- corporations are inherently evil. They are akin to criminals.
Every single time the author has never run a business that is equivalent at the scale of the business being criticized.
And they attribute to malice that can be explained with systematic incentives or complex interactions between various complex components in a dynamic world.
OPs projects/expertise while they claim to not be a (weird af definition) bureaucrat -
“General things I can do for your business:
Mathematical and statistical modeling
Data architecture
Predictive analytics, statistical modeling and machine learning
Physics/technology assessment and development
Data science team building/recruiting
Data reporting engines
Technical writing
Writing for technical and general audiences
Time series databases”
No more explanation needed. Do not hire this person.
Perhaps fcc should look at India’s regulatory mechanism for sim swap solution.
They disable SMSes altogether for 48 hrs when a new sim is given. This gives enough time for a victim to go to a physical ___location to resolve the issue. It doesn’t solve it 100% but definitely introduces enough friction to put a dent in the efficiency of the attackers.
Zerodha has had the good fortune of ending up building a good product whilst the market needed it.
If the pandemic had not happened, the growth would not have been what it is right now and that is when “build it and the users will come” philosophy stops working.
The engagement metrics do work, but just like everything else in life, if you overoptimize for any one thing, it is detrimental (eg- drinking water in excess is harmful).
Zerodha was already India's largest broker more than a year before the pandemic happened[1]. The stuff mentioned in the post isn't something they're just starting to do now; they've been doing it since the beginning. They did benefit immensely from the pandemic stock frenzy, but they were very successful much before it happened.
I've been a user for more than three years, and have never seen a single pop-up or ad or basically any kind of nudge from Zerodha regarding signing up for any of their products. There are third-party add-ons (like Tickertape), but they explicitly make people aware that these are separate products with their own terms, conditions and fees if any. This is very much appreciated by users, and they tend to have fewer complaints per user in comparison to the competition[2].
They've grown primarily because they're good at what they do, and there is no catch regarding any of their products. Rest of the financial industry in India is a cesspool with a massive buyer-beware attitude, which is an instant turn-off for most people, but there weren't many other options until recently.
The one thing I find wrong about the post is that they aren't track-free; I notice Google Analytics being blocked on ublock origin. Hard to disagree with anything else.
As a happy Zerodha user since 2017, I agree with all of this. Even if the pandemic would not have happened, Zerodha would still be India's largest, most profitable broker.
I don't think "engagement metrics" work. I mean, the objective of any business should be to make profit, so the metric that should matter is ultimately the average revenue per user. Engagement may in some cases correlate but why use a proxy when you can use the most important metric directly?
"engagement" only comes into play when you don't have a business model to begin with (and instead hope to carry on raising more VC money or sell to a bigger sucker) so that's the "best" you can do because your actual ARPU is negative.
They do work. You can draw a straight line from “Engagement metrics” to a working business model that generates real revenue. There are several B2C products that derive their value from engagement. And it is frequently a leading indicator of how viable a product can be.
But like all metrics, one should not over optimize on any one metric - be it engagement, revenue, growth rate etc.
The biggest issue has been a lack of balance between engagement and usability which unfortunately has been dominated by engagement over usability.
I think engagement comes into play in both scenarios (having and not having a business model) and is really detrimental in the latter case.
But if you have a business model then looking at engagement metrics can be incredibly useful in informing a lot of product decisions and shouldn't be disregarded. Just a mistake IMO to optimize for it alone in the absence of other things.
I have been writing a book about how software developers should approach taking care of their mental health - self.debug. You can download it for free here - https://leanpub.com/selfdebug
Its rough and incomplete. Would be great to get some feedback on this.
I've not finished it yet, but I can say I was a bit... wary because it hadn't been touched in ... 18 months I think? No shade on the author there - putting your work out there is great.
I'm only about 15% through it so far, but it's not bad.
I havent had the mindspace to continue working on it since the startup I cofounded has taken off due to covid. Context - We provide medical diagnostic tests B2C in India.
Thank you for the followup. And thank you for the writing (and the free option). I like what I've read so far, and plan to digest more in the next few days. You may have moved on, but I'd encourage you to try to wrap it up, and give it a "it's done" stamp, in whatever form it is.
Interested, but few questions - There are several "traditional" financial instruments you can use to fund this rollout across Bangalore.
This includes but is not limited to - Bank Debt, Venture Debt, Equity, Revenue Share based Debt, indie.vc style debt (revenue share debt payback), ads on billboards below/above/next to the wifi towers and so on.
Why go the public retail investor/franchise model route? Are all of the above exhausted or infeasible? If so - why?
Further, the network doesn't require a city coverage for it to work. It can be added piecemeal over time. Thus, you don't need the entire city coverage to start with - but major population dense areas to make the $20k payback in a few months. And the profits there on can be reinvested into more PoPs. Starting capital is $1.3M - its not hard to raise with a working solid business - in debt format if you don't want to give up equity.
OP here. Thank you for your interest and questions.
There are a few reasons why we would like to get the public involved:
1. It's taken 20 years, 13 telecom companies and about $200B to bring mobile internet access to 600 million Indians. Broadband deployment is more expensive than mobile deployment so even napkin math gives you an idea of the magnitude of money and time it will require to truly make a dent in the connectivity of the country. If we can lower the cost of the deployment tech then we will able to lower the cost of ownership and distribution of the tech. This would be a win-win for consumers and investors.
2. A whole lot of the issues that plague the internet today, from the splintering of it into a chinese network, censorship, net neutrality and other issues comes from the fact that it's so expensive to deploy these networks that they fall into the ___domain of mega-corps or nation states. As a result, control of the internet falls into a few hands and we have an internet that is getting increasingly centralized. If Wifi Dabba can spread ownership of the network then we hope that it will lead to more open internet that is harder to control or shutdown.
3. You're right, we're aiming to raise only $2M from the public - 100 PoPs x $20k each. Not sure where the $13M comes from, if you could point out where you see that number, I'd be happy to rectify it.
4. We've also built a lot of safety elements into the purchase process. We're following Kickstarter-ish rules where you only have to make a $1000 deposit - the remainder to be paid only when we sell all 100 PoPs. Furthermore we offer a 100% refund in the first 12 months should you choose to change your mind at any point.
1. The cost for a setup and maintenance is $2M for an entire Tier 1 city in India - that's peanuts compared to the revenue you will generate if the general public starts using the network and pays for it. You can self fund this to a large scale.
2. Wifi Dabba as an entity controls this infrastructure and that entity also controls the software that powers the infrastructure. The PoP is not an independent entity working in a decentralized matter. If the Indian govt says Wifi Dabba as an entity has to shut down - it can easily do so without any problems and the network goes down with it. So its hard to agree that this solution is truly decentralized.
3. There was some weird calculation error on $13.2M figure. I fixed it - sorry about that.
4. That I understand, but my question isn't about the legitimacy of the fundraise.
Apart from point #2 - my original question is not addressed.
Have you explored and ruled out traditional forms of financial instruments? If yes - why?
If not - why not do that first for 1 or 2 cities and then the model can be flipped into public retail investment/franchise model at a later point once you prove a successful rollout on a city scale.
We have raised money from YC and other institutional investors and will continue to do so in the future. Our reason to enable public participation now is to bake it into a core part of our model while learning all the benefits and pitfalls of such a model as early as possible.
In the long run our hope is to lower the cost of the tech enough so that anyone can participate in the ownership and distribution of broadband at a reasonable price. This is the first small step in that direction.
I'm reading "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. I highly recommend it to any subject matter experts who want to improve their written communication. Regardless of expertise, opaque writing makes it too hard for people to understand the author's point. This article is a prime example.
- corporations are inherently evil. They are akin to criminals.
Every single time the author has never run a business that is equivalent at the scale of the business being criticized.
And they attribute to malice that can be explained with systematic incentives or complex interactions between various complex components in a dynamic world.
Its not the same as committing a crime.