Connecting Smarts

The US votes tomorrow. Hopefully they elect the right candidate.  He speaks of a democracy where every one is heard. Many more promised the same before, but for the first time I think it is now achievable because of the web.

I was watching Obama’s technology policies as posted on TechCrunch, and then read yesterday about Jimmy wales saying public collaboration is in its infancy. Jimmy Wales continued on to give an example of Video as another form where collaboration can happen where people may come together to create complex content.

As more and more information is contributed and made available especially in reusable formats, we start seeing transparency in many things. And truth (or the perceived truth) normally bubbles to the top when you have the public involved in creating and reacting to this content.

What excites me the most is that we are building a product that is going to be contributing to the same phenomena. The ability to create rich diagrams/designs and models and the ability to collaborate on these things online is something that is sorely lacking today. While wikipedia is great for its text as Wales says there’s Audio, Video and of course…. pictures/diagrams.

That’s where Creately comes in. Rich visual collaboration. Exciting times ahead.

This is the 2nd post on this blog and it’s been coming for the last 2 weeks.

Needless to say, the last two weeks were scary and shocking. Everyone is forecasting doom and gloom for the global economies, a deep and long recession and so on. No need to remind anyone, there’s plenty of coverage everywhere.

What does matter commenting on is what goes on in a small pre-revenue start-up like ours. We’ve been forewarned that a downturn is inevitable from as early as last year. And we’ve always been conscious about what sort of product we are building and how it’s going to sustain and hopefully thrive in a tough economic climate.

We’ve focused on identifying instances where we can cut cost, deliver extra value and support revenue generation for our customers. We’ve been witnessing the exodus from desktop software to SaaS over the course of 2008, and have been optimistic of the chances for Creately.

But we didn’t expect the economic situation to get this bad this fast. I call what we are seeing as just panic. Intelligent people are running around like headless chicken driven by short term fears and now that it has hit critical mass, for the rest of the investors who were keeping their heads cool are being compelled to join the masses.

As soon as it hit, we went back to our estimates and started doing numbers. We looked at costs of R&D, cut as much marketing as possible and significantly brought down our timelines and expectations for revenue.

And as the markets went from bad to worse, we kept going back to numbers. The 3rd time we started doing this, we figured, that it’s not going to help. We just had to watch and wait. Wait till the storm ends and move from there.

So what do we do while the storm rages? We cut cost where we can. And started putting full effort on what matters. Getting Creately out to our target markets. We reshuffled our priorities and have started to operate with more focused goals that are driven by quick and visible wins.

Is that the best approach? Yes.

Why? Because we are doing something about the crisis. Watching and waiting, hoping the world will get better is not going to work.

Taking decisive action is what will get people through this bad situation. And we certainly are taking ours. I’m glad I’m in good company during difficult times.