ajit verghese

Signs that you are in San Francisco: a lonely Perl book sits...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:27:17 -0500

Signs that you are in San Francisco: a lonely Perl book sits forgotten on a stoop at midnight.

"Don’t be a grin fucker. Stop the corporate bullshit when it hits your desk. You don’t have to do..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:10:12 -0500

“Don’t be a grin fucker. Stop the corporate bullshit when it hits your desk. You don’t have to do it as publicly and vocally as I did – in fact I don’t recommend it. But please be willing to politely and respectfully stand your ground when an internal initiative is off base or you don’t agree with it. I’ve stated previously that I believe that respectful open debate is the highest form of democracy. It also makes good business sense. Stand for high quality. Stand for holding people accountable when they’re proposing something you believe could damage the company’s reputation or waste time and resources. Make your arguments fact based.”

- Mark Suster

Now this is how I remember the old Limelight - much better than...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:30:35 -0500

Now this is how I remember the old Limelight - much better than it’s current incarnation.

Oh wait - that’s a church bathed in light……um…..yeah. okay.

thedailywhat:

Seeing The Light of the Day: Displayed at the 2012 Light Festival in Belgium, the Luminarie De Cagna is a 28-meter-tall cathedral composed of 55,000 LEDs.

Footage of the structure, as well as other Light Festival exhibits, below:

[colossal.]

Can’t figure out who is braver - the one on the elephant...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:34:50 -0500

Can’t figure out who is braver - the one on the elephant or the one walking between elephants. (you may need to squint to see what I mean.)

jacquesofalltrades:

One strong bridge.

@hannibalburess has the right idea

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:25:59 -0500

Hannibal Buress is one of my new favorite comedians. I was first introduced to him when he performed with Aziz Ansari in Boston . He is doing something interesting with his Twitter bio that I just noticed today when researching his next show in Boston (It’s Feb 24 at Great Scott).

Buress included the first 4 dates from his 2012 tour in his bio (screenshot above) - this is interesting because a Twitter user who either follows the comedian or sees a retweet of content that he shared is apt to click on his profile for more info. I don’t have hard numbers, but would assume that the conversion from viewing a Twitter user’s bio to clicking on the link within the profile is low. Making the bio portion of a Twitter profile dynamic and useful as opposed to some static blather is a creative use that engages THIS user. I would love to know if it ends up converting more Twitter users into going to see Hannibal Buress perform - my bet is that it probably does. This only works if the content is always kept up-to-date. I hope that it ends up generating more attendance for Buress.

Setting aside risk, more launching own companies

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:27:17 -0500

There’s a nice article in Sunday’s edition of the Boston Herald about entrepreneurship.

GoodEatsFor.Me and I both get a nice shout out at the tail end of the article. Full text of the article is below (original link.) Thanks Jennifer!

Typically, it’s the entrepreneurs and the small- business owners who pull an economy out of a recession. But this one has been different.

Housing values dropped. Bank loans to small companies declined. Markets around the world that might have picked up the slack stumbled. Many would-be entrepreneurs were either too scared to get started or they couldn’t find the funds.

That appears to be changing, according to a report released last week. The number of people launching or running young companies worldwide grew about 60 percent last year to nearly 400 million, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report.

Rather than being an indication of how good things are now, however, it’s a sign of how bad they’ve been. The number of new entrepreneurs in the United States hasn’t been this high since 2005, well before the economic plunge.

“It could be that people delayed starting businesses,” said Donna Kelley, a co-author of the report and Babson College professor, explaining the jump. “It could be that people don’t see their jobs coming back.”

In the United States, more people saw opportunities and planned to start businesses, even while the fear of failure climbed to 31.2 percent from 26.7 percent in the previous year.

“People may see more risk in starting a business, and this may be linked to the recession,” Kelley said.

New business owners agreed that there’s risk, but said they couldn’t wait.

Matt Chatham had been working on his plans for a SkyCrepers, a crepe franchise, for more than five years when he finally launched the company in 2010. During that time, he was going to school and developing the concept.

“I would be hesitant if I were coming to the market with something that already existed,” said Chatham, a former Patriots [team stats] linebacker. “I felt more comfortable because we’re unique and we’re filling a void.”

Michael Norwood, who has launched two companies in recent months, said he’d rather face the unpredictability of launching a business than that of the job market.

“I figured if I can succeed in an uncertain economic environment than I can survive in good times,” he said.

Norwood is building Type-U, a social movement for families of people with diabetes, and runs a mobile flip-flop store called Woodywear Mobile Merchandise.

Some have hesitated to start because they didn’t think they could raise enough money, but attitudes have changed, said James Hilton, co-founder of Jacox-Hilton Producer Consulting, which provides analysis tools for life insurance advisers.

“Folks are starting to get used to the idea that they will have to bootstrap,” he said.

GoodEatsFor.Me founder Ajit Verghese said entrepreneurs have had to get creative about financing.

“The realities of launching a startup is that regardless of how lean you can make your operations, you still require capital,” he said. “So to fund myself and the business, I became entrepreneurial, went back to my digital roots and started consulting with big and small brands.”

Verghese’s venture, which helps hospitality companies track their social media, started work on the company in 2009 and went live with the beta site in 2010.

“I’ve spent the past 32 months working, traveling and speaking with many established and budding entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists and large brands,” he said. “I’m seeing a lot of innovation, new ideas launched and more risks taken from entrepreneurs in and outside the U.S.”

Character Study: A Sherpa Guide’s Trek From Mt. Everest to Bronx Mini-Mart

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:23:35 -0500

Character Study: A Sherpa Guide’s Trek From Mt. Everest to Bronx Mini-Mart:

Hallelujah : written by Leonard Cohen - covered by Ajit...

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:09:00 -0500

Hallelujah : written by Leonard Cohen - covered by Ajit Verghese - most likely at Whitlow’s on Wilson in Arlington, VA circa 2006

This is going on my short list for my next NYC trip. Chicken...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:19:09 -0500

This is going on my short list for my next NYC trip.

Chicken Paitan Ramen from Totto Ramen - This obscurely located shack on the fare west side of Midtown is invariably mobbed. It specializes in a Cantonese-influenced broth made with chicken and pork bones, and soft straight or slightly wavy noodles. This is a great choice for lovers of delicacy and subtlety in ramen. Shown with two rather unusual toppings, one a hot pepper condiment (shown in the soup), the other soy-marinated avocado. Weird and wonderful! 366 West 52nd Street, 212-582-0052

From Robert Sietsema’s Village Voice Blog post: NYC’s 10 Best Bowls of Ramen

The Startups Promo Video #2 - Chris Huge playing a bad harmonica...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:56:23 -0500

The Startups Promo Video #2 - Chris Huge playing a bad harmonica solo on ‘What Would You Say’ by DMB.

Alex pulled together a promo reel for the Startups. Kinda fun -...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:00:11 -0500

Alex pulled together a promo reel for the Startups. Kinda fun - gonna try and book us a few gigs with this around town to get the juices flowing. Any maybe even get to play Ruby Riot # 2!

2011 in review: we accomplished a lot and have so much more to do in 2012!

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:41:00 -0500

Here’s a good roundup of what Mike and I worked on this year with our startup GoodEatsFor.Me. 2012 is going to be a huuuuge success! Stay tuned.

goodeatsforme:

It is customary to spend the tail end of every year reflecting on what has transpired over the past 12 months. Goal setting ensues once the 1st day of the new year arrives, with a focus on self improvement, elimination of vices and lofty milestones.

I’ve been terrible in consistently documenting efforts to grow our company. I hope to do a better job in the coming months, in addition to growing our business, increasing the traction we currently have and raising some capital. We’ll write more in the coming weeks about some new developments and directions, but for now, here’s an analysis of what has taken place over the last 12 months.

2011 was a year full of success and failure and galvanizing experiences that helped us grow GoodEatsFor.Me and better understand our business, our customers, ourselves and the challenges of startup life.

In January of 2011 we applied to TechStars Boston for the second time. Unlike the previous year, we had a product and some customer feedback and as such were selected to attend TechStars For A Day (#TS4AD) in Boston to meet the team and discuss our candidacy. Unfortunately, i was traveling outside of the US when we found out that we were asked to attend TS4AD. Lucky for me i have an awesome cofounder in Mike who got on the Acela from NYC, came down to Boston and represented us well (despite contracting a horrible case of food poisoning the night before - a story of epic proportions ). While we thought we made a compelling case for Techstars Boston in 2011, alas it was not to be.

We had applied to the New York University Stern School of Business New Venture competition (Mike’s alma mater) at the end of 2010 and were in the throes of competition around the same time we received our TechStars Boston rejection. Mike and I had applied to the competition in 2008 with our failed startup CoachAlly and progressed to the quarterfinals. Over the course of the next several months up through April 2011, Mike and I updated the competition committee on our progress and perfected our pitch deck. We steadily advanced throughout the competition to the semifinals, but after 9 months of competition, we didn’t make the finals and had to be content with being one of 30 semifinalists in competition from an original set of 230 teams.

In February, our application to the Foursquare app gallery was approved and we were included amongst all the other apps that use the Foursquare API. We recieved a lot of signups from our inclusion in the app gallery.

Around the same time we were negotiating our first marketing and distribution partnership with Managed Data Group, a Point-of-sale integrator who helps hospitality establishments normalize the point of sale data across multiple businesses. This partnership provided us with distribution, revenue and good customer feedback about our offering and where we needed to focus our efforts.

As this was the first time Mike and I needed to officially sign something, we needed to incorporate. Through the wonderful introduction of our friend and fellow entrepreneur Russell Wallace (CEO of CivicSponsor) I ended up connecting with Richard Hesp at the law firm Gunderson Dettmer. They got us incorporated, helped us negotiate the contract and supported us through the entrepreneurial process. They’ll be helpful to us and we hope to use their services a lot more over the coming months as we grow the business and raise our first round.

Press opportunities are always good and I was approached by my friend Mike Schneider at the end of March 2011 to talk about a new book he was coauthoring with Aaron Strout - location based marketing for dummies. We ended up submitting a writeup and were included in the book as ‘one of the management tools to use’. The book was published in August of 2011 and you can get your copy on Amazon here.

Mike and his colleague Eric Liest of Allen & Gerritsen were kind enough to interview me on their web show TechInterruption talking about the future of GoodEats and my thoughts on the industry at the end of April 2010.

In early May I also ended up representing GoodEatsFor.Me on a Tastybytes panel entitled “LBS - Not Just for Mayors” hosted by Compete.com.

We received some press mentions over the course of the year, including a mention in Xconomy in July, a mention in Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog in September and a nice piece in the Boston Business Journal in December of 2011.

We are excited about 2012 and are hard at work launching some new things that we hope will help our customers and the industry.

As of January 2012, we have over 100+ beta signups and are working on some big improvements to the site that should help merchants get more value out of GoodEatsFor.Me and help us open up the beta to anyone who wants to sign up to try out our service for free! A bunch of improvements are going to make GoodEatsFor.Me the easiest system to set up and monitor the social activity around your establishment and we are experimenting with a big new idea that should help both our fellow hospitality Startups and the merchants they service. We hope to announce more at the end of the month, so stay tuned and thank you for your support.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - I wish this for all of you. Do what you love...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:01:05 -0500

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - I wish this for all of you. Do what you love - find a way to make it work. Be fulfilled and content. What’s the worst that could happen? You fail?

gary:

Stop doing shit you hate- The web allows for you to start businesses at such a low cost = HUSTLE

There’s a lot of graffiti in Athens on public buildings...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:43:28 -0500

Destroy The Machines, Plan Trees

Crying Octopus

Greek Graffiti & Anarchy

There’s a lot of graffiti in Athens on public buildings that I saw on my hike today through the city. A lot of it looks relatively new - not sure if they’re from the most recent austerity riots, but they’re pretty cool nonetheless.

What I’m (re)reading this vacation: all the old Tinitin...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 01:36:06 -0500

What I’m (re)reading this vacation: all the old Tinitin comics from my childhood. Originals are at home in the library. These are PDF copies on the iPad. I prefer the originals.

Merry Christmas

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:42:32 -0500

My former high school classmate Amy Chambers Cortright who is the Vicar at Christ Church Cathedral shared this status update on Facebook which included a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer earlier today and it resonated with me. There are a lot of people who are hurting right now and life seems so uncertain and foreboding - but we need to keep the Faith, keep calm and carry on. I have faith that we’ll figure it all out. Merry Christmas to you all - wherever you are and thanks Amy for sharing.

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen. A holy and blessed night to all.”

This is a guy that knows how to use his...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:49:40 -0500

This is a guy that knows how to use his MPC.

mattgalligan:

This. Is. Nuts.

"Corporations will be happy to skip advertising altogether, if they can go straight to transactions."

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:21:19 -0500

“Corporations will be happy to skip advertising altogether, if they can go straight to transactions.”

- Gary Morgenthaler Explains Exactly How Siri Will Eat Google’s Lunch

There’s some resonance for me in this statement because I believe that transactions will be facilitated by targeted advertising. f you are able to facilitate - either from the corporation side or the consumer side (and there are many many angles to this) then you can be very successful. That’s been part of our thinking with GoodEatsFor.Me and we’re about to make some major moves to align ourselves with this statement and our success as a company.

Growing up in the shadows of the National Cathedral and spending...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:26:34 -0500

Growing up in the shadows of the National Cathedral and spending my formative years within its halls I am always amazed at beautiful churches and places of worship that take a non-traditional view of design. I like them and think that these innovative approaches sometimes help think about one’s religious worship and spirituality in a different way. Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Arizona and La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain are two more places on the list.

lickypickystickyfree:

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, a collaboration between young Belgian architects Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh, have built a see-through church in the Belgian region of Haspengouw. The church is a part of the Z-OUT project of Z33, house for contemporary art based in Hasselt, Belgium.

The church is 10 meters high and is made of 100 layers and 2000 columns of steel. Depending on the perspective of the viewer, the church is either perceived as a massive building or seems to dissolve – partly or entirely – in the landscape. On the other hand, looking at the landscape from within the church, the surrounding countryside is redefined by abstract lines.

The design of the church is based on the architecture of the multitude of churches in the region, but through the use of horizontal plates, the concept of the traditional church is transformed into a transparent object of art.

"Sci-fi stories are business plans in disguise."

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:07:29 -0500

“Sci-fi stories are business plans in disguise.”

- Walter De Brouwer, CEO and founder of Scanadu - referring to the invention of the mobile phone, which was inspired by the Star Trek communicator.

I think diagnostic and preventative health startups are going to be huge in the next generation across the globe.