Last year, on World Diabetes Day I wrote a post on LifeMojo and their test site. You can read that post here.

One year down the lane, i have more than one reason to be compelled to write about LifeMojo!

I started to track my diet and activities on the LifeMojo platform and soon i realized that i had started to watch what i eat unconsciously!

I have also got onto the habit of checking for calorie content of the food i consume on LifeMojo and these guys have made it really easy to access that information – all that i need to do is ping the “Calories” buddy on my gtalk, input the food i am consuming and voila it gives me the calorie content of the same and more!

I set goals, mainly weight reduction goals and i have lost 8 kgs in all till date. All this, with no crash diets or rigorous exercises, but a well planned diet and some simple activity goals on LifeMojo.

I also tried their Diet Consultation and was on one of their diet plans for a while, but my travel schedule often made it difficult for me to follow the diet plan. But, what i do like about their diet plans are, they do not make you change your food habits, they work around things you like to consume and plan a diet for you!

I subscribe to their daily tip, it comes to me via SMS exactly @ 8 am each day! I kinda look forward to it right now, coz its a new insight each day. Tips that helps me in my daily life.

Something else i like about LifeMojo is their articles section on the website. It’s a melting pot of knowledge related to health and fitness – and not the run of the mill sorts, but features that add real value with tips that are very possible

The LifeMojo guys have constantly kept their product alive by introducing interesting features and kept the interest of users like me alive! Most recently they’ve added a bunch of diet consultation packages to their offering. The diet consultation is not online only, its a great mix of over the phone and online which makes the whole consultation and getting results out of it all the more real. There is someone following up with you!

Just a couple of days back they have launched their Forums – a new feature that brings in more interactivity and exchange of knowledge among the users of LifeMojo and people interested in health and fitness.

What’s more, a little bird also tells me that these guys are almost on the verge of hitting that break-even point and perhaps even go cash flow positive. Looking forward to that LifeMojo guys!

Meanwhile, now that i have a 8 month old at home, i am looking forward for LifeMojo to introduce something to track diet of infants and kids, say JuniorMojo or ChildMojo? What say guys?!

When i wrote to Himanshu of LifeMojo asking him for a few recent updates @ their end for this post, he offered this to all reader of my blog:

One time FREE Diet consultation for Diabetes Diet Plan on LifeMojo. Exclusive for the readers of madhouse musings!

Here is what you need to do:

Call +91 9008 999 189 and mention the coupon code NH14
and you can avail a one time free consultation for this

So, here’s to good health & a diabetes controlled world!

I’ve always done what i have strongly believed in & so was the case with MVP. Not that we had the entire thing  planned out in our heads. We started with a loose model; something that could be of value to start-up entrepreneurs, we were open to learning, tweaking as we learned and executed. But our focus was and will continue to be to give the best and excel in what we do!

And now, one year later, we’ve just announced 10 start-ups as part of our Third Batch and expanded our team. Read Release Here What does it mean to me, as a Partner and one of the founding members of MVP? A whole freakin’ lot!

Indus is a super cool dude, who has entrepreneurship in his blood. The match in attitude, wave length between the team is superb! [Picture this - Indus lives in Bangalore, travels in the local bus, walks some distances to get to a meeting and yet he has all the energy to deliver!]

Thanks to Ankit of Instablogs via whom met Indus & engaged him as a pro-bono Subject Matter Expert for MVP companies. At MVP we had no plans or thoughts of expanding the team in any which way, partly because we ourselves operate like a frugal start-up & partly also because we were unsure about the role of a new team member. But, the guy he is Indus – we just could not, not have him on board! Superb human being, great attitude, exceptional humility! With him on board MVP has grown stronger by bounds and leaps! Indus, Thank you!

We were 10 companies strong till June 2009 and the learning with them was immense. Each one of them – Ankit, Nandini, Sumit, Lalit, Sahil, Siva, Rajnish, Varun, Namit, Himanshu, Rakesh, Waqar, Riz, Jay, Sarab, Vaneet & Ishu – are rockstars in their own right. Thinking big, executing fast, fearing not to fail, fighting and fighting through! Thanks guys for giving me an opportunity to associate with you. (okay this does not mean you’ll not see anymore of me!)

Collage Courtesy: S P Hari

The Current Batch now has 10 companies and I personally believe each one of the founders is exceptional. They have a passion, they’ve dared to dream, they are focused.

Adscoot’s Suyash, stands for hours in the major junctions at mumbai to learn traffic patterns and measure footfalls!

EasySquareFeet’s Ashu & Snehesh are the most positive people i’ve seen! I can see their smiles through the phone when i talk to them (serious!)

Viv & Hari of InterviewStreet are two rockstar techies who are consciously & fast learning other skills to take their product to market. They have the passion & drive to make things work!

Shashank & Abhinav started on Naabo right out of college – the freshness in approach & the passion they bring with them is infectious.

Arjun of Picsean is an engineer, but his passion towards photography is amazing! He’s a good friend & i’ve seen his focus and smart work in his past ventures. His attitude to learn is commendable!

Robin of ReachTax is a star CA, but i love his humility and the motivational skill he has to make his entire team perform month after month!

Pankaj & Gaurav quit their fancy paying jobs to work on Retail Vector. Focus, quick work and frugality of life is what they are committed towards as they scale this venture!

The first thing that stood out when i met Abheek first was such an young guy and such maturity & humility. (Often age and humility dont go too well). This guy was 7 years old when he started putting Lego pieces into perfect ensemble & several years later, he’s using them at RobotsAlive!

I loved their designs and the quality of tees – Rahul & Mohit of Scopial have their focus completely on “Quality” “Design” “Niche”! They sell tees one could die for! Check a sample out here

I read about these guys in a print article & the next time we were in Mumbai, we met Jayesh & Karthik of VeriCAR. Two guys crazily passionate about automobiles & trying to solve a problem i was once a victim of! I love their attitude and their approach to things. They love getting down to basics and doing things themselves.

I am already having a lot of fun interacting with the current batch and looking forward to more fun, chaos, fights, fails, wins & whole lot of late nights!

Now, with all this happening – a whole lot of learning, association with the best of the lot, new challenges, lots of sense of humor & innovation. I don’t really have the time to think if MVP is a success or failure. But what i do know and will continue to focus on is “work harder”, “create more value”, “excel and achieve mastery”. And for evaluations of where we stand – let that be for the skeptics to comment on, while i play on….  & spread the madness!

The agility and presence of mind the Instablogs team has displyed can be a great learning for all startups. Get ready to make those back of envelope notes for your business too.

Here’s the original blog post: Counter-intuitiveness: Instablogs Recession Mantra

MVP had a series of press interactions to promote its cause towards entreprenurship in this region and we  got featured in 3 main newspapers today! Here goes….

• Hindustan Times: Let’s Talk Business
• The Tribune: Recession override (Scroll down to find the article)
• The IndianExpress: What an Idea! (Their e-version isnt up yet, will update this in the evening. )

But there are rare moments of reassurance & pride when customers, happy customers write back to you with good words or acknowledge your efforts to making thier lives better.

Here are two such instances (a proud moment for me) where customers of Deskaway & Commonfloor – MVPs portfolio companies have shared their experiences and candid feelings about their services.

(This article is jointly written by Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hirianniah)

In recent days, while working with the MVP portfolio companies and reflecting back on the days of madhouse, we have identified this phenomenon we are calling ’startup madness’.

It’s visible and present from the time when you start thinking of your million dollar/world changing idea to the steady state point (personal satisfaction, acquisition, IPO or maybe shutdown). Things that you do, don’t make any sense to outsiders and they are like ‘This guy is crazy’ and even when you look back at that period you think “what was I thinking when I did this?”

Looking back at the time when we got the idea to start madhouse, we did not know anything about business, we were just two 27 year old kids (later three of us, with Ankur joining us). We had tried a variety of things in our lives and had managed to do reasonably well in whatever we put our hands into, may be that’s what gave us the stupid confidence. Very importantly we were quite ignorant about ‘real business’ and hence came up with our own take on every business problem we faced.

This streak of startup madness showed at various places:

• We did not hear NO: not from vendors, not from people we were trying to hire, not from investors, customers, no one. A NO just meant we had to come back with new ideas and try again.
• We would never get tired of talking about madhouse and we could talk to any one about it. Most times the other guy did not give a damn , for him/her it was just a blabber
• We just worked non-stop for three years , not even a day off (except when forced by illness)
• Other than work everything else was just plain unimportant : sleeping, eating, meeting friends, attending social functions, family, watching TV, movies, newspaper – all of this had very little place in our lives. We just filled all our day with work with average working day of 16-18 hrs all thru.
• We worked out of anywhere and everywhere. Our tools were a Fujitsu laptop and a CDMA phone which could be used like a modem. Restaurants, inside a car / train / auto rickshaw / bus, out on the road, in the park, bedroom, living room and the loo, locations stopped to matter, where place was work place.
• We did not need a lot of money to live and we were happier than ever (no purchases of over 1000 for 3 years, eating at economical places, shamelessly staying with friends / relatives / acquaintances in cities we visited on work )
• ‘The world impossible was missing” – we just did not believe that there was any problem that we could not solve or anything we could not do. Our minds were one track – focus hard, think hard, work hard and just do whatever it takes.
• We had access to this inhuman energy that allowed us to just keep going – “never get tired” or “never run out of steam”.
• Each time we met a new person, we were constantly thinking of how this person can help our venture, . Everywhere we went, we explored if there was something there that could benefit our startup. Frankly we were classical ‘opportunity hounds” and quite shamelessly so
• We were basically “stuck” in our own world in which we could not fail. While we adapted like crazy, we sort of forced business to work the way we thought it should work, without caring a lot about the outside world.

This madness is the essence of start-ups; it signifies the purity of a startup. It makes the startup tick and makes it successful and enjoyable. The same madness makes you innovate, over perform, challenge your skill set, think out of the box or even out of the world, take 28 hrs out of a 24 hrs a day, it gets you to focus but does not let you blindly focus!

Its also important to figure out how can you keep re-fueling the desire, the madness, so that it lasts forever, not just for days, weeks or months, start ups that click need to be at it for years. For an individual or team to succeed as a startup, having the startup madness is a must.

If you are an entrepreneur look inside you and make an honest assessment. Do you have the streak?

• If yes, great.
• If no. But you think you can build it – nice, go ahead and do it at the highest priority.
• If you don’t have it and you can’t build it – I am not sure you should continue being an entrepreneur.

On that other hand, if you are not yet an entrepreneur you should also look inside you and make the same honest assessment. Do I have the mad streak?

• If yes, you fool, leave your job right now – the world of ’startup madness’ is calling
• If no, it would best for you to avoid the path of entrepreneurship, until the ‘madness streak’ gets to you

Last week, Namit, Varun, Himanshu - founders of LifeMojo, one of MVP’s portfolio sent me a test link to their B2C platform – www.lifemojo.com. Here you can not only assess your current body and lifestyle “health”, but also plan and track your diet and exercise schedule. These guys are in a pre-release mode and will open to users shortly… i’ll update my blog when they release, its a great tool to try out, if you are health conscious, a health freak or just concerned about over-weight. I know that they are also going to add tracking tools for preventive healthcare, such as diabetes and blood pressure.

Anyways, the best thing i liked about these guys is that even if they are in pre-release phase, fixing bugs and all that – When i logged onto www.lifemojo.com this morning – i was totally impressed. I saw a little note on World Diabetes Day on the homepage. When i logged in it also showed me a little reminder about getting my blood sugar tested… So, lo and behold – i promptly got to the hospital near my house in the morning and gave my blood sample to get my sugar levels tested! This, i have been procastinating for a while, though my doctor had suggested i get it tested, considering the family history of blood sugar there exits.

Thankyou LifeMojo!

Role

Looking for a core team member, VP-Engineering to lead the design and implementation of all the products at the company. The ideal candidate has extensive experience designing, building, and deploying public consumer facing web sites. We seek an experienced technologist that loves technology, thrives in a multi-disciplinary collaborative environment, and doesn´t mind rolling up their sleeves to code. The successful candidate will be one of the senior employees/partners and will help shape the company from the ground-up.

Responsibilities

Lead the architectural platform design and release products; Design, build, and test applications; Help to build & lead the development team; Be the first to help us get to the market.

Be a visionary, an evangelist, an entrepreneur & an innovative individual to lead the change…

Requirements

Extensive and demonstrable experience architecting, building, and deploying large multi-tiered consumer-facing web applications; Experience building scalable, flexible, robust, and secure architectures for high traffic applications; Driven by agile methodologies and test-driven development; Willingness to “own the code” and build pieces of the system; Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and technical team management; Solid knowledge of .Net/SQL/HTML/ XML/CSS/Javascript/Ajax/Flash, web application architecture, scalable deployment

Work experience: 8+ years. Should have relevant experience – been there done that or willingness/vigor to work diligently on gaps..

Compensation: Willing to take risk- salary based on experience/skills + equity.

Basically, we are looking for a smart, capable, and most of all a person who has entrepreneurial mindset to run it as business.

More:

To know more about Crederity go here. Write to careers AT crederity DOT com to apply.