Notes on Startup – Foundations – Team is Very Important

“Thiel’s Law”: A Startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.

Beginnings are special, they are qualitatively different from all that comes afterward. This was true 13.8 billion years ago, at the founding of our cosmos: something very special happened and universe began to expand and went on to expand by the factor of 10^30 – a million trillion trillion.

Once a country is formed its hard to change constitution, united states since its freedom, after 1791 change it has amended the constitution only 17 times.

Companies are like countries in this way. Bad decisions made early on – if you choose the wrong partners or hire the wrong people, for example – are very hard to correct after they are made. It may take a crisis on the order of bankruptcy before anybody will even try to correct them.

You can not build a great company on a flawed foundation

Founding Matrimony – A Startup starting with – A Team

Image credits https://www.vrfocus.com/

When you start something the first and most crucial decision you make is whom to start it with. Choosing a co-founder is like getting married and founder conflict is just as ugly as divorce. A wise investor will always first study the team, either the investor or a founder what matters most is the team to begin with.

Its not just a founder who need to get along. Everyone in your company needs to work well together. Its very hard to go from 0 to 1 without a team.

Team Culture for a Successful Startup

What would the ideal company culture look like? Employees should love their work. They should enjoy going to the office so much that formal business hours become obsolete and nobody watches the clock, workers should feel at home.

Recruiting is a core competency for any company. It should never be outsourced. You need people who are not just skilled on paper but who will work together cohesively after they are hired. The first four or five might be attracted by large equity stakes or high profile responsibility. More important than those obvious offerings is your answer to this question: Why should the 20th employee join your company?

Talented people no need to work for you, they have better options out with better offerings, hence as a founder we have to ask ourselves why some one should join my company? some of the bad answers are “Your stock options are better than others”, “You will get to work with smartest people in the world”, “You can help solve the world’s most challenging problems”. The only good answer is specific to your company. The good answers are about your mission and about your team.

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Notes on Startup – Secrets – Believing in Secrets to build Something New

I think we all believe that Every one of Today’s most famous and familiar ideas was once unknown and unsuspected. The mathematical relationship between a triangle’s sides was secret for millennia until Pythagoras has to think hard to discover it.

image credit – https://theskincaremillionaire.typepad.com/

Why aren’t people looking for secrets?

Most people act as if there were no secrets left to find. An extreme example of this is Ted Kaczynski infamously unknown as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child who enrolled to Harvard at 16, completed his PhD in math. In late 1995. the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000 – word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to a press. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. whats left to do is either easy or impossible.

So Kaczynski idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology and let people start over and work on hard problems anew 🙂 His methods were crazy but his loss of faith in the the technology frontier is all around us. Its a really bad that one thinks there are no secrets left to think upon and do something new.

What happens when a company stop believing in Secrets?

The sad decline of Hewlett-Packard provides a cautionary tale. In 1990 The company was worth $9 billion. then in 1991 HP released the Deskjet 500C the world’s first affordable color printer. in 1993 it launched OmniBook, one of the first superportable laptops, the next year HP released OfficeJet, the world’s first all-in-one printer/fax/copier. by mid 2000, HP was worth $135 billion.

But starting from 1999, when HP introduced a new branding campaign around the imperative to “invent”, it stopped inventing things, in 2001 the company launched HP Services, a glorified consulting and support shop. in 2002 HP merged with Compaq, presumably because it didn’t know what else to do. by 2005 HP’s market cap had plunged to $70 billion roughly half of what it had been five years earlier.

HP’s board split into two factions, only one of which cared about new technology led by Tom Perkins, an engineer who joined HP in 1963 to run company’s research division. At 73 year old in 2005, Perkins thought board should identify the most promising new technologies and then have HP build them. But Perkins factions lost out to its rival, led by chairwoman Patricia Dunn. As a result by 2012 HP’s market cap was worth just $23 billion.

Moral of the story is, As a company should always keep chasing new secrets, new opportunities, new technologies and build them all from scratch

The Case for Secrets

Fermat’s Last Theorem after 358 years of fruitless enquiry by other mathematicians the kind of sustained failure. Pierre de Fermat had conjectured in 1637 that no integers a, b and c could satisfy the equation a^n + b ^n = c^n for any integer n > 2. He claimed to have proof but died without writing.

Wiles started working on it in 1986, but he kept it a secret until 1993, when he knew he was nearing a conjecture in 1995. He needed brilliance to succeed, but he also needed a faith in secrets. If you think something hard is impossible, you’ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth.

Similar stories we can see in business ideas, before Airbnb, travelers had little choice, Airbnb saw untapped supply and unaddressed demand where others saw nothing. Same with Lyft and Uber.

Finding Secrets is Key as a Company

there are two kinds of secrets: Secrets of nature and secrets about people. Natural secrets exist all around us; to find them, one must study some undiscovered aspects of physical world. Secrets about people are different, they are things that people don’t know about themselves.

So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secrets is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?

If you find a secret; you have two choice, do you tell everyone ? or do you tell no one and keep it with you? If you keep with you alone and try to build something around that secret then think that you are building something from 0 to 1

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Continue Reading – Startup Thinking – Foundations – Team is very Important

Notes On Startup – Ideology of Competition – Building Creative Monopoly

Creative monopoly means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profit for anybody, no meaningful differentiation and struggle for survival, So why do people believe in competition is healthy?

The answer is competition is not economic concept, its an ideology that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.

We Preach competition, internalise its necessity and enact its commandments and as a result we trap ourselves within it, even though the more we compete, the less we gain, this is the simple truth but we have all been trained to ignore it.

Competition in Education System

Our education system both drives and reflects our obsession with competition, Grades themselves allow precise measurement of each student’s competitiveness.

Students who don’t learn just by sitting still at a desk are made to feel somehow inferior, while children who excel on conventional measures like tests, assignments end up defining their identities and it gets worse as they ascend to higher level of education.

for the privilege of being turned into conformists, students pay hundreds of thousands of rupees as tution fees. Why are we doing this ?

Competition – Marx and Shakespeare models

Marx: People fight because they are different, the greater the differences, the greater conflicts.

Shakespeare: By contrast all combatants look more or less alike, its not clear why they should be fighting, Since they nothing to fight about.

Consider the opening line from “Romeo and Juliet”, Two households are alike, yet they hate each other, eventually they lose sight of why they started fighting in the first place.

In the world of business atleast Shakespeare model proves the superior guide. Inside a firm people became obsessed with their competitors for career advancement. Then the firms themselves become obsessed with their competitors.

Shakespeare model of Competition in Real-world business

Gates and Schmidt that is Microsoft vs Google, they both were in a different world as they started with operating system and search engine respectively. As with all good tragedy, they conflict seems inevitable only in retrospect. As they grew they began to focus on each other and hence we started seeing war like Windows vs Chrome OS, Explorer vs Chrome, Office vs Docs, Surface vs Nexus

Just as a War Costs, it cost Microsoft and Google their dominance: Apple took them all in Jan 2013, Apple market capitalization was $500 billion, while Microsoft and Google together $467 billion.

Image credit ocalastyle.com

Rivalry causes us to over emphasise old opportunities and slavishly copy what was worked in the past

Another Example:

In off 2010 a startup square released a card reader for iPhone, it was a great square shaped product.

Imitators sprung in no time, A Canadian company Netsecure released half moon shaped card reader, Intuit brought Cylindrical card reader, Paypal launched Traingle shaped card reader.

So one gets the sense that Shakespear Saga won’t end until the apes run out of shapes 🙂

Image credit cached.imagescaler.hbpl.co.uk

Competition can make people hallucinate opportunities where none exist.

If you can’t beat the rival, it may be better to merge. Thats whay Paypal and X.com did in late 1999 and that helped them to ride out the dot com crash and then build a successful business.

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Continue Reading – Startup Thinking – Finding out a Secret to build something new

Notes On Startup – A Perfect Competition and Monopoly

“Perfect Competition” Is considered both ideal and default state in economics. Perfectly competitive market achieve equilibrium when producer supply consumer demands.

Every firm in competitive market sells the same homogenous product, no firm has any market power. They must all sell at whatever price market determines.

If money to be made, new firms enters, Increase supply, drive prices down, eliminates the profit that attracted them in the first place. If too many firms enter, they will suffer losses, some will fold and prices will rise back.

Under perfect competition in long run, no company will make profit

“Monopoly” The opposite of perfect competition, where as competitive firms must sell at market price, monopoly owns the market so it can set its own price. Since it has no competition.

Google is good example of a company that went from 0 to 1, it hasn’t competed in search since the early 2000s where it definitively distanced itself from microsoft and yahoo.

The lesson for entrepreneur is clear, if you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business

To the outside observer, all businesses look alike, so its easy to perceive only small differences between them but reality is much more binary than that

Image credit : Zero to One Book

however there is enormous difference between perfect competition and monopoly. Most businesses are much closure to one extreme that we commonly realise. In reality differences are deep

Image credit : Zero to One Book

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Continue Reading – Startup Thinking – Ideology of Competition

Notes On Startup – Four big Lessons from dot-com Crash

It was the period between 1995 to 2000 where investors across the world started investing on internet based startups hoping that all the internet based companies will make money, however by 1999 dot-com bubble started to collapse which is typically referred as dot-com crash.

image credit zero to one book
image credit zero to one book

Entrepreneurs who stuck in Silicon Valley between 1995 to 2000, learned four big lessons from the dot com crash. That still guide business thinking today.

  1. Make incremental advances
    • Grand vision inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble, small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward
  2. Stay lean and flexible
    • All companies must lean which is code for “unplanned”, You should not know what your business will do, planning is arrogant and inflexible.
  3. Improve on the competition
    • Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognisable products already offered by successful competitors.
  4. Focus on Product not Sales
    • If your product requires advertising or sales people to sell it, its not good enough. Technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.

Try things out “Iterate”, Treat Entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation

These lessons have become dogma in startup world; those who would ignore them are presumed to invite the justified doom visited upon technology in the great crash of zero and yet the opposite principle are probably more correct.

  1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality (lack of seriousness or importance)
  2. A bad plan is better than no plan
  3. Competitive market destroy profits
  4. Sales matters just as much as product

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Continue reading – Startup Thinking – Perfect Competition vs Monopoly

Notes On Startup – Startup Thinking – 1 to n And 0 to 1 progress

Globalisation is horizontal progress 1 to n, technology is vertical progress 0 to 1. Going back to the history, from 1815 to 1914, period of both rapid technological development & rapid globalisation, between first world war & Kissinger’s trip to China, to re-open relation with China in 1971, there was rapid technological development but not much globalisation. Since 1971 we have seen rapid globalisation

Globalisation brings decade ahead more convergence and more sameness, what developed nations have done in past, now many poorer nations doing the same and caching up thats what we call globalisation

Technology matters not just globalisation

Image Credit – https://www.orfonline.org/

But the truth is technology matters, without technological change if China doubles its power production over next two decades, it will also doubles its air pollution. If every one in India, hundreds of thousands of households were to live the way Amaricans live using only today’s tools the result would be environmentally catastrophic.

image credit https://itchronicles.com/

Spreading old ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not richer. In a world of scarce resource, globalisation without new technology is unsustainable.

Today the challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st centuary more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.

Startup thinking

It is hard to develop new things in big organisations and it is harder to do it by yourselves

Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly and entrenched interests shy away from risk. At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art but he could never create an entire industry.

Startups operate on the principal that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small, positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.

New Thinking

New companies most important strength is new thinking, even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Continue Reading – Startup Thinking – Four big Lessons

Notes On Startup – Building Something New and Innovative

The Next Bill Gates will not build an operating system, The next Larry Page will not build a search engine, The next Mark Zukerberg will not build Social network.

image credit productiveflourishing.com

If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them

Doing what we already know how to do take the world from 1 to n

But

Every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1, the act of creation is singular and the result is something fresh and strange

image credit fromthegrapevine.com

The Best Paths are New and Untried

Horizontal or extensive progress means copying things that work going from 1 to n, horizontal progress is easy to imagine because we already know what it looks like.

Vertical or intensive progress means doing new things going from 0 to 1, vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has even done.

Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel

Continue Reading – Startup thinking – 0 to 1 progress

From one satellite to 104 satellites (Cartosat-2D) : Historic Achievement by ISRO

From one satellite to 104 satellites : Historic Achievement by ISRO

It is Bharat once again maid a historic achievement, Our scientists at ISRO proved to the world that the world just can not ignore Bharat. Bharat is emerging, Bharat will soon become Vishwa Guru again. Going further let us understand how the journey was since our first satellite launch to till date.

Carrying satellite on bicycle and Bullock Cart
Carrying satellite on bicycle and Bullock Cart

The picture speaks a lot you can read more about here http://knowledge-cess.com/journey-towards-space-isro/ We started lifting satellites on bicycle and bullock cart, it is really an inspiring to read about our scientists. Placing a satellite on its orbit is not an easy job we have achieved it many times and we have achieved it in unique way.

Frugal Engineering : ISRO’s key to success

Bharat always lacking behind in space exploration not because of talent but because of budget and I am not saying that Bharat is not so rich to spend on it. We are capable both talent wise and budget wise, but our previous government was not so keen about this and hence our scientists were helpless. 

Despite government’s less support ISRO has done remarkable job, it is possible because the way ISRO is working. Frugal Engineering is the key to success for ISRO to achieve the best with a less budget. I will explain it in simple way, NASA will prepare atleast 4-5 test samples and then will launch the final satellite, which cost more for all test launches, but ISRO tries all possible way by simulating it and then analyzing every possibilities then trying with a final launch. It is possible only because we have best minds, who can analyse, who can calculate everything without even doing a prototyping and without even real testing

Aryabhata India’s First Satellite to Cartosat-2D 104 satellites at once

It was in April 1975 Bharat launched first Satellite as an experiment and for learning all the basics of satellite launch, Active technological experience in building and operating a satellite system. India’s first satellite. It is not the weight it is carrying matters here because smaller satellites will make it possible but satellites have to be stacked all together with specific settings so that they can be released in their orbits without affecting the flights of others or colliding with each other. This is where ISRO has done a remarkable job and a great engineering innovations.

Aryabhata was a kind of experimental launch but cartosat-2D carried 104 satellite at once, it took decades of hardwork and dedication. It was a continuous learning for our scientists.

PSLV-C37 - Cartosat-2D ISRO 104 satellites
PSLV-C37 – Cartosat-2D ISRO 104 satellites

 

Innovative Approach Used By ISRO To Separate 104 Satellites

Imagine packing up your bag for your journey ! uff wasn’t it challenging to keep most of your items all in one bag? Despite we do hundreds of journey, every time when we travel we spend enough time to pack our stuffs. Common this is not a joke here we are packing 104 satellites in one launch vehicle. And it is not just packing the satellites but releasing satellites in a specific order, with precision in time is most important otherwise they collide with each other. So ISRO has done a remarkable job here, packing 104 satellites? yeah they have done it through an innovative approach.

At the Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SHAR) at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC),ISRO used adapters such as Multiple Satellite Adapter (MSA) and Payload Adapter (PLA) were used along with six custom made adapters to house the satellites. The primary payload was mounted on the PLA, Some of the custom made adapters allowed multiple tier attachments of satellites. A few nanosatellites were even housed in the Vehicle Equipment Bay,which normally only contains the systems for ground communications, and functions as the “brain” of the launch vehicle.

Managing the separation events of the satellites, satellites would have to be released after the launch vehicle lost contact with the Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) tracking station at Mauritius, and before establishing contact with the Troll station in Antartica. 

The stage to which the satellites were attached had a complex maneuvering program, along with a sequence and timing for the satellite separation events. Isro engineers conducted detailed studies to ensure that the 105 objects, including a PSLV stage, would not collide after separation. Isro had to track 5460 pairs of objects

The separation of satellites, a very complex task in the mission was accomplished using a complex electrical wiring scheme, Any error in the wiring scheme would mean that the wrong satellite would be separated at the wrong time, potentially leading to collisions between the satellites.

 

The on board camera video shows how Satellites were injected into orbit 

 

Read more about ISRO : http://knowledge-cess.com/journey-towards-space-isro/

Read more about ISRO : http://knowledge-cess.com/reaching-the-red-planet-mom-isros-successful-mission/

Research For Resurgence : Bhārata Is Changing

Research For Resurgence : Bhārata Is Changing

I remembered a conversation happened between me and my friend long ago, may be 7-8 years back. We were discussing about establishing a research centre in Bhārata, it happened during our morning walk when we were discussing about some out of the box ideas.

I am happy today because the life has given me an opportunity to work for one such great research foundation. I must say that Bhārata is changing, something really great is about to happen in near future, soon Bhārata will once again emerge as “Vishwa Guru”.

Let me elaborate what is changing and what is Research For Resurgence Foundation. RFRF is an ambitious project started by  Bharatiya Shikshana Mandala, a non profit organisation working to bring Bharatiyata in Bharatiya Education. Great minds at Bharatiya Shikshana Mandala while doing brainstorming session, the discussion gave an insight on research works happening within the nation. It is then organisation felt the importance of research work and started discussing with eminent researchers, scientists, academicians.

Several such discussions , workshops started giving a very good shape and more clarity on what is need to be done. Research For Resurgence Foundation has been started with a great vision. Research has no boundary, any one can do a research, in fact most of the inventions happened either accidentally or  because of the necessity. As we all know necessity is the mother of invention.

So far in Bhārata research quality has gone really low, research is being done for the sake of better jobs, but a true research is not that, something unbelievable has to be done to call it as a research. Another important aspect the organisation considering is , the research should be socially relevant and it is not mandatory to have a qualification to do any research. Even a farmer who has done something different for his necessity and wish to explore something new, even he will get an opportunity to do a research, we call them as Non-Formal-Researchers

What is Research For Resurgence (RFRF) ?

   RFRF is an idea of Bharatiya Shikshana Mandal which creates a platform for such research ideas which are socially relevant and imbibe ‘Bharatiya Integrated Perspective’. If any one of you who does’t have any qualifying degree but you have any crazy idea which might look impossible then you have a great opportunity to get associated with Bharatiya Shikashana Mandal.

RFRF will bring a great platform for researchers, you will be getting guidance from eminent researchers,scientists and also funding for your research work if its really a great idea and has a social relevance.

RFRF International Conference :

 Bharatiya Shikashan Mandal organised an international conference on Research For Resurgence at VNIT Nagpur, where a total of 728 scholars from Bharat and 9 other countries, 68 universities from 15 states including 17 central institutes. Participation of 24 industrial houses and organisations including TATASONS,CEAT,RPG,MIDC,MADC,FICCI,CII made involvement. The conference was graced by the attendance of 55 Vice Chancellors and heads of National Authorities in the field of educational such as NAAC,AICTE,NCTE.

Noted economist S Gurumurthy said “Prejudiced mindset of the intellectuals about Bharat and everything that is Bharateeya proved fatal for innovation”.

Bharata Emerging As Vishwa Guru Again

Ancient Bharata was a glorious Bharata, we knew that our Past was wonderful but it is the time to prove it and bring it back to the present. Swami Vivekananda Said Bharata is a Vishwa Guru, Bharat has talented minds but every Bharatiya should work towards bringing back that glorious Bharat again, in this journey the research will play a vital role and RFRF is opening a door for the bright future .

Structure Of Research For Resurgence Foundation 

RFRF has various departments and centers as following.

  • Fundamental Research Center
  • Technology Demonstration Park
  • Industry Interaction and Incubation Center
  • Agricultural and Forestry Research Center
  • Educational Research Center
  • International Collaboration Center
  • Intellectual Property Right Center
  • Collegium and Conventions Center 
  • Training and Capacity Building Center
  • Socio-Economic-Policy Research Center
  • Yoga and Health Center
  • Knowledge Resource Center
  • Publication House
  • Project Monitoring and Evaluation Division
  • Administration
  • Finance And Accounts
  • Research Scholar home and Facilitation Center

The proposed Activity Distribution targeting four R’s as given below

Research-Researchers-Resources-Reach
Research-Researchers-Resources-Reach

 

NOTE:

You can go through the RFRF brochure (Click Here), and those who has any great Idea please Visit Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal Website(Click here) and propose your idea.

 

Mind blowing facts about Sanskrit : Learn Sanskrit

Mind blowing facts about Sanskrit : Learn Sanskrit

This post is just to list out some mind blowing facts about the most scientific language, an ancient root Sanskrit

  1. Sanskrit has the highest number of vocabularies than any other language in the world. • 102 arab 78 crore 50 lakh words have been used till now in Sanskrit. If it will be used in computers & technology, then more these number of words will be used in next 100 years.
  2. Sanskrit has the power to say a sentence in a minimum number of words than any other language
  3. Sanskrit is the best computer friendly language.(Ref: Forbes Magazine July 1987).
  4. Sanskrit is a highly regularized language. In fact, NASA declared it to be the “only unambiguous spoken language on the planet” – and very suitable for computer comprehension
  5. There is a report by a NASA scientist that America is creating 6th and 7th generation super computers based on Sanskrit language. Project deadline is 2025 for 6th generation and 2034 for 7th generation computer.
  6. The language is rich in most advanced science, contained in their books called Vedas, Upanishads, Shruti, Smriti, Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayana etc. (Ref: Russian State University, NASA etc. NASA possesses 60,000 palm leaf manuscripts, which they are studying.)
  7. Research has shown that the phonetics of this language has roots in various energy points of the body and reading, speaking or reciting Sanskrit stimulates these points and raises the energy levels, whereby resistance against illnesses, relaxation to mind and reduction of stress are achieved. •Sanskrit is the only language, which uses all the nerves of the tongue. By its pronunciation, energy points in the body are activated that causes the blood circulation to improve. This, coupled with the enhanced brain functioning and higher energy levels, ensures better health. Blood Pressure, diabetes, cholesterol etc. are controlled. (Ref: American Hindu University after constant study)

  8. Sanskrit is the primordial conduit between Human Thought and the Soul; Physics and Metaphysics; Subtle and Gross; Culture and Art; Nature and its Author; Created and the Creator.

    Youtube Channel for Learning Sanskrit

    Learning Vibhakti in Sanskrit : Start point – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ5oNpr1XhOQr-owlfbLUW40y1vl4h8_n

    Learning Sanskrit through Yoga : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYFmpuPS2X8&list=PLmozlYyYE-EQ0677VLtnYa3oKbYklofiN

    Learning Sanskrit through Tinantaprakriya : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN2nnb4KTMs&list=PLmozlYyYE-ESsTZC0uG3rallpDePEzctb