My Enterpreneurship venture
Hi,
Having written two posts on this site I was just wondering if the site is only about letting world know about entrepreneurs from India and stuff like that or we can cultivate this site to allow budding entrepreneurs to post their project ideas and hopefully someone will read about the idea here and would like to get associated with it. That would also be cool from the perspective that it will allow this site to get a tag like “From Entrepreneurs For Entrepreneurs” 
… So here is my first post in this regard where I’m trying to post idea I’ve in my mind about my venture.
FreeWorld
Freedom of speech and privacy is one of the most fundamental rights of human beings. Almost every democratic country provides these rights to it’s citizens in their constitution. However if we look across Internet then it’s kind of monopoly where things are controlled by some central agencies and of course powerful governments across the globe have definite influence on the working of these organizations.
The basic idea of this project is to create peer to peer networks in which peers communicate with each other. Initially the system would allow for free sharing and instant messaging capabilites. The peers across firewalls would also be able to communicate with each other and hence one can get in touch with his/her buddy as long as long as there is some form of communication medium between the peer. The networks can initially be setup at educational institutions as pilot project and later on the networks can be extended across the globe, so that we all can share info and resources. Technology wise we’ve JXTA available with us which can be used to develop peer to peer applications using standard JXTA APIs.
The idea was born out of a very small problem we found at IIT Delhi where students of different hostels were not able to connect to each other though there was a physical connection present to allow for communication to take place. If this is the case within a single institution then we can easily imagine the scenario when we extend our workspace to global internet.
If anyone is interested in the idea then please visit http://www.overlaynetworks.co.cc for details of the project and drop a mail to mail2mayank[at]gmail.com if interested in any form of contribution to the project.
Popularity: 11%
March 10th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Hi mayank! We are adding forums so that our site will have the potential to become a hotspot for budding entrepreneurs…..
March 11th, 2008 at 12:52 am
The problem that you are trying to solve is a very genuine one… but, how would your peer-peer network be different from the ones we have currently? There will always be a hierarchy of organizations enabling the connectivity of the internet traffic… and they can always be influenced by poweful governments to regulate traffic, right? I tried looking at your website, but as a lay person, it was all gibberish to me
All the best in your efforts.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Hi,
The idea is to allow people who have been discarded access to in some form, say by means of Firewalls or by means of stuff like Access Control Lists, to be able to connect to the world outside through means of virtual networks which run over existing networks. The peers in the networks are self sustained to discover other peers and communicate with them. This is something which is still not very common with peer-to-peer networks like Kazza, Napster etc. They rely on concept of hubs which are the central point of communication of a network. These hubs are like centralized servers we have today and this again is something we don’t wish to have in our system cauz’ it again leads to monopoly of the hub controller. We are also trying to implement annonymous connectivity which can allow peers to communicate without revealing their identities in some form for e.g. IP address. This is another important concern in context of countries like China where Govt. is not allowing free access to global internet to it’s citizen. And why only China even most institutions prohibit access to internet in some form or another.
Thanks for taking the pain to visit d site
I mean if you look at how internet started off then it was all because people wanted to communicate and share resources with other people spread across large geographical distances however today we are trying to impose restrictions on this free culture and that’s what I feel is absolutely wrong and hence FreeWorld !
Regards,
Mayank
March 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Mayank,
I took some time off to search for the guy who posted about genportal.com
I just wanted to check if it was you and it was you.
Remember u said in that post that u tried ur hand at roping in a VC for your idea?
I am not a java fella(belong to the php & python fans)
Well, I have some suggestions for you.
Dont explain to VCs the way you explained here. It seems to be too technical to understand. VCs are not technical guys.
When u approach a VC make sure u do the following.
1.) take very less time… around 20 minutes
2.) show less number of slides… max 8-10 slides and dump more info. Speak to the point! Don’t use terms like libJingle, Haskel Apps or Easter Eggs (go google them if you aren’t a programmer).
Speak to them like speaking to a person who knows nuts about your business.
3.) The VCs are guys who want to make sure that their money is back with them soon in a big way. So u need to highlight on that too. Let them know who your competitors are and how you have an edge over them. Don’t ever make the mistake of telling them that there aren’t any competitors. That would mean that there is no market, which in turn would mean that people can live without ur product/service too. Because business can be done with one kind of idea: only ideas that simplify stuff can make a business. Google simplified the way we search for pages. Karl Benz simplified our way of travelling. Thomas Alva Edison invented a candle that would produce more light and called it bulb. So always make it a point to mention who your competitors are.
Tell the VCs a time range by when u will start generating profits. Tell them something ‘real’. If its gonna take 3 years for you to start generating profits tell them frankly. When you do so you get those 3yrs. Those 3yrs the VCs wont bug you. VCs appreciate people who are frank enough about their business.
4.) After getting funded: If you are in your seed-funding or angel funding stage then approach the seed-funding or angel funding firm/person every interval… like maybe every weeked and tell him whats happeneing in the company and how you are spending his/her money. This way he/she/the firm will be happy to know that they have invested in the right idea/company and will trust in you for future investments.
5.) When u dont know enough about business (if u are the developer sorta person), then its better u hire a fella who knows how to do business while you can take care of the product/service. And if you dont know anyone around you who will fit in this seat, then go and tell your VC that you need help with managing business stuff. He/she/the firm will surely help you with this. And mostly the seed-funding firms provide mentors for each idea to help you out.
And also note: when u are talking to a VC to get funded, tell him your exit strategy too (even if you don’t want to sell your startup anytime). Tell him how much the company will be valued when its grown up (dont do a google search, do some research). Tell him which companies may acquire you. Because VCs also want to know what returns they will get when u exit business (by getting acquired etc). And remember… until u make them profit, its their money. You need to assure them that their money is in safe hands.
Hope this helps!
March 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Yeah and like Kartik says,
We have a forum now. (Search and peck at the “forums” link on the top on the page)
–
Cya at the forums
March 11th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
There is a video-presentation titled “The VC Presentation: Content and Process” among others at : http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/pptVideos/
check it out… its pretty useful.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Can’t your IIT problem be solved by installing any IRC/jabber server ? On a different note, the idea is nice, but do you have a revenue stream for it ? Thats what the VCs would be interested in.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Thanks everyone for posting such useful suggestions …. and @sharnindar this problem we’ve can’t be solved by using IRC/Jabber because these protocols also require one to connect to some specific port of the server and in case the server port is blocked on the firewall I don’t think it would be of much use. Moreover setting up a IRC server is again moving to centralization of services which I personally feel, put us in mercy of the administrator running the server. Imagine a situation where the IRC server admin disallows 2 users who want to communicate with each other. I know that we can do that in Jabber and am sure that this is also possible in IRC. So these two poor souls are now in no-where situation and can’t communicate with each other, though they’ve got physical links between them. So pure peer-to-peer networks in my opinion can remove this hurdle and also allow for efficient use of network bandwidth which is something which we already don’t have much. Hope it answers your argument.