Last evening was listening to Karthik’s X-Unicorns podcast, where he interviewed Prashant, founder of EaseMyTrip. There are a few takeaways for me from the interview as a founder. EaseMyTrip is a bootstrapped ticket reservation platform run by Prashant and his two brothers. The company has been listed in India and is now a public limited. …
Category Archives: startups
consistent
Being consistent is a unique virtue. Not many have it. A few who are gets lots of respect in their organization or society. One can trust you with a task and forget because of your past performance. The same applies to cricket or football. Every team has one or two players delivering one after another …
culture
I see startup websites throwing culture pages with smiling pictures of employees. An organization’s culture is more than the handbook or website placeholder. It’s everyday life and a journey. Also, it comes from the top leaders. A founder’s role is critical. It’s their action that gets cloned/copied or followed.
Sail
You have to be mad head to run your enterprise, the main reason being uncertainty. You are on a treadmill and a vicious cycle of things working and not working. Every other day in the founder’s journey is a challenge: customers leaving, employees leaving, or failing product timelines. Media only glorifies the founder’s life, unicorn …
lead
Leadership is not about telling the team what to do but working with them, hand in hand, and showing them the way. How do you expect a team to peak performance when a leader is in leisure and least bothered about the organization? How will your team perform when you are unavailable for them or …
move
Polaroid, Blockbuster, and Kodak have a few things in common: They are all bankrupt. They were all early innovators. They did not change with time and tune their business model. Companies and management get lazy and don’t see the future because they have a cash cow present. They don’t want to innovate or disrupt it. …
success disease
In Score takes care of itself, the author talks about success disease, our inward tendency to become complacent after a big win. Winning or losing is part and parcel of the game or sales cycle. If we over-celebrate or become arrogant after winning and change ourselves or how we see ourselves, it will affect us …
time
I was supposed to join a super-experienced mentor of mine for lunch. I could not reach on time, and the meeting got called off. It was painful and sad. It also made me realize how important time is and being punctual. Show up early is one virtue am striving for now.
Against
In sales, it’s a simple trick and technique where your customer will throw you against your competitor. They will remind you what features you don’t have or what price point will work for them. At times they will also come back asking about being costlier. I have gone through all these scenarios. Our market expects …
Leadership Principles
In the book, “The score takes care of itself”, the Author talks about 13 leadership principles. I liked it and felt like sharing it. Be yourself. As a leader, the most important trait is being the best version of self. We are all different. It is not necessary that what worked for Steve Jobs or …