Carpe diem – Seize the day

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Dead poets anthem

Recently I watched the movie Dead poets society. The movie hit me hard,  I had tears in my eyes during the last 20-25 minutes. After the movie got over I was numb for sometime and my mind wouldn’t get away from it.  Its been 3 days since I watched it but the movie is with me. I can close my eyes and play the whole movie for myself.  So I guess its not a bad idea to write a post about it.

It teaches some of the most important lessons of life and delivers them in quite a hard hitting way.

  • Be a free thinker
  • Don’t conform; create your own identity
  • Suck out all the marrow of life
  • View things from a different perspective
  • Be loyal
  • (Most important) Carpe diem – Seize the day

Most institutions and influencers around us discourage us from following these lessons and sometimes even force us,  “to conform, to follow, to accept established views & methods, and to be safe”. These include – schools, colleges, parents, govt., relatives & more.

The movie is set in Welton Academy, shown as USAs most prestigious preparatory school, after finishing the school 90% of students  get into Ivy League. The school is run by a headmaster (and management) who is proud to continue the traditional, conformist ways of learning and wants to maintain absolute discipline. Mr. Keating (played by Robin Williams), an graduate of the same Welton Academy, comes into the school to teach English Literature – which is given pretty much a step-motherly treatment since the school wants to only produce – Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, MBAs.

Keating on other hand has different ideas. He starts his first class with “Carpe Diem” – a latin word that means “Seize the day” and Carpe Diem is the central philosophy of his teachings. He wants the students to be free thinkers, to create their own identities – he wants to them to “Seize the day” – Carpe Diem.

As per him English poetry has all the things we stay alive for – beauty, love, romance. His style of teaching is very fresh and totally out-of-the-box. Some of the boys go look up the yearbook for the year in which Keating had graduated from Welton and among other things they find the mention of Dead Poet Society. They ask Keating about it, at first he doesn’t want to talk about it. But when the boys push him he tells them about it but asks them to keep it a secret. During his school days, members of Dead Poet Society met in the Indian Cave which was away in the jungle by the river after dinners, read poetry and sucked the marrow of life. A group of boys lead by Neil like the idea, re-form the Dead Poet’s Society and start the meetings. These boys also start becoming free thinkers and start to create their own identities. One track of the movie is about the teaching methods of Keating – where he uses poetry to teach them some important lessons of life. Second track shows stories of  all current members of Dead Poets Society who are influenced by Keating’s teachings and decide to “be thinkers and find there own destiny”, instead of just doing what their parents and headmasters are telling them to do. As expected the school management does not appreciate his endeavor of making real thinking citizens out of the students and they decide to throw him out. The movie has an amazing ending, but I wont spoil the movie for you by telling the end. But let me tell you – it is the ending that is the most hard hitting. Watch the movie – you will enjoy it.

One of the reasons India has not realized its entrepreneurial potential and not produced the googles is that our kids continue to grow up in a conformist environment, risk averse society, surrounded by schools, colleges, parents and other influencing forces telling the kids to just follow, to conform and not to try new things. All of us admire and respect people like – JRD, Dhirubhai, Sunil Mittal, LN Mittal, Sanjiv Bhikchandani, Subhash Chandra, Narayan Murthy and many more, the entrepreneurs who have made a difference. Ironically, these guys were anything but conformist, all of them traveled the ‘road less traveled’, took the risk , trusted their guts and pursued opportunities which looked stupid to others. When Nandan Nikeleni decided to join Infosys as a young engineer from IIT Mumbai – his friends and family thought he was crazy and today he is one of the most respected guys in India.

The lessons of Dead Poet Society are cardinal to the success of an entreprenuer and I would strongly urge all entrepreneurs (current and would be) to watch the movie and internalize the lessons.  Get your parents to watch the movie as well.

Lessons once more:

  • Be a free thinker
  • Don’t conform; create your own identity
  • Suck out all the marrow of life
  • View things from a different perspective
  • Be loyal
  • and

Carpe Diem – Seize The Day

Credit: The image was taken from a blog post about Dead poets society

Barcamp Chandigarh (and looking for suggestions)

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The startup ecosystem in Chandigarh, the city beautiful, is buzzing with activity. On 12 November the results of Business plan competition, Enterprize – organized by TIE Chandigarh & Chandigarh Administration,  were announced. The winners got place in the EDC setup by the Chandigarh Administration, in the IT park.

Continuing the good news for start-up folks, Fountainhead School of Business is organizing BarCamp Chandigarh – an extreme popular unconference, on 22 November. It will be a day long event that provides you the opportunity to attend some interesting sessions, meet like-minded folks, network and peek into the startup scene here.  Barcamp Chandigarh is also inviting folks who would like to conduct a session. Go ahead and signup to attend the event or to conduct a session at the Barcamp.

MVP is a supporting partner for the the event and we are doing our bit to make the event a good one.

I have signed up to do a session @ Barcamp, but have not decided on what all should I cover in the session. I am looking for some good suggestions from you on that, please leave your thoughts in comments or send a message to me on twitter @guglanisam.

What would you like me to cover during my session at the BarCamp Chandigarh?

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Trip to haranahalli

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(Written on: 13 August 2009 – during the trip)

I am right now at Haranahalli in Karnataka, 200 km from Bangalore. This is the ancestral village of my father- in-law. We reached here today morning via car, started from Bangalore around 0600 am, arrived 1130 am – after a small breakfast stop on way.

We have come here to witness a religious ocassion, which happens in a place called Amanhalla, few miles from Haranahalli. The villagers from 28 villages in his area perform a puja every year on the banks of  a small stream which is considered very sacred. Uniqueness of this puja is that it’s performed without any idol, the stream is considered the deity.  Since no particular deity is being worshipped people from all faiths and casts get together to participate in this puja.

Homa (sacred fire offerings)  is setup on the banks of the river and final part of puja is perfomed by steping into the stream. In this step the head priest, a lady and few other folks enter the river chanting the sacred hymns, give offerrings to the river : flowers, colors , rice and clothes. The lady performs main parts of the final ritual and at the end they say that the goddess enters the body of the lady.

I saw that the lady started behaving as if something has taken over her body, she started to dip her body in the water and came back out multiple times. Priest and other people who were with her helped her come out of the river and during that time they were also asking her questions – which they belive the goddess is answering through the lady.

As she was coming out of the river other ladies gathered to worship her and take her blessings and soon the ritual was over. People took a final look at the homa and climbed the stairs towards the area in which community lunch was being served to all.

The story of this ritual goes as fellows….

800 years ago, a Muslim boy of the region liked a Hindu girl. She used to go to the river bank every morning to perform puja and the boy used to follow her. On one such day, to avoid the boy,  she went and hid in a “deep ditch” in the stream, planning to come out when the boy left. The boy kept waiting and the girl died in the ditch. Villagers believe that after a few days of that incident, the girl re-emerged as a lake a few miles away. And so she was given the status of “devi” (goddess). Since then, every year, the villagers perform the puja on the river banks – where the final offerings are put into the “ditch” in which she had hidden.

Personally I am an atheist and don’t believe in existence of any super natural forces. But I am enjoying being a part of this ocassion, as its given me a chance to come close to rural India. This part of India is still green, non-polluted, people here are simple & hospitable. And of course I am already dying with hunger while I wait for my turn to eat. The food smells yummy…

Mediocrities I absolve you

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“Mediocrities I absolve you” – these are the last lines in the master piece movie Amadeus. The movie tells the life-story of  the prolific and influential composer of the Classical era- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The story is narrated from the point of view of a mediocre Italian composer Antonio Salieri – who also lived and worked in Vienna during Mozart’s Vienna years. (The story of the movie is part truth & part fiction, do watch it)

Story of Amadeus

Mozart was a gifted musician, the best of his time and one of the best mankind has produced. But during his lifetime he never really achieved financial success.  In the movie, the story is narrated by Salieri – who is a mediocre composer but was quite a success in Vienna before Mozart arrived from Salzburg.  Salieri hates Mozart, only because Mozart is a far better composer than him. From the time Mozart appears on the scene – Salieri sphttp://sameer.madhouse.in/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=763ends all his life trying to defame, destroy, derail, humiliate and kill Mozart. But in the process he himself stays mediocre – he makes no attempt to improve his composing skills, to collaborate with Mozart or to discover another art in which he can excel and be the best. He choose to stay mediocre and became saint of all mediocrities and hence the last lines of the movie “Mediocrities I absolve you”.

Observe the difference – once he discovered his calling, Mozart chose to stay true to his music, gave all his life to it, he never compromised, always fought for his music – for his operas, he didn’t do things to please people, didn’t do politics – even though he stayed financially challenged most of his life.

Salieri on the other hand also discovered that music was his calling, worked for it, reached a certain level, joined the Emperor’s services at first given chance, became rich and stopped working on his music or his composing skills. He saw that he had enough skills to make the emperor happy. He chose to stay mediocre, chose to stop growing musically. And later he chose to hate Mozart. Why? Because Mozart did not stop at mediocrity, he went on to achieve mastery – he was the best, he was everything Salieri wanted to become – but without the efforts and without the sacrifices.

Discover your calling

“Find a job you love and you will never spend a day working” – its a old cliche, but still relevant. One can only excel in things they absolutely love to do. So the first step towards achieving excellence and not becoming or staying mediocre is to discover your calling. What is that you can do for hours and never get tired? What is that job in which quality of work matters far more to you than the money you get paid?

If you are one of the few lucky ones you will stumble upon your calling early in your life and after that the job will be to stay on course. But if you are like most of us, the answer wont be obvious, it is there – but it just needs to be discovered.  The problem is that for most of us even the fact that we should be looking for the answer is not obvious.  If you are one of those who is looking for the answer or wants to look – the only way is to keep trying new things – be restless, be fearless. Give-up things if you don’t like doing them and use that learning intelligently to start afresh. You must keep looking – you will automatically know when you find it. Something will click inside you. That is what happened with me.

I was restless all my life – moving from one thing to another, getting bored, moving again – never settled for something I did not love to do – made efforts to get out, took my chances. In August 2004, I moved to India to from San Francisco and had to find a new job. I thought why not try doing something on my own for 3 months and if it doesnt workout I will go find a job. That’s how I started madhouse; accidentally. But the day I became an entrepreneur – something clicked inside me.  I had discovered my calling.  Just that I had spent 27 years looking for it  and tried quite a large number of things.

Everyone has a calling (infact a person can have more than one calling!) – but we have to look for it – either consciously or unconsciously. Most people fall short when it comes to leave what they are doing right now and start again from zero – they want to keep clinging to what they are doing, safety of job, big salary, the home town comforts, etc. The ability to start from zero is the most crucial element. You must have this ability or  develop it if you want to complete the  journey to your calling.  Give yourself a chance, start that company, take that trip, quit that job, make that movie – whatever it is, do it. If you are not doing what you love to do – YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

At the end of the day if you do not discover your calling – you are assured mediocrity.

Staying on the course to mastery

The next step, after you have discovered your calling, is to get on the path to mastery and to stay on course. It could be music , entrepreneurship, sports, belly dancing or something entirely different. It takes many long years to simply be on the path to mastery. These years are sometimes dark, years filled with hard work,  where many mediocres around you are trying to make you one of them, and they will make you some tempting offers.

But if you want to achieve excellence you have to turn down these offers; continue to learn and grow. With every hurdle you cross, the terrain becomes more difficult , but going thru tough times and solving tough problems is the only way to grow.

Remember:

  • You will fail
  • You will face problems
  • You will fall
  • You will run out of resources
  • You will reach dead-ends
  • People will leave your side
  • Many people will hate your guts
  • People will humiliate you
  • At times things will not move at all
  • People will break their promises
  • You will fight, get hurt, lose morale and fight again

Amongst all of this, you have to stay true to your journey and be on the path to mastery. Nothing worthy of achieving is easy. So hang in there!

Credits: Thanks to Indus and Nandini for helping me refine the article

Announcing Batch 3 – New startups & new gang members

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The MVP gang just got bigger with the addition of 10 new startups and 20 new founders , taking the total to 20 companies and 40 founders. Read the official media release here.

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Personally I am very excited with this new batch, already been learning a lot of stuff.

  • How are high-quality designers t-shirts made? Starting right from the thread (Scopial)
  • How do you help a second hand car buyer make his decision? (veriCAR)
  • Insider’s view on how do doctors manage their clinics (Naabo)
  • How to create measurable out of home media? (AdScoot)
  • How can you apply the Easy Cab model to the real estate industry? (EasySquareFeet)
  • How good is the “customer experience” at Food & Grocery departmental stores with special focus on juices section? (Retail Vector)
  • Is India going to see a Robotics Revolution? How hip are the girls of NID (Robots Alive – they are incubated @ National Institute of Design. We visited them last month)
  • What do final year students need to prepare well for campus interviews? (InterviewStreet)
  • The only reason Small business Owners in India file tax returns is to get bank loans. (ReachTax)

Be an ‘exceptionally’ good problem solver

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Some time back I read this essay by Paul Graham – Be Relentlessly Resourceful . The essay attempts to answer a very fundamental question –  “Which is the most important quality / skill you should have as a startup founder”.  Like all essays by PG it is a very insightful piece, but it felt like something was missing, the answer was not complete.

I tried to pin point the missing part.  But even after thinking hard, I was stuck and wasn’t able to figure out what was missing.  So I let it go from my conscious mind & assigned the task to my unconscious mind, so that if there is a good answer it will bubble up.  Here is my post on the same – hope you will enjoy it.

Problem solving is the single most important skill you should have as an entrepreneur or a start-up founder

Just like we break down materials to elements, elements to atoms and atoms to electrons & protons. If we break down the work of an entrepreneur, go to  the most basic level and ask

  • What’s the job of an entrepreneur? What does  he do?
  • Answer:  He solves problems

That’s what an entrepreneur is continuously doing. Solving problems is what moves things forward.

  • You are in STATE A, you come across a problem, you start working on solving the problem, if the problem is solved you move forward to STATE B
  • If you don’t solve the problem – you will be standing still
  • And if you solve a problem in a wrong way, you will move backwards
  • Good problem solvers keep navigating from state to state and the progress keeps happening

Some common problem statements:

  • How do i get featured in techcrunch?
  • How much of seed capital do we need? How can we minimize the requirement?
  • How to find contacts of the right angels?
  • How to in launch next 1 week?
  • How do i make money?
  • How can I define my target customer?
  • How can I make the website load faster?
  • How can I negotiate the rent of my apartment?
  • How can get the damn coffee machine to work?

Problem solving has two aspects to it:

  • Quality of solution
  • Speed of problem solving

Assuming that quality is constant, the speed of solving the problems – that’s what will you give you an edge. It will allow you to be ahead of your customer’s requirements. In case the speed is constant – a better quality solution will make the difference.

But at the end of the day its not an either-or game. To be an exceptionally good problem solver you have to do a good job on both aspects – quality and speed, and you have to do it consistently for all kind of creative problems that a start-up will come across – from technology – to – finance, legal, UI, people, funding, partnerships, sales and the list can really go on.

How to get better at problem solving?

An entrepreneur must be exceptionally good at problem solving in order for their venture to succeed. This skill can be learnt by someone with good aptitude and a discipline to learn. Also one can keep getting better at it, so keep working on it.

Here are some fundamental approaches to problem solving. Use of each of these can make you a better problem solver.

  • The Scientific Method Of Problem Solving

    • Come up with a clear “Problem Statement”  – A problem can’t be solved if it isn’t understood
    • Form a Hypothesis – Hypothesis are reached at after gathering enough information about the problem
      • Hypothesis can be a possible solution to the problem, so if its tested its true you will arrive at the solution
      • Hypothesis can define potential reason for the problem. So if its tested true you would have identified the cause of the problem and can build a solution around that knowledge
    • Test the Hypothesis – For each hypothesis an experiment/ test is performed to determine if the hypothesis is true or false. Experiments are done to gather data.  It is very important that good observations and records are made during an experiment / test
    • Collect the Data – This is where you record your observations, measurements, or information from experiment / test
    • Analyze the Data – Just what does all that data indicate about answering the problem you are solving?
    • Draw Conclusions – After examining the data from the experiment, conclusions can be drawn. In it’s simplest form, the conclusion will be “yes” the hypothesis was correct, or “no” the hypothesis was not correct
      • Yes means – you have the possible answer
      • No means – this was not a correct hypothesis and you cross it out. Based on the current information you should come up with the next hypothesis and test it all over again
    • Repeating the above will normally take you to the solution
  • Increase your collection of “Mental models”

    • Google founders used the citation analysis as a model to solve the “search ranking problem” and created the page-rank algo based on that. This only happened because they knew the  citation analysis and had it in their mind as a mental model
    • Whenever you are solving a problem your mind does pattern matching or looks for similar mental models which can be applied to the current problem you are working on
    • You take a mental model – modify it as per the problem at hand and apply it
    • So the more mental models you are aware of – specially the ones that are used in the context of start-ups – the better it is
    • Here are some ways to increase your collection of relevant startup mental model:
      • Read biographies
      • Read good books: business books and books that have nothing to do with business but can teach you something about life
      • Blogs
      • Info on internet : text, videos on youtube, ted.com, slideshare, fachak
      • Meet lots of people
  • Use the white board and ask four Questions

    • Where are we?
    • How did we get here?
    • Where do we want to go?
    • How can we get there?

I have found this one to be the most useful starting point in problem solving. I have found that this is also the one which most people miss out on. I suggest you put it on paper and paste in your office. The way it works is; bring the team in a room , put the four question on a whiteboard and start putting answers to the questions on the board. Most likely by the time you get to the last question you will see the answer.

  • Networking and relationships

    • Have a network of people who may have faced similar problems and can help you solve it
    • Knowing them well will give you access to the mental models that these folks have collected
  • Focus! Focus! Focus

    • While solving a problem, keep a laser sharp focus on the problem at hand. Don’t go into tangents. Don’t get distracted.
    • If you get some ideas in between, write them down and worry about them later
  • Practice! Practice! Practice!

    • The more you practice the better you will get at it
  • [Updated]  Create your own road maps without a prior set of rules

    • Dipankar made an excellent point in comments, end of the day its about you figuring out your own rules and not be constrained by any lists.

Business proposals are like paintings

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As a startup, specially if you are in the B2B domain, you need to write a lot of Business proposals and send them to potential clients (mostly big companies) . These proposals play a very critical role when you are dealing with big companies, they are used to old way of doing things.  Here are some thoughts on proposal documents.

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  • Good proposal documents are like paintings
    • Writing a good proposal document is an art
    • It has to come from within, you need a deep understanding of “what does the proposal document stand for, what is it trying to accomplish, who is my audience, what do I need to communicate”
    • Once thats done just let your self loose and a good document will emerge
    • Review the document a couple of times to De-text and make it crisp and professional
    • Identify a few folks whose proposal reviewing skills are good and get them to give you critical feedback
    • Don’t ignore the feedback or parts of the feedback. Work on each point meticulously
  • Overall Goals
    • Clearly document the goals of the proposal
    • What are you trying to achieve via this proposal ?
      • Make sure every word & every sentence in the proposal contributes to that
      • Dont get carried away and write stuff which is not directly related to the goal
    • Example Goals

      • Convince Westside to do a pilot in mumbai
      • Pilot should start in next 1-2 months
      • Get Westside to purchase stock against advance payment
  • Communication goals
    • Document what are you trying to communicate through the proposal and ensure that of it (and not more than that) is communicated
      • Example communication goals

        • Who are we
        • What do we make
        • What are we selling to the customer and why should the customer buy it
        • What is a simple initial pilot we can get started with (initially try to get into a pilot which is simple and easy to get started with for both sides, you can get into deeper more elaborate partnerships later)
        • What are the mechanics of the initial pilot
        • What are the commercials
        • Other terms & conditions
        • How can we get started
  • Audience
    • Define who is the audience, who will read it?
    • Step into heads of your audience and think what do they want to see so that they will make decision that you want them to make
  • Overall structure and format
    • Create a document structure to accomplish goals listed above with the stated audience in mind
    • Fill in the content in the structure
  • De-text
    • De-texting means going through the written text and removing unnecessary words / sentences that don’t all value to the content or don’t contribute towards the goals of the document / section
    • De-texting is an art and it takes patience to do it but once you practice enough you will become good at it
  • Have just enough
    • You should have “just enough” content in the document
    • Every word / sentence / section in the document competes for attention of the reader
    • Hence every extra sentence takes away attention from existing sentences
    • So be careful and sure about every word / sentence / section – that its required to complete the document
    • Removal of every unwanted less wanted section will increase the chances of rest of the document being understand better by the reader

Please share your experiences / views in comments about the proposals. I plan to update the post based on feedback from readers.

PS: After reading this post again I realized that its equally applicable to other forms of written communications like presentations, agreements, e-mails, requirement documents etc .

Education in econmonics & investments

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While I was a college student

Economics has been one of my favorite subject since my under grad days. (I was not an economics student, I was studied engineering as my major). Around 1996, while I was 19  years of age and in my second year under grad, I started regularly reading Economic Times on the newspaper stand in front of the college library. I dont remember how I got into that habit. I discovered that I had both liking and a bit of talent towards economics. Soon after, I changed the daily newspaper @ my hostel room from The Pioneer to Economic Times. I would read it from end of to end – except the pages which list stock quotes, these did not interest me a lot, since I was not investing in stock market. I more was interested in marco views, progress of economy and things happening with different sectors and companies.

Since than my interest in economy, companies, sectors, entrepreneurs etc has only gone up. Economic Times is my favorite news paper (thought I don’t read it regularly now), if I am reading some other news paper I always spend first open the business section. Fortune happens to be my favorite magazine, CNBC-TV18 was for a long time my favorite channel.

While I was working for someone

From 1998-2004 while I was working for different companies the dedicated time spent “purely on economics” became almost zero since their were other things taking my attention. Many times I considered starting online trading (to apply my knowledge of economics and make some investments), but could not take out time for anything other than one 10k investment in kothari pioneer mutual fund (which tanked and gave back on 8k after 3-4 years).

While I am a startup founder

In August 2004 I quit my tech startup job in San Francisco and was planning to do my startup – madhouse, I felt there is a need to learn more about economics and finance, so that I can understand and run these funtions in my business. So I started reading a lot of books on economics , finance, business financials, corporate finances. I was particularly influenced by the book Economics of Business Policy. I was again reading ET end to end, watching many hrs of CNBC-TV18. And whatever I was learning I was using a lot of this in the begining to create my business plan, financial models and later to run my business, raise money, manage finances and make a lot of other business decisions.

Obviously this time around my connection with economics became deeper and stronger, my understanding of public markets also went up. This time around I did open a demat account with ICICI bank and was all set to start transacting. But again not even a single transaction. I was unable to take out time from madhouse, also another reason was that my cashflows were always “tight” during madhouse days  and I needed all of it to run operations. Infact many times, I withdrew cash on credit card around 28th day of the month, so that we can meet the payroll requirements for that month.

While at madhouse I looked after finances and fund raising – which gave me a lots of on the job learning.  We started the company with very little money – so the cost management aspects were very important. All founders of madhouse were FTEs (first time entrepreneurs), hence raising money was quite a challenge, and there was a need to learn that well and execute. Madhouse raised a total of approx 2 Crore Ruppees (half a million USD). I learnt about a whole lot of things: business presentations, investor leads, approaching investors, pitching, getting rejected, learning from rejections

After being in business for 3 years, madhouse was acquired by Seventymm and I worked on closing the transaction, in parallel we also negotiated with a couple of other interested parties.

The Warren Effect

My next (and probably the most important) lesson in investing (as well as in business) was reading “Letter to shareholders” written by the “Oracle of Omaha” – Warren Buffet. I was introduced to them by a friend during the Madhouse days (sometime in 2006). I read many of the letters non-stop, was totally fascinated by the empire built by Warren – at that time it was 86 companies large, his style of running it and most of it by his way of describing it. Before this most business material I had read positioned running of businesses and investing as a “complex black art” which is extremely tough to master and only a select few can be successful at it.  But Warren made the whole “business + investing” sound so simple, something which takes only “simple rules + common sense + basics + patience + hard work” to do be successful at.  I realized that most of the so called business pundits are unable to grasp the formula of  “simple rules + common sense + basics + patience”.

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Warren Buffet

Reading the letters gave me a lot of confidence in my own ability of building businesses and making investments. Another important thing I started learning about “How to select companies to purchase?” and “How to manage the operations in a hand-off manner?”. Warren’s secret was that instead of purchasing the business, changing the management and stuff, one should give a new home to great businesses run by great management teams and ensure that management continues to run the business. Warren become one of my role model’s. Possibility of being involved in running of multiple businesses started fascinated me and that was one of the motivations for starting Morpheus (will do a separate post on that). But as I was still busy with madhouse, I was not able to spend much time with stock investing.

Just about 5 months back, through another  friend I stumbled upon “The Snowball – official biography of Warren Buffet” and read the 900 pages fat book in flat 3 weeks. The book again sparked the desire to learn about investing and after finishing it I purchased  “The Intelligent Investor, seminal book on investing by Ben Graham – the father of modern investing and teacher/mentor of Warren. Graham himself tought Warren the art of investing.

Right  now I am in the middle of reading “The Intelligent Investor”, which is the proclaimed to be the best book written even on investing and planning to read “Security Analysis” another monumental book on investing written my Ben Graham.

Final thoughts

I in my current role as a Partner at MVP, I look at a lot of start-ups and make decisions about which ones should we work with and It was important for me to be conscious about my philosophy behind making these decisions. Thats when I started reflecting on “Where am I ?” and “How did I get here?” – specifically on the economics and investment track. In a quest to answer these questions I started tracing the routes of eduction in economics and thru this post I wanted to share my learning experiences. Please share your experiences and thoughts in comments.

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Back to Blog

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In the last few months I did not publish any proper posts (other than cut & paste event announcements) . I guess it was a combined effect of writer’s block and a super hectic schedule both on personal and professional front. Professionally – during last 3 months we selected and started working with the 10-11 new portfolio companies for MVP-Batch 3. Personally – I and Nandini adopted a cute little baby girl – her name is Sanaa.

Well this time around I was away from blogging for so long that I nearly lost the habit of working regularly on my blog.

A couple of days back I saw a new mail from Jason on his mailing list and towards the end of the mail he wrote about the fact that he was writing after a long time because of XYZ reasons. After reading the mail something clicked in me also and I realized how badly I am missing blogging, decided to get back. and Here I am. I plan to first complete a number of posts that have been around as drafts for a couple of months now and then start some new stuff.

What do you guys think. Also looking forward to interacting with you (yeah I am smiling ear-to-ear)…

Oh yeah here are a couple pictures of Sanaa

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