“Micro-collaboration- Have you dunnitt??”
For all the entrepreneurs out there hoping to improve on Twitter and its ilk “Nari Kannan” has apparently beaten us to it. His concept of Micro –collaboration is where the next wave of users are heading. Nari Kannan succinctly explained what his venture “dunnitt” is all about and what his concept is saying “What is Micro-collaboration?”
- Trying to set up a meeting with one or more people and trying to find a suitable time that works for everyone.
- Catching up on the status of some activity you shared with somebody else.
- Trying to organize a potluck dinner and making sure you don’t end up with everyone bringing only desserts!
- Doing an informal poll on what kind of restaurant people at the office would like to go to for Friday’s lunch.
- Creating a shopping list and more than one person updating it from anywhere in real-time!
- Performing a quick brainstorm among two or more people on activities you can do this coming long weekend
“Your family, friends and colleagues are all distributed among various social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Gmail, etc. How do you collaborate with them without resorting to email and phone? Dunnitt!”
Business Idea - dunnitt is a place to Create, Share and Manage Activities -. Twitter does Micro-Blogging. Dunnitt is all Micro-Collaboration. Nari suggests “Use existing memberships of your family, friends and colleagues to collaborate and get things done. Use from any browser or smartphone, anytime, anywhere.”
Target Market – Nari has a firm grasp of who Dunnitt serves and declare his target audience to be “2 billion users of PCs around the globe, hundreds of millions of people using smartphones like iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Hundreds of millions of members in Social Networks like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, etc.”
What sets them apart – With all the hoopla surrounding Twitter you might be wondering what so different about Dunnitt. For starters “Basic membership for doing micro-collaboration is free. Premium memberships buys you the ability to attach documents to your activities, integration with Outlook, Calendars, etc Also API integration with Workflow systems and Project management systems. Targeted ads on Mobiles and on the website. So three sources of revenues. Differentiator is that nobody is doing this yet. Making social networks also useful in coordinating work among family, friends and colleagues like a Universal Shared Task Manager.”
Future Plans – Nari is planning to go beyond just a one hit wonder and has quite a few ideas on what he needs to do next. He sums them up as “Scale up free memberships, pageviews and unique users. Targeted ads using the context of the activity, geolocation and demographics of users.”
Nari is all set to “Become another Twitter or Google in terms of membership size in their first two years of being (about a couple of million users).”
His entrepreneurial journey – Nari has already inspected the green grass on the other side. He was in a regular 9- to 5 job for almost 10 years before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey. He says “I needed that experience for me to become mature enough to handle the pressures of startup companies.”
Nari has discovered that an entrepreneur needs to be a balancing master. He says “Biggest challenge has been balancing the demands of an entrepreneurial life with that of family. I have been overcoming it so far by taking risks periodically and having safer jobs in between.”
Every journeyman could use a good partner but sometimes even best laid plans can go awry. Nari regrets “Picking the wrong business partner.” And adds “It is worse than getting married to the wrong person!”
Dunnitt is a venture that makes Nari proud and he is happy to state what pleased him most saying “Getting the pre-beta release done in almost only 45 days. From just a concept to a working prototype.”
The success he has found today with Dunnitt has a lot of hard work behind it. Nari has spent almost ten years working upto this summit and has experienced the blues like any other entrepreneur. He declares entrepreneurship as “Not for the faint hearted!” and reflecting on his journey says “The highs are higher and lows are lower but the reward comes in achieving something not done before and seeing your company grow.”
Nari is critical of the way Indian entrepreneurs look at their situation. He says “Key challenge for an Indian Entrepreneur is not THINKING BIG, VERY BIG! Think global consumers, not just the Indian Market. Like Google, do you care which country you are in? You still need a search engine.”
“If you are in Iran, Twitter still helps you get photos of repression out to the globe. Think global user and you will grow very quickly. Think local Indian consumer, you will be limited to a smaller market. Reaching global customers has never been easier for an Indian entrepreneur with the Internet and SmartPhones. DO NOT LET GEOGRAPHY define your thinking! It is time to break out and think big. Do not think me too businesses for India. Otherwise we will never come up with a Google or Facebook out of India.”
Entrepreneurial lesson- Nari Kannan exhorts his peers to pay heed to others. He says “It’s much harder than you think if you do not pay attention to what others cite as their failures. Look for a very compelling opportunity. Think like someone who does not know anything about your business. Would you buy into what you are selling?”
Yourstory thanks Nari for indulging us and giving us his story of entrepreneurship. We wish him luck in all his endeavors and hope to see dunnitt become a worldwide phenomenon.
