Hiring is not a challenge and is never a pain for startups. If you are running a startup, as a founder it is your job to spearhead the hiring process. Early employees are no less than owners of a startup. These simple questions will in itself give you the answers: Are you honest with your …
Author Archives: Atul
Competition
We are competing in every sphere of our life. From finding college sweetheart to campus placements. From promotion to offshore opportunity. Even getting love and attention from siblings and parents we are competing. What about competing with our allocated time in this life, how are we utilizing it? How about competing with ourselves, killing a …
Service
I keep hearing about the funding news and how a startup is now a unicorn. I wish there was a similar announcement of metrics for customer satisfaction. If I am paying for a service, I expect it to be delivered well. While the price of luxury has increased over time, services have gone bad. Ask …
Listen
I have never been a great listener. Ben Franklin and stoics considered listening as an important virtue. I am realizing this as my weakness and trying to work on getting better at it. At the same time, I had opinions on everything. It resulted in fostering animosity with many.
Fear
Fear brings the worst out of us. We end up imagining many unreal events. It makes us weak. Fear has fostered in creating many communities and religion. The fear of isolation resulted in forming many unwanted relationships. Why is it so easy for us to be fearful? Is it more to do with our consciousness, …
On Propaganda
Reading age of propaganda has been an eye-opener, thanks to Akshat Sir for the recommendation. These are the 15 action item I picked from the book as mentioned by the author to avoid falling into propaganda by marketers, politicians and other non-profits. Know the ways of persuasion and realize that you may be the victim …
On Bill Campbell
I read “Trillion Dollar Coach”, a book on Silicon Valley’s most loved and successful coach. The list includes Steve Jobs, Sundar Pichai, Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt to list a few. Bill also served as CEO at Intuit and worked with John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins. He also served on boards of many companies including Apple. …
Bad sale
We are living in the era of round the clock sale. Most things are advertised to be sold at a discounted price. Even in these situations, many things could go wrong. Some common warning sign of a bad deal: The deal is only good for “today” The seller offers “free gifts” in return for “minimum …
Journey
We all have our own life journey. We all face our own set of challenges throughout our life. Obsessing and cloning someone else’s journey will only do harm upon us. Our journey is like self-learning and self-healing. I am writing about it after interaction with dozen-odd friends of mine. Some have taken early retirement while …
On democracy
Hallmarks of democracy include the following: Communication is decentralized, with multiple sources of information. Authority and power are constrained by a system of checks and balances. Agendas and goals are established through discussion, not by leader Fiat. There is a reciprocity of influence between leaders and citizens, as opposed to unidirectional influence from elites. Group …