Amazon Echo and the Smart Home / January 23, 2016 by Aanarav Sareen

In December of last year, I received an Amazon Echo as a gift - and it has slowly changed the way I do certain things.

If you are unaware, the Echo is a smart device that is designed to be the hub of your home.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Echo is capable of, but here’s how I use Echo on a daily basis:

“Alexa…wake me up at 8am”
“Alexa…what’s the weather today?”
“Alexa…when is my next meeting?”
“Alexa…play some Bollywood music.”
“Alexa…trigger find my phone.”

Alexa essentially does whatever you ask it to do. It’s a combination of Google Now and a one-way assistant. And it works really really well.

Over the past month, I’ve stopped using the alarm on my iPhone to wake me up or searching for “Weather 10010” everytime I’m ready to leave my house.

While Echo may only save you a few minutes a day, it is capable of doing a lot more when partners start integrating their services with them.

For most consumers, it also makes terms like “smart-home” and “internet-of-things” a lot more understandable. If this is the future, I’m glad Amazon is leading the way with a consumer-friendly product.

We’re in the era of platform stagnation and smart engineers are looking to do more now that computing power enables consumer level adoption of virtual reality, augmented reality and much much more. The video below is shot on a $350 camera that stitches 360 degree video in a few minutes. For professional content creators - it’s a step forward in a very big way!

Experience the blizzard in 360!
Posted by Aanarav Sareen on Saturday, January 23, 2016

It’s an exciting time to be working in technology and as things scale up, I’m looking forward to being a part of it.

The Story of Poln: Demystifying E-Commerce / January 17, 2016 by Aanarav Sareen

Find qualified new customers with the simplest ad platform available! Automate your advertising, boost traffic, and generate new revenue.

Nearly $250 billion in annual revenue is generated by small to mid-sized online retailers. They come from different backgrounds, they're passionate about what they're selling and often times, they dedicate all possible resources into building their store.

However, having worked in data-driven organizations, I've been shocked to see the disregard and lack of return in a way that is absolutely unacceptable. Retailers start with small test campaigns across marketing platforms that are so challenging to use that you need a computer science degree to understand them. And then retailers blow through their budget in a few hours by not knowing the shortfalls or the stop gap measures for many of these outlets.

The only thing that does is leave a very sour taste.

Why isn't new user acquisition easy? Why aren't ad platforms effective? Why the mystery surrounding the very core of what makes a business work?

And that's the reason why we started Poln. Poln makes new user acquisition easy and helps people sell more products. That's it. No complicated budgeting menus, no random pricing mechanism and no inflated promises. We've seen the platform, at the very least, double the conversion rate for many of our retailers and for some, it's been an OK investment.

Advertising is part science and part creativity. I was on a plane back from Los Angeles after spending some time analyzing a client's e-commerce store and was horrified to see the technical performance of a very well known agency. The work that they had developed for this specific client was awful - broken links, no effective call-to-action buttons and a laggy experience at best.

Here's the thing - good advertising requires a good ecosystem. And despite all the changes going on in ad-tech, I'm proud that our small team has been able to help so many brands. Our results speak for themselves and our goal is to help the hundreds of thousands of online retailers who've gotten lost in the process of reaching and acquiring new users.

Poln's simple. It's effective. And if you're a retailer looking to try it - email me directly at asareen@poln.co. I will personally make sure that it delivers for you.

The Leap of Faith Principle / January 7, 2016 by Aanarav Sareen

Holidays are a great time to reflect on the past 12 months and anxiously plan for the next year. And if you're lucky enough to be in New York for the holidays, you realize how many people come to this city primarily to find a job or to visit. And then they leave - leaving the city beautifully empty and eerily different.

I was having drinks with a colleague of mine this week and we were discussing how our social networks consist of people who - when committed to an idea - follow through with immense passion and intense dedication. Everything around them not related to the idea fades away and they're focused on making it - the idea - a reality.

On the other hand, when we talk about this pursuit with outsiders, they're terrified of pursuing their ideas or in awe when others are courageous enough to follow through.

Taking this leap of faith is not easy by any means, but once you do it enough times, it becomes easier every subsequent time.

And despite the strenuous process of turning an idea to a product and then taking a company to market liquidity - it is the absolute core of how financial markets operate.

Whether you’re reading this on an iPhone, an iPad or even a computer - the device that you’re reading on is built by people who took that leap of faith. No one really needed computers back in the day and not too long ago, using a touch screen as your primary device was a crazy idea.

Same thing about launching a service that could only communicate in 140 characters or somehow finding all the world’s information via a simple text box.

All of those are created by people who took the leap of faith and changed the path of humanity.

It is that leap of faith that drives entrepreneurs and separates *billions* of people from chasing a dream.