Many of us get struck in the perfection cycle for ever. It is very essential for the product companies to ship the reasonably good first version and fine-tune.

Think of a person who can give two hour demo of basic tool such as twitter. For those who already twit, that session could have been an eye-opener for “how to demo”.

I can related to your post but not necessarily agree. One of my observations from the recently concluded PC was the lack of exposure to B2C type of products and discussion around such products.

Maybe it has something to do with the prevalence of services in our country but if you take a moment to ponder, most of the product discussions (including the ones discussed during the CIO sessions) were centered around products that one business can sell to another (or B2B). Some of the examples of B2B type products are Finacle, FlexCube, any number of ERP or CRM product offerings, etc. Such startups have to focus on getting the attention of CIOs to make their sale and hence is more ‘B2B’ (or vertical) and the sales effort are generally more local (than global) atleast during the early stages of a startup

Contrast that to the B2C kind of products. These are products (utilities, games) that entrepreneurs can create and make them available as downloadable products (or retail) or on social networking sites (like Facebook and MySpace). Classic examples are Office products from MS, Tally, and any number of Facebook games that we are all familiar with. With the advent of Apple and their App Store (and other competing offerings from Google, RIM, Samsung, etc.), distribution has moved away from clutches of operators into a more democratized space and small startups can create products and distribute such products to a global audience. The market is huge, everyone seems to be using a FB these days and cell phones are getting smarter all the time. Guy’s lecture was more attuned to marketing such B2C products. This is a huge opportunity that we did not get to hear much about during the recent PC. I came back a bit disappointed due to that and the saving grace for me was that keynote from Guy (possibly the only reason I choose to attend the conclave in the first place).

The scenario is quite different for Indian start-ups, as they are on Indian soil and have a indian soul, which also means that:

1. Failures are frowned upon- big time- by everybody, including near and dear family. We have been “successful” for too small a time to not wince when the failure does happen. Not true in the US.

2. Indians are extremely cost conscious, as buyers. Also, FOREIGN STUFF IS BETTER is still too recent a memory for them. In most cases, it is still their current reality. Not true in the US.

3. The culture of innovation is found in few pockets. For a start-up to find innovators to sell to, for payments, restricts their pool to less than maybe 0.02 percent of the population. Not true in the US – most US companies and buyers love in inovativeness.

We need indian success stories and indian story tellers. I felt Rajesh Hukkus presentation could be closer to the truth, and their travails closer than the Guy Kawasakis of the world.

-Sangeeta