sahil parikh’s work+life stream

Adapted from the DeskAway Blog

Last week we announced the integration of DeskAway into the Google Apps Marketplace™, Google’s online storefront for Google Apps™ products and services. DeskAway will join a diverse group of applications/tools and will now be available for direct signup by all Google Apps™ users and customers. Read the official Google announcement here.

We think that cloud computing and web-based applications are the future of enterprise software and integrating with Google Apps is an excellent move forward.

The Google Apps Marketplace makes it easy for more than 2 million Google Apps customers to discover, purchase and deploy integrated business applications and related professional services. By integrating with user account and application data stored in Google Apps, these cloud applications provide a simpler user experience, increase business efficiency, and reduce administrative overhead. To learn more, visit google.com/appsmarketplace.

Here is what we really love about the Marketplace:

1. Existing Google Apps users can easily setup and integrate 3rd party applications
2. As a vendor, it was easy for us to complete the integration as the resources and online help provider by Google was more than excellent.
3. We are current users and fans of Google Apps
4. We got to interact and work with the amazing team at Google - technical as well as marketing!

The DeskAway and Google App integration is really simple and takes not more than a few minutes. Once integrated, Google Apps users will seamlessly be able to access all their project communication without having to sign into DeskAway through a separate browser every time. Watch videos and learn more on our help page here.

Google is making it easier for small businesses to leverage the best of the web’s applications to power their business with the least amount of IT setup and overheads. We are very excited to be a part of this movement.

I love the fact that I can just click on 'DeskAway' from my Google Apps Universal Navigation bar and jump right into DeskAway and start working on my projects.

No, I am not going away and this is not my farewell speech. Just thought that writing the title in past tense seemed to make sense.

After switching from a service company back in 2006/07, a large chunk of my life revolved around DeskAway. An inspirational article I read made me look at the things that I have learnt in the last 3-4 years growing and scaling a SaaS business.

Quick, rapid decisions: You can easily change things around if something does not work out. Don’t ponder and wonder if something needs to be done. Just do it and if it doesn’t work, switch gears and try something else. Try out different tools, policies, management styles, testing procedures, website design and keep only the ones that work. Move fast.

Measure early and often: Everything on the web is measurable. Initially, we were too engrossed in building software that we completely ignored analytics and measuring the customer acquisition funnel. This was back in early 2008. Once we realized that we could learn so much more about our users and business, we built an internal dashboard to track everything - sales, free signups, conversion funnel, upgrades, downgrades and other important metrics. Today, key business indicators are a click away. This is needed to make quick, rapid decisions.

Hire attitude first, then skill: Hiring the right people is a huge challenge. We learnt our lesson early on when we were doing website design and development. We hired an expensive designer who we had to fire after we found out that he was freelancing from within our office. I am not a fan oft hiring experts - they are generally very expensive for startups. Look for good attitude and a willingness to learn. Get the right people on your bus, the wrong people out.

Make time for play: I enjoy each day. Work does consume a large part of it but I generally take out time to pursue my other passions (like tennis, golf and traveling) and spend a good amount of time with family. I guess the family part is well rooted in our Indian culture. Life is too short to spend it away on all work and no play. Also, make sure you take care of your health - without a healthy mind/body there is no work.

Don’t chase success: In 2008 we concentrated on building good software and listening to our customers. This automatically gave us a decent amount of recognition on international blogs, print and TV. This was huge for our small business. The beauty of it was that everything happened so organically - maybe we were doing the right things and enjoying it while at it each day. Too much greed for success gets in the way.

Manage your time: When you are short on resources and need to wear different hats you better know how to manage your priorities. Be aware of where you spend your time. Learn to say no. Keep a certain alloted time for reading and social networking. These things can so easily consume you that by the time you know it, it is already time to go home.

Think purpose & brand: Features and pricing are not really differentiators. The real differentiator is your purpose and the perceived value within your customer’s mind. They should join you because of the message you are giving out. Do you stand for something important? Your purpose, brand and culture should be bigger than your product. This is something that I think about each day.

I am sure there are several more things that I have learnt and am learning each day. I will pen them down on another post soon. It has been an exiting journey so far and looking forward to some fabulous announcements in the next couple of months…

An Indian technology blog Techno Pulse had recently listed DeskAway as one of India's few Cloud service providers. This weekend they published an interview with me about the Cloud/SaaS landscape in India and how DeskAway is gearing up for the future. Read the entire interview here.