Ideas ...

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people."

For last one year perhaps the only constructive work I was doing was simply thinking about ideas...And very late we started to compile them and was surprised to see that it was well over 26 (well , it started  with Plan A, then Plan B and so on and I stopped writing down when it hit plan Z )

Now we are left with a hard task of choosing one ... and in a situation when you do not know what will work and what will not ...

One  way Indian startups chose an Idea is by looking at what have worked in US , and shamelessly trying to clone it here ...some will  work in India and some will not (It took 15 or so years  for India to get an amazon equivalent ) and in that direction , my list contained some Ideas which read like 'xyz clone for India' ..

And some ideas are mere improvements of something existing ..say you use a particular service and feel that it sucks and think that it could be made way better ....such improvement ideas are quite compelling , because you know the business model and have a clue about the numbers ...but the competition simply scare you...and you doubt whether the value addition which you try to bring on to the table really differentiate you.

Some are pretty conservative ideas (read Consulting ideas , say something like to be a miniscule Infosys)...

And there are a very few ideas (infact just 2) which I consider as 'real gems' ...which are something purely new ..but coincidentally the risk associated with them is way high ...you never know whether it will work or not  , you do not have any precedents in it and you know that probably they have a 99% chance of  failure....but still you are attracted to it , becoz it's your baby ...at times theses ideas seem quite foolish ...but they say "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" ...

“Birds fly, Fishes Swim and Startups die"

It's a painful truth that 95 to 99% of startups die...For quite a bit of time I was thinking hard on how to get into the other 1 to 5 % ...

Certain thoughts to remind myself (on why startups fail and the things to be cautious about)  ....

1. Failing to create value for the user and not having a user first culture ...

         The first cause of failure must be creating something that the users do not want . And not focusing  on the user is probably the biggest mistake a company can make on the way...

         
          “What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea… and the engineers go, “Nah, we can’t do that, That’s impossible.” … the manufacturing people…go “We can’t build that!” And it gets a lot worse… And I said “No, no, we’re doing this.” And they said, “Well, why?” And I said, “Because I’m the CEO and I think it can be done.” And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit.”
         
        “Sure what we do has to make commercial sense, but it’s never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience.”

2. Failing to create a proper distribution channel ...

        However great the product be , you need to have a proper distribution channel to take the product to the customers .
       
3. Suicide or rather Giving Up!

         Persistence is the key to success ..
                "Great entrepreneurs are who believed in their product and had the persistence to see it succeed."

4. Lack of focuz  ...
         
                  "Gold is found digging deep , not wide"

             “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.  But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other things…”
                               

         

5. Hiring B players ...
                 
                "For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said they wouldn’t get along, they’d hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn’t like working with C players. At Pixar, it was a whole company of A players. When I got back to Apple, that’s what I decided to try to do. You need to have a collaborative hiring process. When we hire someone, even if they’re going to be in marketing, I will have them talk to the design folks and the engineers." Source: Isaacson's book

          "A good engineer is better than a 100  ordinary engineers"
          
           Who could be a good hire ..."One who is smart and who gets things done."


Hope I can keep a check on those ...pretty hard though ...

My favorite theory on motivation ...

                                                I somehow had a feeling that by working for somebody else , one is just being a 'glorified slave' ...At some point I started to realize that there is no much 'glory ' in it , and that you are just a 'slave' , however be the work environment ... and you start feeling restless ...That was a moment when I decided to drop out ..And this was despite the fact that , I enjoyed the maximum possible freedom with my previous employer ...Life was purely on my terms ...went to office at my time ..returned as I wished ...often came home and slept on feeling sleepy ...never cared to mention leaves to anyone...did the job at my own pace with no body questioning ..and still managed to get a 'successfully meet the expectation ' rating ...(though not outstanding) ...still the restlessness was there ...wonder what the situation would have been,had I be in an Indian company with things like punching, dress code and numerous comedies...really I feel pity on the 'kindergartens' who have to work there...

But if I had the situation to remain unemployed after graduation , even for a small period of time ,all my thoughts would have been different ...I would have certainly been happy to wear a tie , and do the punching.. I would have been more than happy to be just a slave , let alone a 'glorified slave' .. And Moslow explains this ...

  Read Quote of Aashish Gupta's answer to Startups in India: Why has India failed to produce tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.? on Quora

on a positive note ...

Ever since my hairline started to recede , I was too much worried about it ...And several times wondered , y now ? How better it would be, had this been a  few years later!

But of late , I notice that my worries have started to settle .. A couple of deaths nearby(of people at a relatively young age ) and an encounter with a cancer patient has opened my eyes to see the world in its true spirit ...I want to note down this thought somewhere , to remind myself , day after day  , that how lucky I am ,  and  hence this post ...

Being able to see the world,
Being able to walk around,
Not having to face hunger,
Having a place to sleep ,
Having wonderful parents , relatives and friends ...

Perhaps , these are the biggest bliss of life ... And I am incredibly lucky for having all of them .. :)

PS : Update on the startup saga ... My friends have rejected the offer to fly and settle in US(A) ... and that means , the  'Game is On' ...enjoying every moment of it ...

And a Shameless plug ...Soliciting disruptive , royalty free (or non-free) , start up ideas ... (Its not that we do not have any idea ,but I am preparing a list of possible ideas to work on , and guess what, the list has crossed well over 25 entries...more on that later... )

:(

Starting up is an incredible journey...with high mood swings ...high excitement  and severe anxieties ...

Well , I have been super excited for the last few days ...when some of my 'super talented'  friends decided to drop their jobs ....for a moment, I thought we could create anything under the sun ... it was a bunch of incredibly talented people(except possibly, yours truly)...and  anything was achievable...

The fact I overlooked (or rather wished  to ignore ) is that those people are extremely hard to get...When they conveyed their decision to quit, the counter offers have started to pour in...The first real test has come in the form of an offer to fly to US and settle there , for one of them..and another is expected to get the same in a few days...

My only worry is that , in case I happen to lose them (which I know I won't , but still) , I will have to find somebody else who could stand the test of such temptations , who have the desire to jump out of the rat race...who take immense pride in being  job creators..and who are ready to sacrifice anything for the cause....

A checklist for every 'startupper' ...

4 or 5 things which I keep on reminding myself...
On the things you do ...


http://youtu.be/ZjcgggYsXvU

 On the importance of hiring A+ players...
And a word of mouth advice on the importance of setting monthly targets and constantly following it up ...
and last but not least the following quote ... " The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. They are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. "

Heard this is a good read ...bookmarking ..http://book.personalmba.com/

dots getting connected ????

When I resigned my day job , I had absolutely no clue as what I was going to do...Now as I am on the verge of making 4 others to resign their 'high' paying jobs , I doubt whether the dots are getting connected...

'thotz..' :)

Just read this somewhere -- "Failure is when you give up, everything else is only a difficult situation".. 

Neither have I entered a difficult situation , nor have I started ( let alone think about failure ).Just noting down a powerful statement which I came across.

When I announced my decision to resign , and go wandering in the uncharted territories , one of my colleagues advised me not to hesitate to get back if things did not go well...And my reply was 'May die out of hunger , but there won't be a turning back.' . To be frank, it was rather a casual statement and was not a much thought one..But the power of those words still captivates me and comes to my mind every time I think about a risky idea..



The words are at times so powerful to drive your thoughts  , of course only if you care to be honest to it..The other occasion when I had a similar experience was during a casual talk with one my friends - I casually remarked -If it all there would be a second company in my career , it would be mine. And perhaps that sentence, which might have come straight from the heart , which might not have had much rational processing , helped me incredibly  to decide to put in my paper.

This has been a strategy which I have been using quite well...to blabber about things which you doubt you would do , normally things that you know that you have the least chance of making up your mind to try it out...and people come back reminding you about those , and it gives an incredible push to your motivation levels..

an update

With 4 B-Plans  , namely Plan A , Plan B , Plan C and Plan D , and a couple of  people who could dream big ,me all set to approach TBI Nitc... :) Happy and excited like anything... :)

Just saw the following status update from Vineeth Sreenivasan on the success of his movie thattahin marayathu and its songs.....

"we all will grow old, have white hair & celebrate life with some beautiful cholesterol.. but boy, we will tell our grand kids that we made all this when we were young and stupid.. :)"

Yup..I have been saying myself something similar for the last few years...At the end of the day , each of us will have a story to tell..Let that story be not that of somebody else as well...Let that story be stupid ,irrational and crazy... Let that story be something which fills you with pride and sense of accomplishment..

A real inspiration..

bplan 0.0.0.1

Well, decided to learn open erp during the next couple of months (or until something path breaking is discovered )
so hopefully I am gonna eat,think,breathe and sleep open erp for a few days ahead.
Here are my targets
1.To learn the various functional units of an erp in general and open erp in particular
2.To learn high level architecture of open erp , to have a quick code reading and to develop the expertise in creating new modules

A week of joblessness

I continue my despadi!! Another week passed by , and nothing remarkable has happened..Pretty expected as I was back at home for a small vacation..

There hasn't been anything concrete which I have learned so far.
But on a positive note, I wouldn't be as confused as I used to be when I here statements or words like the following.

1.I am going to take my website (or web application) to cloud... (??? it means he is going to host it on Google App Engine or Amazon EC2!!!! That's all)
2.NoSQL Database , CouchDB , MongoDB, SimpleDB
3.Webservices (obviously REST full) , SOA , SOAP
4 Hadoop, HBase , BigData , BigTable
5.Memcached
6.Business Intelligence , ERP ,CRM , Workflow

Add to it a few more jargon. I have now a fairly good idea of about what all those mean at least

Since am Back to my 'office' , hope to get things on track by tomorrow.
Wishing myself good luck

first day of joblessness

The first day of my joblessness just passed...It was rather lethargic than to say energy packed..Well, that is quite expected when you do not have any ideas eating your head..
I believe in my ability to dedicate myself when I am passionate about something..I had experienced the same when I was trying to create Bulls N Bears....A sort of state when you think it,eat it ,sleep it and virtually live it. But in state when you are not sure about the path ahead , it is hard to happen. Hope to get to track soon.

rk

PS: But I should admit that I have fallen in love with this state .