I just read this story where they talk about how they built a web app in 4 days for $10,000. Voila! It struck me that I have been equally competitive (if not better) in terms of building a web app. So, here I share my story of building a web app.

I recently built MyJugaad.in, which lets anybody create a slideshow from a set of webpages or RSS feeds. Following is the time line and the money involved during making this web app.

• Day 1: Conceived the idea. Explored the idea space. Refined it. Drew user interface for the slideshow on a paper.
• Day 2: Realized that Javascript is the way to go forward. Researched on Javascript Toolkits. Found JQuery to be the best. Learnt Jquery. Started programming Slideshow front-end using JQuery.
• Day 3: Wasted a ton of time on sorting cross-browser incompatibilities. Done some more programming. Working prototype ready by evening.
• Day 4: Wanted to make a system for user authentication and management, slideshow creation and management. Confused between Django, CodeIgniter or CakePhP. Chose CodeIgniter. Started Learning and programming the web app. (Used SimplePie for RSS feed fetching and parsing.)
• Day 5: Finished Programming. Discovered that NYTimes.com was breaking the slideshow due to their iframe breaking script. Had a hell of a time trying fixing that.
• Day 6: Looked for interesting free designs on the web. Chose this. Implemented and integrated the design with the web app. Wrote a basic ‘about’, ‘faq’, ‘contact’ page. Uploaded the web app on a shared hosting account free of cost (courtesy: my friend). Used a domain already purchased: myjugaad.in (cost Rs. 350). Seeded the app with a few initial users and data. Announced the web app on my homepage and status message on GTalk.

What’s missing?

• Market Research: I should have done initial market research. Instead, I simply jumped into programming the web app. If I had done some market research, I would have discovered a product with almost the same feature set as mine’s. Nevertheless, I learnt a lot during my six day journay. So, I don’t regret making this app.
• Testing: I just did some initial testing. But should have done a little bit more testing.
• Users: I didn’t do any marketing for my web app. That’s bad and I am going to fix it soon.

Hope this post helps you write and launch your own web app in record time.
Any thoughts?

PS: By the way, I think you shouldn’t be making web apps at all.

I am. Having read this article intensified my guilt. Aren’t there enough web mashups already? Do you really need to create yet another social network? Web entrepreneurs today are so hallucinated by their own culture that they have forgotten that there is a whole range of important problems to be solved for which the internet is not necessarily the panacea.

I am not suggesting that what they are doing is wrong. In fact, they are making best use of what they know. They are making cool virtual pets simulations, social networks for cats, amazing google maps mashups and a ton of amazing applications which really have potential to revolutionize the world. Imagine, how the world would be transformed if all the cats in the world could actually communicate over the internet. But - here comes the reality - apart from a (very) few cases (read Facebook, Youtube, etc.) the potential for these web apps never seems to be realized. Millions of such useless apps hopelessly float around the web, waiting for someone to discover and use them.

All these web programmers, on the other hand, could devote their time to what world really wants. The world does not want their trivial apps. The world wants its problems of hunger, poverty, thirst, freedom and happiness to be solved. The world wants to prevent millions of children who die everyday due to preventable causes. The world wants to break the vicious cycle of poor nations. The world wants to get better.

Having realized that I have wasted so much making futile web apps that nobody really cares about, I really want to change the world. It might sound naive but that’s where the fun lies. Only the true naive can innovate and invent new business models that solves world’s pressing problems.

So, world, here I come!

I am very proud to announce MyJugaad.in, a web app that I have developed.

What is MyJugaad.in?

MyJugaad.in is a slideshow for webpages, which are sourced either from popular websites such as del.icio.us, digg, google news, etc. or from a list provided by you or from a RSS feed(s).

For example, here is a guided tour of all I have done in my life.

How can it be used?
It can be used in a variety of ways:

• For browsing the web lazily when you are too tired to do active browsing.
• As an alternate way to access your RSS feeds.
• To create a showcase of best posts of your blog.
• To make a tour exposing best parts of your website.
• Keeping track of best stories on the Internet.

So, people, have a look at MyJugaad.in and let me know your comments/feedback/criticism/bugs/rants/appreciation. Also, please note that the web app is still being tested, so if you come across any unexpected behavior, let me know ASAP.

Wow! It surely comes as a surprise to me. This blog is featured on India Blogs, a Directory of Top Blogs in India and Most Widely Read Indian Bloggers.

Thanks Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration for taking notice.

I attended Startup Lunch Delhi 2 today as a candidate, not as a startup. The event is mainly about connecting startups and people who want to work for startups.

In a word, the experience there was simply wow. I met numerous startups and their founders who shared information about what their company is really about and what kind of candidates they were looking for. Following are some of the points I noted:

• 95% if the startups were technology startups, with exceptions being Zice and iDiscovery. Is it because of a bias that only technology companies are aware of this event or is it because there aren’t really many non-tech startups in the first place?
• More than 5 startups talked about changing the world, which of course is good.
• Interacting with so many startups, a candidate can really get spoilt for choice. Any thumb rule on what to do when one gets so many options to choose from?
• One more thing I noticed is that interacting with startups increases the fire in your belly. I really began to think: if they can, why can’t I. Next time, I promise that I will be there as a startup, not as a candidate.
• There is such a thing as free lunch after all!

An idea of an event struck me there. If startups can meet potential candidates in an event, why can’t people find co-founders for their startups in a similar event. In this event, people would exhibit their ideas and find the right people and mentors to kick-start their startup. Avinash expressed his concern that people might not be willing to reveal their ideas at the concept stage. But I think such an event would be a tremendous opportunity to get feedback, find co-founders, mentors and heck (who knows) even customers. How do you find the idea of this event? Any takers?

The aim of this post is to list 30 things which I would want to do before I turn 30 (I turned 21 yesterday). Got inspired by this and this. So, here goes my list (in no particular order):

• Learn to play Electric Guitar and start my own Rock band
• Write a novel on my philosophy of life (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance style)
• Start a startup incubator (Ycombinator style)
• Start my own (successful) startup
• Go to the moon (I know it sounds crazy!)
• Earn Rs 100 crore (I know this sounds naive!)
• Read thoroughly The Road to Reality
• Publish a paper in Science or Nature
• Reduce India’s poverty by at least 10%
• Produce something creatively viral
• Travel backpacking across Western Europe
• Make a truly creative Artificial Intelligence program that can learn and perhaps pass the Turing Test
• Make a short-and-slick movie that earns more than what it takes to produce it
• Sponsor my parents’ word trip (I really really would want to do this)
• Learn a foreign language (preferably Spanish)
• Live for a year or so in Silicon Valley (doing an MBA/MS at Stanford perhaps?)
• Read entire Calvin and Hobbess collection
• Do Skydiving and Bungee Jumping
• Spend a year or so at MIT AI Lab
• Buy a (small) country (it is not impossible)
• Read all the popular books on Philosophy, Psychology, AI, Sociology, and Cosmology
• (My secret wish) Spend sometime somewhere without spending a penny from my own pocket
• Produce a truly breath taking theory (in the leagues of Theory of Evolution, Relativity and Gravity
• Travel to at least 30 different countries
• Being featured in a good business magazine
• Being admired by businessmen, scientists and students
• Learn to draw better cartoons
• Read and understand the history of philosophy
• Read and learn about world’s religions and mythology
• Make a 40 by 40 list

Hopefully, some of the things will come alive for me. So, life, here I come!

A good initiative by Guruji. They claim to have all Indian songs since 1932. Check out the service here.

PS: The songs cannot be downloaded. They can only be played.

Hey Guys, I have switched this blog’s feed management to FeedBurner, so update your feed link to new link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/paraschopra

Check it out here.

Inspired by WhyDoesEverythingSuck.com and learning from Kroomsa.com, following is why I think most internet startups suck:

• They Give Away Things for Free
  When the business model depends on free, only a very few lucky companies can survive. Advertising, at best, should be a secondary source of income for a startup. How would startups keep on innovating their services when they are giving away stuff for free. Where is the motivation, dude? On the other hand, when you charge for what you are offering, there is a direct incentive to improve your services in order to attract higher prices or more customers, which directly translates into better earnings. Thus, charging for something you offer kick-starts a positive feedback loop which reinforces itself. And, that is good for a startup.
• They are VERY easy to start
  This directly translates into absence of vision and low barriers to entry. When you don’t have to invest time thinking about why you are doing something, you end up doing a quick but messy thing. This is especially true for startups. Today, starting an internet startup is so easy that anybody, really anybody, with a basic knowledge of web can start a so-called internet company. People find it cool to have a company these days. And, successful startups are seldom cool. So, in a nutshell, either try to do something not-so-cool and/or try to do something hard, which will force you to think about the reasons for your motivation.
• There are Gazzilions of Internet Startups
  While for the industry and consumers, it is good to have so much of choice, for entrepreneurs it not so good to have an idea and then discover that there are already tens of internet startups offering *exactly* the same service or product (and, chances are, for free). How is your new internet startup going to make money when some freaks are offering the same thing in a better package, at a better price and with a better marketing budget. So, get a little away from Internet and think if you can do something useful in traditional fields where there is a moderate amount of competition and where barriers to entry are higher.

So, now we agree that most startups suck, what should you do to prevent your next internet startup from suckage?

• Do away with relying on advertising solely.
• Don’t give away stuff for free.
• Repeat, Don’t give away stuff for free.
• Don’t jump at every idea you get. Give it the sweet time it deserves.
• Think about entering into an industry/category/idea where barrier to entry is low and there is not too much competition out there
• Know when an idea is a project and when it is a startup. Mostly, what you call a startup is actually a project. So, call it a project.
• Do something serious. Really. There are a lot of problems waiting to be solved: poverty, digital distribution, literacy, government accountability, etc.

Lastly, one suggestion: Do justice to your time. It is more important that you think.