Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext (
We have been slashdotted and dugg ..
Strange how the web works .. A story we did about movietally has been picked up by both Slashdot and Digg
The irony is: When Hayden emailed me the request, I felt that we were not the best place for his site since we mainly cover the Mobile data industry / Digital convergence.
So, I thought he would not get much coverage!
While its nice to see the coverage, often comments miss the point that the site has been created by a fifteen year old.
In a nutshell, the post was about a site called ‘movietally’ which was created by a fifteen year old boy. I thought(for reasons mentioned below) that I should encourage him by posting about his site on my blog. What I did not expect is – it would be one of the most talked about post on blogosphere in the last 48 hrs.
There is a bit of personal history why I put that post ..
I tried to set up my first business at age fifteen which involved sending typed letters to a bunch of people asking them if they were interested in buying a UPS system for their computers. This was in India(Mumbai/Bombay) where people were concerned about power fluctuations to their (then new) computers.
My friend and I were ‘distributors’ of this new system.
I knew about UPS systems because my dad was a banker in India and as a kid I would often work holidays in companies / factories to get some experience (mostly where my dad knew the management from his financial institution)
One of these was a factory making UPS systems
We felt that there was a market need since the guys who sold the computers never realised the risks of fluctuating power supplies in India (until it was too late!) and working in the UPS system factory, I was one of the few people who did.
Hence, the letters to people where we tried to distribute the system after speaking to the owner of the factory.
Oddly enough, it worked (in the sense we sold something/got some replies)
However, it took a looong time to get anything going (In fact, to my horror – by the time we got the first letter in response saying someone was interested, our holidays were over and we were back to school!). Obviously we never told anyone that we were both fifteen – else no one would have taken us seriously
The point is: The Internet now cuts down this time to market dramatically (no letters, no time lag between responses etc).
Thus, a new service can get a lot of exposure where ever it is in the world .. and by who ever ..
That’s why I posted the movietally entry – as a way to encourage someone when I faced the same problem at that age!
The response and coverage just proves this point .. that the world is flat
