For me, 2002 can be summed up in three words: Entrepreneuring, Emergic and Blogging.
At heart, I am an entrepreneur and have been one for the past decade. I have tried multiple things in my life developing object and multimedia database applications, trying to sell a fractal-based image compression application in India, doing outsourced software development, doing local software projects, creating an image processing application, launching Indias first Internet portal and a collection of a dozen allied vertical websites, developing and managing websites for many of Indias corporates, and offering messaging solutions. Some ideas have worked, other have failed. For me, the thrill and challenge lies in envisioning the future and working to build it ahead of others.
Entrepreneurship is about living life not with a map, but with a compass. It is about waking up every morning expectantly, fully prepared for the uncertainties that lie ahead. Entrepreneurship is about knowingly taking up challenges with the odds fully stacked against, and then working each day to reduce these odds. And, as Dan Bricklin says, “as you jump from rock to slippery rock, you have to like the feeling.”
This is the spirit I tried to capture in my series on The Entrepreneurs Delights.
Emergic is the vision I want to implement next as an entrepreneur. Much of what I write about in Tech Talk are the ideas that I think of when imagining how we can create low-cost computing solutions to make technology a utility in the lives of the millions of users and small and medium enterprises in the worlds emerging markets.
Emergic is about creating a software platform which brings down costs of technology by a factor of 10, thus making it affordable for consumers and enterprises in the worlds emerging markets.
Emergic is going to become the computing platform for the next 500 million consumers and the worlds 25 million SMEs who have not been able to adopt technology because of its dollar-denominated pricing.
Emergic is targeted at the worlds emerging markets, because they are where technology has not yet penetrated deeply, and yet, for whom, technology offers perhaps the last opportunity to better integrate into the worlds value chain and improve the standard of living for their people.
I think of Emergic as the Amul (or Wal-Mart) of computing. It is about making it affordable to the bottom of the pyramid. It is about making the dream of a connected computer accessible to every employee and family a reality for those who live in the developing nations of the world.
In May, I started a weblog Emergic.org. It is a mix of my thinking and links to articles I read and find interesting. Over the past few months, it has become an extended personal knowledge management system. More importantly, it has helped me, just like Tech Talk, clarify and share my thinking with you all.
Tomorrow: A Personal Journey (continued)
TECH TALK The Best of Tech Talk 2002+T
