Komli Launches ViziSense: India’s First Free and Open Online Audience Measurement Platform

I’m very excited today to announce the launch of Komli ViziSense, the first free and open audience measurement platform for India that accurately reports details of site visitor demographics and other audience characteristics. ViziSense helps publishers with an independent measurement system, enables advertisers to access and understand their online audience with precision, and allows ViziSense agencies to plan better media buys.

Read more details here and here.

Some screen shots below:

5 Hacks for Startup Hiring in India

Here are some thoughts on hiring for a Startup in India. My experience with hiring in India for the last fifteen years, in one word, has been – “Awesome” ! In Pune I have met some of the best Programmers and Designers in the world and work with many of them. There are some of most hardworking, smart and knowledgeable individuals, who love to crank code (read an interesting post here, under the “People” section). I love working with the great guys at Komli!

Hiring in India is different than hiring in other parts of the world. The following thoughts are written for an employer in mind, especially a startup employer. These thoughts are in a random order, and based on personal experiences. Please don’t equate my consistent use of ‘he/him’ with a gender bias.

1. “Offer acceptance is not equal to JOINING”

This is something you learn the hard way. It is very difficult to believe that a candidate talks so nicely, and accepts your job offer, only to NOT show up on the joining date. This is a shocker, which takes several days to recover from. If the candidate is good he calls up/e-mails you a few days in advance, telling you that he cannot join. Many will not inform you, and simply won’t show up on the joining date.

My recent experience – “a senior managerial candidate, who was relocating from the USA to India, accepted the offer after several negotiations that went on for weeks. He was very happy and I was very happy, that we have a deal. The day he was supposed to land in Pune, and join after a few hours of landing – he didn’t show up. I patiently waited until the evening, and next morning. Emailed him, and found out that instead of flying into Pune, he landed into Bangalore, and joined another large company yesterday. How nice.”

Accept the fact – a hire is only a “probability” until the day he shows up. This probability increases as the date of joining comes near. An offer acceptance on e-mail, or in hardcopy are still probabilities of joining.

The way I would handle this is – a) don’t count on a hire until he joins, b) always plan for backups – no hiring is complete until the last guy joins, c) keep calling the candidate every few days, to find out if he is going to join – if he tells that he is not joining, it’s better to know that early on, rather than on the last date, and d) if the numbers are large – over-hire, to compensate for the probability.

2. “The Resume”

I have found that many resumes have inaccurate information in them. You can actually build a “probability-framework” on what percentage of a resume is true – based on some of the key parameters of the resume – such as skill-set (Java, PHP, RoR, ASP.NET, C/C++, C#, etc). Try that, it works.

The way I handle this is – talk to the candidate, find out what he has done. Correlate that with his resume. Most of the times they match.

Another interesting parameter is the – “keyword density”. My personal experience has been that the higher the keyword density, the more likely is that the candidate is bogus. You cannot learn – all of “C, C++, Java, PHP, MySQL, Oracle, OLTP, Apache, Tomcat, RoR” in 2 years :-)

3. “The Sourcing”

Sourcing of resumes has a major impact on the success rate. I think it is very important to access the success rate of each of the source of resumes – direct, referral, recruiters, newspapers, online portals, etc. You may be surprised to know that there may be a difference of 10x in the conversion rates of each of these sources – so you should focus on the source that has the highest conversion rate.

For startups referrals work the best. Keep your employees happy, so that they find more friends who want to become happy!

4. “The Interview”

A few things at the top of my head are following:
Do initial screenings before you go too deep into technical discussion. If the candidate is not good, let’s find out in the first ten minutes of discussion, so that you save time on both sides. One important thing in my mind is – ask questions about your most recent problem that your company is facing, find out if he can solve that problem or not. Even if a guy can solve the most complex algorithm problems, or he can do the most optimal data structure design – can he solve your current (or past two-three) problems? Make sure you factor that into the overall decision. Don’t compare the candidate to yourself – “he is not like me; I can do it better than him”. It is very difficult to find a guy better that yourself, don’t try that :-)

5. “The Timing”

Try to keep “good” interviews at the top of the day, during mornings. You are in the office at 9AM, if the candidate doesn’t show up, or doesn’t pickup the phone – that does very bad things to your day. It’s a difficult thing to do, but I try and keep most interviews at the later part of the day.

Well, that’s all I have for now. There are many more things, but I wanted to keep it simple.

Got any more ideas, send me a message on facebook or Twitter?

Komli to represent eBay India for all their ad sales worldwide

Komli and eBay India have entered into an exclusive partnership whereby Komli will represent eBay India for all their ad sales worldwide. In addition, Komli's ad network optimization technology PubMatic will optimize eBay's unsold ad space for maximization of revenue.

This is very exciting news for a couple of reasons:
1. A global internet giant has chosen to partner with an Indian startup for its superior understanding of online advertising and online advertising technology,
2. This bodes well for the growth of online advertising in India -- large portals, which in the past have not looked at online advertising as a key revenue driver, are starting to do that now.

For details see official news release at - http://www.komli.com/news/ebaypress.php .

Iframe ad-tag vs. Script ad-tag: Online advertising tag type comparison

This is a list that I have discussed many times with friends, however I never found these on a single place so here you go ...

Differences between iframe tag and script tag:

1. Iframe tag does not delay the loading of the web-page elements: Iframes usually load in parallel, so for example if you have several elements in a page like images, CSS, JavaScripts and HTML tags and you have the ad-tag as an iframe embedded in the page, the iframe loading would happen in parallel and it would not make your page loading slower. So, if you want page to load faster use iframe tags.
2. Script tag does not change the “referrer” property of your ad-tag: If your ad-tag is served from inside an iframe, the ad-network that serves the ad will see a referrer property different that your page url/domain. On the other hand if you use a script tag, then the referrer url remains the same as your page url and therefore your domain name. Some ad-networks that require that the ad being served from the same domain that they were created for, will therefore not work with iframe tags (therefore they will not serve ads). Most ad-networks however allow setting of a “site-alias” that allows you to set a different domain from which the ad may be served. Read more about the referrer property here.
3. Script tag works better for ad-networks that do contextual analysis of the content of the page: if you use iframe tags, ad-networks will not be able to look outside of the iframe therefore they will not be able to do on-the-fly contextual analysis of the contents of the page, therefore they may serve irrelevant ads. Read more about contextual analysis here.
4. If there is more than one ad from the same ad-network, and you are using iframe tags, these ads may not be able to communicate amongst themselves since the scope of the JavaScript variables is within an iframe. Therefore if an ad-tag sets a JavaScript variable, which the other ad-tag on the same page is expected to read, this will break if you use iframe tags.
5. Since JavaScript variables have their scope only within that iframe, they don’t contaminate the namespace of the JavaScript variables of your web-page, neither do they get affected by the JavaScript variables of your web-page.
6. Iframe tags are easier for inclusion inside a web-page, since you can save an ad-tag in a file, and load it as an iframe into your web page. This will also allow parallel load of the ad-tag iframe. For example if your web-page is:

<html>
<script type=”” …>
</script>
<iframe
src=”ad-tag.html”></iframe>
…
…
<body>
</body>
</html>


More questions? Drop me an email.

Update: For #3 "Script tag works better for ad-networks that do contextual analysis", Google AdSense does mention in their help section for Why aren't my ads relevant?, read on:

The AdSense code was placed within an IFRAME.
Our targeting technology is not optimized to serve ads within a separate IFRAME. If you placed the AdSense code in a separate IFRAME, your site may display less targeted ads or public service ads. For better results, please implement our ad code directly into the source of your webpage. Once you make these changes, relevant ads may not appear immediately. Until we are able to re-crawl your site, which may take up to 48 hours or more, your page may continue to display untargeted or public service ads.

Skype All-Hands: Works really well

I did a "Skype All Hands" this morning. Surprisingly it worked much better than a face to face all-hands, or a teleconference-all-hands. To be specific the problem that I mostly face is - people don't talk, they don't ask questions during such all-hands meetings. In a face to face all-hands meeting, it takes a while before the first guy asks a question, and then the second guy, and many questions come towards the end of the meeting. A Skype all-hands on the other had turned out to very interactive, people asked many questions, they really participated in the meeting. It seems like engineers like typing much more than talking. Well, I love this. As an added advantage - you already have the meeting minutes (cut-and-paste from IM log), and you can do this across the oceans.

8 hacks for finding Startup office space

I started looking for a new office for Komli Engineering at Pune, India about a week back. Here I describe my journey and the final selection.

Here are some of the key points when finding an office of about 2000 sqft in Pune in Aundh/Baner area:

1. Rates have gone up like crazy – average rate is Rs. 50/sqft., unfurnished
2. Most office spaces have only 2 restrooms, which is too few for a 2000 sqft space. So most spaces can pretty much be rejected on that ground
3. There are a large number of residential properties that people are converting into commercial properties for offices and showrooms, and charging Rs. 50 per-sqft!
4. The problem with these residential-turned-commercial properties is that – a) families are living in the same building, b) kids are playing in open spaces and c) parking is mostly an issue.
5. There are independent-bungalows available at very cheap rates. These places are great – they are peaceful, have lots of spaces, lots of parking and so on. BUT you would probably never get broadband in those places. These independent-bungalows are available at 1/3 the rental cost
6. Your office space must be located not more than 3 minutes from 5 places that must sell wada-pav, hot samosas, cut-chai, tandoori chicken and Pizza Hut – else you are doomed, because most employees in a startup are not married, and they need to eat (when they are not writing code)
   
7. The other most important things when you are renting an office space are – 1) the place is good, 2) broadband is feasible and 3) parking space is available. The “broadband” is the most unexpected thing to find out. You can find the best place and the least cost, but no broadband – that will totally blow you off. The second most difficult thing to find is parking space for 4 cars
8. I looked at the most cool places such as a nice place next to McDonalds in Aundh, a really cool office with all glass façade – but not good enough for Komli!

I finally decided with a really nice place above “Kobe Sizzlers” in Aundh. Awesome place, lots of space, central location, 2 balconies and lots of eateries around. And the best part is – you can get Sizzlers on Demand.

Wanna join us - check-out our open positions at http://www.komli.com/careers/ .

algoGod: Be Crowned the World's Greatest Algorithms Expert!

Komli today launched the “algoGod contest” for machine learning, math, genetics, and algorithm experts.

http://www.komli.com/algogod/

Contest winner to receive Rs. 2,00,000

Start date: October 15th 2007.
Entries must be submitted on or before November 14th 2007.
Results will be declared on December 31st 2007.

Have you ever wondered if you are the best algorithms expert on the planet? Have you ever thought, "I know I can beat everyone, just let me prove it?" Well Komli's algoGod contest is for you, it's your chance to show the world how smart you really are!

The algoGod contest seeks to crown one expert as the 'Algorithms God'. How are we going to do this? Well, the proof is in the pudding! We want every contestant to solve a common problem, and whoever is best will receive the algoGod prize!

A little more background:

Komli lives in the world of online advertising, and online advertising is rife with opportunity with complex algorithms based on cutting edge topics such as machine learning, data mining, graph theory, etc. Online advertising is growing at a very fast pace, and the number of variables affecting the performance of an online ad has been growing at an even faster pace. Komli is devising methods for maximizing the yield of online advertising using advanced statistical machine learning methods over large-scale systems. This is a very interesting and complex algorithm problem.

Komli is currently using a set of algorithms for maximizing the yield of online ads, collectively called 'Yin-Yang'. There are a lot of interesting alternative approaches to Yin-Yang that have yet to be tried. Komli is interested in determining if any of these alternative approaches can beat Yin-Yang by making better predictions.

Komli will provide participants with anonymous ad impression data and a prediction accuracy bar that is 50% better than what Yin-Yang can do on the same training data set. Participants' solutions will be judged by 'Time complexity' and 'Space complexity' criteria. The participant whose solution works best will receive Rs. 2,00,000, bragging rights and an opportunity to work with Komli. Of course, participants have to share their method and code with Komli. Eager participants can signup for the contest by filling the form on the left. Also, please let us know of any questions at algogod@komli.com.

PubMatic Engineering: Slide show

PubMatic selected by TechCrunch as a Top 40 Startup in the World

PubMatic, a product of Komli, was selected by TechCrunch as a Top 40 Startup in the World. Nearly 750 startups from around the world applied for this honor, and PubMatic was lucky enough to be selected! This was announced at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco, CA, a conference built to showcase these 40 top startups.

We are hiring!

If you dream in Java, think in PHP, and talk in <xml> over IM, you should talk to us.

In addition, as part of our presentation at the conference, we announced that PubMatic has been released into a global beta available for all publishers around the world! During our alpha over 500 publishers from around the world have been using PubMatic and seeing some amazing results. See news about PubMatic here.

Online advertising is growing at a very fast pace, and the number of variables affecting the performance of an online ad has been growing at an even faster pace. Komli is devising methods for maximizing the yield of online advertising using advanced algorithms running over large-scale systems. We are also developing decision support system for data analytics, analysis of real time data, such as user behavior and web analytics, server scalability to support 100,000,000 requests per day (to start with), and much more cool stuff.


The last I posted about Komli, we had just moved into our new office. We were still building the product. Since then a lot has changed, we wrote a bunch of code, did a beta, were selected as a Top 40 startup in the world, our team grew to 8 people, and have been having a lot of fun.

The beta release was amazing, we had close to 400 customers using PubMatic, a small team of very enthusiastic world-class programmers were writing code and managing escalations at the same time.

While we hacked code in Java, PHP, AJAX and C 12 hours a day, and listened to rock and the latest Bollywood tunes of Bhool Bhuliyaa, the continued to have a sense of humor. This is a sketch that one of us drew on the whiteboard, while he was designing a new DB schema for user authentication.

And, did I mention, we never miss a chance to have fun ...

Venturing into venture capital? Be ready.

Amar Goel posted a great writeup on venture capital. It is a must read for anybody who wants to raise money for their business:

The 3 lines I liked the most are:

“Raise VC money only … If you would like to build at least a $20M business over 3-5 years and ideally a $100M+ business over 5-7 years you are a prime candidate for venture capital. If you want to build a $3M business over the next 5 years do not raise venture capital.”

“It takes a lot of time to raise venture capital. [At Chipshot.com] Turning that interest into funding took 4 months of almost full-time work. I basically spent 15 hours a day on phone, email and in meetings selling the heck out of my company and our team. ”

“Most VCs will be loathe to invest in some “idea” you have that will change the world that nobody has ever done before.”

I have met many entrepreneur-aspirants who want to raise VC money, but have very little idea of how soon they can get paying customers, and how much those customer are going to pay them and why. I believe it is very very very important to have a clear idea of the business - who is the customer, why will he use your software (or hardware), why would he pay you for the product, how much will he pay you for the product, how would you approach this customer, how often will the customer pay you, how sticky is the product (I mean will they pay once and that's it), etc.

Internet Ad Spends In India To Double In 2007

Reported on ContentSutra by Anupama Chandrasekaran:

Media agency ZenithOptimedia expects Internet ad spend in India to more than double in 2007 and to be 10 times its current size in 2009. [via agencyfaqs] Ad spends on the Internet could jump to Rs. 450 crore this year from Rs. 210 crore in 2006 and could skyrocket to Rs 2,250 crore mark by 2009, the study said. This would mean that in two years, ad spends on the Internet will surpass those on radio, cinema and outdoor, individually.

Online Transactions To More Than Double In 2007-08

ContentSutra reports:

Railway, air and movie tickets, as well as electronic item sales are boosting e-commerce in Indian metros, according to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India. The result could be a 150 percent jump in online revenue to Rs. 5,500 crores in 2007-08 from Rs, 2,200 crores in the year-ago period. According to the report, the percentage of Mumbai’s population that shops online is 24 percent and is expected to touch 40 percent. Delhi follows suit at 20 percent and is likely to go up to 30 percent. Ironically, the percentage of e-shopping population in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, stands at a paltry 6 percent for 2006-07.

It's very interesting to see Bangalore doing so little ePurchases. Do you wonder why? Is it because IT-people are more aware of the frauds that can be done online, and therefore they wouldn't like to eat the food that they cook? Like ever time I put my credit card details on a web form, I know that the data is going over wire from my laptop to the router to the server to their server to some other server, and it is potentially cached at all locations. Plus I need to check if I am not being phished, so I triple check the URL, and then I check if it is a https connection all the way. I am sure my wife wouldn't think of that when she does an electronic purchase.

But, I love the progress in online transactions increasing in India. More online transactions also means more advertising moving online, good for Komli :-)

Komli Mixer roundup

The Komli Pune Mixer event was attended by close to 50 people from various startup companies in Pune. It was a get together where folks from the founder and CEO/CTO community met engineers and hackers from a number of startups. Check out the attendance demographics.

We had people coming from very different technology and business areas – from Avaya to Zmanda. We had participation from 42 companies in Pune. Some of the notable company representations were from BookEazy.com, EverGrid, MeraTrip.com, Officewalla.com, PANTA Systems, Persistent Systems, Sakaal Papers, SunGard, Symantec, Symphony Services, Xite etc.

Some people are doing really interesting stuff. Like Xite etc who are developing some very cool technology for video restoration, and think that their technology can reduce the costs of video-restoration by up to 90%. MeraTrip.com, that does trip-plan aggregation. Officewalla.com that makes CRM software. Etc.

This is probably for the first time that we had such a get together in Pune, where we had people from Pune startup community meet; I feel we had a very unique combination of CEOs, founders and engineers in this event. See chart to see the attendance demographics.


Most people that I met were young, energetic, “entrepreneur type” people, it was very cool to meet such people. We had good beer and tikka served from Sarjaa. A good number of people that I met thought that this was a very useful event, and we should organize more such events.

Event Alert: Komli Pune Mixer

Komli Pune Mixer

When	Wednesday, 30 May, 6:30 – 9:30 pm
Where	Komli Media Pvt. Ltd., A-4, 2nd Floor, Nav Vrishali, (Above Cosmos Bank), ITI Road, Aundh, Pune 411007. Directions

Komli's Mixer is ground-zero for meeting people in the Pune startup community. Based on the philosophy that good ideas become better when discussed with great people, Komli's Mixer is a platform to network with people who are interested in and/or doing startups.

Entrepreneurs, working professionals, hackers and VCs -- all are welcome. Budding entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to talk to some of our distinguished guests.

Snacks and soft drinks will be provided.

Attendees are strongly encouraged to confirm attendance since the venue might not be able to hold more than 40 people.

Please signup at http://komlipunemixer.eventbrite.com. For suggestions and feedback, please email veyron@komli.com .

Our New Office: Komli Engineering has moved

WE MOVED TO OUR NEW OFFICE TODAY. This office has great location, with many tall trees around, some of which bear fruits; it is primly located with lots of restaurants and chai-taparis around the place, well suited for young and energetic engineers. It is situated right above Cosmos Bank on ITI road in Aundh. [see some photographs here]

We have a 2000 SQUARE FEET TERRACE, which is neatly done with lamps put on the side-walls giving it very plush looks, well suited for Friday evening barbeques and beer bashes [ friends and family invited :-) ].

“THE KOMLI TEAM” is like a family, where we live, work and have fun together. We don’t have walls between our offices; we believe walls inhibit team work.

SETTING UP KOMLI’S NEW OFFICE has been fun and sometimes frustrating. I started with a 19-tasks long action-item list on 1st May just as I returned from my vacation from Manali and Delhi. I picked up the 2 most difficult and most important tasks first – setting up Broadband and AC. Broadband setup – what I thought was one single task bifurcated and trifurcated into a 6-task activity. One guy would put the cable from the office to the terrace and another guy would pull the cable from the terrace to another terrace. The height was when one guy came and told me his only job is to connect the left cable with the right cable; yeah right, I said. But he was right, that’s all he did; he left after that [and I canceled a project-discussion to meet this guy]. All these uncoordinated tasks made a 2 days task stretch into an 8 days task [and then they told me that the broadband access is bound to a single MAC address therefore my switch must fake a MAC address]. AC setup – was more complex than I thought. The installation required a hole 5-inch in diameter to be dug in a concrete wall. They started digging the hole, until they realized that the wall is made up of only concrete and steel-mesh. So, now they have to guess the exact square inside which they can dig a round hole without disrupting the steel-mesh. I was solving this round-hole-in-a-square-mesh problem for the next one hour or so.

THE FIRST DAY was fun; we took off almost without any problems. Getting the network and the AC running at the same time, never felt so good!

I had to order new speakers to listen to our rock collection.


TOMORROW is going to be a long day, window-blinds need to be ordered and installed, one of the toilets is not functioning, gotta push the new application online, interview a few candidates …

WELCOME TO KOMLI! Please keep your hands and feet inside and fasten your seat belts …

Startup joining Dilemma

It’s an interesting dilemma about when you should join a startup company, when you are young or when you are old. Lately, I have talked to people who are young and people who are old (I mean my age). When I talked to old people, they tell me that it is too late to do a startup or get into a startup. They look at me with a stare similar to – “are you out of your mind”. They tell me about the home loan, the kids that go to school and their lavish lifestyle. Some of them tell me about their health problems. Some of them tell me that they are “much higher than startups”, and startups is for people like me. While, deep inside, I know what really keeps them away from getting out of their comfort zones. When I talked to young people, I hear – is this the right time for me, I think I should work for a large company and “gain some experience”. What’s wrong with working in a large organization? Can I really take risk at this point in my career, I am just beginning to work, and won’t it cause problems?

I find this very interesting. I like to lecture people about this dilemma; it almost seems like my favorite topic.

While it is obvious that the best time to take a risk is at the beginning of your career. When you are young and energetic. When you can work 24 hours without a break. When the fire to know more, to solve problems in half the time your nearest competitor can. This is the time when you don’t have house loans, when you can go home late, and come back to office early (or you can sleep at the office). Remember that the next time you will have no-house-loan will be 15 years hence.

I think the young in India should take more risk. Join a startup, make something happen, work hard, build something.

Disclaimer: I co-founded Komli, and currently run the engineering at Pune, India.

Komli Announces investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures; introduction of the Komli Premium Network

Komli today announced an investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson (http://www.dfj.com) and Helion Ventures (http://www.helionvc.com), two leading venture capital firms. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, based in the US, and Helion Venture Partners, based in India, have been involved with companies such as Skype, Overture, Hotmail, MakeMyTrip, Daksh, and Junglee. Komli has partnered with these two funds to utilize the global experience of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the local resources of Helion Venture Partners.

In conjunction with this investment, Komli is introducing the Komli Premium Network, today. The Komli Premium Network works with premium quality publishers, helping marketers interact with consumers in a more targeted and rich way online.

Lastly, Komli is aggressively looking to hire India’s best and brightest people as it builds new products to help make online advertising simpler and more efficient for online publishers and advertisers around the world. Komli is looking for great people across engineering, product management, business development, sales, and client services (more information is available at Komli Careers -- http://www.komli.com/careers).

Also, see Komli in press:

• contentSutra: Ad Network Komli Raises Funding From Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Helion Venture Partners
• StartupAvenues: Ad network Komli raises funds from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Helion
• Alootechie: Online Ad network Komli.com receives VC fund from Draper Fisher, Helion