Are you a restless GUN?

I don’t intend to write something else then entrepreneurship, ideas bla bla but offlate I have been labeled again and again as a “restless” gun

. Hence this is a humble attempt to observe in the vicinity of that label, good bad or ugly.

My friends often call me restless and sometimes impatient, now common there is a generic difference in both the words and offcourse I really don’t want to bore anyone explaining what it means. But lets look at the great personalities around you, aren’t they restless? I am offcourse not trying to mimic someone but then I ask why not be a restless person? Whats the harm?

If you are restless you can always sustain a sharp focus on your goal(pls don’t try too hard, just shoot this on your brain and brain will say offcourse dude!)
Imagine you going to a store to buy a phone, now you know what exactly you want but still you listen to the salesguy? Do you? If you do you are not trying to be patient but indirectly your brain is in a dilemma. You doubt your own decision making system which you think you have decided with your own criterias but actually its not that way. If you were so much convinced & focused on what you want , you would NOT hang in there to listen to some crap sales tales & politely interrupt the guy and say yeah fine its kool but I m looking for iphone 4S only and not a galaxy note which he is trying to pound you with.

Now second scenario is if you are listening to the sales guy talking about some phone which you don’t intend to buy considering the fact that you are very clear on what you are looking for, but you still listen to him….

this behavior shows you “still” want to explore and want to know that hey why not check what he is talking about, now that’s exactly what is happening in your brain , trust me.
Steve Jobs, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mahatma Gandhi etc. were actually labeled as restless & impatient. Steve Jobs never settled or compromised on something which was little away from his vision.

Dhirubhai had the perseverance to excel but at the same time he would never settle down with lesser then his goal or vision….

so if you try to emphasize more with your cereberal molecules you will realize that focus comes with a dogged pursuit which comes by being restless and impatient…doesn’t that mean you are always on your “toes”?

Now someone lying on a bed performs or someone on his/her toes performs “most” of the activities(xcept for a few ) better??

MBA degree is for losers?

Over the last couple of days, I was getting some updates about friends-family in India, while talking to my mom. During conversation, my mom mentioned about two recent graduates, who’s campus placements (in IT companies) were deferred due to the uncertain economy. And so, they were considering pursuing – applying for an MBA in the meanwhile.

And for some reason, that topic lingered on in my mind – bothering me. Why would two recent graduates consider an MBA as a ‘way out’ ? How much did they even know about what MBA is about ? After all, by the time you graduate with a bachleors degree, you hardly have any insight into real world, leave aside an MBA. Who counseled them into an MBA program ?

It didnt take long for me to figure out that no one else is to blame for this distorted notion but our society. A B.E + MBA combo is seen as the holy grail for Indian technical professionals. BE + MBA candidates are not only paid highly – they are valued highly by the society, professionally and even from the matrimonial perspective. Not to mention the extent to which the media has glamorized the MBA degree – touting the crore plus salaries and the direct placements abroad. Now that I revisit some of the conversations i’ve had with my peers, several of whom have graduated from top-tier MBA schools in India & abroad, it seems that the common motivation to do an MBA seems to be for one of the following three reasons:
1) I want to do an MBA to get a higher salary

2) I want to make a shift from technical to the business aspects of the profession

3) I’m stuck in a rut in my job and so need a change

Taking the entrepreneurial route would guarantee you points (2) and (3) above. Point (1) is something that is not guaranteed and apparently, the riskiest aspect of the proposition. So I guess the sheer uncertainty of point (1) leads people to opt for an MBA rather than taking the entrepreneurial route.

I actually find it quite ironic, because Indian B-schools are shifting into overdrive when it comes to B-plan competitions (just look at the increase in the number of b-plan competitions being held across b-school campuses) – implicitly encouraging graduates to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs. So, its like you joined a b-school, the b-school encourages you to become an entrepreneur when you could have completely skipped b-school and gone into entrepreneurship directly.

Personally, I believe that the biggest value that an MBA provides is the access to the network of people and the alumni. The other 3 reasons listed above seem frivolous in comparison and dont seem to justify doing an MBA – I might very well be wrong, but its just me.
The reason I decided to write about this is because if entrepreneurship needs to be encouraged at the college level then we need to change their mindset that BE + MBA is not the only way to go. Entrepreneurship is a viable career option and chances are that they will learn much more being an entrepreneur than pursuing an MBA.

Ok. Time to go and talk to those family friends about their MBA plans...or may be WHO CARES?

Scott McNealy---> the DuDe of Sun Microsystems with his new Boat....

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (with intro by President ...

the crunchiness of TechCrunch!

Now i Just stumbled upon Mike Arrington's version of how it all started with tech-crunch...this shows there is no pattern for success except for one thing perserverence & dogged focus...UMMM...here you go

TechCrunch a San Francisco-based company that publishes the influential blog of the same name, started as a hobby. In 2005, Michael Arrington, a serial entrepreneur and former lawyer, was researching Silicon Valley start-ups and decided to post his findings online. Since then, TechCrunch, which draws about 9.2 million visitors a month and boasts annual revenue of about $10 million, has become the go-to source for breaking news about Internet start-ups and tech companies. Although TechCrunch has 25 full-time employees, Arrington, 40, still spends much of his time reporting and writing. On most days, he works remotely from his home near Seattle, in a cavelike home office. From morning until night, Arrington sits in darkness in front of his computer—blasting music, working his contacts, and focusing on what he loves best: breaking big stories.

Mr.Arrington says --> I wake up in a pissed-off mood. I'm not a morning person. And I usually wake up to emergencies—an e-mail or a text message saying, “Oh, my God! Something big is happening! How could you not have written about this yet?'

If news is breaking, I want to be on it. We break more big stories than everyone else combined in tech—and that's not prebriefed news or something that was handed to us. I judge my own performance based on that. When we break a story, that's a point. When someone else breaks a story, we're minus a point. And I want to be positive points.

I try to get up at 9 a.m. every day. One of the things my doctor wants me to do is regulate my sleep. A year ago, I'd work until I passed out, and wake up eight or nine hours later, which might be 4 p.m. or 3 a.m. Then I'd work again until I passed out. That was my life for four years—it got really bad. I missed a lot of social things. I didn't keep up with friends. I was a mess. I actually gained 50 pounds in the five years since I started TechCrunch. So now I'm working with a doctor and trying to get reset. Getting up at the same time every day is apparently one of the best things you can do health-wise. The problem is, I still don't go to sleep very early. So I'm usually working on four or five hours of sleep. Then I make it up on the weekends.

The very first thing I do in the morning is go right to my computer, which is always on. I'll scan my e-mail for breaking news. If something big is going on, I'll decide if I want to cover the story or assign it to another writer. Say a source sends me a tip that Google is buying Microsoft, and it's going to break later today—I'm making this up, but that would be a big story. I'd start calling people at Google and Microsoft to see if it's true or not.

Sometimes, it will be true, but the company will ask me to hold off. Negotiating with companies over how news breaks is a big part of what we do. I don't think traditional journalists would do this or admit to it, but a source might say, “Yeah, we just got bought, but can you please not write about it for a week, because it might kill the deal?' Unless I know lots of other journalists are sniffing around, I generally defer to the entrepreneur. We probably lose half of those stories, but it's the right thing to do. It builds trust. People aren't going to tell you things if they don't trust you.

Usually around 11 a.m., after I have put out all the fires and there's nothing left in my inbox that I have to address immediately, I'll take a shower, get dressed, and walk my dogs. I have a chocolate and a yellow lab, and they're my best friends.

I moved to the Seattle area in May. It's calm, and my parents live nearby, so I see them a few times each week. I spend two-thirds of the time working here, and the rest of the time in our office in San Francisco. Right now, I don't actually have a place in California, so I stay in hotels.

After my dogs are fed, I make myself something to eat and go back to my desk. My office is like a cave. I have blackout shades on the windows. I like the dark. There's less distraction. I use a Mac with two 24-inch monitors, and I'll do research on one screen and write on the other. It's more efficient. I'd love to have three monitors, but Macs support only two. I have the exact same setup in my office in San Francisco.

I usually spend about half my day talking to sources, either on the phone or on IM. There are very few people in Silicon Valley—or in tech, in general—whom I don't know pretty well. Chasing down stories is my favorite part of my job. My style is to bust the door down and clean the mess up later. That works pretty well for me. I've known a lot of my sources for five years now. When I call them, there's no salutation—it's just right to the point. I expect them to tell me what I want to know very quickly.

Our main competitive advantage is that my team and I truly love entrepreneurs. They're my rock stars. I've always been fascinated by entrepreneurs. I had four businesses that did not work out. TechCrunch is my first real success, and it happened by accident. If I were to write a book, it would be about what drives entrepreneurs. I meet the winners, and the losers, too. Most of them could go out and get a perfectly reasonable job as an accountant or a lawyer. Instead, they risk everything for almost certain failure. The losers are actually more interesting sometimes. You learn a ton from failure.

I never develop friendships with people I don't actually like. For instance, I write about digital music a lot. And the music labels are notorious for working the press. They'll leak stuff and develop relationships, and it can actually be pretty fruitful as a journalist to get to know them. I hate 'em. They sue their customers. I see them as Darth Vader. Maybe it's not fair, but I see the world in black and white. I don't like them, so I won't talk to them. My sources are all people I actually genuinely like, and I think they know that. They're my friends, too.
I'm pretty unorganized when it comes to keeping track of my sources. I used to keep most of them sorted in my head. But then at some point in the past year, I suddenly lost my short-term memory. I don't know if it's just turning 40. One way I stay organized now is by using Google Voice. It keeps a record of all of my phone calls and text messages. When I make a call, I'll almost always initiate it from my computer through this service. And if somebody calls my Google Voice number, it will ring my cell phone or my home phone—any phone I want. It also makes it easy to set up cell phones when I travel to Europe or Asia.
Text messages and phone calls tend to be the sort of cloak-and-dagger way I get tips and story ideas, but I also use Skype a lot. The video quality is great. When you go full screen, it's like the other person is in the room. Skype also has screen sharing, so the person can hit a button and I can see their desktop. I use it a lot for business, and more and more for talking with friends.

I don't like PR people for the most part. I like going to CEOs directly. If a PR person suggests I meet the CEO of this new company, I always say yes. But if they say, “Can we set up drinks? Or dinner?' I say no. I hate that—it is a huge waste of time. Let's meet over coffee or get on Skype video and talk about your company, but I don't want to chitchat about your family, because I don't know you. If I have time to go to dinner, I want to do that with my college friends or my parents or whomever I'm dating.

I usually post several times a week. When I first started TechCrunch, I would post several times a day. I've always been manic about it. You know that experiment where the rat hits the lever and the treat comes out? By the third day of writing, I got my first comment from somebody who wasn't my mom. That's the treat. Then people started subscribing to my RSS feed. Every day, that number would go up—10, 13, 100. That constant feedback is my reward. I still scan for comments on my posts. I can almost always predict how many comments I'll get. Most are knee-jerk reactions, but sometimes there will be a few that are worthy of discussion, and I'll chime in.

TechCrunch is known for our parties. That's how I met all my sources in the early days. These days, we do three big blowouts every year, five or six smaller events, and then a few small parties. It winds up being an event every month, and I try to go to all of them. I started the tradition when I first moved to Palo Alto in 2005. I wrote a blog post inviting people to a party—10 people came. I made hamburgers. We drank beer and stayed up until 4 a.m. drinking Scotch by the fire. Two weeks later, I had another party, and 20 people showed up. About 100 people came to the next one, then 200. Venture capitalists were smoking pot in my backyard and passing out on my couch. I stopped having parties at my house, because it was getting trashed. About 1,000 people came to our party this summer.

Over the years, some people got upset when we didn't cover them, and a certain percentage of those really made it personal. Or I'd write about how much I liked a start-up—or didn't like a start-up—and people would get really passionate about that. Suddenly, there were people who really didn't like me. And because I'm introverted—I like being alone—that actually made me pull in a little bit, and then more and more. The more I pulled in and stopped talking to people, the more people saw me maybe as arrogant.
So suddenly, I have all these enemies. In 2008, somebody spit on me at a conference in Germany. Before that, I had a death-threat incident—I had to hire private security 24/7 to protect me and my parents. We closed our office, and one of our employees got detained by police when he stopped by to check on things. Obviously, we sorted that out, but the whole experience freaked me out. I took off. I went to Hawaii for a month and didn't bring my computer. Page views went up; everything was fine. That helped me realize that I am not nearly as important as I thought I was—and that the team I hired is really good. I've really let go since then. Now I really rely on them, and it's really good.

I have never been very good at managing. I want to be writing, and it's hard to be a coach and a player at the same time. Plus, I'm moody. That's why I hired Heather Harde as CEO. She is steady. Erick Schonfeld, who is co-editor of TechCrunch, manages the editorial team. I talk with each of them maybe three times a week. We have never had an executive meeting. Instead, we use this program called Yammer to make sure everyone at TechCrunch is on the same page. It's like a streaming bulletin board—anyone can post, and everyone will see it. If I think a writer or editor did a great job, I'll give them a public high-five. Or if someone screwed up the formatting, I may point it out so others can learn from those mistakes.

Around 3 p.m., I usually take a break. I run errands or play fetch with my dogs. This summer, since I'd just moved, I did a lot of household things—like unpacking or buying a shower rod. Depending on my plans, I may go out to dinner with my friends or my parents. Or I'll eat alone and then go back to work. Honestly, my goal these days is fitting real life in around the work.

After dinner, I'm usually back at the computer. That's when I do thought and opinion pieces. I'll spend two or three hours on one post. For example, in July, a CNN journalist was fired for tweeting her opinion about a Hezbollah leader. I wrote a piece about how ridiculous it was that she could not have an opinion.

I like working late at night. There are no interruptions. I usually listen to music when I write. I like hard music that is not happy music—Metallica, Eminem, Rage Against the Machine.

I might go until midnight or 6 in the morning. No matter what time it is, I always read before I go to bed—even if it is only a few pages. Usually fiction and always an actual printed book. My favorite book is Catch-22. And then I fall asleep, happy.

e-commerce in India.... a TOUGH job !!

India is yet to witness a breakthrough ecommerce success story particularly in online retail. There are number of barriers, most of them out of your control, which makes this space difficult to conquer. Travel and Matrimony ventures are doing relatively good and we will see why the case is so.

A successful business requires a lot of auxiliary services which supports the main business. Internet based businesses are no different. In effect, the companies providing these services necessarily become your business partners and that too, interestingly, in revenues and not profits. If you are a garage based startup, sorting these things out will be bigger challenge than getting visitors to your site. You will have to invest significant amount of time and energy in just setting up basic things.

India still hasn’t developed a matured ecosystem which will help small, low on fund startups to grow. At some point or the other, you will have to get your hand dirty and make efforts to put all these auxiliary services in place. Not only you have to look for services with minimum service level but also make sure that it doesn’t put a hole in your pocket.

An eBusiness is a normal business with internet as a medium. This doesn’t change basics of the business but instead you have one more responsibility to make it work on the internet.

Following are some of the infrastructural barriers responsible for slow growth of eCommerce in India. Some of these even present new business opportunities.

■Payment Collection: You could end up giving a significant share of your revenue here (~4% or more) even when you get paid by netbanking. With a business of thin margin, this effectively means you are parting away with almost half of your profits. Fraudulent charges, chargebacks etc. all become merchant’s responsibility and hence to be accounted for in the business model.
To add to it, you still don’t get that world class service which gives a seamless experience for users. They might be greeted by a poorly designed landing page of your gateway which will ask a million questions even if user wants to pay by netbanking. This might lead to low conversion rates.
■Logistics: You have to deliver the product, safe and secure, in the hands of the right guy in right time frame. Reaching this Holy Grail with not spending too much is a dream for Indian ecommerce initiatives. Regular post doesn’t offer an acceptable service level, couriers have high charges and limited reach. Initially, you might have to take insurance for high value shipped articles increasing the cost. Low value articles will have significant shipping cost which will make them costly.
■Vendor Management: However advanced your system may be, you will have to come down and deal in an inefficient system for inventory management. This will slow you down drastically. Most of them won’t carry any digital data for their products. No nice looking photographs, no digital data sheet, no mechanism to check for daily prices, availability to keep your site updated.
■Taxation: Octroi, entry tax, VAT and lots of state specific forms which accompany them. This can be confusing at times with lots of exceptions and special rules.

Travel industry doesn’t have a problem of logistics. Their vendors have very advanced reservations system in place already which will tell you about real-time pricing and availability. They have long been accepting card payments and it’s now part of their business model. All the taxes levied to them are usually easy to calculate as it comes from their vendor itself. This domain is already conquered.

The challenge left is in the area of selling tangible goods. What’s your take on these issues?

interesting and challenging enough i guess....

Reasons why you should NOT start a biz...!!

We come across various resources on the internet on how to start a business, and making it more complicated everyday making us wonder if there are so many points to remember while starting up a biz?? I just thought of some points which are relevant in making a decision why NOT to start a biz....

1. Don’t Start a Business for the sake of MONEY

Top on the list of reasons why people go into business is the strong desire to amass wealth. I have never known of a more ineffective way to think about business than this. As unpopular as it might sound, most business failures stem from this singular fact alone. Why? Because the moment making money becomes your primary focus as an entrepreneur, delivering value which is the foundation of effective business practice becomes secondary. And when this happens, no matter how great your business is, it automatically goes on a downward spin. Nothing kills a business faster than putting money first before adding value. So when next you’re thinking about starting up a business, I suggest you lose every possible thought about making money and focus entirely on delivering consistently superior value. Trust me, I’m talking from experience (of other people), starting your own business for the purpose of making money is a sure fire way of being highly indebted and having cardiac arrest!

2. Don’t Start a Business because you LOST your job

Closely related to the issue of money is going into business because you lost your job. As you’ve probably realized, this is how many people end up as entrepreneurs. At first glance, there might not be anything wrong with this approach of starting up a business, but taking a closer look will reveal a vital truth; people who lose their jobs are often driven by fear and to start a business because you are afraid is absolutely disastrous. The implication is often enormous; top on the list is that you will never exercise the due diligence starting a new business entails. Why? Because the fear of living without a regular income since you no longer have a job will keep haunting you and eventually start making you place unrealistic financial expectations on your new business venture. Second on the list is that you are emotionally unstable the first few months of losing a job, especially when you didn’t see it coming.

3. Don’t Start a Business because you HAVE money

I know you’re probably startled about this one. You certainly didn’t see it coming. Well, it’s as wrong as starting a business for the sake of making money. How? Here’s the thing most people with money don’t realize, it doesn’t take money alone to make a business work. Starting and running a business will cost you more than all the money you think you have. There are just too many things a business will demand from you that money can’t even buy, for example; how much does it cost to buy the passion needed to build a SIGNIFICANT (unique and useful) business? Have you ever seen passion being offered for sale? In fact, no university or institute of learning can even teach you passion (not even Harvard or Stanford). Here’s the truth, having money is good, but it’s not sufficient enough to make you want to start a business. Starting a business requires gut, passion, ingenuity, creativity, resilience and so many other personal character traits that all the money in the world is insufficient to buy!

4. Don’t Start a Business because you want TIME Freedom

The thought of not having to wake up early and rush off to work can be very enticing to would be entrepreneurs. But take it from me, I’ve been in the game now for 4 years; the fact that you didn’t wake up early and rushed off to work doesn’t mean you are not at work. Being an entrepreneur means working all of the time even in your sleep. That your fantasy of time freedom will naturally go sore once you choose to become your own boss. How do I mean? You see, it’s not that you wouldn’t have more time to yourself when you’re an entrepreneur, certainly you would. But the irony of it all is this; that time freedom is for you to do some creative work and not for you to be idle and indulge yourself in some unproductive activity. You left your job to have enough time to do what you really care about in life, that’s all the definition of time freedom you’ll ever get – having enough time to make a SIGNIFICANT contribution with your life to the world. True entrepreneurs hardly stay idle indulging in pleasurable activities just because they have time freedom. They are always in the creative process, picking up clues here and there of how they can make the world a better place by utilizing their time, money and life for something worthwhile.
5. Don’t Start a Business because OTHERS are doing it

Anything that is popular has a way of being highly contagious. People just literally jump at it without any logical explanation. Believe it or not, this is how so many people ended up in the world of business. Since everyone they know is quitting their 9-to-5 jobs to go start their own thing, why shouldn’t they do the same? The down side of going with the bandwagon is this; you’ll lack the staying power critical to survival in the world of business. At first, the thought of being your own boss can be very enticing, but sooner or later you’ll realize it’s not a bed of roses. And when this reality sets in, you’re the only one who would be left alone to figure out a way of making it through the stormy days. So start a business because it’s what your soul desires and not what the society or your peers desires for you. Starting your own business is not about boosting your personal ego or winning a popularity contest, it’s a personal decision born out of an internal conviction!
6. Don’t Start a Business because you HATE working for others

Now here comes the tricky one; starting a business because you hate working for others. After wanting to make money, this is another popular reason people give for going into business. Listen, as popular as it may seem, here’s the truth; 99% of popular things are either totally wrong or mere misconceptions. That you hate working for others is no guarantee that you will succeed or enjoy working for yourself. In fact, there’s more work to do working for yourself than you ever thought you did working for others. So if you hate working for others, you might just as well hate working for yourself. What it turns out to be sincerely is this; you simply don’t like work in general and this is why starting your own business is the last thing you should ever think of doing. Why? Because business is the domain of unlimited work; there are no working hours like your regular 9-to-5 job. Welcome to the 24/7/365 days a year working schedule!
7. Don’t Start a Business just LIKE everybody else (Differentiate or Die)

In my field of business development, I have seen so many people go into business just because they saw somebody else succeeding in it. This is a higher form of going into business because others are doing (point #5 above). You observe a business and simply go make a clone of such business. So what do we get? The same kind of business but with different brand names. I don’t get it; “Why would any right thinking person choose to be a duplicate of another when it’s absolutely possible to excel being an original?” As a matter of fact, you have higher chances of succeeding going into business as an innovator than being a duplicator.

The business terrain is already overcrowded filled with countless number of companies doing almost the same thing you have in mind to do. Unlike in the past before the advent of the internet where you had only local or national competitors, such is no longer the case in this age of globalization. Now your competitors are all over the world and just one click away from your local or national target market. So why would you want to build a business just like your neighbor? Here’s the deal; if your business doesn’t stand for something SIGNIFICANT (unique and useful) there’s no need repeating what others have already done and giving it another name. Meaning, if there’s nothing positively unusual about your business, don’t bother going into business to offer the same old milk but now in a new brand skin or container. Doing this is the fastest way of route to extinction. In other words, differentiate or die!
8. Don’t Start a Business without SUFFICIENT planning

Business is a highly complex activity and therefore requires adequate planning. It’s been statistically proven that inadequate planning is top among the reasons why most businesses fail. I’m sure you already know that by now (that’s why it’s the second to the last point). Why then did I include it in the list? Because most times, the problem is not about what we don’t know but more of what we do know but never put to use or practice. There’s a phrase that best captures the essence of planning and it goes like this; “He who fails to plan, plans to fail”. And a key element of planning is having a long term perspective of things or as it is popularly called; seeing the big picture. Which intentionally, happens to be the subject matter of the next point to which we now turn.
9. Don’t Start a Business that cannot OUTLIVE you

One of the underlying principles of the Accounting profession is called; “going concern” which means that a business must be in perpetuity. That is, a business is meant to exist as far as there’s still a need to be met. It’s just basic human nature; I mean who wants to raise a child only to watch the child die before their eyes? In the same regard, you should never start a business that has a short lifespan. Starting a business from a short term or temporary viewpoint, as far as I’m concerned is the definition of selfishness. Why build something temporary when you have the potential to create something eternal? The joy of any creator is to see his/her creation rise above their widest dream and outlive the very existence of the creator. So here’s the ultimate question for you; “does your business have the capacity to outlive you?” OR “Would your business still be in existence long after you’ve gone?” Never start or go into a new business without asking and providing answer to either of these questions.
What then is the RIGHT way to start a business?

It’s in the bid to help you answer these two questions above that I now offer the only right way to start a business.

Start a business because you have something SIGNIFICANT (unique & useful) to contribute to the benefit of the human race!
Why?

Because a business is a tool that entrepreneurs create in order to make a SIGNIFICANT (unique & useful) contribution to the world by addressing a particular problem plaguing the human race.