Manik Gunawardana's cyber space

Recently I was at a meet up, the topic was about "how to create a startup". There were two well-known start up founders who addressed the crowd that day and I was surprised to see that they were just talking about all irrelevant areas without focusing on the most important aspect of the birth of a startup. In modern era there are lots and lots of startups emerging because of the technological advancement of the society. Also most of these startups are technological startups because of the same reason. So can anybody create a startup out of thin air? The answer is no. So how to create a successful startup? Here are some tips. 1) Identify a problem and try to find a solution for that Identifying a problem is crucial when it comes to creating a startup. Just because you have an idea we cannot guarantee that idea will success. So instead of just throwing wildcards to the table it's always better to find a common problem and try to find the solution for th...

Yes, If you ever got into HTML code an email design with responsive support you already know what I am about to say. Developing a responsive email is really can be a pain in the butt right? But why do we have to feel that pain, because about 48% emails are opened on mobile devices, so it's not a choice you can make but you just have to get used to that. Ever thought why it's hard to develop an email to be compatible with mobile devices? Let me explain, the simple reason for the emails to work differently on mobiles and desktops is because we have whole lot of email clients to deal with and all these email clients doesn't work in a unique way. Back in the day, when you say you got mail, there is no doubt that you got mail to your Office Outlook; admit it, we loved it back then right? we used to have voice overs to say "You got mail" every time you got an email, at least you loved it because there wasn't another email client for us to use on a windows PC. ...

E-commerce is becoming more and more popular throughout the entire world in present and lots of business owners believe in it. What more can I say, we are living in a world where people use mobile phones to make online purchases, pay bills and make lot more transactions. But when it comes to Sri Lanka, the concept of e-commerce is not so popular yet, most of the merchants would have a website for their business but hesitate to sell products through that website. The entire world is moving forward, but we are hesitant to keep up our speed with the rest of the world, may be this article will clear some doubts you have about having an e-commerce website. Let me start with explaining what e-commerce does. E-commerce enables you to sell products online whenever, wherever. Think about that for a moment, imagine a potential customer who live in another country buying your product, how cool is that? Have you ever thought about your product reaching out into another country...

When it comes to sales, its all about selling your product or services to whoever and no matter what. May be not everybody thinks like that, but most do. That's why there are lots of articles on the internet about promising something you can't deliver. Specially when it comes to sales we all think of selling more to achieve sales targets and make more money. Not only in sales, you sometimes make promises to your superiors to build trust among them, but what will happen if you fail to deliver something that you promised? Will it make a positive effect on your sales target or your reputation? You will end up repaying a good portion of the money you got and the client will never consider getting your service again. And if it is to your superior, only god knows how they will react. When it comes to customers, you know how hard it is to get a client to pay for your service. Losing a client may burn a big hole in your pocket. Following advises will keep you away from promising t...

How many emails you get into your inbox everyday? How many of them you read everyday? Are those emails really relevant to you? These are some interesting questions you should ask yourself before doing an email campaign. Yes! even you plan the campaign, you must get into the other's shoes to see or think like others. How many emails you skip each day because they are not relevant to you? And have you ever thought of how many emails you get into your junk folder each day? I want you to answer these questions before further reading this. Being an email marketing service provider is easy these days, you just need a good email list with about 500,000 emails in it and you just have to create multiple email marketing accounts in MailChimp or any other email marketing software provider, it's that easy. I recently got a call to my office line from a guy asking me if I am interested in buying an email list. Just because I am curious, I asked how many contacts in it and how much do...

How many decisions you take everyday? hundreds? thousands? think about how many decisions you take in every second daily. Do you take all those decisions consciously? not exactly. If you have a brain, you are automatically wired to be bias and if not you are not a human. So being bias unconsciously, is it a bad thing? the answer is it depends on the situation. As I explained earlier, we take a lot of decisions everyday, and it's impossible for us to take all those decisions consciously, it just not happens. For example, lets say you are crossing the road and you see a speeding car coming towards you; do you really do the math how speed it comes and how long will it take to run you over or do you just immediately jump away from it? Now lets see how unconscious bias can affect your workplace decisions. When it comes to work life, most of the time we make gender biased decisions. Ever thought of this when you prepare a job description? Check the below statement "Ideal ca...