Way Ch

I am a true believer that life’s main purpose is to be lived fully. What I mean by that is it has to be exciting, it has to feel like you have a purpose, and you need to enjoy it. In my humble belief, enjoyment comes from interesting conversations, either with yourself or with others, and engaging conversations need engaging seeds of thought which could come from cinema, news, shows, and other…

This morning, I had a revelation: not everything we denounce is inherently bad. Take fear, for example. We often see bravery as a virtue, something to aspire to—but when I think about it, its evolutionary purpose seems quite the opposite. Bravery might actually exist to minimise the risk of death, not defy it. The braver you are, the more risks you take, ultimately reducing your probability of…

Personal Context (Feel free to skip if you’re pressed for time) I’m a product of India’s liberalization – born just two years after the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization) reforms. That means I’ve had the privilege of growing up without knowing what life was like before the 1990s economic shift. For me, India’s journey into a new era has always been the only reality I’ve…

If there is one book that has shattered most of my beliefs and had to read with an open mind this would be it. The book is just phenomenal in terms of how it condenses extremely path-breaking ideas into simple nibbles of wisdom is beyond my comprehension. I would do a disservice if I thought I understood this book in its entirety, after my 3rd read of this book(a lot many times to come). I am…

How to Not Die Alone – Book Summary

Let me not profess a great deal on the necessity to have a relationship or date, the premise of this book is simple why relationships are important and HOW to select the ideal partner.  Three dating tendencies: The Romanticizer: You want the soul mate, the happily ever after—the whole fairy tale. You love. You believe you are single because you haven’t met the right person yet. Your motto:…

The Walmart Effect by Charles Fishman is a book about how a single company with a singular focus came to dominate the world and the impact it has had on each of us.

Do you know there was a time when deodorants came in cardboard boxes like other consumer goods?

Walmart is among the primary reason why you don’t see them today. For Walmart, the focus is to reduce costs, for which it has asked all…

The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

For all those people like me, who are arrogant enough to believe you are smart just because you’ve read a few books and understand the way things work.

The Black swan is the nail on our head, it makes us question all our preconceived notions, biases and things we’ve taken for granted and tilts them 180o  for us to rethink everything we know.

This is a book which would make us more humble and less…

The McKinsey Way – Ethan M. Rasiel

The McKinsey Way is a book by Ethan M. Rasiel Using the Techniques of the World’s Top Strategic Consultants to Help You and Your Business

Ethan, a former consultant at McKinsey, explains how things work at McKinsey and try to explain how we can integrate some of the principles of the world’s most successful strategic consulting firm and integrate them into our daily lives and businesses.

Although…

Peter Thiel, as some of you might know, is one of the fascinating personalities to come out of silicon valley. He was one of the founders of Paypal, and what’s famously known as the Paypal Mafia. Among the first investors in Facebook. During its early stages and later co-founded Palantir which has helped bust human trafficking rings, finding exploited children, and unravelling complex financial crimes and has FBI, CIA, NSA and others as its major clients.

  Zero to one is his notes on the startup ecosystem and how to build the next generation of startups. The following snippet that I am going to write is not a review or an opinion; instead, it’s just my notes that I’ve taken for my reference which I am sharing with you. To decide whether you have to read this book or not is for you to make and not mine.

  So, this books builds on a radical idea of Perfect competition and capitalism are opposite to each other, he goes on to defend his thoughts by showing examples of how all the successful and large-tech are just monopolies. Example Google is a monopoly in the search engine, Facebook a monopoly in Social Media, Apple has its ecosystem, and so on.

He also goes on to suggest that no real monopoly would want to show that it’s a monopoly. Because of the legal and political hassles instead, they try to hide in plain sight by claiming to be a part of something larger market than what they really are, as Google tries to create smoke screens in terms of all its products which really don’t make much money and claims itself as an internet company rather than a search engine company, which would make it a smaller player in a broader market rather than a monopoly.

  He goes on to define a few characteristics of a monopoly.

  Proprietary Technology – far superior to the rest at least 10X better than the closest rival

Network Effects – Can quickly scale as Facebook did

Economies of scale – The cost of acquiring a new customer is way below the customer lifetime value

Branding – Establishing a clear brand differentiation, Ex: Apple

  He also shares his thoughts on how to build a monopoly.

  Start small and monopolise – Don’t try to scale unless you’ve entirely monopolised the initial small market that you’ve chosen

Scaling up – Once you have a killer product quickly scale-up

Don’t Disrupt – He says that the word disrupt itself is a bad idea because it tries to capture a market that already has established players and he is against the idea of trying to go and eat into the market share of other existing players instead he believes in creating a new market that nobody is looking at

The last will be the first – He says that you should become the last player, it might look contradictory but makes complete sense. Because he says, the product and the offering should be so unique that once you monopolise the market, there should be no space left for others to enter.

    Being a VC himself, he shares his success mantra. His strategy has been to select few which have a clear and distinctive technology advantage and are miles ahead of the competition rather than invest in a lot of startups and wait for one of them to succeed which he thinks is not the right approach

  He says Opportunities can be found in two places or two broad areas:

Secrets of Nature. Ex: Monopoly and competition are opposites

Secrets of People. What important secrets are people not telling you

  His thoughts on essential elements of finding a company:

Founding Matrimony – Your partner should be someone whom you would naturally get along with regardless of the company who compliments your strengths rather than someone who doesn’t understand your thought process and is a hurdle

Ownership, Possession and Control :

Ownership – who owns

Possession – who runs the day to day operations

Controls – who steers the company

On the bus (or) Off the bus – Hire only full-time employees for all the essential functions rather than freelancers or part-timers because the commitment of somebody working part-time wouldn’t stay loyal

Cash is not the king – While hiring people in the early days of a startup, it’s better to prefer people who are willing to take part of their pay in equity rather than cash. Because those are the ones who believe in the company and its future and invest their energy to make the idea a reality, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hire people who would prefer cash. It’s an individual preference, principally those who have joined for cash also have left opportunities at a larger firm to work for you and your idea.

Don’t give equal shares to everyone – Everyone doesn’t deserve equal shares because some might work more than others. It is easier said than done.

Extending the founding – If the initial foundation is strong, the company can steer itself from the hurdles it faces and can reinvent itself any number of times.

Paypal Mafia:

His take on how he built PayPal and how it was able to create so many individuals who went on to create some of the largest tech companies

Hire people who you would want to spend time with even after office hours

Work should be something you do for leisure and enjoy doing

Why should the 20th person join your company: By being honest about what do you want to achieve with this company and what their contribution towards that goal would be, and the right people would find you

Each individual should be responsible only for a specific task (No jacks of all trade)

Everyone in the company should be different in the same way – Since the initial team would be small it’d be better to find individuals with similar interests/hobbies

Be a small cult

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. Who am I?

Who is Way? 

What does that name mean? 

What do I stand for?

Who am I? This question has intrigued philosophers, thinkers, academics and general folk alike. In a quest to discover myself and delve deeper into who I am, I start this reasoning. 

I in no way claim to know the answer nor am I suggesting that what I write is all I have to…

New Era of Globalization

Our Perception:

When we say Globalization most of us have an image flash in our heads about the sweatshops, BPO outsourcing and Offshoring production to the cheapest bidder. Although it was the case back in the 80s and 90s, that’s no more where the majority of the global trade is happening.

Experts Opinion: 

Most of the experts opine that we might have reached peak globalisation during the…

A small step in education, A giant leap for a generation

The Indian education budget is about 94,000 crores in comparison the Harvard endowment fund 2,50,000 crores or more than 2.5 times that of the entire Indian education budget for 2019.

I know that we can’t just look at those numbers to decide the quality of the education or the resources available.

But, since I like most of you am a product of this system. I am not happy with the kind of education…