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…
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…
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…
Does every thing about India have to be half assed? When we were socialist, we were half assed socialist. We did not do what socialists primarily do ,i.e.,…
I hate a YAFO (yet another fricking opportunity). Yafos are distractions and wasteful. I am a strong believer in DAFTW (doing a few things well), rather than lots of things half-assed. I don’t like to dabble either. Either I am all in or I am out. For an…
My father used to say that about cheap shoes but I later discovered it applied to software too. When I took over as the CEO at Excelan, Our TCP/IP software was priced at $65 per copy. No matter what computer it was used on. It was buggy and…
Entreprenurial journey is like riding an emotional roller coaster. It has high highs and low lows in a rapid succession. One day, one is on the top of the world; everything is looking rosy, things couldn’t be better but the very next moment every things falls apart. Entrepreneurs…
Silicon Valley startup culture was set when David Packard , an outgoing marketing guy teamed up Bill Hewlett, a quintessential nerd, to start HP in 1930s. That combination of marketing man and and a engineering guy has come to be seen as an ideal team. Marketing guy loudly…
When I had a battlefield promotion to become the CEO at Excelan from VP of engineering in 1985, I had to metamorphose as a person. I was a hardcore nerd, with a pocket protector and beard etc. I had to shave and put on white shirts and ties. Bigger…
I felt very good and confident about things as the 1985 drew to close. Company had established itself as a profitable venture with a very sharp market positioning. We were the go-to company if you needed to network your heterogeneous environment. We had gone from $5. 2 million…