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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Elegant organization

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 [...]

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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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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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Gates and Jobs: Great Show

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 [...]

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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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My First Business

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 [...]

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How green is my purchase?

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.

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First mover disadvantage …

Why Yahoo could not use the first-mover advantage in number of areas with Web 1.0?
Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix.net, puts it this way:
The second mouse gets the cheese while the first mouse gets trampled on.

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Thoughts … by Napolean Hill

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 [...]

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An ideal life – devoid of contradictions

Consider this -You wake up in the morning suffused with an ineffable feeling of joy, a deep sense of well being. You go to work, to a job you love so much that you would pay for the privilege of doing it. You labor intently but are so focused that time flies by unnoticed. At [...]

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Wow! An exclusive hour with three CIOs

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 [...]

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Ben Bernanke’s Speech about Global Integration

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 [...]

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CEO’s Advice

“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, [...]

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Why the VC model works in the Silicon Valley chaos

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 [...]

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Presentation Zen – Simplicity and Complexity

How to make a presentation simple yet powerful in message?

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