Beer, sun and summer holiday induced mental numbness are a perfect chemical cocktail for thoughts ranging from the meaning of life to should I order more beer, what day it is today, to more serious matters like changing the world. Somehow. But don't know how.

Though biographies don't mention it, I am convinced that these were the conditions in which Einstein, Mozart, Stalin, Mao and Porsche found their grand inspirations. To very different ends.

Somewhere through the 3rd pint, it hits you. In multiple punches. The first punch is about the idea. Being yours, you have a special affection to it. Not unlike, your affection for your newborn. At the time, you are convinced that it is the best idea on the planet. Ever. The lever to spin the world out of its orbit has been found.

Then comes the second punch. A deflatory punch. How did I waste 37 years of my life by not coming up with this earlier?

In this sense, Berlin in the summer of 2009 was a perfect place to get the Kida for MySalaryWiki.com. Kida in Punjabi (my mother tongue) literally means an insect. In the more transcendental sense a Kida can be best described as a constant and mildly benevolent itch. Every entrepreneur/inventor knows how it feels like. A Kida just is.

The seed for this Kida was probably planted (unknowingly) during my first job interview for HP in 1997. The salary negotiation ended with "HP pays the best in class compensation based on annual salary surveys…". Take it or leave it. It's your first job after school. You take it. 13 years, 8 jobs, 7 cities, 5 countries, 3 companies, and 3 continents later, you still take it. Because you don't know better.

Best in class my a***. The Kida is born.

Summer 2009, Berlin. The Kida has hatched. The lucid vision. It’s a website. A platform where anyone, anywhere in the world can enter their salary data and compare it against other users.

No registration, no privacy issues, total anonymity. Simple. Bingo. MySalaryWiki.com is incubated.

The Missus notices it. “What’s up?“. “Whahh?“ My typical reaction to an interjection in my thought train. I manage to blurt out the basic idea.

“This is the first sensible idea for a business I have ever heard from you“, says from the Missus. I decide to take it as a compliment.

Let me be clear, MySalaryWiki.com is not about charity. Nor is it a neo-communist idealogical, uotopic horse-radish. It makes business sense. For everyone.

We’ve all heard the that deadbeat cliched story about the Indian (or was it Chinese) fishermen getting a better price for their catch once they got hold of a mobile phone that allowed them to bypass the middle-man and get information about the real market prices. Enabling India (China) to be the economic superpower.

Openly traded commodities are the backbone of international trade and in effect the rise of our civilization. Therefore we have all sorts of exchanges, for gold, rice, fish and so on.

If you really think about it, we, as professionals are selling our skills in a market place. In an efficient market, the best skills should invite the best rates. Unfortunately the market place is not open today.

There is no platform or “Exchange” where people can freely and anonymously share their salary information with fear of getting into a tight spot with their employers. The only way to get any salary information is through so called “surveys” by some compensation specialities whose operational transparency would make the CIA or Mossad headquarters look like an aquarium.

There are some salary websites, that claim to use end-user using online surveys. On closer inspection you notice that they have few and very fixed job categories, based on binocular view of world. Can someone really claim to know all the jobs that 6.8 billions are involved in?

There’s one based in USA (Glassdoor.com) which, for a salary questionnaire for UK, asked me for my 401K plan. Some should tell them that the “51st State” remark was supposed to a joke.

That where MySalaryWiki comes in. Enter your own job industry, your own job title, your own company, your own educational qualifications. Also choose if you get paid, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Anonymously. And compare to check is were taken for ride. If you were, apply for a new job. With the company that gives the best deal for your skills.

This means, best employees and find the best companies and vice-versa. The best quality commodity attracts the best price. Market becomes efficient. Everyone wins.

In less than 2 months of going live, we have users from from 78 countries and 734 cities. Without any real advertising. The people are speaking. The Kida was right.