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Building Businesses

I am trying to build something that lasts.

"Since starting my first software venture in 2001, I have built agencies, bootstrapped SaaS products, and grown WordPress product businesses to hundreds of thousands of customers. Sustainable business is not about chasing hype; it is about solving acute problems, understanding customer retention, creating transparent pricing, and building a team you can trust."

28 articles across 4 categories

In this topic

Starting Out

5

I have an idea. Is it real?

Customers Who Stay

4

I can get customers. I cannot keep them.

A Team You Can Trust

15

I cannot do this alone any more.

Getting Found

2

Nobody knows we exist.

Starting Out

(5 posts)

I have an idea. Is it real?

Build It and They Won't Come - Watch this before you build your next WordPress plugin / theme / whatever...

WordPress has more than 50,000 public plugins. Should you build the next one? Will it be worthwhile maintaining it over the next five years? How will people discover your plugin? What activities can suck you away from building great plugins? How do you land up with great reviews for your plugins? Does it make sense to listen to customer feedback? How do you run a business around WordPress plugins and make money? Those are some of the questions you will get answer for, in this talk!

Gearing up for Entrepreneurship - Best Lessons

If you are coming here after my talk at Prerna - Entrepreneurship Seminar at SFIMAR today, welcome to a budding entrepreneur! What follows is a collection of my…

1 comment

India: Cash Rich, Product Poor

Sramana Mitra wrote on Forbes that India has a lot of venture money now, but no tech products. She goes to explain that: India's meteoric rise in the tech world…

1 comment

Magnet - 10 years of the brand

This Valentine's Day marked the first decade of the Magnet brand! Ritesh, Murphy and I started MagNet as India's first electronic magazine in February 1998. We…

5 comments

Customers Who Stay

(4 posts)

I can get customers. I cannot keep them.

4 Sure Steps to Calm Down an Irate Customer

What do we normally do when we hear from an irate customer? The first reaction is to justify our position. No matter how much we say that "we understand your…

2 comments

A Team You Can Trust

(15 posts)

I cannot do this alone any more.

What Would Buddha Do - Part 4

Here's the last part in the series of What Would Buddha Do At Work! Today, we have some wisdom on hiring, morale, conflict resolution and turning around. After…

What Would Buddha Do - Part 3

Continuing in the series, here's what Buddha would have said about being an employer, effectively handling customers and capital & assets. - Assign work…

Happy 9th Anniversary

This is a letter to all Magneteers, past, present and future! Dear Magneteers, Congratulations on Magnet's 9th Anniversary. We have completed 9 eventful years…

8 comments

What Would Buddha Do - Part 2

I wrote about What Would Buddha Do to Become an Enlightened Worker earlier. Continuing in the series, here's what he would do to create and expand superb…

3 comments

Magnet HackFest01 Report

And it is over! We completed Magnet's first HackFest at 5pm today. A bunch of hackers came together on 23rd December at 5pm, and hacked internals of systems,…

The Asterisk Saga

We worked on an Asterisk setup project two weekends ago. It was a rocking experience. And Ameya, one of the heroes in the story, has written up a nice saga on…

13 comments

Monthly Reviews - lessons from September

First Tuesday of every month, is a review day for us at Magnet. We meet individual teams, discuss about the previous month and set out goals for the current…

2 comments

Ego and Engineers

Excerpts from The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams Ego-wise, two things are important to engineers: a) how smart they are, b) how many cool devices they own.…

3 comments

Chocolates day, New office work

We celebrated chocolates day in Magnet today. It was quite a blast. When HR emailed people about it on Tuesday, waves started. Here's what Sarita said: Hello…

2 comments

Making a difference

We had a colleague who was not performing upto my expectations. He broke his promises and did not seem to put in enough efforts. Seemed like he was taking…

Trusting your employees, to do or not to do

About three years back, I went to Germany to attend CeBIT. Magnet was doing very well and we were looking at new markets. There was a strong team in place and…

1 comment

Getting Found

(2 posts)

Nobody knows we exist.

Who is Bhaskar Bharati?

Bhaskar bana Bharti If you are in India, you may have seen such hoardings around. Who is Bhaskar Bharti you may ask? And why did Bhaskar ditch so many girl…

5 comments

More in Building Businesses

Additional essays and perspectives related to building businesses.

Reliance's new logo - thumbs down

That's the new brand identity of Reliance Infocomm / Reliance Communications. I saw it first on a big billboard near my house. The first impression I had was:…

17 comments

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