Remember your childhood? Those were the times when on a cool, breezy, slightly-sunny morning, you blissfully played on freshly dewed grass. You threw your sandals away, and while your eyes darted everywhere around, you ran barefoot, feeling small yet sweet pangs of cold seeping into your body. You were so lost in your joy that you didn’t realize that all you were doing is running purposelessly in circles. You felt blessed.

As a child, infectious enthusiasm was all you had and that produced an honest reality of your own that you believed in with full conviction. You invented that reality daily, but truly lived and breathed in it, never doubting its authenticity. When you saw or heard a ghost story, you actually believed in it and felt a beautiful joy of encountering it. Myths and fantasies of distant lands (mostly from absurd TV shows for children) were real. These fables were as real as your naive belief that one lucky evening you will get stuck in a candy or chocolate shop all alone. Didn’t you believe that Superman existed, and may probably come to help if you were in trouble? Or that Teletubbies were somewhere there having fun when you were not around?

Oh, and don’t forget, you had dreams, too. At some point of your childhood, if you were a boy, most likely you wanted to become an astronaut or a fighter pilot. If you were a girl, you probably wanted to become a teacher. (No brownie points deducted if you wanted to become something else). Point is: you wanted to be someone, who in your reality had best possible life. A life which could give you immense joy, adventure and freedom.

But as you grow up, slowly your parents start chiseling your world-view. When you insist that Superman (or whoever your favorite hero was) is real, they would say: “No, child. He exists only in TV or movies”. At first, it is a shock to you, or even an abomination. You ignore your parents. But after a while, you start accepting their reality since it is coming from parents (and, that too, not from Joe’s parents but yours). As you grow up, these nitpicks transform your reality from “what you believe in” to “what you should believe in”. No longer becoming a pilot is good enough for you. Like all healthy grownups, you must aspire to become a lawyer, doctor or an engineer. You reluctantly agree because, after all, they’re your parents so they must know better.

Of course, parents’ point of view about reality helps children in many, many ways. If parents play a passive role in upbringing their children, world may be full of soon-to-be adults who actually believe in cartoonland. So, they should definitely discuss issues and topics with their children. They should encourage a healthy curiosity and a sense of wonderment. They should be proud if they are able to teach their children how to think independently and decide for themselves. Creating a man or woman who is able to think freely and stand for his beliefs should be a function of parents.

It is a disgrace, however, if parents take advantage of a child’s impressionable mind to engrave their views upon you. If they are Hindu, Muslim or Christian, why must you become the same? If you like being a rocket scientist, why must you give that up for their dreams?

Things really get complicated when you think you have grown up and suddenly find yourself disagreeing with your parents. Issue at hand could be about startups, ethics, morality, homosexuality, politics, fashion, religion or any other topic under sun. Many cultures (oriental ones like Chinese and Indian, especially) promote respecting parents and elders as de facto behavior. This cultural programming is well entrenched, so much so that people may start questioning and compromising their beliefs and aspirations, just because they may risk offending their parents.

These weaklings never give up their comfortable jobs for risky, adventurous life of an entrepreneur. They never question their faith or religion but accept it as a “given”. Or, in spite of their wishes, they impatiently marry or have kids. All this because parents (or relatives/elders/society, for that matter) say so. Worst part is that somehow they convince themselves that they’re wrong. (Maybe these self-lies are necessary to live such a fake life)

If you are not convinced of someone’s opinion, don’t you disagree with them? (Unless you are pussy who agrees with everyone lest someone gets offended). If you have no qualms about disagreeing with others, how should it make a difference if “others” in question is your parents?

As a child, you believed (or, perhaps it is wired in our genes) that parents are perfect creatures and you made heros of dad and mom. They were best ever, weren’t they? But, as you grow up, that ideal fantasy starts transforming into an imperfect reality. Much to your shock, you discover that parents are humans too. And like you, they share same psychological and sociological biases and flaws. They too have perspectives, and those perspectives may not be any better than yours.

I am no way arguing that you should (necessarily) disagree with parents (or elders). They definitely have more experience of world, so you should always give them an ear when they are telling their opinion. But unless we all live in a utopian society where everyone thinks alike, there would come a day when you may find yourself disagreeing with people older than you, people whose emotions (and reality) you don’t want to shatter, people you love. In such moments of self doubt, you can either condescend into a shameful agreement and live your life with constant reminders of self-betrayal. Or, you can stand for yourself and live a free, proud and honest life. Choice is yours.

I was fortunate to have been interviewed by Andrew on his awesome website Mixergy.com. The interview was about how we bootstrapped Visual Website Optimizer to over 1000 paying customers. The video is long (75+ minutes) but I hope if you watch it, you enjoy it! (If you rather prefer reading transcript, it is also available on Mixergy).

In a previous post, I wrote about what matters in life and what doesn’t. What I proposed was that these things don’t matter at all:

• Ego
• Material possessions

What matters instead is:

• New experiences
• Relationships

What if you have to choose between an experience or a relationship?

Such situations are always extremely hard. Imagine you need to go travel the world for a year but that means giving up (not fully investing) in a relationship (with friends, colleagues, spouse or parents). What would you do? Of course, there are many variables there but if you are really stuck at a decision, my recommendation is to pick a new experience over a relationship.

This may sound controversial to many but my reason for choosing a new experience over relationship is that experience is something which is entirely under your control. With relationship, there’s a second person involved whose behavior is something you cannot (and shouldn’t) predict and control. I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, and I understand that in many cases relationships indeed create richer lives. However, many relationships also go sour with or without any reason at all and there is little you can do about it. With new experiences, improving your life is completely up to you. You can choose to have new experiences on a regular basis and nobody would object to it. Level of control you have on new experiences is much more than that you have on relationships.

Ideal situation, of course, is to have both meaningful relationships and new, interesting experiences. However, in dire circumstances, if you have to pick just one, pick an experience since it is a more predictable (and easier) way to have a meaningful life.

All of us chase after success. For majority of us, success means achieving more in life. A better car, a bigger house, a promotion at job or a fancy watch. This particular definition of success pertains to what I call as professional success. Most of the stars, sports people, top shot CEOs and other celebrities that you know are at pinnacle of their professional success. They probably worked very hard to achieve what they have today and are also probably very proud of it. So far, so good.

But, there is another aspect of success. I call it personal success. If you compare two people: one movie star and another middle class office goer, do you really think movie star is more happy than the office goer? Deep inside they both have same happiness scale. In fact, for all the possessions and fame that a movie star has got, he may be actually not as happy as the regular office goer who gets to see his family every day and spend quality time with them. Regular Joe is happy as hell, why should he be ashamed of not being a movie star?

So, personal success is a different ball game altogether. It is completely independent of professional success you have got. In fact, I value personal success much more as compared to professional success. Reason for that is because personal success is much easily achievable. You all have a choice to spend quality time with your friends and family and live a rich and happy life. But, sadly, many of choose to chase professional success like mad people (rats). We work endlessly to achieve the elusive “professional success”, odds of achieving which is very less (just compare number of celebrities out there v/s total population on Earth).

So, given you can be happy with your personal life right now, why would you work non-stop and sacrifice personal life for some professional success. Why should it even matter that you could not become Sachin Tendulkar, Bill Gates, Lady Gaga or Tom Cruise? Just because they are at pinnacle of their professional careers, do you think they more happy than you? I doubt and I am pretty convinced.

I’m probably too young to be writing on this topic but observing countless souls distressed by daily life made me think hard on what is that really matters in life. Undoubtedly, there are happy and sad phases and that’s part-and-parcel of life. But what I’m really bothered about is general, daily bitching about how miserable one’s life has become. You find people complaining about work, commute, relationships, other people’s attitudes & personalities, neighbor’s barking dog, lack of parking space, and, heck, some people also feel stressed about how they are unable to install latest iPhone update. Yes, I’m concerned about those people. Are these things really worth stressing about? Allow me to analyze.

What doesn’t matter in life

Let’s start off by observing what doesn’t matter in life and why. Life would be much better and satisfying if everyone could do away with (or at least de-prioritizes following) two aspects:

• Material possessions: countless sages have professed it and I completely with them that material possessions are source of most of the stress we face in our daily lives. Modern technology (and compulsion to keep up with it) only makes it much worse. Your car radiator broke down, your phone screen got a crack, you are unable to install USB drivers, or your expensive massage chair needs maintenance. Possessions end up taking over your daily life and you don’t even realize that. Wouldn’t you be much happier and free if you need not bother about constant purchasing, maintaining and discarding of possessions? I’m not advocating complete asceticism but my point here is that it is OK to be still using Windows 98. It is OK to travel by bus or taxi, and not having that fancy car. It is even OK if you don’t posses a phone (or if you have poor network provider, like mine — MTNL). It is OK to be like a free bird without any heavy baggage of material possessions.
• Ego: the number 1 stress factor you have in your life is no-one but you. The compulsive drive to prove yourself right (and others wrong), the obsession with (financially) outdoing your peers, neighbors & friends, the depression about how you couldn’t score 100% in math exam, the fights over how the wall is painted with the wrong shade of blue, and anger over how a friend misplaced your favorite book. Source of tension and stress in all these situations is not society or the other person you are fighting with, but it is you. In long run, do these little ego fights really matter? Are you enriching your life by these ego fights where either you or someone else ends up feeling bad? Wouldn’t it be much better for all if you started giving less importance to yourself? Maybe it is hard, but just try living a day making yourself unimportant and your life will be much more satisfying (as you can kick your ego aside and you can focus on what really matters in life — see below).

What matters in life

I have observed that following two aspects enrich one’s life and makes it worth living. What are these two things that matter in life?

• Experiences: seeking out new experiences in life is one of the best ways to be alive. Experiences excite, teach and rejuvenate you. Unlike material possessions, the memories, stories and photographs of these experiences will never fade away and certainly don’t require an upkeep. Have you ever thought of travelling the world? If not, do it! (Budget’s not a constraint). Learn a new language. Go bungee jumping. Do hitch-hiking. Start a new charity organization. Try new, exotic cuisines. There are literally millions of different types of experiences that you can seep in and most don’t take bagful of money. Usually, under false pretense of being busy in daily humdrum, it is your ego that prevents you from exposing yourself to different types of experiences, and hence doesn’t let you mature you as a person and live life to its fullest. The best part about these experiences is that you get to meet many interesting people, some of whom can also become lifelong friends and partners. This brings us to next point.
• Relationships: treasuring and maintaing relationships you have with your parents, friends, siblings, spouses, children and even neighbours is one of the most satisfying aspects of life. Humans need other humans in order to stay sane and to derive joy out of life. A loner can easily drive himself crazy. But, unfortunately, due to ego, sometimes we are rash with these relationships and end up hurting people. Even ignoring people can lead to isolation or broken relationships and that’s why it is important to realize that the relationships you have with other people are much more important than yourself (this realization is for your own sake and happiness, since you depend on other people. Try living completely alone!). Doesn’t joy and happiness become real only if you have other people to share it with? Can you be happy all by yourself? Nope! So, leave your ego aside and try to strengthen the relationships you have. When you come back from a trip to Caribbean, make sure you have someone to share your experiences with (and no, I don’t mean your Facebook friends)!

As usual, comments welcome!

I am happy to announce that we got nominated for not one, but two prestigious awards. The first one is Red Herring Asia 100, where they choose 100 companies from all over Asia who have potential to make it big. The other nomination is for NASSCOM Emerge 50 which choses 50 emerging companies from India in the IT field.

Red Herring is a widely recognized brand famous for spotting Microsoft during their infancy. On the other hand, NASSCOM is India’s top association of IT industry and is highly regarded for building India’s brand for IT services. I feel lucky to be nominated for these awards. The whole Wingify team (see below, yes we’re 8 people now) deserves to be recognized:

Please wish us luck for these awards. We have our fingers crossed!

This post is a slight, but important, detour from my usual posts about startups. Today, I watched the documentary Zeitgeist: moving forward. Even though I may not fully agree with the proposed solution, the problems and current flaws of free markets are very real and left a deep impression on me. If you care about the world, do watch the movie once. Here’s what the movie proposes:

Abolishment of money. Collapse of mindless consumption and materialism. End of profit-maximization at nature’s expense.

We humans are too narrow minded to comprehend the fact that the current system isn’t sustainable. The false hope that free markets will eventually take care of us all is a myth. Have they taken care of hungry, dying children in Africa? Have they taken care of species on brink of extinction? Do they really believe Earth’s resources and oil is endless?

But free markets are getting bailed out. Trillions of dollars spent on bailing them out can be spent curing poverty and hunger, but who will do that? Government officials take a narrow view of their 4 or 5 year term.

Who will think ahead and see if the current system of free-markets, consumption and wastage is sustainable till, say, 2050? If we don’t act today to stop the stupidity, who will?

Sadly, there may not be a tomorrow if we don’t act.

3 days ago our company Twitter account @wingify got suspended. See the screenshot below:

It’s sad to see our account being suspended for no good reason (they did not even bother to send us an email). I have gone through their rules and firmly believe we haven’t broken any. We don’t spam, we don’t abuse, we don’t use any bots. We only use Twitter to communicate with our customers and tweet about articles on A/B testing and landing page optimization. Then, why the hell did our account get suspended? The saddest part of the whole episode is that their support hasn’t responded for 3 days. We have emailed, created tickets, tweeted from other accounts but no avail. Beware: Twitter can suspend your legitimate account, not provide any reason and then not respond to your support queries.

What’s embarrassing is that our customers and users are asking what’s up. See this tweet (apparently Twitter is still recommending @wingify as a user to follow):

Now, what could we possibly reply to this? That on Internet, you are at mercy of private organizations?

This teaches us a humble lesson that any service we take from granted can be taken away from you. No explanations provided. Be it GMail, Facebook, LinkedIn or Paypal.

Yesterday, my startup hit a significant milestone: 10,000 total accounts (trial + paid). And last month marked one year anniversary of launching paid plans for Visual Website Optimizer. I think it is a good time to reflect what it means to me and the business.

Needless to say, I am very happy that we can boast of a small, smart team and big brand customers like Microsoft, Groupon and AMD. However, when I think about it — I was much more excited (and happier) about first 10 paying customers than 10 new paying customers now. Back then when I was launching it, there was an unknown territory to explore and I was a warrior ready to battle the unknown.

Questions and Euphoria

Whether it would work? Or, whether I would need to get a job? I still distinctly remember getting the first paid order and delirium it had caused. Even though I had read almost all essays of Paul Graham and absorbed myself into startup world (perhaps) bit too much, the realization that someone was ready to pay for my hacks was an incredible feeling. Then, within first month of launching paid plans, when the revenue surpassed four times my previous market salary, I was ecstatic. Who could have guessed that? The coverage on blogs, feedback from customers, demoing and closing Fortune 500 customers like Microsoft, 10% revenue growth every month, scaling beyond one 512 MB VPS (now we have 30 servers!). It was all new for me; it was exciting! I loved it.

It can be done!

Since then, inside me, a thought has been taking life of its own. The thought is an incredibly powerful one; the main essence is: it can be done! Today scaling servers, coverage on a major blog, additional customers and many other aspects doesn’t give the same kick like they used to give me. And, I guess, that’s because the question that I set on to answer via a startup has been answered (to a certain extent — of course, I know tomorrow is unknown). Paul Graham’s essays were theory to me, but Visual Website Optimizer is a practical. The initial euphoria of a startup was because it was a sudden transformation for me: from having a regular job to making (unpredictable and scalable) amount of money even while I am sleeping. Now, I guess, the theoretical question has been answered: it can be done! (And, apparently, it can be done by anyone — no special skills needed.)

What’s next?

Well, what’ s next best logical step for my startup? Of course, team will grow, product development wil keep happening (in fact, we are launching a new interface next week) and we may even introduce new products (have exciting ideas – wink, wink). But the theoretical question has been answered and a certain level of satisfaction has set in. What can be the next level of kick for my sweet-little startup? Perhaps doing something that requires another leap of faith and pushes us into the unknown.

We had a horrible experience with Airtel, our Internet provider, today. Our Internet line hasn’t been working since morning, I registered a complaint and was promised it would be fixed by 6:30 pm in the evening. The time passed and when I checked the complaint status, it was marked closed. Asked for an explanation, a customer service representative put me on hold for — drumroll, please — full 15 minutes before I gave up. Their IVRS system is impossible to navigate and you are actually asked to dial a gazzilion numbers before. Internet is full of complaints about Airtel and they recently ranked as worst customer service company in India. I’m surprised how the highly paid bosses don’t realize this or don’t do anything to do this. Baffled, surprised and makes me punch myself.

Sadly, Airtel is not an exception. Many large companies have impossible customer service processes. What’s even more sad is that this poor customer service experience has become a norm and there are even funny (but true) comics based on this reality. Why can’t be world full of Zappos like companies who believe in delighting the customers?

Customer service is not cost of sales

I think the primary reason for endemic poor customer service is because management typically includes it under the cost of sales head. Unfortunately, cost of sales is something organizations see as an unwelcome item on their balance sheet. They want to reduce it or better still eliminate it completely. Having more staff in customer service centers means more cost, so they come up with (unintelligent and ultimately frustrating) ways to automate the customer service. They fail at this automation miserably and end up annoying the customers. All this is because customer service is seen as cost of sales, which is wrong in my opinion.

Customer service is marketing expense

Ironically, just because poor customer service is endemic, a company can get huge competitive advantage just by having a good customer service. Each customer service interaction leads to either a happy-and-satisfied customer or a frustrated-and-angry customer. Research shows that buying decisions are heavily influenced by peers, friends and family. Advertisements and marketing just creates awareness. It’s ultimately the recommendations that cause people to purchase stuff. And guess what drives recommendations? Product quality and features is one part. The other big part is customer service. No frustrated customer will EVER recommend a service, no matter how many features you cram into it or no matter if you run never ending national TV advertisements.

The right way to look at customer service is to see it as a form of marketing expense. If every customer service interaction creates a happy customer, it should be seen as an alternative to advertising or marketing. In fact, even if most organizations spend even 10% of their billions of dollars of advertisement budget on customer service, world will be a much better place.

Humble plea: if any of the big bosses are reading this post, please do your bit to make the organization embrace customer service!