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We think therefore we are

Ghostbusters…

Posted by anjali on June 20, 2007 RSS Feed

Friday evening, the roads of Pune were already filled with people starting their weekend plays.  At the MangoSpring office we were all ready to party ourselves….because:

  • The results of the “Team Challenge” were coming and everyone wanted to know which team took the i-pods home
  • The Server team has been chasing a deadline and had been putting in a lot of late nights.   We wanted to give them a well deserved break. .

So instead of heading to a pub and spending the evening squinting through the tobacco smoke, we decided to spend the evening on our MangoSpring terrace for some fun and laughter.   There were squeals of laughter with the Balloon stomp.   We made enough noise to get quiet a few stares from the “late at work ” lot from the offices overlooking our terrace.  Next we played “The Human Knot”.   We have all become very good at these games……next time we will have to have a MangoSpring Olympiad!

Next came the results of the MangoSpring Team Challenge.   Team GhostBusters rocked  and were the grand winners.  Much to everyone’s envy, they took home the i-pod rewards.   Not far behind was team Lemon Tree.   The best part was that there were also special prizes for the best movie, the best simple and elegant scenario , the best small business scenario and the best quick event scenario.   So in the end, everyone was a winner!  Kiran and Abhinav regaled everyone with mimicry and there was loads of food and ice-cream as usual.

Plans are already afoot for July, when we plan to go bowling at a new entertainment mall that has come up on the outskirts of Pune.

BarCamp 3 in Pune

Posted by anuj on June 14, 2007 RSS Feed

I have been loosely associated with BarCamps from its start in India back in early 2006. The first BarCamp happened at Delhi and well AJAX, ROR, Web 2.0 were then not mainstream as they are today. I had spoken on contextual flow between mobile and PC. Read here and here

Since then I have been to BarCamps in Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai. Spoke on different topics and given product demos.

And now its BarCamp3 in Pune. A lot of common names on the wiki already.
We at MangoSpring are an active participant and supporter of barcamp, MoMo’s ( Mobile Monday) and the likes. We hope to be present their in strength. To learn, to see, to hear and of course to share.

Quiet a few of us are looking forward to give sessions. Anjali ( our Happiness Manager) is eager to talk about what she calls ” Organization 2.0″ - must say she has become quiet good at using these buzz words :-) She believes that organizations need Happiness managers and not HR managers. Also her ideas on ‘Naked organization’ and flat structure inspired us to come up with TaskBin.

I myself shall talk about how communication has evolved over the internet from bulletin boards to email, from IM to sms, From scraps to twitter. We at MangoSpring our working on our stealth product Felix in the space of communication and messaging. We believe that true innovation in this space has only just begun to happen and are glad to be at the forefront of it.

Hari is a changed man. From Java fanatic to Rails convert in 6 months. He wants to share his experience with fellow developers at BarCamp and Isha is all set to show how push technology on browsers is here for good and show case Cometd implementation.

More on BarCamp 3 as it happens.

Find the core and focus on it…

Posted by anup on June 10, 2007 RSS Feed

In this multi-part blog, I am hoping to capture some thoughts I have had for a while regarding MangoSpring’s strategy. First some background:

Assertion #1: The Internet is a beautiful platform enabling unparalleled value creation everyday.

  • The Web is a frictionless environment enabling innovation and new business creation at breathtaking speed. There isn’t a day that goes by without some news-worthy innovation.
  • Every year there are 3-5 blockbuster innovations (MySpace, YouTube, Skype etc.)
  • There are 100s of other mid-size innovations and services around which very successful companies and services are built.
  • There are 100s of services that don’t make it and end up in dead pools. Yet thousands of others never even get talked about.

Bottom-line: The Internet is a vibrant and thriving medium for service and business creation. The amount of energy & innovation, both successful and un-successful, everyday is unparalleled to any other medium that has ever existed.

Assertion #2: Mobile is a terrible platform to innovate & create data application-based businesses in.

  • Minimal service innovations over the last 20 years.
  • Beyond voice, SMS is the only other wildly popular service. A quick look at where operator revenue comes from is enough to illustrate this point.
    1. WAP, Data services, games, personalization (ring-tones etc.)
  • New service discovery and associated behavior changes need to happen on a very constrained environment (small screen size, limited navigation, limited resources etc.) making it harder for the platform to lend itself to innovations.
    1. OEMs are good at creating hardware and hardware/design oriented innovations, but are not good at creating end to end network based services.
    2. It takes years to launch anything because of the long value chain and industry dynamics.
    3. By the time a need is identified and a solution is designed, developed, tested and deployed, it is easily 4 to 5 years later.
    4. Because of the time it takes to make a service available to millions of users worldwide, in a meaningful way, the cost to innovate is very high.
  • There is a lot of scope to build 10-20 million $ businesses in mobile because of the intricacies of the platform. To build a blockbuster, you have to start on the web.

Bottom-line: Don’t try to innovate a new data service in the mobile space first; your chances of success are small. Only a handful of mobile focused companies will be successful because of the amount of inherent friction.

Assertion #3: Mobile is a beautiful platform to establish a deep, always connected, relationship with your users

  • Unlike PC, Mobile is a very personal and a SPECIAL device.
  • 3 Billion+ mobile users worldwide as opposed to 1 Billion or so PC users.
  • Mobile gives users “freedom”.

Bottom-line: Although most value creation will happen on the Web/PC side first and then extended to mobile, mobile is super important to becoming an integral part of the user’s life and is a huge service differentiator.

As MangoSpring is aiming to create a god-send service that will become an integral part of millions of user’s world-wide, like Google Search, what better platform than the web? Having established that, MS now needs to figure out the areas it wants to innovate in and have a strategy that will ensure it is one of the top companies on the web.

At a high-level, MangoSpring product strategy is SIMPLE! - Relentless focus on its core.

This doesn’t mean that MS needs to do multiple separate products. Actually the exact contrary – to excel in its chosen space, MS needs to be focused on the “core” and features that strengthen the core. To be successful, MS will need to package these features along with the core in unique ways. You can easily find “small” companies like MS that do a lot of different things and advertise many different products. It is very easy to get swayed by the power of numbers - oh, wow, look they have 6 different products! However, spreading yourself too thin rarely works.

Building good products requires the dedication and focus of a sports team at an international level - you have to be at the top of your game. Just like you can’t have the same team play Cricket and Soccer for your country, you can’t have a successful company trying to do multiple products. A startup has to be a one-trick pony to succeed. From initial concept to requirements, wire-framing, prototype, product development, testing, maintenance, support, pricing and marketing - it takes a lot to have a successful product. Very few companies, if any, that I have seen succeed without relentless focus on its core.

MS is well aware that some other fine folks are building companies around what MS thinks are features of its flagship product. Are these entrepreneurs crazy? Are Venture Capital firms crazy to invest 10s of millions of $s in them? Of course not! However, this brings me back to my assertion #1 - a lot of innovation happens on the web everyday, but only a handful of them succeed. At a minimum, most of these companies are part of that innovation cycle.

In summary, MS product strategy should enable the company to package and deliver unique innovative services built around it’s core - better, faster and cheaper than anyone else!

Let us know (feedback@mangospring.com) what you think?

- Anup

Work@Startup

Posted by anuj on June 2, 2007 RSS Feed

There are numerous posts that I came across on the web for what an entrepreneur should do, or for that matter, not do, while running a startup. These are typically directed at the founders. I haven’t yet come across good write ups on what should an employee at a startup do. Having worked with two startups Thumbspeed and now MangoSpring, I thought of putting down what I have learned.

  1. When you joined the startup, you had a strong reason. This could be a desire to work with an exciting product company, to feel a sense of ownership which only a startup can offer, to be able to wear multiple hats, to be able to contribute across the spectrum - ideation and development or something similar.You need to constantly ask yourself if you are doing what you initially joined the startup to do. If you wanted to wear multiple hats, what efforts have you taken in the last week to be able to multi-task? If you wanted the feeling of owning something end to end, what actions did you take which demonstrate your ownership of a project or feature? I personally remember asking myself this question in my early days at Thumbspeed. It was this that led me to push my way into the product development team from a sales team . If you are not doing what you joined the startup to do…speak to the founders (sorry startups typically don’t have managers).
  2. Startups are managed by a small set of motivated and hardworking individuals. You have little choice but to match up with their energy levels. Your extra bursts of energy rarely go unnoticed and are always rewarded in one form or the other. It’s the only place where you shall have your boss always working more than you. And trust me, it’s a very embarrassing feeling.
  3. When at a startup don’t just point out what’s broken, fix it. Though true everywhere else, this is all the more relevant at a startup. There are always a dozen things that could be done better, and there is always more to do than there is time for. Hence, its helpful if you fix whatever is broken. This could be inadequate information on the company website, bad network management, or anything else. If you can help do it better, no one will ask you why you did it. There are no possessive team leaders here!
  4. The company’s success is your success, and vice versa. Do not try and separate the two things. Work towards making the company a success and you shall be one. You rarely have successful employees of an unsuccessful startup. Successes of a startup doesn’t always mean a billion dollar company. Success means doing whatever you had set out to do, and doing it right. It means creating the right work environment, the right work practices, the right code, and the right features. Each day work towards making your company a successful company and I guarantee you will reap the benefits.
  5. Always remember it’s your company. Ownership does not end at your tasks. Just like you own the code base, the features; you also own the company’s limitations, its finances. Save where ever you can. Save paper, electricity. Of course don’t over do it at the expense of your comfort or efficiency . But wasteful expenses should be kept at the minimum.
  6. Since the company management is easily accessible and extremely responsive in a startup, we often tend to get in the ‘ask’ mode. One must resist the temptation of asking for things.
  7. Self-drive and self controlled. There are no IT policies, no IT departments blocking access to sites. There are no time sheets to keep track of how many hours you have been working. This is none of this because startups don’t have the resources to do so. Its because startup founders find it very hard to believe that someone would waste time when he/she has so much to do! Working in a startup requires a great deal of self control and you need to be able to motivate yourself to produce 110% output on a daily basis.

As Anup always says….They (the competition) can outspend me, but they can never outwork me!

Handpicked Lot – Who we believe in

Posted by anjali on RSS Feed

“We stick by each and every hiring decision that we have made and wouldn’t want to go back on any one of them” says our VP Engineering.

That’s quiet an achievement and reflection on the recruitment and hiring practices at our end .Each and every SpringSter has been handpicked carefully. People high on passion and who understand and share our vision of a perfect Communication Service. We are as loyal to them as they are to us. There is mutual interest, trust and respect.

While hiring we focus on not just the technical skills but also the right attitude.
Yes, Honesty/Integrity/Adaptability/ Dedication/Hard-Work/Good Work Ethics/Tenacity/ Positive Attitude/Motivation/Energy/Passion/Innovation/Self-Confidence/Self-Drive are important to us. Seems quiet a lot and old fashioned in this age of job-hops?? ? Our take is that Brains are important but it’s the heart that makes all the difference.

Top 10 reasons to work for MangoSpring

Posted by anuj on RSS Feed

  1. You get to be Happy- We believe having fun at work is important to thrive and foster innovation. That is why we go to great lengths to cultivate a friendly, fun loving, informal, and happy work environment. Regular fun team activities and contests help SpringSter’s learn through experience and grown through learning.
  2. People leave bosses and not companies so they say – At MangoSpring therefore we have done away with the concept of a boss. It’s a flat organization with no hierarchy and seniors play the role more of mentors and communicators. But just so you don’t think we are a rudder less ship…let me tell you that we have able leaders in our Seattle and Pune office at the helm of affairs.
  3. A sense of purpose – It’s just not good physical work environment that makes work enjoyable at MangoSpring. The team shares a sense of purpose and the feeling of working for more than a pay-check. What has everyone excited and on their toes is the opportunity to do important work and one which gives a feeling of accomplishment. The mantra is to set challenging goals so that the complacent “good enough” attitude does not set in.
  4. We believe in a naked organization – Our first product TASKBIN is just about complete and since we want to walk our talk the first organization where it gets implemented would be our own. TASK BIN allows everyone in the office to be at the same page. Everyone can see everyone else’s to do list and can add, delete, update the list.
  5. Your work matters – Because you will help the world to change the way they communicate . Make a difference! Nowhere else will you get so much respect and trust and the freedom to choose to do, what you do best.
  6. Your voice AND ideas count – We have a ritual of monthly one – o – one’s where you get a chance to pour your heart out on whatever it is that is on your mind.
  7. MangoSpring Paraphernalia – Every SpringSter gets a cool t-shirt and name plate. Everything that we do around here has a generous sprinkling of love and sweat and that makes the end result all the more special and yes forgot to mention that SpringSter’s just can’t do without their black beauties sleek new dell machines with 19 inch LCD monitors.
  8. Take Ownership – At MangoSpring everyone gets to own something more besides stock options, it could be a piece of code or module or an idea that you came up with and see it through.
  9. Innovative Workplace – We work on bettering our code, strategies and solutions every day!
  10. You get to be Content – We have warm lunches and tea-time snacks in our cozy canteen, fresh fruit and juices, tea. And a BIG terrace attached to the office where you could just sit and gaze at the eagles circling the skies on one side and the busy Mumbai–Pune highway on the other side.

All About US.

Posted by vishwa on RSS Feed

We are building products that are platform agnostic and offer a seamless, end to end user experience across multiple communication mediums. We believe that these services will make you wonder how you managed without them so far!

We love to use upcoming technologies that help us rapidly build innovative solutions. So, as a company, our latest excitement has been around Ruby on Rails (RoR). We put our money where our mouth is and are currently building the majority of our server systems on the Rails framework. These server systems will provide rendering and back-end services to our Web 2.0 and Mobile clients, enabling users to have seamless access to communication and collaboration services anytime, anywhere.

At MangoSpring, our passion for RoR is reflected is our DRY humor, new found fondness for trains and ruby stones, practicing convention over configuration, and our personal status messages on IM like “My blood now tests positive for Rails”!. As a team, we feel proud to be building innovative products from the ground-up; products conceived, architected and built from our cozy office in Pune (India). We Springsters at MangoSpring do things differently, yet as a team.

At MangoSpring, there is never a day when you lounge around doing nothing, and each day happiness walks on busy feet. Springsters believe that, at MangoSpring, coming together is just the beginning, being together will help us progress and working together will ensure that we use cutting edge technologies to deliver products and services that delight every one of our users.

Fun Activities@MS

Posted by anuj on RSS Feed

There is always something happening at MangoSpring. Never a dull moment is what one of the Springsters likes about being at MangoSpring. Being a small team we have quite a few company wide activities.

Kite Flying – There is a child in all of us ! and Springsters this Sankaranti remembered their good old days and regaled each other with stories from their childhood. And that’s not all , they tried their hand at kite flying too. Though it took some time before they could finally get one up in the air , after that there was no stopping them and their were enthusiastic cries every time they cut somebody’s kite ….

Gorgeous Gals and Dashing Dudes –Valentines day saw all the gorgeous gal’s at MangoSpring dressed in pink and all the guy’s in their formal best(??). (For most of the guys we are used to seeing in floaters and round neck T Shirts in everyday – it was quiet an effort to come to work in formals :) so what if they were not sporting pin-stripe suits!)

So 14th feb with all it Valentines Day euphoria sees Pune going crazy with hearts filling up as the brain empties…..With the entire city going crazy we would like to take it upon us to maintain the equilibrium so there were no flowers n cakes n chocolates for Springsters :) Instead we had our first foosball championship

First Party at MS - Springsters finally getting into the groove….

Holi – Watch us play with balloons this Holi on the MangoSpring terrace , followed by some yummy ,hot pakoda’s

That’s not all besides we have the customary cake cutting on every birthday and the pantry taking care of the hunger pangs and “need for break’s” with it’s stock of lemon tea and nimbu pani and other snacks.

Brown Bag Sessions

Posted by anuj on RSS Feed

At MangoSpring Brown Bag sessions have become a de-rigeur at our office . In these sessions we meet over some grub and one of us talks about a topic they wish to talk on. At the outset there were no volunteers for the sessions. The first session was about “He Says” “She Says” - about how men and women communicate differently at the workplace. By some quirk of stars all our teams except one are has one member of the XY chromosome and one of the XX chromosome. So there were a lot comments and laughs. What it also did was sensitize us on how to communicate more effectively and with empathy. It also left some of us like me confused:)  so now every time I nod my head I catch myself thinking am I just listening or am I agreeing (the research says that men nod their heads to show they agree and women nod theirs to as a way to say go on…i am listening)

After that we haven’t missed a single Friday there have been all kinds of topics -graphology to mobile world to vedic mathematics to name a few. Whatever it is we make it a point to eat a lot and talk a lot ….

Activities like these at MangoSpring make us aware as a team of each others interests not to mention that we expand our horizons with each session. The Happiness Manager seems to be doing a neat job of keeping us Springsters a happy lot :-)

Team Challenge

Posted by anuj on RSS Feed

Product companies thrive on innovation. And ideas are democratic. They do not come only to a particular person or team. MangoSpring as a company encourages each and every individual to own the product. To innovate and to define new features for the products. The product team which is responsible for the product requirements acts more like a facilitator.

To encourage innovation across the team and to make the Felix feature set kick ass at MangoSpring we had a ” story telling” contest this May. Each team of 3-4 people were to come up with as many stories/use cases for Felix. With an ipod nano for every winning team member, needless to say there was a lot of passion,energy and enthusiasm in true MangoSpring style , not to mention the late nights ! The teams came up with some really cool narrations with mushy movies to gang wars to vouching for the farmers cause. It was hilarious at times extremely insightful. Post the submission of the storylines Springsters met over pizza to discuss all of them and debated which one’s would see the light of the day and which would go to “cold-storage “.

Goes on to show how at MangoSpring there is never a dull moment and how we take innovation seriously. Every one at MangoSpring is innovating everyday.

What Springsters have to say about being at MangoSpring.

Posted by anjali on June 1, 2007 RSS Feed

This is what Springsters had to say when they were asked one reason why they liked being a part of MangoSpring .

What we need now are their clones , in skill and attitude. Are you the one ??? Click here

Neha :Since I am just fresh out of college I don’t have any other experience to compare with ,but when I talk to my friends in other companies I realize people here are self driven n fond of their work.. and the culture is such that work is never a burden.. so I myself enjoy at work.

Isha :I must say it has been a place where I have seen a lot of innovation. A lot of freedom is given which helps talents to flourish.Not to forget the Springsters around here…..:) ..its fun!

The beauty of is that there are no strict lines drawn between product management and engineering.Each and every member can contribute and this makes work all the more interesting.

Shilpa : For the kind of code I get to write here.

Avinash : No compulsions to wear formals :). There’s freedom of expression and your work is valued.

Kiran : “MangoSpring is a powerhouse of Talented, skillful, enthusiastic, creative people.. ”
Talented-Developers team, Skillful - Everyone, Enthusiastic - HR Team, Creative - Product Team

Life never stops at MangoSpring (continuous challenges, activities, loads of work)

Anil: Its a very nice startup! full of motivated people, you get to be creative on the job …for example the way we made use of ajaxed functions in TaskBin. Designed the total structure of TaskBin code. Used various new plugins and new techniques for testing application.All such things… are creative to me. Also seeing product team adding new ideas, Abhinav implementing GUI, Hari and vishwa implementing the server behind it, all mobile teams working on product requirements and their own ideas, all this is motivating!

Namrata : I like MangoSpring coz, it has active people..I like active atmosphere..

Hari : To start with MangoSpring is special to me because at the end of (almost) every day I get a sense of satisfaction of having contributed to mine and company’s growth.It is a place where I can speak my mind and know I will be listened to and my point considered!It is a place where ppl’s enthusiasm for work is infectious,rubs on you on a dull day!! I could go on and on :)

Abhay : The technical expertise in house and the innovative product development make the experience unique.

Abhinav : MangoSpring gives me a good environment , colleagues and the support of the management.

Arnab: I am given enough support and mentoring to do my job well.We work on various technologies and we have some solid engineers in our team .

Sandeep:MangoSpring gives me flexible working hours and a chance to work on all kinds of new technologies.

Nilesh:People here are friendly,motivated and positive. I am so glad to be a part of MangoSpring!

Vishwa:Working here gives me a feeling of satisfaction when at the end of a day I see MS family members put pleasure in the job which in turn puts perfection into their work.

Anjali:I am SIMPLY loving it ! :)

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