Quote of the Day
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
What does economics have to do with weather forecasting?
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
– Jean-Paul Kauffmann
Archive for the 'Business' Category
Why Startups Fail?
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
- They spend too much on sales and marketing before they’re ready
- The startup doesn’t move fast enough and is outpaced by the market
- The entrepreneur behind is unable to take the idea and transform it into a well defined product
- The market takes too long to develop
- Risky Business
You may find original article on Tech, Startups, Capital, Ideas and a shorter version on Start Up Arabia from where I have extracted the above headlines.
DemoCamp Dubai (Second Edition)
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
Yes, I have been there, and I really enjoy it.
What is all about? Presentations of web applications (a total of four on this edition) plus a session of question and answers at the end of each presentation.
This way I could learn about trends in web development, I could figure out which platforms are in use, and I have been carefully listening to the answers of “What is your business model?”. This is because I am myself involved in such a project called Dine In UAE (dineinuae.com), and I am looking for effective solutions to bring it back to life.
But to my surprise the most applauded project didn’t have any business model behind (http://www.wasfati.com). It was created with passion, evolving from a simple blog gathering Middle Eastern food recipes, to a food and nutrition portal, with plans to become a social website, whilst keeping its main purpose.
The other projects presented are:
- http://darrb.com – delivery by third party, users register and request for some items, and darrbers are delivering those items. Business model – a planned darrber fee.
- http://logta.com – presenting hot deals in UAE, a portal where you can find out where are best prices for selected items. Business model – classified – which provoked some protest whispers – reminding that we were in a “democamp”, not a “marketingcamp”.
- Swalifcast – an interesting concept, YouTube like, but focussing on educational screencasts (arabic only).
In the end, we had some food and could make friends. This is how I met the guys behind places.ae and spinbits.com. I like their way of thinking and hope we can become friends, especially because we are embracing now Ruby on Rails technology as our favourite development platform, and should be in contact via Ruby on Rails Dubai Groups: rails.ae and the Google Group.
