Everyone

In the early days of building your company, it is you alone and your belief in the product, market, idea, and execution. 

As the journey progresses, you realize there are many stakeholders. 

In short, you have a village to work with and for their success. 

You will not succeed if you are aiming for your good only. 

Everyone who is part of your company and in the journey of building the startup should benefit. 

We had some of our customers who switched from one fund to another. A few got jobs with our reference.  

There are a few instances where family offices reached out to us for reference checks on partners of funds.

price

One of the rules of negotiation is having real expectations of price. Because of our ongoing conversations, we forget to focus on the core. We start building castles and rope in for the journey together. 

When the conversation about price comes, we end up accepting the offer. The sunk cost and all the socializing and projection as a team we have done all this while. It takes a front seat.  

Many seasoned negotiators do this to win deals on their terms. They will keep making you run around and again. They will observe you, identify your desperation, and play their cards. In most cases, they win because we are naive and they are seasoned. 

Malgudi days

I am watching Malgudi days again. It brings back childhood memories: from school to cricket matches to getting pampered by my grandmom.  

Some of its episodes remind me of my village and summer holidays. Sometimes in life, it feels great to see the progress and advancement. While growing up, school holidays were about eating mangoes, spending time with Grandmom, and bathing in boarding pumps in fields or nearby ponds.

I get a similar feeling reading Ruskin Bond or Satyajit Ray.

Our country is so huge that every village and its everyday ongoing activities are no less than a book or Malgudi days equivalent in it. 

balloons

We live in a world where we create balloons of expectations. We become confident and take everything for granted. The life we are living is very cut-throat, and people are killing others for a few dollars.

The last thing living without expectations will do:  it will give you a peaceful sleep, whether things are working in your favor or not.

Our life on this planet is limited. We spend much time socializing and wasting on things that mean none to us. Building castles on others is a recipe for disasters.

Work

Some people think they will get an easy way out on the back of other hard-working co-founders. 

It will be an easy exit and fruitful operation with more intelligent co-founders to back them. 

It can work in the short run. 

In the long run, everyone has to perform. 

You are not in a government job where salary and blabbering keep you safe.  

Building a startup starts with co-founders working equally hard, having a clear vision, and being honest and empathetic for each other.  

Steve Jobs was an asshole, but he worked hard till the last day of his death. 

His tempers were accepted because he delivered, not just blabbered. Still, with all the money, he died alone. 

With shows like Shark Tank Media glamouring entrepreneurship, it makes wannabe 20s kids act and behave like assholes instead of working hard and dreaming big. One outline cannot be worshipped and seen as a success path. 

Building a startup requires hard work and it is not for everyone. 

divide

We are a 70-plus-year-old independent nation now. 

Our democracy is the biggest in the world. 

Yet the current trend I am seeing ends up being the same during the election. 

Caste and religion are still playing central issues in elections. 

The discussion should have been on job creation, education, health, and food.  

I am reading Mark Tully’s books. He wrote them 30-40 years ago. I see the same India seems described by him then. What have we achieved with technology when it has become a weapon to spread propaganda and venoms?

How many more years will this continue? 

validation

We are a living validation machine. We are one of the millions in the faceless world of the internet. We want compliments from others. People we have never met to like, comment, and compliment us. 

We are hollow from the inside. We carry smiles for Instagram. Our relationship is testing waters, but we are a couple making reels.

Why do we need validation from others? Are we ignored or have no self-belief?

Face

The advantage of believing in what people tell you on your face is that you don’t have to worry about the game they play. We live in a world where people play games. They will say something and mean something else. 

We have strategists, influencers, and others in the job profession for the same reasons. They can understand things from far away and sense the mood. 

Most of us humans are simple people. We have a life to lead. We have rents to pay. We don’t have time to see, observe, and understand others from their actions, the game people play. 

run

Our ego is behind all our rage and anger. The way we react to others with unmet expectations. Our life is not about running around and making the world be at our fingertips. There are things that we don’t have control over. We need to let it go. Not doing this will make us a raging bull. We will get mad and people around us will be in pain.

We have limited time in our life. We should invest it in things which we are in our control. The world is not our slave, it runs on its course. We cannot change it. The sooner we accept it, we will be more at peace with ourselves. 

Sane

The life of an entrepreneur is hard. Still, many of us knuckleheads take the stride. We are swimming in uncertainty and unknowns. What keeps the journey going is the self-belief and going against all odds. 

It is easy to draw a month-on-month salary and enjoy weekends and family time. The amount of stress and overall running is limited. 

The path of entrepreneurship is not for everyone. What’s on TV and what media feeds us is different from reality. The mental and physical strength is what keeps you going. So it becomes more important what you eat, what you read, who you meet. 

A few who keep themselves sane are the ones who make it big.