Rohit Jain's Blog Rss

NACS Conference and Shaking Hands

Posted on 09-10-2011 | By: Rohit Jain

Category : General, Random, Startups, Technology

Tags: , ,

NACS Conference is a great event to go to if you are looking to partner with Brands/CPG products that are found in convenient and specialty stores. NACS (National Association of Convenient Stores) was held at the beginning of October with over 300 companies in attendance from Pepsi to Subway. Interesting comment made by numerous executives at the event was the concept of “shaking hands,” as you can assume you will shake over 50 hands at a large event. They referenced Michael Arrington, who blogs at Uncrunched and founded Techcrunch. He has blogged about shaking hands on Techcrunch here, http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/09/hand-shaking-is-so-medieval-lets-end-it/ and http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/18/handshake-horror-the-awareness-spreads/. I’m sure people think about it when they meet people..I am indifferent..fist bump or hand shake..but how many people would keep a bottle of Purell in their pocket?

Popularity: 11% [?]

Social Media…

Posted on 01-04-2011 | By: Rohit Jain

Category : Entrepreneurship, General, Social Media, Startups

Tags: , , , ,

Social Media has become a part of most people’s daily life and business:, be it facebook, twitter, myspace, etc…  I can only imagine how life would have been 10 years ago with these tools. There would have been a lot more distractions in the classroom and outside with the way social media can catch fire with a simple “tweet,” when I was still in school. The days of communicating long-distance with friends and family have changed dramatically. Growing up one could only write letters sent by snail-mail to friends and family; soon we were exchanging emails and communicating over instant messenger. Now we have our entire phone book stored in our cell phone, contacts accessible at any moment; we can communicate through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. It amazes these communication channels have been adopted by businesses as they try to get consumer’s attention. The days of reading newspapers and clipping coupons has quickly changed into downloading coupons on your iPad, buying a groupon or visiting a deals-aggregating site such as fatwallet.com.   The different social media channels have opened up many new ways to communicate with friends and even strangers/celebrities (through twitter). Finding the most effective strategy all depends on the end goal/purpose; I’ve been able to connect with people and lead to discussion for closing business development deals. Social media has been an effective channel for me as it continues to evolve and I can’t wait for the next new wave of technology that will make communicating and doing businesses even easier.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Email address worth millions?

Posted on 10-08-2010 | By: Rohit Jain

Category : Startups

Tags: , , ,

Can it be true that having an individual’s email address be worth millions of dollars? Yes, case in point in Daily Candy, which delivers the very best in style, food, fashion, and fun for free via e-mail, video, and the Web, and others. Daily Candy was recently featured in Startup Digest, which was sold to Comcast for $125 million dollars. The startupdigest co-founded by Chris Mccann, has put together a weekly email digest consisting of startup related events in over 48 cities. He has amassed over 60,000 emails in just over 6 months. I applaud him for going after a niche that doesn’t have a true leader. It’s all about eyeballs and converting the visitors into transactions. Once you have following, advertisers and event planners will be knocking on your door. The Startup Digest has been a Monday morning read for me and has become a useful tool just like another recently acquired daily email newsletter HARO, which is a gateway to getting free and easy press.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Storing information in the cloud?

Posted on 06-07-2010 | By: Rohit Jain

Category : Entrepreneurship, Startups, Technology

When you hear about products offering “storage in the cloud,” this is a relatively new concept. There are a couple different products on the market, box.net, sugarsync, and dropbox. They allow you to store data files on a virtual server and access it from anywhere. This would solve the dilemma of taking around a jump drive from one to place to the next. I have been using dropbox and would have to say that I haven’t had any complaints. The product allows you to save a file on a dropbox folder and view it on any computer, ipad, and many mobile devices. Their product is very user friendly and has made storing files seamless. In one instance I had saved a pdf on my computer’s dropbox folder and was able to view it on my ipad through dropbox and docs to go app. I would highly recommend this product for any startup or business that has files that need to be stored and be easily accessible on many different devices. If you are interested in trying it out, here is a link, dropbbox.com.

Popularity: 54% [?]

Lebron James or Foursquare, what’s hotter?

Posted on 29-06-2010 | By: Rohit Jain

Category : Sports, Startups

              Lebron James and internet startup, Foursquare , have been a hot topic the last couple weeks. The hottest free agent, Lebron James this summer, has had many suitors waiting to line up for his services. It has been estimated that Lebron’s  brand is worth over $500 million! Teams are doing everything they can to convince by meeting him on his own turf in Ohio, from Jay Z and Russian billionare representing the Nets, who had the worst record in the league last year. He could be getting a salary similar to Tiger Woods if it wasn’t for the salary cap that restricts teams from opening up the bank. Lebron is scheduled to earn around $20 million next year and oodles more depending on which team can increase his brand awareness and bring on huge sponsors. Everyone remembers soccer player, David Beckham to the Los Angeles Galaxy a couple years ago for 5 yrs 250 million! It never panned but Lebron is another level. Any team that gets him to commit to a contract will need to have deep pockets to create a winning team to satisfy Lebron’s deep desire to win a championship.
                Internet startup, Foursquare has been blowing up and growing at a faster clip than Twitter. Everyone big name was courting them to be acquired from Facebook to Yahoo. Venture Capitalists were trying to invest in a company that had a reported 1.35 million funding and looking for a $100 million acquisition/valuation. Can you believe it?! They eventually got funding by well known and highly regarded Anderrson Horowitz, that has produced many winners.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Lebron James is just as hot and will have to wait and see if he goes to the Mecca of sports, New York Knicks or the Chicago Bulls and rocking his legendary 23 jeresey and emulate the #23 of old, Jordan.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Deals, Deals, Deals..at your fingertips!

Posted on 22-06-2010 | By: Rohit Jain

Category : Deals, Startups

Tags: , , ,

The good old days you would hear of a deal and cut a coupon from the local newspaper for 15-20% off an item in a store. As advertising for deals in print went south of the border it opened  up another world of online deal shopping today. This phenomena went into full gear I think in 2008 when the economy was hurting and people didn’t have money to throw around on “wants” persay. The shopping experience as we know it has changed. The malls seem emptier as people have been shopping more online, this is a sigh of relief, esp for a male, since you now take your female counterpart “shopping on a computer” instead of the boring 4 hours in the mall. It has become convenient for the shoppers that are lazy and have deals everyday to choose from daily. Americans are lazy and this idea of online deals has made it convenient for buyers. Deal sites like Groupon.com and Gilt Groupe are heavily funded and valued at over a billion dollars! There over 100 deal sites are online and growing. I personally have purchased shoes, watches, and even Tumi luggage from Gilt.com. Deal sites are here to stay and hopefully make  males lives one step easier shopping for themselves and avoid being stuck shopping in a mall (with a female).

Popularity: 61% [?]

Rohit Jain's Blog Top