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers"). 

15.358 The Business of Software and Digital Platforms Spring 2010

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 The Business of Software course thought by professor Cusumano, was one of my favorite classes at MIT. The seminar styled class takes a deep dive on a separate topic each week. Each class has a lecture by professor Cusumano, followed by a student presentation on the topic, then sometimes a guest lecture from industry leaders and ending with a short lecture by co-professor Imran Sayeed. 

Overall, the course was very interesting as we explored various topics like SaaS, Cloud computing, Mobile Video, Mobile platforms, Social networks etc. Each topic was relevant to current times and as stated above was covered from multiple perspective. The class was very interactive. Only drawback was, we always ran out of time. I guess I cannot complain too much as these are very interesting topics and they are bound incite deep passion and hence the discussions. I think first few classes could be trimmed for future semesters as the discussion about products vs. services does not seem to add much value.

The course load involved 1 class presentation, 2 reaction papers and one final paper. Reaction papers are individual assignments and rest in a group of 2 - 4 students. Each submission is evaluated by Cusumano, Imran and the TA. You will find that not everyone will like your point of view in the reaction paper. Do not forget the 40% for the class participation as common with every Sloan course.

You are not allowed to sit in as a listener, so SDM students will have to burn one Sloan credit for taking the course. I think it is a very valuable course taught by one of the leading experts in the industry, so if you are interested in software, this is a must course.

Back to Blogging

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Its been a while, since I blogged. Have made a pact, that I will be more regular :). The new job and relocating to India kept me very busy. Having the best summer of my life so far. Apart from meeting amazing people to writing articles for magazines, life is good.

I do plan to continue writing reviews about my courses I took in Spring 2010. I do miss the MIT ambiance a lot, so hoping to be back some day. For now happy with my job.

I will also write more about my experiences in India and specially with my new job. Its an amazing gig and I do plan to stick around for some time.