Hiring for your own company is a completely different experience. I’ve had the experience of most of the hiring process followed by big corporations and it’s completely different. Your attitude when you are recruiting from your employers and when you’re recruiting for your own startup is completely different. When you’re hiring for yourself – you want the best of the best and the biggest plus is that you are in total control of the process. We recently conducted a recruitment drive at an MBA college and our co-ordinator introduced saying we are looking for ‘resources’. Guess what? That single word made a quick change to my mind and everyone looked like a ‘resource’. The business started looking like a cakewalk – hire ‘resources’, pay them salary and get 10x the money you invest in them. I quickly thought of the...

If you are experiencing down-times and need a temporary boost to your motivation levels, I’ve a collection of quotes that I found on Srujan Patel‘s blog. I’ve picked the ones that appealed to me below. “Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like being waterboarded.” – Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator) Yeah, it’s about how much you can take and still get up. A lot of people won’t agree with the second part of the quote because they’d already begin enjoying waterboarding. Go search WikiPedia for what exactly it is. “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.” –Unknown This quote is what I remind myself when the things aren’t going ‘right’ for an extended period of life....

I’ve often wondered why people read motivational books, listen to motivational speeches, use motivational quotes as their ‘status messages’ and do absolutely nothing with their newly obtained motivation. The answer is quite simple – because the motivation is ‘external’. External motivation exhibits ‘Coffee Effect’ – it makes you feel super cool, excited and enthusiastic for a limited time and then the effect fades away. The problem with such type of motivation is that it doesn’t do any good to your life. People waste hundreds and thousands of bucks and 10x worth time on finding sources of motivation but fail to look within. I decided to take up the issue and propose a solution through my recent talk at TEDx SITM. The organisers have finally uploaded the video on YouTube and I’m embedding it here for the benefit (it...

I’ve discovered that the world’s biggest and the best business school is right around you – your mother! At least that totally holds true for me. It turns out that you listen to all the ‘paid’ speakers who charge thousands of rupees for their time to speak to a group for few hours and basically they’ll tell you what your mom told you over the dinner last night. I’ve observed that pattern over and over again and it surprises me! So those of you who didn’t go to business school – “When in doubt, ask your mom”. The world becomes simpler.

If you’re working for a startup, then here’s one bloody message for you – Click To Open Stop Wasting Time, Idiot!!

An engineering college has invited me to talk to engineering students about ‘startups’. I denied right away. Because I know how curious engineering students are about starting a venture, working for a startup and becoming an entrepreneur. Yet, the professors insisted that I ‘talk’ to students about ‘entrepreneurship’. I know it’s going to be complete waste of their time and my time as well. Engineering in India has become a joke. No one; neither the students nor the lecturers & professors are interested in engineering. Parents enroll their kids in engineering so that they eventually get selected in a big name IT company and that’s the end of ‘achievements’ in life. Who’s going waste their time ‘creating’ something? Yet, there’s a new ‘fad’. There are still a few optimistic people out...

ELFMD is a series where I share the ‘Entrepreneurship Lessons From My Daughter‘. I’ve figured out that there’s a lot to learn from my ~9 month young daughter which can be applied in entrepreneurship. People usually advice that you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously. I think that might be a right advice in regular life; but the rules do not apply to entrepreneurs or people who are out there to achieve something. Getting upset at yourself is the most basic and necessary step. I’ve noticed that my daughter has derived the ‘anger genes’ from me. She gets upset when things don’t go like the way she wants. Her ways of expressing anger are cuter; but she does get upset at herself at times. When she can’t reach out to distant objects on the tables, she gets upset and then keeps trying until she finally gets what she want on her own...