Ajai Karthikeyan is Invictus

Is it just me or is everyone annoyed with how much AT&T charges for messaging? I’m pretty positive that the actual bandwidth (and in turn, expenses for AT&T) used by text messages is a lot lower than the other services. We can all agree that messaging is way too over priced, but my annoyance for the day is the 3 packages offered.

AT&T offers 3 messaging plans. A 200 messages plan for $5, a 1500 messages plan for $15 and Unlimited for $20. There is a lot of room between 200 to 1500! I personally text about 300-400 times a month but have to pay the $15 for 1500 messages.

Come on AT&T! Get something right for once and make a $10 messaging plan for 600 messages a month or something!

A recent Atlanta startup has started to become really popular. Wavee is a penny auction site where you can win a lot of cool merchandise for dirt cheap prices (a Nikon Coolpix worth $184.99 for 20 cents as shown below). The catch? There is indeed one. To be able to bid, you need to purchase credits which cost $0.75/credit.

Sounds like a deal doesn’t it. Wavee advertises between 70-99% discounts on the final bid price (vs. the retail cost of the item). How does Wavee make money? Well, my rather inquisitive nature led me to figure out the math behind Wavee.

My goal is to figure out the relationship between the Value of an item and the final selling bid at the break even point.

The total revenue (which at break even point will be equal to the retail price of the item) from the sale of a product is the revenue from bids ($0.75 * number of bids) and final selling bid ($.01 * number of bids). The gets the total revenue from a sale to be $0.76 * number of bids.

Since the final selling bid is $0.01 * number of bids (hence, number of bids = 100 * final selling bid), the total revenue can be written as 76 * final selling bid. So, we come to the conclusion that Wavee breaks even when the final selling bid is 1/76th the value of the item. This equates to final selling bid having a 98.68% discount on the value of the item.

So, you can see that Wavee makes a profit whenever they sell a product at a 98.68% discount or less. Sounds like a deal for both the startup and the buyer. Check them out and have some fun.

Note: This analysis is done with only the sale of the item in perspective. You got to keep in mind that there are other expenses for the company such as development costs and employee salaries. Wavee also provides 5 free credits to each new account and also gives reward credits which are not accounted for. But the basic idea remains the same. If the winner of the auction is not a total idiot, he is definitely going to make a saving on his purchase; and as long as Wavee has enough users bidding, they will make a profit too.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Whats more to say? Say’s it all doesn’t it!

Ok. That was just a catchy title. Get ready for some preaching

The basic idea is that you should play your part in making the world a better place. Some people are great developers. So, great idea people. And some really good at getting things done. But what do you do when you are not one of these people? Well, you help them. The age old saying comes to mind; “Those who can’t do, teach”.

I like to use a different word instead of the more common tool. I like to think of myself as an enabler. I feel that by helping other reach greatness, I have done my little bit to change the world.

Now why am I talking about this topic in particular? Well, I have rebooted the Young Entrepreneurs Society once again. Though I hope to work on my side projects which will probably include a startup and develop myself professionally, YES is going to be my #1 priority for the coming academic year.

The success of this organization will mean a lot more than you would expect. This groups goal is to change the very culture at Georgia Tech and get more startups to come out of this wonderful institute. I am going to embark on the quest to make YES awesome once again and this time, I am joined by 2 other people who are crazy enough to thing this will work too; Welcome aboard Michelle Bjornas and Mike Skalnik.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So, this is what I say. If you have the opportunity to enable someone to be greater than they are now, take it. It is probably one of the best thing you could do.

PS: Quoting the Apple Think Different ad has inspired me to write another post today. Way too much coffee I tell you

Having spent the past couple months looking for an internship for the summer, I am happy to say that I have accepted a position with Turner Broadcasting. While I hope to talk about that at a later date, today’s post is mainly about the inherent flaws of the GPA system.

In my search, I stumbled into far more than one job posting that had a GPA cutoff, (usually 3.0) which meant that I had no hope of getting the job even before I applied. This led me to think more about the whole GPA situation and how much it actually spoke about my abilities.

Firstly, I must say that having a fixed GPA cutoff is inherently biased against most Georgia Tech students. Due to the academic rigor, the average GPA at Tech is lower than that of most other universities. For instance, the GPA requirement to graduate cum laude from Georgia Tech is a 3.15 while at most universities it is closer to 3.5. This does not create a standardized GPA scale between different colleges and I am happy to say that many of the Atlanta based companies and most of the companies that come to career fairs at Tech are aware of this. But even still, GPA cut-offs seemed to be disqualifying a lot of eligible candidates.

Secondly, the GPA seems to fail at measuring your academic success and is more of a measure of your academic failure. Why do I say this? Well, the GPA seems to be based on not what you have learned at the time of graduation but more on what you didn’t know at another point in time. The easiest way to explain this is with an example: I have personally registered for Calculus III for CS Majors 4 times during my time at Tech. I dropped it twice and have failed it once and  by the look of things, will be failing it once again this semester. My GPA has been drastically affected by both of these ‘F’s but when I do graduate, I will have the calculus knowledge imparted by these classes as I won’t be able to graduate without passing this class.

Lastly, GPA doesn’t account for the difficulty of different classes nor does it account for learning styles of different people. For instance, I have many junior level and senior level classes during my Freshman year and have been taking graduate level classes throughout my time at Tech. Being the youngest person in these classes should definitely mean that I am ahead of the curve, but were I to make a B in one of these classes, my GPA is lower than my friend who is taking the same class 3 years after I am. Does a freshman taking a senior level class and getting a B show more ability or does a senior getting an A in the same class. Exactly my point!

As for learning styles, I earlier wrote about my bad luck with calculus. My personal learning style is oriented towards learning by applying what I learn in my day to day life. I am a very hands on person and love to get my hands dirty while I try to figure something new. This is quite difficult to do with a subject such as calculus. It is kind of funny how my being bad at calculus does not even demonstrate my ability with Math. I got an easy A in both Combinatorics and Constructing Proofs, two of the more difficult mathematically oriented classes at Tech and I plan to have a similar experience with Probability and Statistics.

There we go. My rant about GPA. I’m not even going to talk about how the GPA doesn’t say anything about extra-curriculars and work experience since I hope that goes with out saying. Please feel free to continue this discussion.