My Trip to the Valley!

I had a very short but interesting trip to the valley! This time it was not about the vacation or the holiday, it was about business!

As soon as I landed, I rented out a car and drove to Los Gatos, where I had my first meeting. After the meeting, I drove to Cupertino and you know what that means - Yes, I went to the APPLE HQ. Sadly, didnt have a meeting there but was just visiting a friend who works there. Later that evening, a couple of my friends and I went to dinner at Mountain View. This place was full of Googlers everywhere!

The next day, I started my day brainstorming with my team on a new content-based product idea where we conceptualized what we intended to build. Later in the afternoon, I felt the taste of a hungry, smart and business focussed person from the valley. Meeting him was great experience not because he was influential in the valley but also because the picture he painted through his conversations was just astounding. I adapted myself to the situation and as an entrepreneur started talking (or at least tried talking) in the same tone and language as what I assumed is the type of tone used in the valley. Post that meeting, I went to meet an Entrepreneur from Mumbai. After knowing about our startup, he immediately connected us to another startup where he thought synergies could be discussed. This I think is the best part about Entreprenership - there is always a lot of sharingof either connections, knowledge orlearnings. He & I spoke more from a grassroot level which made me want to think about a lot of other things in the process. I think the thing that stuck the most with me is the conversation about surviving. He asked me to think about a situation where we would have a ZERO bank balance, and asked me to further think of what we would do to ensure that we dont have a ZERO bank balance. He hinted SALES! Excellent discussion! There is always a lot to learn from other Entrepreneurs.

The final day in the valley, my friends took me to Santa Cruz - a beach area where we chilled out a bit before we headed back. Before I went to the airport, I had this one last meeting. This meeting, I was able to demo one of our products in MVP stage and the good news was they really liked it and wanted to talk further!

Well, the perfect way to end the trip in the valley. Like I said, it was a short trip but a great learning experience and also progress from a business perspective too.

I didn’t take pics but I have the memories in my mind. I now wish I had Google Glass! :-)

- Rajeev Chhajer
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Behind the scenes @ LAST-BENCH! : Website revamp

Behind the scenes is an 'inside look' into what is cooking at Last-Bench! Here you'll get to read about our current activity, future prospects, ‘under construction’ projects, brainstorming sessions, coffee breaks, 'whiteboard' drawings and lots more. Most importantly this is the perfect place to connect with our team and ask us about anything under the sun. It's almost as if you're right here with us! Feel free to comment, have a laugh and give us some useful feedback :)...

W.E.B.S.I.T.E - Our immediate learnings!!!

After we launched our website, we received a lot of 'praise' emails. It was motivating for us.
While, most of the feedback was positive, there were a couple of questions around our offerings. This was definitely something we had to analyze and take care of. We immediately sat down and brainstormed on our initial purpose of the website, how much we achieved and also revisited the feedback.

After our analysis, we found the feedback that we recieved fell in line with our observations. We completely missed out on explaining our offerings clearly to our 'Last-Bench Learners'(Customers). This included the What, Why, Where, When, Who and How of the offerings. Now, it was time to get down to actual business and get this issue fixed. The changes included revisiting the page layouts, content, content organization and the interfaces.

The W.E.B.S.I.T.E!

It was a proud moment and a huge relief when our website went live! :) After weeks of brainstorming, mock-ups, paper prototypes and conceptualization, we finally saw it come to life. Of course, without the contribution of the tech team this wouldn't have been possible.

It was a great team effort because everyone did their part and ensured that we stuck to our schedules. Some things that I personally like about our website, one is the bench-y feeling, second the custom font and the sketch pad on which all the info is put out and finally all the images that were developed.