WagersOnline.com

For once i got a good name for a idea...!

as the name suggests, an online wagering site, where you can put bets on anything, and using the Social Network model, invite people to accept the bets.

Somethings which need to be taken care of:

1. No Real money, because as soon as you put that in, the game becomes really complicated. What can be done is that when a user creates an account, they are given x (and here x is a big number) WagersOnlineviRtualMoney (WORMs). Use this to put the bets. 
2. This has to be plugged into an existing Social network site like FB, because only a network of friends will be able to put bets. 
3. Wagers should be time bound. 
4. There should be good categorization, why, i'll answer later. 
5. There can be a very simple model to this...no betting, just for or againsts. and the weight on either side decides the bet. So I if put in the bet, the weight is 1:0, for someone to join in against me, they would have to bet 1 WORM. and then the bet becomes 1:1. Now suppose after 10 other people, the bet stands at 3:7. So anyone joining at the 7 side will have to pay 10, but returns will only be 3 (less returns for going on the favored side), but on the other hand, guy betting for 3 side, will pay in 10, and get returns of 7.  So getting in remins the same, but paybacks varied depending on the risk you take. (but risk you take the is the same)

Monetization:

Two ways really:

1. After a minimum number of WOrM's, you can buy more money, not sure if this would be legal though.
2. Trends...imagine how good an input will the be to the physical betting industry, or for everything else. Obama will win the elections, 1000 people put in this bet, or join in, and 1000 join in against!!!

A good review...

Let me start with this, "This is a positive review". Why, well because I don't really see many positive reviews around, unless they are paid for or written by the owners of entity being reviewed. And frankly, there is a need for more positivity in this space. 

So the background: We wanted to get our home cleaned for Diwali, and not having the time, and seeing all the advertisements of Start-Ups providing home cleaning services, as vary as we are of startups, we decided to atleast explore the options. 

After talking to 3 - 4 such start-ups and getting quotes we decided on Helpr. We decided on the price, the terms & the date, they sent me a Text and we were done. On the day appointed, at the time mentioned, a 5 person crew showed up, with some basic equipment and self-organised themselves and started cleaning. They were done in about 8 hours, asked me to check, took the money and left. Simple!!!

Now why a full blog on this, I could just have tweeted about this. Well, because there were many things worth writing about. So here goes.

1. Why Helpr - Although Helpr gave me a competitive price, they were far more patient in answering all my questions. They were reassuring, to the extent that the lady I spoke to convinced my wife, and that's not easy, if you know what I am saying. And secondly, well, I spoke to a lady. That in self gave me confidence that these guys knew what they were talking about. Now, hold on a moment before you judge me as sexist, I think women in general know more about cleanliness and organising stuff then men, they just have that sense. (If anything, this is sexist against men). 

2. The crew and the quality of work - Think of maids and well any other service provider in India. Its always a stressful thing in India, you have to be on their case all the time - have you done this and done that, have you done it well, how long will be your lunch, will you come back after lunch. It actually starts right from 'Will they come?'. There is also the fear (unfounded maybe) that they might steal something. 
These guys, were good. Full Stop. They came, they knew what need to be done and started without any delay. They were thorough, asked questions when in doubt, suggested alternate solutions (sir, paints coming off when I used this chemical...Should I just clean it with Soap Water), got regular feedback (Sir this room is done, please check once.), handed over any money that was found under / behind the furniture), and were cautious (sir can you check this pile of paper to see if there's nothing important).
We didn't have to sit on top of their heads, forget that, I was working from home and I could actually 'Work from home'. 

3. The crew liked what they were doing - And I think this was what was responsible for 2, and I think this was because they took dignity in doing their jobs. Cleaning is traditionally considered a lowly job in India, and people doing this usually have low esteem. This comes out passively and sometimes as aggression. But these guys took pride in what they did. One of them, cleaned the bathroom for 3 hours, cleaned it so well that the tiles which we thought were cream in color actually came out to be white. After he was done, he called me, took me to the WC (pot, WC is the technical name, means WaterCloset, I was a construction engg in a previous life), and pointed me look inside, with a wide smile on his face. It was sparkling white (I wondered if I'd ever want to use it again), but that smile was the smile of man who is content with his work and feels that he deserves a shabashi. I was just taken aback, and pretty much decided to do this post to honour his work!. 

So the learning's and the gyaan:

·  Give dignity and money to the crew. These guys told me they are getting ₹200 /- per head for a full day, thats like minimum wages. Not just that, from a business point of view, its very easy for me as a customer to take their numbers, and call them directly to do the job. So if you want loyal workers, pay them well. 

·  As for helpr, Develop some processes, cleaning always starts from Inside out and top to bottom. So first thing, clean the insides of cupboards, and re-stack everything, then start from the cobwebs, and move to the floor. That ways, you don't dirty what you have already cleaned. Also, followup with the customer, first to assure that your person's gonna show up (especially when the booking is done couple of weeks in advance, and the general impression is that the customer usually has to follow up many times, break that taboo) and later on to take feedback. What went well, what didn't, how can we improve sorts. 

  A rare good experience with a startup which is actually just starting up. Hope they continue as they grow. 

rate people...

Many years ago in some gyaan session I was told that every person is actually two people, first person is his own perception of himself, and another is everyone else's perception of himself. The actual self lies somewhere in between. Another thing I heard today in a session was how a feedback given to someone else is also a feedback on yourself. Kind of like when you point a finger at someone, you are pointing three back at yourself.

One of the visions I had in 2010 was that there will, some day, exist a universal recursive rating system, through which one rates something, anything, and in turn gets rated itself. So if I give a 5 star rating to a restaurant, which has a 1 star rating originally, both the restaurants rating and my rating change. The restaurants rating goes up, but proportionally. And my rating goes down, again proportionally. And this happens continuously. Of course ratings will go hand in hand with tagging, so you are not rating a restaurant, but a very particular type of restaurant.

Anyways, when I wrote about Rating Engines, I knew that if something of this sort ever does get developed, it will be very controversial, and damaging as well. Because, at some point directly or indirectly humans will be rating humans. Although we do this all the time, we do it very personally or based on a small group of people who surround us. But when done online, on the internet, most probably anonymously, it could have devastating effects. We already seen this in case of Secret or Whisper, where something like gossip or secret on a internet scale has devastating effects. 
And well, the backlash over Peeple proves this. 

But what if, these ratings were not just direct ratings given by people to people. But they had machines intervening in between. What if Analytics played a role in between. What if a a 3 star rating given by person A to person B went through multiple algorithms, each of which tempered it, proportioned it. 

What could these algorithms be? Well one could be a 'Network effect' algorithm, which would see what ratings people in Person A's network have given to people in Person B's network. And it filters out biases.  Another could be a 'Interaction effect' algorithm, which proportions person A's rating of person B based on the volume of their interaction. Or maybe an 'Outlier Algorithm' which looks at statistical methods, and finds out if the rating is an Outlier, and if so, then maybe hands over to another algorithm which analyses why an Outlier rating was given. And so on...till a point when every rating is sieved and proportioned by hundreds of algorithms. And not just when recording the rating, but also when showing it to someone, based on that someone's rating. Convoluted I know, but the way analytics is going, quite possible. 

Again, this doesn't necessarily make it less controversial, but like Privacy, it might make it more acceptable. Because you know that a non-biased machine is tempering the ratings, you will be less threatened. Especially when you consider the benefits it might bring to overall society. Wouldn't you reliably like to know if your maid is punctual, clean, good at her job, honest and and will gel with you before you hire her. 

But then, and I am contradicting myself here, would you be like to be that maid who got branded as unreliable, dishonest, sucky at her job and so on by a machine, however right it is? Maybe there is a 'wipe the plate clean' option available when someone judges that you are making a fresh start...I leave 'who that someone is' debate for later. 

Ciao.  

Maps for everyone & everything

Ever come across a quaint little shop (Raasta) while wandering an unknown area (Frazer Town) in a city and wanted to save the location to return later?

Or wished that there was a map of all women's restrooms on the Bangalore Coorg route (with information about how clean they are, if water is available and if they are safe...wishing for too much right? ) 

Or a map of walking trails around Bangalore where you can go and practice for Oxfam Trailwalker 2016

Or maybe a food map of Ahmedabad showing all the famous street food shops, curated by people living in Ahmedabad?

Or struggled to find your parked car in the myriad bylanes of Koramangla (hoping it hasn't been towed), and wished there was a way to mark its location on a map so you could find it easily later.

Or stuck in a jam because of a BMTC bus breakdown during rush hour and wished there was a way to share this with all the others coming behind you (so that they would take a different route and make your life easier.. ;-) )

And wished that you could do this with same ease that you post to Facebook or Tweet from your phone?

Today’s mapping applications are very much geared towards showing you the way, towards roads, and traffic. Maps are tools to guide you to a place, to find a place maybe, but they should also be a medium to explore, and a medium for future reference. They do all of the above but in bits and pieces, and none of them make it easy. For e.g. Google Map maker lets you add you own locations which get added to the central Google Maps after review, but its not easy. Waze lets you track the traffic, but that's it.

Frankly like Instagram is about pictures and Zomato is about food, there is nothing about maps!

So how about a Social Mapping application, which provides a private map, on which you can mark your current location with all the detail you want to go with it. So you can mark where you parked your car, or the location of that shop, or that shortcut route you took to office.

And also be able to mark the clean toilet you found on a public ‘Sulabh Shauchalaya’ map, or mark that bus brakedown on the ‘Current Traffic Hindrances’ map, or mark that awesome vadapav wala you found at the hidden corner in the ‘Ahmedabad food trail’ map.

What would be required of such an application?

The application will have three main aspects:

1. The maps – The layer on which everything is built.
2. The property – Anything which is marked on the map can be called a property
3. The mechanics – How to mark, maintenance rules et al

Maps

Maps will be the base layer on which everything is built. As I see it, every account holder gets at least one private map when their account is created. This is the map to which all properties are marked by default, and persist, irrespective of whether they are on any other map. This is account holders personal reference map.

Public maps are maps on which anyone can mark locations. This is how curated maps of things like food trails, public toilets et al will be created. And like Wikipedia, they should be maintainable by the public. There could be some authoring rules et al attached to such maps, but they should get maintained organically. Public maps are owned by an entity who has an account, but they are public because anyone can create, and in return view the properties on a public map. Details of lifecycle of the public map needs to be given some more thought.

All account holders can create multiple maps, Public or Private. As I see it, the maps are really just layers on top of each other.

Properties

Properties are the assets created on a particular location on the Map. It can be a (relatively, because nothing really is) permanent property such as a restaurant, an old tree, a community or a temporary situation based marker such as a traffic jam, a newly road being built, or the current location of pride of lions in GIR forest. Every property is created on at least one Private map, and has to live on at least one private map (not necessarily the one it was created on originally). A property can be private (default option) or public, the difference being that a private property will only stay on the private map it was created on but a public property can be added to any other private & public map for reference by others. Properties of course will have metadata, and ratings and all sorts of other properties.

The big unanswered question here is about the ownership of the property. Is the property owned by the creator on the map, and if so what happens when multiple people mark a property on their public / private map. Or can a property be owned by the real life owner, so for instance can a restaurant marked by random person on his personal map, be owned by the actual Restaurant Owner, in which the restaurant owner can delete the property and so does that mean that the property will get deleted from every private map. Again the question is really regarding the life cycle of the property. I don’t have an answer to this but think the answer will be in developing very good search functionality, which comes under the Mechanics of it all.

The Mechanics

The third important pillar of this app will be the mechanics. Things like how to mark, how to search, cleanup of public maps, persistence of properties et al. 

Marking a property has to be 1-touch (Mark location, open app to provide more details, like the Voice Recorder in the iPhone, but launched from the home screen). Why so, because if there are too many steps involved in marking a property, then users won't do it. Marking a property is actually a two step process, first is to mark the location, and second is to give the property details. Without the latter, former will make no sense. There will be some technical challenges with the above though, because marking a property in 1 or 2 step means that your location is being tracked continuously and whether the mobile devices battery hold up to that is any ones guess.

Another very important aspect, especially to avoid duplication and keep the data clean, will be searchability or rather, search driven suggestions. So for example if I am at a location, and I mark it, before I give details of the property, I should get suggestions of the (public) properties already marked at that location. Thus I might just want to select one of those properties and give some more detail to it. In addition, another advanced, and algorithm driven back end feature could be the matching and merging of metadata provided by different users for the same property, but then this has to be dealt with really carefully.

There should also be a way to purge all or some properties at a given frequency. This applies to scenarios like ‘Traffic blockage maps’ or ‘where is the Pride in Gir forest map’. You can expect folks to mark properties, but surely not remove them. And if they do not remove such properties, they just create clutter and confusion. So there has to be a periodic purge method. How this gets applied, and who applies it (map owner vs system) needs more thought.

Gamification, Monetization, Verification of properties, Layering of maps et al are other aspects under which can be worked on.

So anyone up for it??!?