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.

Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab) course review

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E-Lab was the most fun course I took at MIT this semester. Working with a team from diverse cultural and educational backgrounds was the best part of the course for me. Each team member brought a unique perspective to the problem and collective debating and eventual consensus was a great learning experience.  After taking feedback from past students and exchanging few emails with Ken Morse(former Director of E-Center), I decided to take this course. So without further adieu let me get to the point.

Overall, I rate this course “A-“. This is just my personal experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.  The course was thought by Professor Alan MacCormack (http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=sp0025344&co_list=F). Before coming to MIT, he was a professor at HBS for over 10 years. He has authored many case studies related to technology companies and has extensive background in Technology and Operations Management. He is very passionate about the course and is one of the nicest professors I worked with this semester. Many of the theoretical leanings from the course were directly applicable during the project. I would have liked more classes, specifically on startup finance and sales. Maybe one class on each of the entrepreneurship topics could have been very helpful.  Overall I will rate him “A” based on how he handled the course.

The project I picked was with a local Boston based startup (2006), which competed with Google Analytics and Omniture with their own web-analytics product.  Competing against Google should have raised warning bells :), but this was the only software product company which was picked by E-Lab team and I had to join one of the teams. There were over 20 projects and only 7 teams and hence the problem.  In the end it was not so bad, because it was interesting to work with founders who were so passionate and confident about their product and undeterred by Google’s dominance in the market. It was also interesting to watch their struggle to differentiate a product in a highly commoditized market. Some of the ideas our team gave were implemented immediately and it was an amazing experience. In my opinion, I don’t think it matters which project you pick, as long as you have a great team to work with.

The team you pick is super important. Unless you know them from other classes, it will be random based on their resumes and the project you pick, which are posted few days earlier. I highly recommend working with people you have not already worked with, else you miss the fun. My team included a PhD, a Visiting student, an MBA and myself. We had varied cultural and professional background which I believe was the best part of this course. You will find an equal distribution of MBA (Sloan), HBS and non-MBA students taking the course and that by itself provides a rich platform for learning. I was the only SDM student taking the course. 99 out of 100 times, you are likely to meet great team members and you will enjoy working with them. As the semester progresses, you will spend many long hours debating on everything, but best part of the learning at Sloan comes from discussions and I am glad I had a great team to both learn from and contribute to.

Food was provided in every class; a new cuisine every time, which was really fun. But the sad part was we had only 7 or 8 classes during the whole semester. TA was very helpful and overall you get enough guidance to make progress. You are required to do primary research in terms of interviews (Cold calling and surveys) and both qualitative and quantitative analysis. It took me a few weeks, to convince myself to go for cold calling. All in all it was fun.

To summarize (in random order)

• 1.       Selecting a good project is important, but overall it does not matter because you will get the same experience, no matter which project you choose.
• 2.       Select a team with diverse background to get maximum experience out of the course.
• 3.       Be prepared for cold calling and lot of quantitative analysis from surveys.
• 4.       Do not jump into interviews and surveys. Spend time understanding the product and do a market and competitive analysis.
• 5.       You will have 2, one hour team meetings with the professor during the semester.
• 6.       One lunch with the professor in a group of 4 to 6 students, which is a good experience
• 7.       You will help with the CEO reception. You help with inviting guests and carrying name tags to the CEO receptionJ. Good part is you get name tags as “HOST”, so it becomes easier to network with over 200 VCs and CEOs at the reception.
• 8.       You have 4 presentations overall. Last presentation is 90 minutes long with Alan and another E-center professor.
• 9.       Try to work with a team with atleast one HBS student, and one non-MBA to maximize your learning.
• 10.   Course is not as rigorous as it is led to believe. It is manageable if you are smart about time management and have good team dynamics.
• 11.   It is not important to be a lead in the team. Our team was lead by the youngest person in the group, who is a non-MBA and has no industry experience. This was his first management course, but he did an awesome job. It does not matter who is leading the team, just enjoy the experience.
• 12.   Big part of the class experience is networking with fellow students. I did a terrible job at this, and it took me some time to realize and correct it. In the end it does not matter which project you did, just the relationships you built and experience you had.
• 13.   Do a lot of quantitative analysis. Our team got a terrible feedback for not doing enough of it.
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Done with Spring Semester

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Finally successfully completed the spring semester! It was an amazing experience. I am still getting used to the idea of not thinking about the projects, assignments, papers etc. Last few weeks were so stressful that I can hardly recall how they went by.  Now that I have some time on my hand before I start my summer job, I will be blogging about various experiences I had, and few tips for future SDM students.

This semester I took

•          i.            Business Strategy and Role of IT
•        ii.            The Business of Software and Digital Platforms
•       iii.            Entrepreneurship Lab
•      iv.            Organizing for Innovative Product Development
•        v.            An independent Study for 6 credits.

I know too much softwareJ. I will blog about my experience with each course and few tips how to get maximum experience from them. I hope it might be useful to someone in future.

Overall I was happy with my course selection. The only regret was I could not get into one of the Harvard courses (Lottery) which I was looking forward to take for a long time.  I am going to try again in Fall or next spring, if I can get into it.

For Fall, I bid for G-Lab, Advanced Strategy Management and Technology Sales class @Sloan. I am so looking forward to the G-Lab class, specifically if I can get a project in India or Australia.

SDM on Twitter

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Samuel Chow, SDM'05 has started an MIT SDM Twitter List.  Thanks for taking the initiative Sam!. Follow it at http://twitter.com/#list/Cybersam/mitsdm.

I was contemplating about doing some kind of inbound marketing for SDM for couple of weeks, but never got around to it. Listening to some of the lectures of co-founders Brian and Dharmesh from Hubspot, I am convinced that SDM can greatly benefit if all the past and current students are more active on Social Media talking about the program. 

We should all blog about the program and integrate tweet into our blogs so that it is tweeted to our followers and friends on facebook, twitter etc… I am including links below on how to integrate twitter with blog and how to integrate twitter with facebook.

http://www.allblogtools.com/tricks-and-hacks/how-to-add-retweet-button-to-blogger-blogspot/

http://www.ajvaynerchuk.com/how-to-link-twitter-to-facebook-a-twitter-tutorial-3/

What a week!

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The week started with a phone call early Monday morning(early by MIT standards :)) from Sears HR who wanted to congratulate me for getting selected into their Technology leadership program internship. It was a pleasant news. Then I dragged myself to finally submit the business of software reaction paper 1 by the night. When I finally got to read the email sent by Sears, and found out the package, I was very excited with the offer. 

Tuesday, I had a meeting with Venture Capital for presenting my business idea. Although the meeting was disappointing, but it gave me a chance to meet the VC for the first time in my life. I submitted the Business Strategy assignment and also completed the E-Lab presentation PPT by the end of the day.

Wednesday started with the professor Cusumano basically telling our team, that the presentation we prepared for Friday was crap. While my team was scrambling to make the changes suggested, I was preparing for the E-Lab presentation. E-Lab presentation went decently well, with my team giving me a B+ for my presentation skills. It was my first presentation at MIT, so I was happy with that rating :). I was able to confidently answer all the questions. For some reason, I am not that confident on the stage, as I thought I was... maybe it was just MIT phobia :).

Thursday morning Business strategy class had Sear's CIO as the guest lecture. It was a very inspiring presentation. It was interesting to see how a company as bureaucratic as Sears is going through a transformation. I later had a 30 mins meeting with the CIO at 2:00 PM. I had mixed feelings about the meeting. It reminded me of the documentary of Winston Churchill and how he lost the election immediately after winning the world war II. 

Thursday evening professor Cusumano blasted our final version of the Friday's presentation. We slogged into the night, trying to make changes and finally at 11:00 PM our presentation was approved.

Friday...in  the Business of Software class; every one loved our presentation.The professor sent us an email praising  our work.

With that, my most hectic week at MIT finally ended... to celebrate my successful triumph during this week, I took a trip to Ithaca and drove for 12 hrs (6 hrs each way) and loved it.