LinkedIn Site Goes Down!

LinkedIn, the global professional networking site, suffered a down time today, just 6 days after hitting 100 million subscribers. I was casually trying to access my LinkedIn profile sometime around 21:20 local time (Amsterdam, GMT +01:00) when I was told "Sit Tight: We're taking moments to clean things up" a nice landing page at linkedin.com that actually meant “LinkedIn was Down”. However the LinkedIn blog and learning center were available, since they were in different subdomains. I tried to find out if this was a scheduled down time (which of course is still not acceptable) but there was no mention of it anywhere in the web.

Reaffirming this fact, many people tweeted about the issue at the same time.

LinkedIn seems to be broken - what's happening? #linkedin at http://twitter.com/#!/marcuseast/statuses/52476531393576960

Getting a "HTTP Status 404" on #linkedin; n at http://twitter.com/#!/neeraj/statuses/52476148168400896

…and I tweeted,
#LinkedIn down? Saying "Sit Tight: We're taking moments to clean things up", just 6 days after reaching 100 million!  at http://twitter.com/#!/udayshankarab/statuses/52449964974026752

However as many users were facing this issue, the site was back up again when I verified it at around 23:00.

So what was the reason for the downtime? I did not see any official statement on this yet, however very soon @LinkedIn tweeted that the site should be back up again, acknowledging the fact that the site was down.

“All of our users should have access to the site currently. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience! ~Tony” at http://twitter.com/#!/LinkedIn/status/52481836915503104

Is it something to do with their “Bigger, better, and more reliable. LinkedIn’s new data center in Los Angeles”?, maybe not, So “Sit Tight: They’re taking moments to clean things up”


Here below are some links referring to some of the previous downtime’s of LinkedIn,

2009, Feb 03^rd| Oops! LinkedIn Goes Down, Can't Get Up
2010, Dec 11^th | LinkedIn Down While They Up-grade Data Center
2010, May 11^th | LinkedIn Down
2011, Jan 10^th | Why Is LinkedIn Down?

[Updated on 5th April 2011]

My good friend Mike just informed me that LinkedIn was down again, and yes it indeed was! What is happening there? With IPO on the table could they afford two outages in a span of 6 days?

As I write this, it looks like the site is experiencing some varying issues. The site is coming up and going down intermittently multiple times within a span of seconds. Here is what the official twitter feed say, "We're looking into site issues currently. Apologize for the inconvenience. Please stay tuned for more." At http://twitter.com/#!/LinkedIn/status/55292427778535424

However, I am not sure if this is an issue within Netherlands or within Europe? Does LinkedIn have local geographical servers that work with a central server or does it having one main server (I totally doubt such a configuration)?

It also poses some critical questions,

• What is their site failure rate in the recent past? What is causing them such frequent downtimes?
• Why are they not disclosing or even apologizing for such down times? (Yes, LinkedIn is not public, but there is no rule that a non-public firm should not, especially considering the fact that LinkedIn is closely associated to 50 million professionals!)
• Isn't LinkedIn able to handle it's own exponential growth?
• Is it a technical bottleneck or error in judgement of demand?
• Does it have capable resources to manage their growth rate or struggling to procure them?
• Is the duration of usage per person significantly increasing as well?

I can only ask! Who CAN ANSWER? (Or do we, the 50 million professionals even have a right to ask?)


[Update]
Site is back with no issues now. It took close to 2 hours for fixing this issue. Here is the tweet from @LinkedIn. "The site is up and running for all our users. Sorry for the inconvenience earlier today. ~Tony" at http://twitter.com/#!/LinkedIn/status/55322353374208000

[Unlike my other blog posts, this is not something that I fancy to blog about. I was personally intrigued about this down time and did some googling around, later to which I thought, why not share it!]

Interview with an Entrepreneur (Part 3/Last)

[Continued from my previous blog post at http://udayshankarab.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-entrepreneur-part-2.html]

Architecting, Growing and Transforming: The Second Beginning

Starting from 1970 till 1995, he ran the financial share fund with utmost dedication, perfection and perseverance. However, he did run in to some bad decisions. Some people defaulted and did not repay the loans. It was those times in life when personal relationships took advantage of him and tried to manipulate him. However, though it brought in a momentary setback it helped him learn many more lessons. So, what else is called “Learning by Mistake”?

Synthesis: Any entrepreneurial activity will go through many TESTING TIMES,  both professionally and personally. In those times, it is about standing tall and weathering the storm, pulling up all your strengths to resist and fight it.

Years passed by and in 1995 he realized that he could transform the model to scale up. He had built enough reputation in and outside his friends and colleagues circles. He also saw an opportunity to reposition his venture as a Chit Fund business. It was because, at the same time, many chit funds failed to deliver results and defaulted to its investors and there were investors in search of well managed and trustable funds. He had also garnered strong experience in running and perfecting the business along with building many supporters and well-wishers. The timing was ripe and the doors were open, Yet Again!

In the fall of 1995, few years before his retirement he started Friends Cooperative Chit Fund, thereby discontinuing the so far successfully run share fund. He started this venture along with two other knowledgeable and well-connected individuals, one a friend and the other a relative. The fund, as in its name, consisted of a closed group of members who were closely known to at least one the three and hence created a strong network of people forming a fund with very low risk.

The strategic partnership with two other owners helped bring in more investors to the fund and at the same time retain the culture and philosophy of having a set of investors whom the owners personally knew. It ensured that the increasing in scale did not bring in increase in risk.

Synthesis: You need to have a GREAT TEAM which shares the same passion and vision along with also bringing in different perspectives to the table. Just because he/she was your best friend, colleague, or a relative does not mean that you need to have him in the team.

What happened later to 1995 is a revered story in his locality and among his friends and relatives circles. The chit fund has continually created value for all its investors and owners. Investors flock in for its membership each time a new chit begins and has been oversubscribed every single time. There have been many instances where investors submit the first chit amount many months early to ensure subscription to the chit fund, an example of how strong investors believe and trust it for increasing their value of investments.

Talking to the entrepreneur, an investor was found mentioning, “Sir, It is because of you that I have been able to own a site, house and property. If not, I may have not been able to make all of these”

Our entrepreneur feels humbly proud of this, that he was able to help people in increasing their investment values and in also helping many others in getting loans when they needed the most.

Synthesis: You need to CREATE VALUE for yourself and ALL stake holders.

The turnover of the venture has grown from a mere INR 20,000 to the current INR 1,600,000 value per month. In terms of Compounded Growth Rate it has achieved an astounding growth rate of 31.51%.

Our entrepreneur now, after retirement from his full time job 10 years back, continues to run the chit fund full time along with his two other owners. He has a clear strategy of not scaling it any further and to only sustain and maintain the existing numbers.

Failure in Pure Finance Venture:

In the recent past, around eight years back, he started a finance company bringing in two additional owners, along with current three, whom he knew close and well enough. This company ran independently and did not have any relation to the chit fund that he already ran. It was a different business model where in equal seed money from the five owners was loaned out to people. The people who availed loan came in with reference from any of the 5 owners and the qualification to a loan was based on the trustworthiness of the individual and the strength of reference from the owners. However, due to the dilution of ownership to five members along with several other socio-economic factors, the firm ran in to many defaulters and subsequent legal battles. It was hence a failure and he decided to dismiss the firm after realizing that it is running in to too many issues.

When asked about the failure of the firm, he described that it was a high risk business and that he soon realized that it did not align well with the values he ran his chit fund business. This new entity also demanded more legal and administrative work that he was not equipped with. He mentioned that he did step in to this venture with an open approach of testing the waters and he was not hesitant in pulling it down for the right reasons.

Synthesis: Do NOT be too EMOTIONAL about your idea/business. Most ideas/businesses are hugely influenced by many environmental factors such as social, timing, competition, cost and many others. YOU NEED to know when the business is no more viable and to decide when to phase out.

Synthesis:

Our entrepreneur undertook the entrepreneurial activity in the perspective of creation of wealth, change, value and growth, however, not in the perspective of creation of enterprise or employment. The calculative risk appetite along with the environmental factors and opportunities helped him conceive the startup though he had no prior sector specific experience. It could also be seen that he later evolved his business model from being a share fund to a chit fund contemplating increased opportunity for value creation.

His was a process of continuous pursuit of opportunity. Starting with the bun selling and freelance electrical business, the entrepreneur moved on to a totally different business line, a purely financial undertaking. It epitomizes the fact that the entrepreneur was driven by outside in (seeking opportunity based on market demand and scope) approach rather than an inside out (seeking opportunity based on internal or personal capabilities) approach.

Our entrepreneur was driven by the hunger to achieve, to excel and to create economic value. His careful and strategic approaches such as (1) selecting investors, (2) than making investors come to him, (3) testing the waters and starting small approach, (4) evolving his business model when the opportunity arose, (5) ready to fallback as in the case of pure play finance venture and (5) partnering to reduce risk, are the factors that were some of the primary factors of his success. Though he did not have any well laid out long term plan he was strategic and clear on his business objectives and targets.

Starting with no prior knowledge and experience our entrepreneur created a chit fund empire in his locality. Though it is not a million dollar business it is a business that embodies the characteristics of entrepreneurship and the true inspiring spirit of an entrepreneur. This story I believe sheds lights and proves the fact that an entrepreneur can originate and be influenced from circumstances within and external. It is dependent on a multitude of factors but primarily by the urge and hunger of the entrepreneur.

“Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them”, Anonymous

[Image Courtesy: http://www.fortunewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/entrepreneur_black.gif]

Interview with an Entrepreneur (Part 2)

[Continued from my previous blog post at http://udayshankarab.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-entrepreneur.html]

Seizing The Opportunity!

[Image Courtesy: http://pixdaus.com/single.php?id=281651]

"the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity." Peter F. Drucker

He used to invest in a share fund locally run by his landlady for quite a few years. It was running all smooth and fine, as it was visible outside, until one fine day when hell broke loose and the landlady defaulted. She ran in to many people who did not repay the loan and hence as a ripple effect defaulted to all her investors. She very soon lost her face and hence stopped running the fund.

It was this time that he saw an opportunity, luckily for him very soon also supported by many friends and potential investors. He was a knowledgeable and trustworthy person among his circles and hence when this incident occurred, he rose up for the opportunity and claimed to run a new fund with better returns, favorable interest rates and loans terms.

Synthesis: “Keep looking for opportunities and the under-served/un-served segments. You see a market gap then that’s one of your opportunity window”

He ensured that he garnered people’s interest in his venture by reducing loan interest rates, and at the same time he also reduced his risks of having defaulters by allowing membership only to very close and trustworthy set of individuals. Soon, he had many people coming to him also because the segment was underserved. He rose up to the opportunity and seized it.

Synthesis: “Garner Support, Form Alliances, Have a Compelling Selling Point on why your customers should come to you”

Many may ask why he felt freelance electrical wiring was not scalable. I did that too! So when I asked this question, I very soon learnt that it was an intelligent and tactical decision, to not to scale up in this. To scale up and work completely on this it required a license to operate from the government (which was by itself fine) but the important thing was that he could not work in his factory on his full time job if he gets a license. He will then have to forfeit a job, which promised him a safety net and continual income. He realized that he could not take such big a risk since he had many people dependent on him, it wasn’t just him, he thought about lot more people depending on him.

I then asked if risk appetite was low then how come he was getting in to a business which failed miserably at the hands of an earlier owner, and in which financial implications are huge? What came out was something that had not run through my mind.

Though he did not want to take much risk he was aware that starting any business does require considerable risk taking, and hence he believed in calculated risk taking. In terms of calculated risk, the requirement to take a license and then quit a permanent job was an absolute NO for him and hence a very high risk activity. However, the running of the share fund did not necessitate quitting of his job. It also required less amount of time and was an intellectual function that could be done from his home rather than having to travel to multiple places as opposed to electrical work. In electrical contracting work he had to go to houses in remote places wherever they are being built, and as he scales up manage his own work force and also hunt down more and more customers in a segment that was already being filled with competition.

In running the share fund, he was aware that he will need to start as small as possible to reduce risk and test the waters, and with success have people come to him rather than he having to approach them for investment. It was a well thought out and deliberate plan.

Synthesis: “Risk is an inevitable element in any entrepreneurial activity you cannot eliminate it but can always alleviate it. Calculate Your RISK appetite before taking the plunge”

In my next and last blog in the "Interview with an Entrepreneur", Watch out for "Architecting, Growing and Transforming: The Second Beginning"

Interview with an Entrepreneur

"What were your success factors?" I asked him and he answered "it is about trying, never giving up and learning from things around you" and I knew how true he was, because I had seen him practicing it.

I had many more questions lined for the call I had with him. It was after a long time that I had spoken with him so much, asking him, knowing him, learning from him and reliving with him some of the experiences he had many years ago.

I was to write a research paper on an entrepreneurial event, describing and analyzing the event and the entrepreneur. After having thought for a long time, I did not want to write it for Google, Microsoft, or Apple, I knew there were enough written about them. I was looking for an entrepreneurial activity that was different, that I could closely associate to, that I could feel and really explore with. I did not want to Google for information of a company, understand what was written by someone and re-analyze it. So that's when I remembered about a financial venture locally run at my home city, Bangalore, India.

The list of questions I had lined up were,

Why did you start this venture? What inspired you?

What was the trigger, the exact story that made you start this?

What was your motivating factor? What were the environmental factors?

Did you have prior experience and did you have a business plan?

Why did you choose to do this rather than anything else?

Who helped you?

Did you lose control or get scared somewhere in between?

Were there any cynics or people who discouraged you and how did you deal with it?

If you were to look back in to past what would you change? What could you have done better?

Why did you not scale up?

What were some of the mistakes you think you made?

What were some of your biggest challenges?

Were you successful in this venture? If yes (I knew he was!), what were your success factors?

How have you helped others in this journey of yours?

What are the results, personal, financial and social?

How has business changed over time?

I really wanted to dig deep down in to his story, which sadly I had not done all these days. I knew what he did and how he did but had not explored his past and how it all started.

The Entrepreneur I am talking to was a son of an average village farmer who then lived in a hut, with a big family of 11 brothers and sisters. He was born in 1942 in a small and remote village called Aghalaya in Mandya, Karnataka, India. He was the eldest son of the family, which meant responsibilities of running the family were bestowed upon him only second to his father. It was a customary tradition in the Indian families where in the eldest children’s are expected to carry most of the responsibilities of running a family along with their father.

Living his early life as a farmer, assisting his dad at the farms he was able to complete a moderate schooling in his village. He cleared SSLC, 10th Grade, which was a big academic achievement for a farmer’s kid those days, but very soon realized that there is more than farming that he wanted to do. So with the dreams of at least making a moderate survival he moved in to the city of Bangalore during his early 20’s. He signed up for a vocational training for being an electrician and soon landed up in a job with a large Indian PSU.

However, it soon struck to him that the salary in the range of tens of rupees did not help in making things better since he had to also support his parents, brothers and sisters in the village helping them in their needs for health, food, daily life along with saving money for the marriage of his sisters. Hence he started to continuously look for opportunities to invest and earn. His first step in having a business was of selling buns in his factory during lunch time, by which he made a few paisa of profit for every bun he sold. He also started working as a freelance electrical worker during weekends, and late nights after his regular factory job. However, both of these did not work out as a scalable model for him, and hence he was, continually seeking.

“I had to make my own living and my own opportunity”, Madam C.J. Walker and yes, he was on his way to make his own opportunity.

More to narrate in my next blog...

Apps In Business: My First 50 Min Presentation in Dutch/Nederlands

…but only for the first 50 seconds!  “Goedemorgen Mafrao en Mineau. Ik spreek en beicha Nederlands” (it meant "Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen, I speak little Dutch!")were  the first words that I started my presentation with, today on March 10, 2011 in the “Smart Business is App Business” event. It was a seminar organized by Sogeti Netherlands BV and attended by people from many different companies representing diverse industries across Netherlands. Much to our surprise we came to know that the event was a full Dutch language event except only for the presentation we were presenting. It was an interesting and for a moment frightening fact to know, only a day before the presentation, we did not know whether it is an advantage or a disadvantage, but anyways at the end of the day it didn’t really matter! I was joined by my fellow classmate Amit Munshi who presented the latter half of the presentation with me starting off.

The day started off with me and Amit joined by our dear friends Tina Liu and Javen Chen, catching the bus to Utretch from Nyenrode and from there again to Vianen. We reached the venue at around 9:00 AM and the seminar was scheduled to start at 9:30 AM. The Agenda of the day was, Wim Hofland, one of our main project sponsors presenting “Smart Business is Mobile Business”, later followed by our presentation “Apps in Business - De stand van zaken” which meant “Apps in Business -The Current Situation” from 10:10 to 11:00 (for 50 minutes) followed by presentations from Arnd Brugman, our one other project manager from Sogeti, on “Strategisch gebruik van Mobile” (Strategic use of Mobile) and lastly from Jeroen Jonker Roelants, a Sogeti customer representing IDG Nederland sharing his views on their App journey.

We stepped in to the magnificent hotel hall soon after our registration and as soon as we stepped in, it made us realize the farther gravity of the seminar. It was filled with around 150 (as we were informed at the end of the event) executives from a plethora of companies! It did make us feel good (but at the same time posed us with a challenge because of the mere size and diversity of the audience). We started settling in with the atmosphere after making sure that our presentation is available in the laptop and I getting the microphone fitted, and very soon I came across one other thing, I saw this sheet of paper placed on all the chairs. I gazed in to it trying to decipher what was in it, because all it had was in Dutch and found out that it was a feedback form for the seminar with options for people to provide rating for each of the individual presentations! Whoa, isn’t it interesting, when you get to know that 150 people will be placing tick marks about you at the end of your presentation (or if you are so bad and boring even before the presentation ends).

So, it was 10:10 AM, the presentation from Wim ended and the noble call for the Nyenrodean’s came along! I was called upon the stage to present “Apps in Business”, a project that we, the class of Nyenrode International MBA 2011 comprising of 37 students from 19 different nationalities, had worked on for the last 5 months. It had culminated with seven reports from the seven different companies that we worked on and a generic report that summated all these efforts. It also came along with a much exciting and interesting model called Appetizer, which was a humble effort to develop a jumpstart kit for businesses struggling to formulate their Apps strategy. The project involved an extensive data collection with desk research across Google scholar search and industry comparison of mobile apps, hands-on testing of apps, in company interviews, public surveys, class room sessions and discussions, multiple company visits, opinion gathering from social media platforms and many more channels. It was later followed by a broad analysis phase accompanied by a user persona based approach of targeting the right segment. It was an effort to build concise recommendations on the mobile app strategy for the different companies we worked with. On a whole, speaking about the Apps in Business project, it was an industry and academic joint venture project to explore and assess the landscape of mobile apps in different industries and to create a strategic report for organizations to benefit from the App movement. All in All, it was exciting, grueling, time consuming but at the end satisfying!

Oh, by the way did I mention that we received a free iPad at the very beginning for working on this project!

Coming back to the presentation, it was truly a great and interesting opportunity for me to be there, to be representing the Nyenrode Business University being the ambassador of Nyenrode and to be interacting with these people from different companies across different industries. Soon after I ended my few Dutch words at the beginning of the presentation, I conveyed that it is for the benefit of the audience that I switch my presentation to English, which caused a good round of laughter, encouraging though! I then continued and went on to explain the app explosion and the factors influencing it, the key strategic questions businesses are confronted with while building their mobile app strategy and the current app trend. It was later followed by the 7 stories or experiences we came across when working with the companies, such as,

·         Achmea (the largest financial services providers in the Benelux region and one among the largest insurers in Europe)

·         KLM (a leading international European airline based in the Netherlands)

·         ING (a leading global financial services institution offering banking, insurance and asset management services)

·         Cordares (one of the subsidiaries of ABP/National Civil Pension fund for government and education employees, specializing in collective pensions and supplementary products)

·         Academic Medical Center (one of the eight university medical centers in Netherlands in the field of Academic Medicine)

·         Sogeti (a wholly owned subsidiary of Cap Gemini S.A and a leading provider of professional technology services specializing in Applications Management, Infrastructure Management and High-Tech Engineering)

·         Nyenrode Business Universiteit (a leading university in Netherlands offering graduate and post graduate level programs in the fields of general management, accountancy and controlling)

I believe I was able to carry the audience to quite an extent, an opinion that I support myself from the small rounds of expressions and exclamations during the course of the presentation. The one that caused a little more exclamation was when I gave the example of the Fridge Police, a food expiration tracker App (if you aren’t already aware, know more about it here)

I was done by the end of 10:40 AM (Yes, I did take a little more time) and Munshi took over the floor for the later part of the presentation which was the Appetizer model. I should say that it did raise a lot of eye brows, which we could make out by the many people we interacted with at the end of the seminar. However, we did ensure to mention that it is a work in progress and the excitement to feel and use the model has to be delayed for a few more months, and I am sure we will have something great at the end!

All in All, the event was a nice experience! It was further more exciting for me when Wim came back at the end of seminar and mentioned that “Uday, you were a true performer on stage, Goed!” What can I say!

Later soon, at the end of the seminar, we were presented with a Sogeti wine bottle (a customary I see mostly in Europe) and the event ending with a networking lunch.

It was a day well spent, In being a Nyenrode Ambassador and In being a Mobile App evangelist! …..NOW, I am looking forward for more! Thanks Sogeti, and Great Nyenrode!


Thanks to @ArndBrugman for taking some pictures of the event! More of them at http://yfrog.com/hsceqcj, http://yfrog.com/h07welnj, http://yfrog.com/h418pxpj and http://yfrog.com/h0dc8evj