Open AI - Why Google is Threatened

 Open AI - Why Google is Threatened

If search without AI was an order of complexity - one, then search with AI is like an order of complexity two. Google is now launching its own #AI chatbot - BardAI which will respond to complex queries instead of simple questions served by google doodle. AI is now venturing into more complex tasks; hopefully, more players will participate and emerge.

More info on Open AI can be found here

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading: 

How to kickstart and scale a consumer business: 

 Here’s what’s in store: Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea ← This post Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your super-specific who Step 3: HOOK: Craft your pitch Step 4: REACH: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale Step 5: RETAIN: Iterate until enough people stick around Step 6: SCALE: Build your growth engine

 
Marc Andersen on Technology and Web3, Crypto 

I think this is a foundational technology change, a new architecture for building an entirely new generation of computing systems. We have become convinced that Web3/blockchain/crypto is foundational. It’s a big hill. It’s as foundational an architecture shift as the ones from mainframes to PCs, from PCs to web, from web to mobile, or from traditional software to AI. It’s a fundamental shift and building this out is a 25- to 30-year process.

 
How Companies can build In-House Consulting 

“Management consulting is expensive. The median billing range for India-bred consulting firms and the Big Four is 0.7-1 million per consultant-month. For international firms like Accenture, this range can be 1.5-2 million. For MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain,) the range is 2.5 million plus, and can cross 5 million per consultant-month (Indian arms of MNCs often pay global rates.) This translates to gross margins of more than 50%. Given this increasing need for consulting services and the high costs, many companies attempt to build consulting teams in-house. At its core, management consulting requires three things: One, top talent. Two, access to information sources such as research reports and expert networks (e.g., GLG—Gerson Lehrman Group.) Three, the institutional knowledge on domains and problem-solving methods.”

 
Align Sales and Marketing for Revenue Growth 

Strategy Alignment: Both Marketing and Sales functions must dramatically change their revenue strategies to better align with the new buyer. The Marketing strategy of brand awareness and demand generation, and Sales strategy of opportunity management and closing, is no longer adequate. Marketing strategies and Sales strategies must be integrated into a common, comprehensive revenue strategy that focuses on shortening the entire buyer journey, both online and offline. 

Process Alignment: Both Marketing and Sales groups must dramatically change their revenue processes to better align with the empowered buyer team. The marketing process (aka funnel) and the sales process (aka pipeline) no longer aligns with the customer’s purchasing process. The separate Marketing processes and Sales processes must be integrated into a common comprehensive revenue process that focuses on moving every buyer team member through each stage of their purchasing process resulting in a decision to purchase. 

Execution Alignment & Empowered Collaboration: Both Marketing specialists and Sales specialists must dramatically change how they design and execute revenue campaigns. They must leverage their unique professional skills, experience, and technologies to collaborate on designing and executing an integrated marketing and sales campaigns that accelerate the buyer to the next stage of their purchasing process.

 
What’s Standing in the Way of B2B Companies Providing A Great Customer Experience?

NBN - Threats to Fibre Revenue Stream

NBN - Threats to Fibre Revenue Stream from 5G, Idle Network, Space Technology Driven Disruptors like Starlink and Kuiper 

 

Highlighting > 2Mn services are  <=25Mbps and 82% of services are on <=50 Mbps.

Today the avg speed is 52 Mbps

Loss Making to Continue for another 2 Years 

Disclaimer: All discussed thoughts & opinions are my own & not that of my employer/others

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 

Why Bioscience can change the world

“Eric Schmidt…thinks the next big thing is the “bioeconomy”, not the internet. This catch-all label, Schmidt explained to me at the Aspen Ideas forum last month, describes “the use of biological processes to make use of things that we consume and manufacture… advances in essentially molecular biology… plus advances in AI have allowed us to do new techniques and grow new things.” Helpfully, he listed a few innovations this economy might include: new plastics that naturally degrade without polluting water, “biologically neutral” cement that does not hurt the environment, soil microbes that reduce fertiliser use, soy-based roof-coating that reduces urban heat and, my favourite, compostable dining ware such as edible forks. Put another way, the bioeconomy is based on stuff that is grown using synthetic biology.”

The phases of Fit - "Product market Fit for Startups"

What can Influence Sellers Decision

What Students need to learn in school but dont get exposed to or taught:

Dear students, please learn the following in your school days :

1. public speaking 
2. writing well 
3. storytelling (see 1-2) 
4. personal finance 
5. critical thinking (not cynicism) 
6. active listening (hear unsaid) 
7. networking (trust and giving) 
8. good customer service 
9. how to sell 
10. to fight against entitlement 

source: Vala

  Millionaire Migration

Weekend Reading

 My predictions on Macro Economic View of Australia FY23

How Humans and AI are Collaborating 

The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Blocks and How to Overcome Them

Given the complex nature of B2B lead generation, it goes without saying that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can hinder lead gen efforts. With this in mind, we’re diving into the common pain points marketers experience when filling the funnel while offering solutions that lead to better marketing results.
1. Marketing Without a Cohesive Lead Generation Strategy 

2. Marketers are Focusing on Lead Quantity Instead of Quality 

3. There are Gaps in Content Marketing Efforts 

4. Content Marketing Isn’t Aligned with the B2B Buyer Journey 

5. Marketing Efforts Aren’t Consistently Optimised 

B2B buyers Transparency make Vendor Purchase Easier

Research has shown that nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2B buyers felt vendors placed more emphasis on selling than they did on listening to their needs. Because of this, buyers are turning to other non-vendor-controlled sources such as user reviews, free trials and product demos to investigate the cons before making a purchase. To get ahead of this, vendors should be more forthcoming and listen to what their buyers are telling them. By highlighting their weaknesses, they may actually start to make more sales.

What is your customer's Unique Value Story

Supercharging the executive summary 

The most important part of any sales proposal is, of course, the executive summary. It’s likely to be read by stakeholders with the significant decision or approval authority who won’t go into all the detail. And some of those stakeholders may not have been involved in the previous discussions. Some may even be questioning “why do we need to do this at all?”
This is where an executive summary that deals with your customer’s three critical questions: why change, why you and why now? can be such a powerful selling tool. Summarising the customer’s unique value story in your executive summary not only promotes your organisation, it also promotes the need for change and reinforces the benefits of urgent action.

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem 

• Appier 
• GumGum 
• Sizmek by Amazon 
• IBM Watson 
• Dstillery 
• Invoca 
• Influential 
• Quantcast 
• Heuritech 
• NetBase Quid 

More details here

Weekend Reading

Digital Business Ecosystem Under The Hood 

In an ecosystem, we typically see three types of horizontal business models emerge - Aggregators, Integrators, and Infrastructures - which may be distinguished based on their position in the value chain. Additionally, firms may specialise and act as capability providers.

Five Anxieties of Tech CEO

• The first is dealing with increasing individual and team performance. Technology moves at such a rapid pace that is challenging to keep up with evolving new concepts. 
• The second is with doing more with less – either with resources (people and budgets) or time to meet the company goals. 
•  Most technology organisations have developed specializations over the years and the CEO experiences the third anxiety of leveraging with partner organisations as specializations are all over. 
• Often, either the organization, the investors or the board has a new vision, and the CEO now needs to deal with the fourth anxiety of how to synchronize one’s execution with a new vision. 
•  Finally, the technology world has grown global and technology teams take the job to where the talent is. This now means managing and leading the global workforce, the fifth anxiety.

Want More Deals - Teach your Sales Rep to Write

Why B2B Marketers Must Stop using the Jargon

“Don’t hope to impress customers with the language they won’t understand. Instead, impress them with how much you understand them,” the post said. “The reality is that jargon varies so much from organization to organization – and even from department to department inside of an organization – that it’s always better to speak in plain terms than to risk fanciful obscurity.”

Replacing the Sales Funnel with Flywheel 
Using a flywheel to describe a business allows us to focus on how to capture, store and release our own energy, as measured in traffic and leads, free sign-ups, new customers, and the enthusiasm of existing customers. It’s got a sense of leverage and momentum. 

The metaphor also accounts for the loss of energy, where lost users and customers work against our momentum and slow our growth. 

The two dynamics that make our flywheel spin fast: are force and friction.  

How to make Marketing Platforms as Profit Centres

Source:  How to build Profit Centric Marketing 

• What businesses need is a framework for profit-centric marketing, with profit creators
• This can only come from existing customers using 5R – 
• combining retention, 
• repetition, 
• referrals, 
• reactivation (as opposed to reacquisition) 
• and replenishment (targeted new acquisition) 
•  This 5R focus needs the 4P framework: 
•  pipes, 
•  partitioning, 
•  properties, 
•  and prospecting

This transformation will need the third generation of martech platforms: the first generation was about point solutions and the second generation was about full-stack platforms. The third generation will be about platforms that are Web3 powered and enable the tokenisation that marketers need to make XR (and therefore profit-centric marketing) a reality.

Weekend Reading

 Bridging the gap: How and why product management differs from company to company

Companies, like many in New York, that are introducing solutions to mature industries tend to be sales-driven, so product teams are informed by what customers will readily buy and are measured based on output and revenue. Companies, like many in the Bay Area, that are creating new categories are generally vision-driven, so product teams are more cross-functional and iterative, and are measured based on validated learnings and outcomes. The two models on each end of the spectrum manage risk differently and, with regard to startups, offer a varied range of results. Predicated on introducing solutions to previously unarticulated problems (e.g. Snapchat), Bay Area startups and product managers are tasked with launching moonshots. Failure is more frequent and expensive but success is exponential in size.

How Marketing can assist in Maximising Growth

Fortunately, there's a good rule of thumb called the "70-20-10 rule" that business leaders can use to address the current vs. future aspect of the resource allocation challenge. The 70-20-10 rule has been used for a variety of business purposes. For example, Google has reportedly used it to manage the innovation process, and Coca Cola has reportedly used a version of the rule to guide marketing investment decisions. The marketing version of the 70-20-10 rule says that about 70% of your marketing resources should be devoted to capabilities and programs with a proven track record of acceptable performance. These will include marketing channels, techniques, and technologies that your company is currently using successfully. The 70-20-10 rule does not mean that companies should simply "keep on doing what we're already doing." It means that marketers should evaluate how well their "bread and butter" programs are performing and continue to invest in those that are delivering acceptable results.

Why your customers want to buy is as important as what they want to buy

In complex, discretionary B2B buying environments it’s just as important - often more important - to understand why your prospective customer has embarked on their buying journey. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that no matter how perfect your salespeople’s understanding of their prospect’s needs is, and no matter how good a job your salespeople have done in influencing those needs in your favour, if you don’t understand why your customers are buying, you’re flying blind.

Replacing the Sales Funnel with the Sales Flywheel

One of my favorite business school professors used to say, “If you want to build a great company, your product has got to be ten times better than the competition.” Today, that advice feels out of date. If you want to build a great company in 2018, your customer experience has to be ten times lighter than the competition. It used to be what you sell that really matters, now it’s how you sell that really matters Unlike some changes in business philosophy, the flywheel is not an all-or-nothing proposition, Any tactical change to reduce friction, or organizational alignment of forces that optimize for customer delight, will have a measurable impact on customer experience. Early successes will breed increasing support for a full flywheel approach.

10 Commandments for Marketing and Product in a Software Startup Artificial Intelligence Strategy: 7

 Things to Consider Before Getting Onboard What B2B Sales Enablement “Visionaries” Are Doing

Weekend Reading

 Blockspace is best the product of 2020

Blockspace is a space on the blockchain that can be used to store information and run code. Critically, it differs from traditional computing space because the hardware is subordinate to the software, the blockchain code. These systems, when sufficiently decentralized, are more trustable — as in they can make stronger commitments — than ones controlled by centralized parties.

Twitter and Musk - Wealth Creator

“Entrepreneurs create wealth; governments destroy wealth. Ultimately, it’s about division of labor and specialization. Entrepreneurs specialize in creating wealth; governments should specialize in the protection of life, liberty and property; we should devote a part of our time and money to the extent we can in helping others as part of our social responsibility. Entrepreneurs sow the seed corn, we reap most of the harvest. Denying them seed corn will surely mean starvation for us.”

How Leaders Can Focus and Prioritize their Work in a Complex world Sales Reward - Best Practices

Build your sales rewards around the notion of intrinsic motivators. This way you’re not only providing your reps a reward for good performance, you’re validating and encouraging a sense of self that pushes them to excel every day.

Accelerate your Professional Services Sales Revenue 

Set the Stage for Success - You and Your prospect

By preparing both yourself and your prospect, you will open the door for better communication, better use of both of your time, and most importantly, a better meeting outcome that leaves you with the answers you need to deliver a valuable proposal.

Why Closing Deals are becoming more Difficult

Post COVID - B2B Tech Growth Driver

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading

• How to overcome sales objection
• How Leaders Build Trust
• How to deal with legacy buyers approach
• Technology saves the world
• How much time should sellers be selling
• How 5G can kick start next gen factories

Weekend Reading

 Weekend Reading

• AT&T Cash flow continues to grow - Fibre, Postpaid and HBO Making a difference
• The digital currencies that mater
• High performance brian to text communication via handwriting
• In a letter in the journal Science, 18 prominent biologists are calling on China's laboratories and agencies to "open their records" to independent analysis
• In Person or On Video   

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading

• What history tells you about post-pandemic booms - read here 
• Voyager Digital: 18,000% Revenue Growth And Better Interest Than Coinbase - more here 
• Funding Friday: Pattern Alphabet cards for exploring nature - more here
• Making large-scale, functional, electronic textiles - more here

Hype Curve Emerging Technologies - 2013

 

 Source: Gartner

Interview with Brad Howarth - Australian Innovation and Startups Landscape

As part of our ongoing interviews with CEO's, Media Personalities, Philanthropists, and VC’s, to gauge the innovation and startups landscape in Australia, today we showcase our interview with Freelance Journalist, Public Speaker Mr Brad Howarth, who writes on Australia’s startup industry, digital marketing, dangers of climate change and other relevant topics in this domain.

This is what Brad has to say in a detailed interview with me. Read it here

Mobile Megatrends 2012

 

Sydney in race to develop first bionic eye

Bionic eye is very close to my heart. I would definitely love to see something in this space. In future I also intend to set up a wiki/website where I will try to put as much information about where people can learn about the developments in this space. More on the developments here [Via Slattery Watch]

A Centre for Implantable Bionics is to be established at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and one its first aims is to commercialise a functioning bionic eye. UNSW's Advanced Vision Prosthesis Group has been working on a bionic eye since 1997, and has produced over 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications and filed multiple patents. Other research efforts of the Centre will include trefined bionic hearing devices and artificial heart technologies, and development of electronic stimulation technology. A new leading research chair, the Paul M Trainor Chair in Biomedical Engineering, will be affiliated with the centre and an international search is currently underway for the inaugural holder of the position.

Agile Consulting to Product Offerings - ThoughtWorks has come a long way

ThoughtWorks has come a long way from being an Agile practising and consulting company to a product offerings company. Founded by Neville Roy Singham, as a Management Consulting Firm under the name of Singham Business Services in 1992, it relaunched itself as ThoughtWorks after three years of its inception to focus on building software.

ThoughtWorks is now a leading global company when it comes to Agile Development and Practices. It is helping businesses across the globe with their consulting practices which include, Agile coaching and mentoring, S/W Development and Delivery and now products suite under the initiative of Thougtworks Studio

People who are in consulting business can learn few things from them:
1. Be Agile to market forces, prefer people to process.
2. Strategic Resourcing and Innovation - it follows a different model for hiring its workforce, people who already have a good profile in an open-source project are most likely to be hired and will be allowed to continue their participation in ongoing projects. This not only leads to expertise and new opportunities but also allows employees to be engaged with what they are passionate about; its intentions are similar to the famous 4:1 Google Model.
3. Hire bright guys only!
4. Tech due-diligence - is the best way of getting the foot into the door. I don’t think ThoughtWorks has many business partners or third party vendor relationships or product based relationships, pure technical consulting has to drive more business. This is in contrast to other models/practices for growth.
5. Better Movement of People - Probably one of few companies, which has achieved better results with offshore development and delivery. Its offices are located in the UK, US, India, Australia. It is probably the only company, which runs its induction session for new employees from various countries across the globe for 2 weeks in Bangalore (helps in breaking the cultural differences, if you have an offshore delivery model).

Going forward to capture more market share and to expand the relationship/engagement with current and new customers, it has started rolling out its product offering around its consulting practices, for example, Mingle - Agile project management and team collaboration tool.
Surprisingly the product suite is not on RedHat Model. It’s closely developed by ThoughtWorks and is licensed based, with no community participation in development. This model is similar to Atlassian, where an open-source community or non-profit organisation can get a free license.

Whats’ Next - to me it is a well-placed niche market in which ThoughtWorks is operating and will be safe to say are the leaders or trendsetters in their domain. I think sooner or later it will be a target of acquisition from a big consulting company like Accenture, Deloitte or maybe 3 Indian Giants Wipro/Satyam/Infosys. As Steve Jobs said with its launch of Mac Book Air. “It is in the Air”, BEA bought by Oracle, EDS by HP, Microsoft Trying... Yahoo. I will not be surprised if cash-rich Indian consulting firms, which have fewer consulting offerings in this domain, might go for it.

It will be interesting to see how ThoughtWorks go forward. What do you think? Any thoughts?

Catchup at Cebit

I will be heading to Sydney on May 22 to attend CeBIT's Transaction 2.0 conference. For those who are interested in catching up with me, please feel free to come and chat with me. Our Australian Startups Carnival 2008 winner Scouta has got a pod for exhibition in TechRamp Pavilion, so will be there for some time as well.

It's going to be exciting and a little bit hectic, but it's worth it. I'm looking forward to catching up with new friends.