The founder /CEO in a startup has really only three main functions similar to the roles of three seemingly insignificant equipments on board a ship.
1. The Radar
2. The Steering gear and
3. The Main Engine’s governor
If you got that analogy and the implications, good for you, you are half-way to doing a great job in shipping or a startup. Either way.
Value, Technology and the Market
The only three things you need to know as an aspiring founder.
Value proposition you bring to the table( aka Market ) in any opportunity.
The technology that will make the value extraction possible.
Is there a market that is willing to pay for that Value.
Everything else is a derivate of these three.
Oh! This new one!
Bakes me say all the right cakes,
Frays out all the right nerves,
Fills out all the right curves,
Makes me wonder if there could be a One.
Okay , so you think you are oppressed. Fortunately, you have the education, the background and the financial/ educational viability to leave the country and stay in the US or Singapore or UK or wherever the hell where you justify that you ” have a better standard of living” . But what about the rest of the 700 million Indians who don’t have an option but to sit around and pay taxes, because they neither have the muscle nor the clout to avoid them?
How many of them should suffer in an oppressive regime or a corrupt regime where cast politics IS democracy. The more your cast votes, the higher your chances of getting elected, regardless of whether you are efficient or not and mix in a dash of idealism into this from the upstarts, and you have the Indian democracy. The irony is that the ones who get voted don’t give a shit about anything at all, caste or no caste. Those who can’t EXIT ( physically or mentally ), those who don’t have a VOICE have to face the REALITY, i.e Death and taxes , of-course, which morph into crumpled notes of 1000s as Govt. contracts and into swiss accounts of those in power.
So think again if are you really going to abandon, in the name of better life style, all those who neither have the VOICE nor the capability to EXIT and then you can go on to discuss Modi Vs. Rahul in your Facebook and Twitter feeds from Orange county, CA.
If you cared anything at all ( you either care or you don’t , no such thing as ‘ a little pregnant’ ) –
you would be here fighting alongside – either trying to create an entity or a business which challenges the status quo and improves the economy , the lives of the 700 million here or
you would be working in Healthcare ( do you know 300 million Indians don’t have access to Sanitation or primary healthcare? ) or Agritech or
you would be working as a startup politician with a hint of naiveté and idealism or
you would even be an innocent farmer who votes for that idealist politician- with the hopes of getting electricity for his water pumps.
But you wouldn’t leave us to escape into your comfortable second-class citizenry in the ‘developed world’.
“Sometimes, all you have to do is exist in order to be someone’s saviour.”
A life lost in sensations is a thousand miles from origin.
Poetic rhyme and prose mary each other in the mind of a man,
Consumed by rage , fear, grief and vengeance- they live in an unhappy marriage.
Only to convolute in a maze of dystopia,
in Euphoria. Forever together but alone in the moment.
A man who believes that he lost his soul , juxtaposed and searching for naught………
” Wistful longing glances from afar only strengthening the certainty of the unconfessed attraction,
The regret of ‘ what if we had’ floating as the loudest unsaid poem;
In a different life, under different rules, a melancholy of soft skin and stern words, a cocktail of feverish delirium and euphoria;
They could have glanced into each other’s eyes ,
He knew, for aeons and aeons. “
Among the bubblegummy sweetness of celebrations of New Year, I am going to be the grinch for you here.
Imagine you turned 20 and had 20,000 pebbles given to you in your hand and every year on 1 st January, you are supposed to drop around 350 of those pebbles to the king in exchange of living on his land. You cant steal these pebbles, borrow them or even acquire more of them. Inevitably, after you pay them all, the King, the kind-hearted man that he is, will most certainly execute you because you are not productive anymore to his country. There is no two ways about this and everybody is executed when they run out of pebbles.
What would you do then?
You cant control the number of pebbles or being executed. You can only control what you do with those pebbles within the years till you run out of those pebbles.
Would you still casually drop around those pebbles into the pond for the fun of it? Throw them around at your friends in parties? Throw them on to random girls to catch their attentions? Throw those pebbles onto people you don’t care much about and try to catch their attention only to show them how much fun you are having by throwing the pebbles around? Really?
The pebbles then , my friend, do not stay pebbles at all. They become diamonds.
Each pebble is a day of your life from the moment you turn 20.
“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree”
― Haruki Murakami
If 90% of the analysts thought a share was correctly priced and others thought it was overvalued. Then it essentially means that the 90% think that all risks have been mitigated with respect to that stock. Isn’t it?
Then,
If stock price were the function of “perceived” risks mitigated , i.e. S(R) = 1 when correctly valued. Then if R–> 0 as 90% think, the stock should tend to be invaluable, i.e. infinity.
So forget working on fundamentals and start buying 90% of the analysts dinners.
If you have lost wind of what I am conveying here, then you my friend should get it in you head that ” Perception often precedes reality.”
The perception of being invincible, i.e your stock sky rocketing, often creates a false reality of invincibility for companies and the moats around them are capable of being broken only by the brave and naive startups who don’t believe in ‘the impossibility concept ‘, circa IBM vs Apple. Circa SolarTown going after some of the big guys ( SunEdison, Azure, etc. ) . Only time will tell and perhaps our execution too.
You see the last scene in Matrix , when the architect says to Neo, ” You have to do this to ensure the propagation of your race” and then Neo refuses. He then goes on to do that , which no other ONE has done before, to turn his back on his duty or Karma Yoga. So was he right to believe in his ego or was he wrong. Ofcourse in the movie, it all ends well. Humans and machines live in Harmony every after. Usually it’s not a good idea to take moral lessons from Hollywood.
But in this world, what happens when there is free will and what happens if it collides with divine will , if there is such a thing. What would you do? How would you consider visions that you have ? As the doer or as just an instrument? If its all divine will and no human will, does it even make sense to act on something, that is not in your control ultimately? If yes, then why keep acting irrespective , as a willing puppet. ( Wouldn’t be a puppet if the puppet and the master are one and the same, would it? )
Somethings to ponder upon.
To achieve greatness, it is essential to achieve thought and belief clarity foremost.
Clear, believe and then execute all-in with determination.
Competition drives me. I see no point in playing if I cant win and cant be the absolute best.
To do that I do two things :
1. I read up about a well performing competitor who I want to absolutely outcompete, at the beginning of the day.
2. I think about a supporter ( Customer / believer / Angel ) who has supported me, ask myself if I have been worthy of that support and then I step out to begin my day.
Vikram Dileepan 