Impressed with Impress.js

Impress.js is a small open source javascript library that we had used to create our "Why Kinship" presentation available on our site. Impress.js uses the power HTML and CSS3 to create stunning presentations that would the give the likes Prezi a run for its money.

We have always been fascinated by the power of Prezi presentations. It was a great relief from the world of boring powerpoint slides (read death by powerpoint). Prezi enabled your slides to come into life with zoom-in or zoom-out transitions that can augment the core idea that your slides are conveying. Using the Prezi designer tool one can layout the slides on an infinite canvas and it allowed all the transitions to be visually designed too.  In short, Prezi was damn cool but that was until Impress.js happened.

To listen or not to listen that is the question

When it comes to building a product, designing a user interface or adding a new functionality there are two schools of thought at work in the start-up world. One, pioneered by the likes of Apple and 37Signals,  says not listen to your customers because they don't know what they actually need. What they say they need is a what they "think" they want and which may not be true. The other school of thought pioneered by Steve Blank who is a serial entrepreneur, academician, author of the much-acclaimed book "The Four Steps to Epiphany" and proponent of the "Customer development model" say one should solicit opinion and feedback from the customers and build your product accordingly.

It is obvious that both these approaches are right and can work as evident from the success of Apple and 37Signal and the numerous startups that have used the customer development model effectively. So the question is not whether one approach is better than the other but rather the question is which approach is right for us as a start-up company. To listen or not to listen to that is the question.

Retail Broking: Customer relationship that outlive market crashes

The stock market has its ups and downs, the cycles of boom and bust and times of high volatility. The mood of stock market investors also tends to go up or down with the market. This creates some unique challenges in customer relationship management for the stock brokers. We are trying to look at some of that and see if there are any best practices one could adapt to tackle these challenges.

See the real picture, Invest wisely.

There are a lot of free investment advice going around these days, celebrity anchors and investment gurus giving investment/trade tips on TV, broking firms suggesting stock selections on social media and TV, investment advisors and analysts giving out free tips through SMS and other means. All this should make investing in stocks very easy and millions of people should have become millionaires by now. Somehow that doesn't seem to happen. It seems more people are losing their money than gain it, why?

60% of investors will beneit from New no-frills demat account

With an aim to encourage an investment culture in the country, Sebi announced no-frills, or basic trading accounts, for retail individual investors with no charges applicable for holdings up to Rs 50,000.

Investors can hold securities worth up to Rs 2 lakh in these accounts and are called Basic Services Demat Account (BSDA). The charges would be capped at a maximum of Rs 100 a year for funds exceeding Rs 50,000.

Indian stock brokers, you are getting it wrong

As a stockbroker, do you think your customers are happy with the service you give them? Do you think you deserve the 50 basis point cut they give you for every trade?  Do you think you really care for them to make money from markets?

Running Beta is rubbish

Yes, we are going to contradict ourselves here. We were running Finahub in beta mode for about a year only to realize the mistake later. In reality, it is because we didn't have the guts to say that our product is just amazing. Maybe we need to blame Google for this. They came out of beta only after a long stint of so many years of running in beta.

An interminable beta stage tells customers you’re not really committed to rolling out a finished product. It says, “Use this, but if it’s not perfect, it’s not our fault.”

Beta passes the buck to your customers.  If it is not good enough for public consumption don’t give it to the public to consume.

Take responsibility for what you’re releasing. Put it out and call it a release. Otherwise, you’re just making excuses.

Don't worry we are inspired by Getting Real from 37signals.com. We recommend it as a must read for all fellow startups out there.

Do share your thoughts on this.

Jerith.

Startup Life: Exploding Head Syndrome

 We have been busy getting our next version out with all the new features and customized look and feel. That explains why we haven't been blogging for a while now. Have said that, we know that zero blogging is not the best of strategies for startup, even if it is a B2B company. So now onwards you will be seeing some short blogs getting posted once in a week or two.

Our product development is going into full swing, things are hectic and crazy. We are following iterative development cycles with code drops to the UAT happening almost every day. Like all startups, we have too many things to do and too little resources at hand. Of all the resources, time is our biggest constraint, this is because we are juggling too many things at a time than we would like to.

Why "attitude to risk" is so important

Guest Post by John Hughes.
John Hughes writes for Best Bonds, a site that provides access to market-leading investment and savings bonds

The accurately gauging risk is crucial to developing an investment portfolio tailored to suit your needs. There are a wide range of investment types and an equally wide range of risks involved. The key to building your portfolio is to find a level of risk, or a combination of risk levels and types ideally suited to you.

Our startup journey

It's been more than a month since we posted our last blog, we have been too busy with developing the features that are important to our new client. We have been thinking of scribbling down our start-up journey for a long time. So we think today is a good day to stop putting it off. It has been a bumpy but exciting ride so far. It all started with a casual post-lunch conversation. Speaking about the future plans we both were thinking of start-ups mostly. We both had some history of trying some things on our own. One of us started an open source software rating site, and another started to build a contest pool website for people to share about contest's happening around the world. Not to mention nothing really worked out for both of us. We talked a lot about these and finally, we decided to try out our future ventures as a team.