Compensation

I don't think I can say it any better than Joel and Eric. What they have said makes perfect sense and I think, the only thing to think about is how these principles can be applied to the indian scenario, where market is quite crazy with quality degrading quite a bit.

If you have any thoughts about how this might work differently or might not work for the indian situation, please do comment.

Funding Application

Some of the questions which are a part of the YCombinator's application for funding are worth answering for anyone thinking of a startup. So what I am doing here is filling up the application even if we might not be eligible. The questions seem to be real thought provoking and I will not have answers to all the questions.

• What is your company going to make?
• Please tell us in one or two sentences something about each founder that shows a high level of ability.
• What's new about what you're doing?
• What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?
• What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet?
• How will you make money?
• Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?
• How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet?
• What tools will you use to build your project?
• How long will it take before you have a prototype? A beta? A version you can charge for?
• Which companies would be most likely to buy you?
• If one wanted to buy you three months in (March 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take?
• Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate?
• Do you have any ideas you consider patentable?
• What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.)
• If you'll have any major expenses beyond the living costs of your founders, Internet access, and servers, what will they be?
• Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? Will any be working as employees or consultants for anyone else?
• Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it? (Open source is ok of course.)
• Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)

[Answers in the comment section]

Employee Referral Scheme

If you know somebody who is looking for a job and you think is a good fit for Indygo refer him/her. If (s)he accepts the offer and joins us, Indygo will pay you a huge bonus, a percentage of his/her annual CTC. The terms are -

• You have to be an indyan when you refer your friend
• The person should join before the offer presented to him expires
• Three percent of the annual CTC will be paid to you as bonus on the successful completion of his/her three month (90 days) employment with Indygo
• Directors cannot claim this bonus

So tell your friends who you think can be a good indyan and bring them our way.

Risk averse

One observation that is both bad and frustrating is that we as a people are very risk averse. I can understand the position of a guy like me with mouths to feed and a family to run, but a guy just out of college still wants to get into a place where there is not much hope of working in what interests him.

I guess there are two aspects to this. One is the prestige about working in big companies. As Paul in his wonderfully written essay says "Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy."

The second and the difficult one is the sense of "not always true" security in big brand names. This is again due to the fact that the next jump will fetch them a better rate if they are jumping from a bigger brand name. If life is all about money, then I dont think we have to write software to achieve it.

Wikimapia

We are on wikimapia. Its amazing to see what can happen in a social environment with the right tool. Really love it!

You can see us right next to Netakallappa circle right bang in the center of the map.