“France has General DeGaulle and Spain has General Franco. But We have General Motors and General Electric”, so people would say when I first got US in sixties.…
This is the classic photo of the traitorous eight who defected from Shockley Semiconductor and founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959. That was the start of what came to…
Adam Osborne was the entrepreneur who pioneered portable computer. He had a luggable CPM machine before anybody in 1981. It was selling like hot cakes, almost 10,000 units…
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/pe-firm-used-mauritius-entity-to-avoid-tax-on-rs-14500-crore-made-from-flipkart-walmart-deal/articleshow/76457795.cms#:~:text=The%20Authority%20of%20Advance%20Ruling,of%20Flipkart%20stake%20to%20Walmart. Very discouraging to see this headline in a respected business newspaper like ET. If that’s how they charcaterized it, I wonder how the popular press sees it.…
Startups rarely get in trouble because the upside happens but they quickly do when downside happens. Entrepreneurs do not spend time worrying about potential downsides. They always worry about how to make upside happen. It would serve entreprenurs well if they were to worry about things that may…
Andy Grove, a former CEO of Intel, was fond of saying that. Inspite of that Intel missed the whole smart phone wave. It stayed focus on Wintel monopoly where it was able to extract high rents for its chips. ARM emerged as the leader in the space. Intel’s…
Always be selling is the mantra for the entreprenurs. Enterprenurs must have or acquire skills to sell very early on because entreprenurship is all about selling. In the beginning, you have sell yourself to leave your cushy life to pursue your dream. Then comes the need to sell…
David Jackson (name changed to protect the guilty) was the reason I became an entreprenur in 1982. David worked me for a couple of years at Singer Link in Sunnyvale in late 70s. He, like me, was also an immigrant; albeit from UK. He was a decent engineer…
Ishan Nadkarni is a young entrepreneur from Bombay. He is also a fellow IITB graduate. Ishan stopped by other day at our office in San Mateo. He surprised me presenting me with a pencil sketch of me he had done several years ago as a student during one…
With WeWork, UBER and Lyft fiascos, people are starting to wonder what is going on. Here is my assessment… In the beginning, there were founders, angels and VCs. Their job was to create a robust fast growing and a profitable company with proven markets. They needed more capital…