Steve Blank: Launching a start-up and having a family life

It is a hard balance that many of us need to struggle with. Working in a start-up and having a good family life seem to be poles apart. One of my favorite business school professors, Steve Blank published this piece today on VentureBeat. The permalink seems to be broken so I am repeating some of [...]

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Why gaming is the future of learning

Jane McGonigal is a very talented game designer. I met her for lunch in Berkeley when Nipun brought us together with Mike Smolen (dotSUB). She was voted MIT’s top-35 innovators changing the world, for her work in building distributed games. Here is an interesting presentation from her about how gaming would help learning in the [...]

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TED Commandments

Nipun wrote about what makes TED talks tick. What is it about these talks that makes all of them resonate so deeply? What makes them so consistently good?

Thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual shtick
Thou shalt dream a great dream, or show forth a wondrous new thing, or share something thou hast never shared [...]

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Four Steps to Epiphany

One of my greatest teachers ever, Steve Blank, started writing his blog recently. He is the master of understanding the intricacies of the startups. He has a knack of telling these complex ideas in a very simple and fun language. His core idea is that there are patterns in successful startups. He calls his [...]

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We Win or We Perish

This is an interesting short-story that gives a perspective for entrepreneurs’ risk taking abilities. 
A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his [...]

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Interview with Bill George (Author of “True North”)

I interviewed Bill George, author of best-seller books “Authentic Leadership” and “True North”. Bill is not just a great author and a leader himself, he is a wonderful coach and a teacher too. Here are the excerpts of this brief interview -
Hitesh: What is “True North” and how does it apply in the context of a business student or [...]

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My Creative Journey: Part 4 – Buddha

 Here is a simple sketch of Buddha as I “see” it. Just looking at this sketch brings so many different emotions and thoughts. Sketching Buddha was very peaceful.
This is the fourth sketch in my series of simple “starter” sketches. The other three were Baby Hanuman, Flower Vase and A View from Up Here.

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The MONK and the MONKey

I read Randy Komisar’s “The Monk and the Riddle“. I just could not stop when I started reading it. By the time I finished reading it, the clock struck 4 AM. I think it was a night well spent.
Randy Komisar is a Venture Capitalist with Kleiner Perkins. This book tells Randy’s evolution (thus the word [...]

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My Creative Journey: Part 3

Here is the third post in my series of sketches. The first one was the view from my patio and the second one was Baby Hanuman. This one is a flower vase that I sketched just before it was broken by accident. It was good that I captured it in some form before we lost [...]

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Harmony in Decision Making and Happiness

We make so many decisions everyday, ranging from as simple as which brand of coffee to drink to as significant decisions as whether to use nuclear weapons against Japan.
How do we make these decisions? What is our personal compass that we use to navigate through this web of decisions? And, Is that compass directing us [...]

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Khosla’s Pursuit of HappYness

I met and listened to Vinod Khosla, a renowned Venture Capitalist, at a US-India Venture Capital Association meeting. His speech gave a glimpse inside his mind. It was a very personal speech unlike his previous speeches. Khosla talked about some of the decisions he made in life and why he made those decisions.

Move to India [...]

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Discipline fosters creativity

Popular Belief: Discipline hinders creativity.
Reverse: Discipline fosters creativity.

The most prevalent way to depict creativity is Einstein’s photo with his shabby hairstyle and chaotic looks. Creativity does not always come packaged as this confused picture. The other well-behaved gentleman shown above is C.V. Raman – another physics Nobel Prize winner. It is a different face of [...]

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Teaching …

An Eastern saying … (food for thought)

“The teacher and the taught together create the teaching”.

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