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Haig KayserianProfileHaig Kayserian founded KayWeb in 2003 after graduating with a BA in Media and Communications from Sydney's Macquarie University.
Other facts about Haig KayserianFavourite Sport(s)Football (Soccer), Rugby League Favorite Movie(s)Scarface, The Departed, Screamers Favourite TV Show(s)Underbelly, Q & A, House, West Wing, Seinfeld Favourite Website(s)www.theworldgame.com.au, www.digidirect.com.au, www.kayweb.com.au, www.google.com Quote:"Always underpromise and overdeliver..." |
All entries by Haig Kayserian
We have long been hearing about the need for quality engineering talent to keep up with the demands of ideas-centric New York City.
New York startup founders of the non-technical variety have long struggled to find skilful, technical co-founders. These individuals are not often immediately monetized in order to be able to afford the services of the limited developer talent pool available in the big city.
KAYWEB Angels, LLC is the 'angel development company' founded to fill this gap and plug New York's developer hole.
KAYWEB Angels is majority-owned by KAYWEB, the web and mobile development company with offices in New York, Sydney, Melbourne and Manila. KAYWEB employs 20 full-time staff, including 14 programmers specializing in developing websites and applications using various languages and technologies.
With over 200 clients using our systems, including our state-of-the-art content management system KAYWEB CMS, KAYWEB is well-equipped to build the next great web and mobile startup projects originating in New York City.
KAYWEB Angels has been founded to facilitate this process by providing our considerable resources in exchange for equity in founders' projects.
Our resources include website, application and mobile application designers, developers and project managers.
It also includes a mentoring network headed by our board of directors, who bring an outstanding level of expertise to the table.
Sidney Minassian is a Silicon Valley-based CEO, who has led one of his previous startups through significant levels of funding and a launch at DEMO which won his product the peak marketing prize.
Shant Soghomonian is an executive at VMware, with over 12 years of IT sales, management and leadership experience in Asia, the Pacific and Japan.
Foad Fadaghi, formerly with Friendster, brings over 15 years of experience in technology research and consulting, having authored ground-breaking studies into paid search, social networking, online group buying and tablet computing.
John Buckman is a corporate attorney and the founder of Buckman Group - Corporate Counsel, which actively provides transactional and corporate legal services to a variety of businesses, specializing in startups.
I, Haig Kayserian, am the Founder and CEO. I am an internet and mobile business consultant with clients across Australia, the United States of America and Asia. I founded KAYWEB seven years ago and have personally managed and advised on hundreds of website and applications projects for clients, which include businesses, organizations, government and individuals.
KAYWEB Angels, LLC has three New York projects as active investments already and we are actively inviting applicants to submit their ideas as we look to take that number to five by July 2011.
Click here to apply.
New York startup founders of the non-technical variety have long struggled to find skilful, technical co-founders. These individuals are not often immediately monetized in order to be able to afford the services of the limited developer talent pool available in the big city.
KAYWEB Angels, LLC is the 'angel development company' founded to fill this gap and plug New York's developer hole.
KAYWEB Angels is majority-owned by KAYWEB, the web and mobile development company with offices in New York, Sydney, Melbourne and Manila. KAYWEB employs 20 full-time staff, including 14 programmers specializing in developing websites and applications using various languages and technologies.
With over 200 clients using our systems, including our state-of-the-art content management system KAYWEB CMS, KAYWEB is well-equipped to build the next great web and mobile startup projects originating in New York City.
KAYWEB Angels has been founded to facilitate this process by providing our considerable resources in exchange for equity in founders' projects.
Our resources include website, application and mobile application designers, developers and project managers.
It also includes a mentoring network headed by our board of directors, who bring an outstanding level of expertise to the table.
Sidney Minassian is a Silicon Valley-based CEO, who has led one of his previous startups through significant levels of funding and a launch at DEMO which won his product the peak marketing prize.
Shant Soghomonian is an executive at VMware, with over 12 years of IT sales, management and leadership experience in Asia, the Pacific and Japan.
Foad Fadaghi, formerly with Friendster, brings over 15 years of experience in technology research and consulting, having authored ground-breaking studies into paid search, social networking, online group buying and tablet computing.
John Buckman is a corporate attorney and the founder of Buckman Group - Corporate Counsel, which actively provides transactional and corporate legal services to a variety of businesses, specializing in startups.
I, Haig Kayserian, am the Founder and CEO. I am an internet and mobile business consultant with clients across Australia, the United States of America and Asia. I founded KAYWEB seven years ago and have personally managed and advised on hundreds of website and applications projects for clients, which include businesses, organizations, government and individuals.
KAYWEB Angels, LLC has three New York projects as active investments already and we are actively inviting applicants to submit their ideas as we look to take that number to five by July 2011.
Click here to apply.
09 April 2011
Smartphone gaming a serious business
I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on Smartphone Gaming at "Socialize - Monetizing Social Media" conference at The New Yorker Hotel in New York last week.
The panel included international experts providing international perspectives on the mobile gaming industry, which is growing at an alarming rate. Silicon Valley California, Japan, China and Germany were all represented on the panel, which revealed:
- the importance of an international strategy when creating a mobile game;
- how to build games easily for multiple platforms;
- how to take games viral to maximize downloads and users;
- how to monetize mobile games; and
- how to best use mobile games for brand marketing.
It was an extremely interesting discussion, and very topical considering the successes being registered by smartphone gaming companies, like Rovio, every day. Rovio is the developers behind the hugely popular game Angry Birds, which according to Wire UK, is played a total of 200 million minutes every day!
Rovio typifies the business successes being registered in the smartphone gaming business, recently raising over $40 million in funding to further advance its empire.
Anybody thinking of coming up with 'the next big thing' should stop and give some thought to games that may become highly addictive, international and monetize-able :)
21 March 2011
Starting an Online Business: Quirkiness is cheap
The roads to virality hence success of the great internet startups that consume our everyday lives, like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon to name a few, have been less conventional than the roads to a similar result experienced by traditional startup businesses.
These great internet startups have proven that ‘quirkiness’ can replace the billions of marketing dollars spent by traditional businesses to build a brand and cult following.
Quirkiness comes in many forms.
Quirky could be the idea of virtualizing the everyday lives of Ivy League students like Facebook did to attract the majority of Harvard, then other College students before ending up with profiles of 1 in 14 humans living on planet Earth.
Quirky could be enforcing a 140-character limit on status updates like Twitter did before attracting a gigantic user base that includes world leaders, business tycoons and celebrities to its application.
Quirky could be coming up with win-win deals with local businesses and spreading them as cleverly-worded coupons to a bargain-hungry audience, like Groupon has done to become a company that rakes in over $1 billion in revenue per year after less than three years in operation.
None of these businesses spent millions of dollars on television ads, bus stop advertising or a Times Square billboard. Planned or not, quirkiness was one of their key means to go viral and attract a critical following of their business. They have built online empires that are today valued at between $10 billion and $65 billion, depending on who you ask.
When starting your online business, plan quirkiness. It is an affordable way to take your business viral and save critical marketing dollars.
A good entrepreneur is always an optimist by nature. He or she must also be a realist, which is not always a characteristic that comes naturally to us entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs often fall into the trap of thinking we are without weakness and that we are able to cover all the needs that may arise when forming a startup. However this is never the case.
One of the best ways to plug weaknesses is by bringing in others. To turn an online startup into an internet empire, a great number of things need to go right. Each of these components require an expertise - this could be in engineering, marketing, distribution, leadership, sales, connections, among many others.
I have not met a superhuman who can cover all necessary components. Some of the leaders in business, such as Donald Trump and Richard Branson, put their success down to surrounding themselves with the right people.
How do we do this?
You can bring in others by identifying which of your weaknesses they can plug, and paying them a consultancy fee (usually hourly) to consult your startup.
Alternatively, you can offer these experts some ownership in your startup in exchange for a more lasting consultancy.
My preference is for the latter. While you lose some ownership in your business, you gain a person (or people) with a vested interest in your startup. This means they are more likely to want to see it succeed than if they were a paid consultant giving one-off advice.
Most entrepreneurs I meet as an Internet Business Consultant at KAYWEB and an active Angel Investor aren't trying to build a $10,000 business. They are trying to build multi-million dollar empires.
When playing with sums that large, what pain is there in losing a few per cent of equity if what it brings you is an expertise that may help you reach your desired bottom line?
Entrepreneurs often fall into the trap of thinking we are without weakness and that we are able to cover all the needs that may arise when forming a startup. However this is never the case.
One of the key first tasks of entrepreneurs starting an online business must be to identify weaknesses and form strategies on how to overcome them.
One of the best ways to plug weaknesses is by bringing in others. To turn an online startup into an internet empire, a great number of things need to go right. Each of these components require an expertise - this could be in engineering, marketing, distribution, leadership, sales, connections, among many others.
I have not met a superhuman who can cover all necessary components. Some of the leaders in business, such as Donald Trump and Richard Branson, put their success down to surrounding themselves with the right people.
Bringing in others is the best way to maximize a startup's chances of success.
How do we do this?
You can bring in others by identifying which of your weaknesses they can plug, and paying them a consultancy fee (usually hourly) to consult your startup.
Alternatively, you can offer these experts some ownership in your startup in exchange for a more lasting consultancy.
My preference is for the latter. While you lose some ownership in your business, you gain a person (or people) with a vested interest in your startup. This means they are more likely to want to see it succeed than if they were a paid consultant giving one-off advice.
Most entrepreneurs I meet as an Internet Business Consultant at KAYWEB and an active Angel Investor aren't trying to build a $10,000 business. They are trying to build multi-million dollar empires.
When playing with sums that large, what pain is there in losing a few per cent of equity if what it brings you is an expertise that may help you reach your desired bottom line?
21 February 2011
Starting an Online Business: Location, location, location
When planning an online business (or mobile business), founders and co-founders must begin discussing 'location' as soon as possible. By location, I particularly refer to the launch and base location(s) of your online or mobile business.
The following are four pointers I'd like you to consider in your startup location, location, location discussion:
Firstly, is where you live the best place to launch and base your internet or mobile startup?
If you live in countries with modest populations, like Sweden or Australia for example, and you've come up with a business that could have global appeal, you must seriously consider if launching in your home country will be beneficial to your aspirations.
The United States, with a population of 300 million that mostly use the internet and smartphones, might be a better option. For example, Foursquare, launched in New York, would not have had the same appeal if launched in Beirut.
The fact is that there are not as many examples of non-American startups making it big as the other way around. But there are countless examples of non-Americans making it big with U.S.-launched web and mobile startups!
Secondly, you must consider if launching in a smaller market will leave you vulnerable to predators?
In this industry, we constantly hear that some multi-billionaire startup founder took his/her "inspiration" from another guy who lives in a small village in some unpronounceable country.
If you launch in a smaller market and register some success, others will hear about it and use their considerable resources to establish your idea in a bigger market before you have had a chance to get there yourself.
Thirdly, you must question whether your online or mobile business' location is the best choice to attract the talent you will need.
If your startup succeeds, as we expect all will ;), you are going to need talent. Depending on the nature of your startup, you may require Engineers, Business Development personnel, Project Managers, Designers, etc.
It is fact that there are certain hubs where such talent is more fertile than others. For example, I believe Engineering talent is best in Silicon Valley (USA) or some Asian countries (Singapore, Philippines, India, etc.), while some of the best Business Development personnel I have met have been from cut-throat cities like New York (USA) and Sydney (Australia).
Finally, and probably most importantly, do investors have preferred locations?
There is a great chance you are going to need money to grow your business. And it is a definite that you are going to want money when you exit your web or mobile business.
Venture Capitalists, Angel Investors and others with money will very likely judge your capacity to service the greatest-possible market for your business when deciding on whether they should or should not invest.
The above should not mean that everyone should launch their web or mobile business in the most populated, capitalist locations. First and foremost, the location has to be right for your business.
But once you have a list of what the right locations for your business could be, my advice is you make sure your capacity to service the largest locations is front-and-center in your planning.