Want to start your own company? Welcome to the Jungle

If I were to compare a startup to hunting, then the idea of hunting that bear is akin to the new business idea you are pursuing. But the hunting doesn’t start unless we get our lazy asses out in the jungle. Similarly, entrepreneurship only happens when we enter the jungle (execution), with all its uncertainty and dangers which we all miss in the city (idea). Below are some rules of the jungle, if you have forgotten –

1. No Reasons and Excuses
Once you have stepped in the jungle, you can’t blame the wild bushes and animals and the lack of roads. You can’t demand a hospital and a restaurant in a jungle. So if you think you need funding to execute an idea, or a quiet time to write that book, or that degree to be successful, then shut the **** up and stop giving excuses. Outside in the civilized world you can give these reasons, but in the jungle these become just excuses. Nobody wants your MBA degree in the jungle, and neither can it make any difference.

Life is a zoo in a jungle. Peter De Vries

Life is a zoo in a jungle. - Peter De Vries

2. No Blame, Only Responsibility
In the jungle, you can either blame the thorns and the leeches for you not being able to hunt, or you can take responsibility for stepping into the jungle and dealing with whatever it has to offer. Taking responsibility will ignite the inner fire in you, to take charge of your life and improve/change and do whatever is required to reach your goal, inspite of all the challenges that the jungle presents to you. And yes, it takes strength.

3. Calmness amid Change
In a jungle, you can’t blame that the ecosystem changes every inch. If fact, it is utter stupidity if you expect anything other than change in a jungle. Similarly, in the startup world, you must learn to accept that life is filled with change. The only thing that matters is how accepting or rejecting you can get of that change, discomfort and hardship? The more you accept that as normal and stop resisting it, the more easily you can find the hidden treasures of entrepreneurship. As one wise man once said – “It is much easier to ride the horse in the direction that it is running.”

4. One Difference
If there is one difference between a startup and hunting, it is that in hunting you know which tools to carry and what animal you are going to hunt. But in a startup, most often you don’t even know your target (customers) so there is no question of having the right tools like a gun or a knife with you. So, you will not have the programmer, the sales guy, the money when you need it the most. Face it. Using whatever tools, you have to do get the job done. Using rocks as knifes and stones as guns can look funny to others, but that is the best you can do in your situation. And so you do it.

Taking it a notch ahead, I would say LIFE itself is a jungle. Think about it? For me, that is what makes it so exciting. For you, only you can answer this question?

Two more Tragic Myths of the Time we Live in

Starting from where I left in my previous article about the Top Three Myths of the time we live in, I am going to present two more such myths in this article. It furthers on the same principle that nothing is fixed despite our attempts to see reality through culture, belief systems and processes. And how, if we can see the world free of these myths, can we live whole heartedly and enjoy the thrill of living with the various emotions and anxieties it has to bring, rather than resisting it. So below are listed two more tragic myths of these times –

Live / Contribute for Others
We live in a world where ‘social good‘ and ‘sacrificing‘ oneself for another has become noble virtues. And being selfish and doing something only for your own pleasure invite scathing comments and looks from the so-called society. By getting stuck in the myth of seeking approval of the world, we often risk losing ourselves and that can lead to a life without joy and fulfillment even when it might look good to the ‘others‘.

The highest value a man should strive for is pride and confidence in what he is doing. It is your own respect, and you have to earn it. If you are not happy, it is the biggest dis-service you are doing to the human race. Isn’t it strange that it is called noble to do something for the good of others, but the same happiness becomes devilish when we seek it ourselves? Why is it bad to provide yourself with some fun and pleasure, and good to give the same pleasure to others?

I believe the best thing a human being can do for others is to live his life the best he can to fulfill his own desires. And it is a big myth – to do something which should look good in the eyes of the ‘others’, first it should look good in your eyes. And if nobody else sees it the way you are seeing, go ahead and do it because it is your life and not theirs.

(P.S. – I am not against service to others and standing for other’s rights, but I believe the best way of doing that is not by sacrificing anything in our lives. Instead I believe that standing for our own happiness and desires is the first step to feel really free to to do any kind of service. I will write what service means to me in another article.)

Service

Service

Love and relationships are two-way streets
One of the biggest myths which we turn into reasons later on to back out is that love and relationships are two-way streets and they expect something in return. And here I am referring to the love between any two individuals, as brothers, father-son, friends and not just romantic love. Loving someone is the purest joy a human being can experience, yet “being loved” in return is a myth. In the modern society, we have all become so driven by materialistic desires that loving and respecting another being just like ourselves has become rare. We are constantly looking for reasons of why not to love someone, rather than the other way around?

Loving someone unilaterally without any expectations is a virtue which results in the purest forms of happiness. By loving someone, we are declaring our love for ourself first and it makes us grow in many different ways. Loving somebody is the purest form of being human I would say. It will rejuvenate your mind, energize your body and nourish your soul. And it is no tragedy if the love is not appreciated or reciprocated. You are loving someone because you want to love, not because you want to “be loved“.

(P.S. – Again, that does not mean otherwise. A two way relationship will always be more fulfilling and satisfying. My only point is that it is not the condition of love.)

Conclusion
In our side of the world (eastern), the illusion formed by these myths is termed “Maya“. We make everything real which we perceive by our senses, for example, if we see, feel, hear and smell something, it is very ‘real‘ for us rather than just an imagination created by our mind based on senses. For eg – If all doctors say that someone is not going to live more than 1 year due to some critical disease, it becomes reality for us, rather than just the illusion which our thoughts have created because doctors are meant to be experts in their fields.

Fun as a way of doing Business, and why the “Cricky says Thanks” Campaign?

As I (CricketRadius) launch the Cricky says Thanks to Dravid and Ganguly campaign on twitter today, I want to take you into a brief journey of how I came up with the idea and how I see fun as an integral part of life, whether it is doing business or watching a game of cricket, or anything else for that matter.

If you Obey all the Rules, You miss all the Fun
If there is one mantra I live my life by, it would be this. The focus is not on breaking rules, but on having fun. We learn by doing, and by failing we learn how not to fail the next time. But that failing had all the fun. Remember the childhood days when you fell off the bicycle, or while playing football, and how much fun it was. And with every fall, we became better at not falling. For me, doing something the way I want do it is the greatest thrill in the world.

Cricky The Fan

Cricky The Fan

Work = Fun = Play = Business
I have always been in the business of cricket. Irrespective of where I have worked, I have always followed every single cricket match played by India in the last 20 years. I have devoted hours every day reading articles, watching videos and discussing about cricket with my friends and colleagues. The point I am making is what you ‘care‘ about is your business anyway, in whichever form it is. And throwing yourself into a job you love and enjoy is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

I am my own Customer
The one thing that wakes me up in the morning these days is the idea of giving a great experience to my customer. I have myself followed cricket by way of keeping a track of records in notebooks and cutting pictures from newspapers to form huge albums of collages. Later on I have maintained excel sheets containing all kinds of cricket related data and kept them updated regularly. What I am trying to do with CricketRadius is to deliver a product for myself and people like me. I have still not figured out what the end product would be, but I am sure I know it somewhere deep inside and just have to bring it out in the right form.

Get Started. Make Impact. Small is not Bad
If I have an idea that can save the planet, I will act on it. But if I have a small idea which will just make watching cricket more fun, I will work on that too. For me, the real joy is of ‘creating‘ something new, not in how big or  small, and the journey in itself rather than the destination. So the point is – Just make a difference where you can. Some solutions can be scaled up, some can’t, but I like to realize that after taking action, rather than in classrooms and meetings.

Relive 5 historic matches of Ganguly and Dravid on Twitter from 23-27 May

Relive 5 historic matches of Ganguly and Dravid on Twitter from 23-27 May

How the campaign came about?
It is not a co-incidence that the campaign is about expressing gratitude to Dravid and Ganguly for their contribution to Indian Cricket. I have spent my childhood watching their entire careers and I believe these two players have had the biggest impact on Indian Cricket in the last 20 years, along with Anil Kumble, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar. And in todays inter-connected world, the question I am asking with this campaign is – “What if twitter had been there on these 5 historic matches which I am re-creating and reliving?” Every fan has the option to relive those moments of pure joy by following the commentary, reading articles and watching videos about the same online for 5 days starting today.

And what better way to show that we acknowledge Dravid’s and Ganguly’s contribution to Indian Cricket than getting all fans together in the form of a huge collage made out of our Twitter profile pictures – The Twit-Bat. So follow the matches live on our twitter account, and invite other fans to take part in the campaign all details of which can be found here.

Building the Right Product versus Building the Product Right

In my 7 years in the industry, I have seen that the relationship between the product and engineering teams can make or break the product, and the whole business around it. Product management is about building the ‘right‘ product while Engineering is all about building the product ‘right‘. However, in a business both are equally important and myopic views about any one of them will end up hurting the business in the long term. This hold more true for startups and internet based companies than for established and growth companies where the ‘right‘ product is already identified.

Part of the Same Team

Product management and Engineering need to work together as they are part of the same team, while having very different roles. It is critical that the two see themselves as peers, and on the same side of the table. In most companies these two teams sit far away from each other, limiting interaction, which is critical especially in the beginning stages of any product. It is important to understand that out of PM and Engineering, none is subordinate to another, and steps must be taken to introduce a cohesive working environment between the two to enable better understanding and co-operation.

Make Engineers Understand the Customer

Most of the times engineers are unaware of why they are building what they are building. Their focus is on getting the requirement spec from product management, and then working on implementing that. But without an intricate knowledge of why they are building that product, and for whom, they can never get a complete understanding of their place in the whole company and fully contribute to it. In my view, making each and every developer in the engineering team aware of why they are doing what they are doing is critical to discovering problems in time and preventing frustration and despair later on.

Is this the story in your company?

Is this the story in your company?

Encourage Engineers to Come Up with Ideas

Your engineers are the ones who are the closest to the product, and they know the technology best. They have the best idea of what can be done and what not, and the relative complexities of implementing any two different solutions. Involving them in idea generation and encouraging them to come up with ideas can prove vital in reducing the PM-Engineering mail clutter to come up with better solutions sooner. At the same time, it also gives engineering a sense of ownership about what they are going to implement.

Product Manager should focus on Minimal Product, then regular Increments

It is often considered fancy to come up with a product plan which will take 2-3 months for engineering to build. The product team think they have done a great job detailing every feature and detail in the spec, while the engineering team devotes their best resources to doing it right. But after the product ships (or sometimes even before), the product team (together with sales and marketing) gets valuable feedback from the customer and wants to drop some features, change a few, and add a couple of new ones. This becomes the Product Spec v2. All the while engineering has no idea why their efforts of the last 3 months have gone down the drain, which leads to frustration and reduced productivity. And the cycle continues.

Another way to approach this situation could be to come up with a minimal set of features to build in the first version of the product. It is critical that both PM and Engineering sit together and decide this based on each other’s inputs. If the two work cohesively together on a minimal product, and then add small increments as customer inputs start coming in, the kind of productivity that can be generated could be awesome for both teams, and for the company as a whole.

Ten Frank and Straight from the Gut Tips If You are Angry at Someone

1. If you are angry, irritated or frustrated, seal your mouth. Don’t say anything, don’t send any email, text to anyone. No-one wants to hear about your misery. The best thing I can think of is go out and take a walk. Maybe exercise. Take that anger out and burn it in the form of sweat.

2. You are angry because of your emotions, not because of what someone else did. Your emotions are your responsibility. Own up to it. You made yourself angry, so don’t blame anybody else for it. And only you can stop being so.

3. If you happen to open your mouth, do not raise your voice. Do not make threats. Do not make expressions to show your anger. Do not play the ‘sympathy‘ card.

4. Don’t drink or smoke. It will only make things worse.

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ~Malachy McCourt

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ~Malachy McCourt

5. Learn to respect others opinions, even if you disagree. Even if you think they are wrong, even if you can prove they are wrong. Respect their opinions.

6. If you said or did something you shouldn’t have, apologize. If you said or did something which you know is right but the other person got hurt, still apologize. (Not for being right, but for hurting someone else’s feelings)

7. Listen. Listen. Listen. And understand.

8. You have nothing to prove to anybody. Accept what you get and what you didn’t get. And move ahead. Maybe come back later to fight another day.

9. Don’t assume things for others. If you have a doubt, ask. But don’t make stories in your head.

10. If you still have any thoughts, write it down on paper. Then read it again and see if they are still valid. Cut off what is not important.