I met a very successful enterprise software entrepreneur/investor Bruce Cleveland in a very random way. Bruce was a part of the founding teams at Siebel and Oracle. It is really amazing how/where/when you meet such interesting people. As I was going through Bruce’s blog I found many intriguing posts. This one stood out because it [...]
Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category
Spin Ins not Spin Outs – A new VC investment structure
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital on June 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Take complexity out and not the capabilities
Posted in Creativity, Decision Making, Design, Entrepreneurship on March 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I asked this question to my network -
How to bring simplicity in to the design of products – take complexity out and not the capabilities?
Here are a couple of interesting answers I got -
David Marshall wrote back -
It should all be driven by a proper elicitation process to define system requirements. This should result in [...]
Four Steps to Epiphany
Posted in Coaching, Entrepreneurship, Professional, Venture Capital on March 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
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 [...]
Elegant organization
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Perspective, Professional, Psychology on March 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I loved this short story about Mark Zuckerberg and how to “start” communities. [Taken from "What would Google do?"]
The scene was the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum International Media Council in Davos, Switzerland, as the head of a powerful news organization begged young Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, for his secret. Please, the [...]
Blogging away at WeekendApps
Posted in Blogroll, Entrepreneurship on February 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I am blogging live about WeekendApps happening right now at Googleplex in Mountain View. Here is one of the posts -
http://opensocial.weekendapps.com/2009/02/quick-recap-day-1/
If the first day (Friday evening) looked like NBC’s reality TV show Apprentice then what followed on the day 2 and day 3 was very much like Survivor. The first day had some real drama [...]
We Win or We Perish
Posted in Balance, Book, Coaching, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Perspective on October 17, 2007 | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Interview with Bill George (Author of “True North”)
Posted in Balance, Book, Coaching, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Interview, Leadership, Life, Professional, Spiritual, Venture Capital on June 20, 2007 | 2 Comments »
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 [...]
The MONK and the MONKey
Posted in Balance, Book, Bottom of Pyramid, Coaching, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, HoMe, Leadership, Life, Personal, Professional, Psychology, Review, Spiritual, Venture Capital on June 6, 2007 | 4 Comments »
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 [...]
Gates and Jobs: Great Show
Posted in Balance, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Personal, Professional, Psychology, Spiritual on June 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Gates and Jobs shared a stage and it was quite a show (better than a Bollywood thriller).
One thing that is quickly evident from this – Jobs comes across as a person who still has a lot to prove while Gates looks deeply satisfied like a Sadhu. While Gates looks like entering Sanyas , Jobs is [...]
My Evolution As A Sketcher – Part 2
Posted in Art, Balance, Bottom of Pyramid, Creativity, Drawing, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Sketch, Spiritual on May 29, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Here is the next sketch that I tried. This is the second one in my series of posted sketches – first one was a view from my patio. This one is a Baby Hauman sketch based on Indian animation film Hanuman. Pardon some of the shade which is because of scanner issues. More sketches to [...]
My Evolution As A Sketcher
Posted in Art, Creativity, Drawing, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Sketch on May 28, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I recently started sketching again (after 18 years). It had been a great experience.
Here is one of the first sketches that I came up with. It is a view from the patio of my townhouse in the University Village. I know it is far from perfect. It is a beginning (restart actually). I will post [...]
Happiness: How To Find It?
Posted in Balance, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Psychology on May 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »
HAPPINESS – It is the single most important goal of human life. All our actions could be traced to “seeking happiness”. While happiness is so important and sought after, it is not properly understood. There is a huge element of subjectivity involved and that makes it hard to define, measure, monitor and fix.
Uncertain Future: Our [...]
Harmony in Decision Making and Happiness
Posted in Balance, Coaching, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal on May 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Khosla’s Pursuit of HappYness
Posted in Balance, Bottom of Pyramid, Coaching, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Life, Personal, Professional, RandomThoughts, Venture Capital on May 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
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 [...]
My First Business
Posted in Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Life, Personal, Professional on May 22, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I started my first business at the age of 9 (1984). It was a comic books rental service. I did that during my summer vacations. My first partner was my childhood friend Amit. I got all his comics, combined them with my collection and we had our starting inventory of books. We had books including [...]
How green is my purchase?
Posted in Balance, Bottom of Pyramid, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Professional, RandomThoughts, Spiritual on March 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
When we ask this question about “How green is this purchase of mine?” – Remember this -
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
Discipline fosters creativity
Posted in Balance, Coaching, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Psychology on February 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
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 [...]
Dealing with Darwin
Posted in Creativity, Entrepreneurship, RandomThoughts on February 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
“In sume, if the past few decades were heralded as the revenge of the nerds, the next few will be the revenge of the liberal arts graduates.”
HopeLab: Its all in the brain …
Posted in Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on January 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday I attended a class on “Creativity and Innovation”. Our guest speaker Pat Christen (President: HopeLab) described some fascinating insights into how they are working on ReMission, a video game for teens and young adults suffering from cancer.
Creativity is sometimes applying the old concepts. She described how she applied the same old concepts she learnt [...]
Teaching …
Posted in Coaching, Creativity, Entrepreneurship on December 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
An Eastern saying … (food for thought)
“The teacher and the taught together create the teaching”.
Thoughts … by Napolean Hill
Posted in Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Personal, Professional on December 4, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
He had nothing to start with, except the capacity to know what he wanted, and the determination to stand by that desire until he realized it.
Seek expert cousel before giving up. “Three feet from Gold” story.
The greatest success comes just one step beyond the point [...]
Wow! An exclusive hour with three CIOs
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Professional on November 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
I went to the “CIO Meet” at Haas tonight. I got the privilege to ask them some questions.
The three CIOs were -
Marty Chuck, CIO, ElectronicArts
Greg Higham, VP, Information Systems &Technology, Witness Systems
Chris Jones, CTO, Shaklee Corporation
What an opportunity! Along with the free EA game and T-shirts I got answers to some of my questions I [...]
Ben Bernanke’s Speech about Global Integration
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Professional on November 5, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Here are some excerpts …
By almost any economically relevant metric, distances have shrunk considerably in recent decades. As a consequence, economically speaking, Wausau and Wuhan are today closer and more interdependent than ever before. Economic and technological changes are likely to shrink effective distances still further in coming years, creating the potential for continued [...]
CEO’s Advice
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Professional on November 3, 2006 | 1 Comment »
“It’s better to be poor and running your own business than to be rich and work for someone else.”– Calvin Ayre, CEO of Bodog.com
“Perseverance. Stick with it and keep a positive attitude. Starting a company is definitely a challenging process, and you have to be able to believe in yourself and believe in the concept, [...]
Why the VC model works in the Silicon Valley chaos
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Professional on October 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
From NetService Ventures -
Venture backed companies live to push discontinuous change into the world. This is “10X” stuff, and is how their backers make a living. Large firms face serious threats from discontinuous change. It is hard to see coming.
The culture of the large firm is optimized around managing continuous change, but can’t manage discontinuous [...]
Poverty in Africa vs Povery in Asia
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on October 19, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
I heard Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa (Former Rwandan Ambassador to the US) speak in the Management of Technology lecture series at Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). One striking thing he talked about was how African countries did not buzz much during last three decades in terms of the health standards and the per person [...]
India’s Growth: Is it helping the poor?
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on October 19, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Economic growth may have been spectacular since 1993 — that is, post-economic reforms — but it seems to be trickling down rather slowly.
A soon-to-be-released official report has estimated that poverty declined by a mere 0.74% during the 11-year period ended 2004-05. Although there are signs of things moving a little faster, at 0.79%, between 1999-2000 [...]
Yunus from Grameen Bank gets the Nobel Peace prize
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on October 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
A great day for those who aspire to make this world a happier place – one person at a time – with small contributions.
Yunus is an ispiration for many of us. Yunus getting the Nobel peace prize endorses the view that development and peace are both linked to each other.
Here is an inspirational article by [...]
Presentation Zen – Simplicity and Complexity
Posted in Balance, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Professional on October 7, 2006 | 1 Comment »
How to make a presentation simple yet powerful in message?
