Sorry for the big lag in posts, been moving for the past week.  Somehow each move holds change, and promises so much. Always good to change. We all need to change to be relevant. Once, we stop trying to be relevant to ourselves, our world, our families and friends, I don’t know what else remains.

Dario D’Onofrio guest blogs over at Profy.com today, sharing some of his experience with the rest of us. Every business on this planet has two golden rules - Cut costs & Higher profits. No matter how big you get or how small you start, you always have to know how and where to cut costs. I was fortunate enough to have a great mentor who taught me how to bite the bullet, even at time I didn’t want to. For the rest of the readers who aren’t as lucky, Dario’s post gives you a lot of fodder for thought. Here are 11 ways a startup can think of cutting costs:

1. Look into projects according to your background
2. Ask your family/friends to comment on your project
3. Observe your competition before spending money
4. Keep your ideas secret
5. Negotiate with suppliers
6. Don’t tell media what you are doing in the first stage
7. Be flexible
8. Spend more time thinking than doing
9. Be ready to give up when everything goes wrong
10. Run a blog to keep in touch with users
11. Don’t hire, outsource instead

I went into this movie knowing nothing but that it starred Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey. I have come to expect a lot from Rajat Kapoor, his movies bring back images of ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’ and that whole lot of crazy NFDC upstarts whose works are still considered the golden age of Indian comedies. Ranvir Shorey and Vinay Pathak are no less. They were together last time with Konkona Sen in Kapoor’s Mixed Doubles - quite well done, I thought.

Movies which move in ‘real time’ tend not to be tolerable. Most of this movie revolves around the one night that Pathak is stranded with Kapoor and the rest of the cast drops by, including Milind Soman, Sarika and Bhairavi Goswami. Vinay Pathak’s Bharat Bhushan is a likeable character who doesn’t know when to stop. Hilarity ensues. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard with (and not at) a bollywood movie. Vinay Pathak and Rajat Kapoor’s rib-tickling conversation through the ‘night’ carries the movie; these guys are too under-rated. Some soon to be classic lines:

Khaata yehaan ka hai, gaata waahan ka hai

Aji [dinner ka] dahi kar dega woh

Meri shirt to nahi tere paas

Mujhe to kabhi kabhi lagta hai ki aap mujhe bilkul hi idiot samajhte hai

I almost feel embarassed to say that I did not know about Matthew Haughey of Metafilter, till I stumbled across his blog - fortuito.us. It’s newly launched but if the quality of the content is any indication, its definitely here to stay. He obviously has enough experience running a successful community (46,000+ users at Metafilter, running since 1999) and shares some of his tips with the rest of us. Here’s an excerpt:

1. Take emotions out of decisions
2. Talk like a human, not a robot
3. Give people something they can be proud of
4. Bring users in during community decisions
5. Moderation is a full-time job
6. Metrics spread the work out
7. Guidelines not rules

Its official - Feedburner just got Googled. Read about it on Burning Questions - CEO Dick Costolo’s blog as well; Techcrunch estimates the deal to be worth around $100 million.

This is a good move. Feedburner is a great service and with enough traction in the business, so only good things can come from this. Better marketing campaigns management with RSS feeds, more control to the bloggers. What more could we want, right?

Go Go Google!