2006 18
FON in India
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
To launch FON in a country we need a local web site, an e commerce platform, a local blog, a round of press/bloggers conferences that I attend explaining what FON is and lastly a compelling offer for the social router, say around 10 euros. We are getting ready to launch in India and are interested in finding a techie/blogger who can help us set the site in India, build the e commerce platforms so we send our routers from Taiwan and the payments platforms in India. If anyone has candidates pls refer them to me. In other countries we manage with teams of 3 people. We need to build such team in India. The don´t advertise at FON, our key expenditure is the subsidy on the routers to get many FONeros.
2005 11
Sweden, India and FON
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I find the tremendous acceptance of FON in Sweden surprising. Here we are in one of the world´s most advanced technology islands and yesterday at SIME, when I was done talking about FON (you download my powerpoint presentation here), somebody asked for a show of hands and around 70% of the audience wanted to become fonero. In other words, download our software which will be available on Monday and build the wifi nation. I thought that here, in the land of affordable 3G, people would prefer that choice. But the comments at SIME were so negative on 3G and so favorable on wifi that the whole thing made my day. Interestingly, I was approached by an Indian woman who wants to do FON in India. In India, FON is all about using wifi to reach many at a low cost, say a lot of mini Bills, in fonero language. But in Sweden it´s about Swedish people with the latest wifi enable gadgets wanting to find wifi signal everywhere. And they loved it when I said that the wifi nation already exists, that no additional expenditure is needed but the making of it with a clever piece of software. The largest hotspots networks in the world have less than 20,000 hotspots, T Mobile is a good example. Next Tuesday when we put our software on the net we don´t know what may happened but we believe that the chaos of random downloading may beat the central planning of large corporations and yield in a reasonable time the largest wifi network in the world.
2005 12
Tired of losing: Outsource your Rival, American Law Firms
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I lived in the States for 18 years. During that time I completed my schooling at NYU and Columbia University and my first 10 years as an entrepreneur. Overall I loved living in NYC, this city has some of the best universities and most remarkable entrepreneurial opportunities in the world. Everything is there. Unfortunately everthing includes a serious impediment to business: expensive American law firms. Americans called Europe beaurocratic and that is true. But at least European beaurocracy is mostly free. American beaurocracy comes in the shape of law firms and it´s outrageously costly. Lawyers in America are as priviledges as members of the Communist Party of China: they are people who walk around charging $400 an hour to talk to each other while they make rules for all the rest of us to live by.
But wait, there´s hope for this abuse and it´s in India. Some American entrepreneurs have realized that the “knowledge” that American lawyers have can easily be replicated in India and there are now people in India who are receiving an American Legal Education. Imagine the education institutions now focus on turning out amazing software engineers coming up with a new training, American Law and graduating lawyers who can do most of the legal work that needs to be done supported by a few coordinators in America who yes, could bill $400 an hour but for very very few hours. And after that, how would you like to have Indian lawyers trained in American law working for you over the net at $10 an hour? Well, it´s coming. Soon one of the most important useless drains of cash for American businesses will stop… in India.