I stumbled upon a really interested post over the weekend and thought I’d share it with you guys.

Sachin Rekhi, product manager @ Imeem says that instead of building simply based on “What People Want” (the motto preached by Paul Graham of Ycombinator fame), you should build based on  “What People Want” and “What people will Buy“.

If you think about what this means, it fully encompasses the original statement. In order to make something people will buy, you first have to make something people want. But now making something people want is a necessary, but insufficient condition. You have to take it to the next level and make something people find compelling enough to buy.

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We’ve seen a lot of innovation in the last 5 years on product, but limited innovation on the monetization front. I hope with the current flight to revenue, quality, and sustainable businesses, we start to see real creativity in the business models and monetization methods that drive web businesses.

You can read the entire post at Sachin’s blog.

While chatting with an Indian entrepreneur over the weekend, a really interesting discussion came up. He mentioned that the Indian startup ecosystem is starting to become more of an echo chamber. When prodded for more information, the reason he cited is because of the numerous ‘startup related’ events being organized all across Indian cities.

If you look at the various events – Proto, HeadStart, BarCamp, IAMAI events, Startup Saturday, Open Coffee Club, Startup Lunch etc., you keep meeting the same set of people over and over again. Since you happen to bump into the same crowd, the same ideas kept getting tossed again and again.  Most of these events have a lot of wannapreneurs in the audience. What we really need is for more of these wannapreneurs to ‘start doing’ and become entrepreneurs. That way, we have a fresh flow of ideas and interaction happening in the ecosystem.

Additionally, some of these events are mere fluff. Some of them have become more of a social outing rather than a useful medium for entrepreneurs. What I need is a forum where I can shoot some of the problems I’m currently facing as an entrepreneur, which happen to be primarily technical at this point. Some hardcore geek problems. For example, if I have a scalability related question, I can easily post the question to the forum. Or a CSS related issue. In short, less talk, more action. Few bystanders, more hackers.

I have pretty much quoted him as-is from the chat we had. At his request, I’m keeping him anonymous at this time.

What do you think about the experience above ? Agree – disagree ?

Apparently, yes. A new paper from HBS indicates that all things equal, a VC backed entrepreneur who starts a company that goes public, has a 30% chance of suceeding in their next venture. First time entrepreneurs, on the other hand, have only a 18% chance of succeeding. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs who failed in their previous venture, have a 20% chance of succeeding.

The paper provides evidence that performance persistance in entrepreneurship works. Read much more such additional insights in the entire paper here (PDF file).

Campus placements in IIT’s has been impacted by the economy slowdown. The response from companies has been lukewarm and companies are either cancelling or postponing their campus visits. IIT Roorkee had only 2 companies visiting the campus and only 8 job offers have been made so far. IIT Bombay, which had 93 offers made on first day last year, has seen only 33 offers on first day this year.

At the same time, startups hiring from IIT campuses seems to be on the upswing.

Read more here & here.

The definition of success is so subjective to each one of us. Some equate success with wealth, some equate with health, some equate with family, some equate with fame.

So, what exactly does success mean to you ? By your definition, when would you call yourself successful ?