small

What has happened to us? Have we stopped celebrating small milestones? Are we not happy with smaller wins?

The meaning of success and happiness has altered with time. We want everything huge, big. We are so much busy seeing the bigger pictures that we have forgotten seeing smaller joys.

The smell of soil after the first monsoon, the first baby step of your son/daughter, hitting ramen positivity. All these things are getting forgotten for the future.

Focussing too much on a better future without enjoying small wins in the present moment is meaningless. We will keep changing our success goalpost. It reminds me of throwing carrot and letting us chase it.

Why I Write, George Orwell

I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound.

I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer, the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

  1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen— in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.
  2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story.
  3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
  4. Political purpose—using the word “political” in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Excerpt from Why I Write by George Orwell. (via my kindle clippings.)

Scent

Has the scent of agarabaati reminded you of your mother’s evening prayers? Or has it remained you of your ex, the fragrance of perfume at the client’s meeting?

I wonder why our brain acts this way by throwing our past. Everything comes to a halt. Positive association of it brings a smile. We end up thinking about why things did not work then and become remorseful If the scent has a history of separation.

Lipstick

I have been getting advice from people who are successful in selling or marketing. The problem with me is that I am not a believer in either. I apply the JTBD approach to sales. It is popular in product development.
I have written about “Jobs to be done” earlier in detail.

Pillers of Jobs to be done:

Pain: Why will someone think about buying something if an existing product has eliminated all their pain?
Desire to Progress: If a user has no desire to progress, why will he even take pain in switching. None of us like to change. People are happily using spreadsheets since inception, while many peers are making 10X return moving to workflow tools and simplifying life.
Willingness to pay: If someone has no money, what use your product is for them.

Now I understand there is another school of Andrew Chen evangelizing growth marketing and discount or freemium model in sales. It might be very successful but does not fit with my philosophy and principle I am doing my business. I have nothing against it.

I believe in delighting my customers, solving their pain points, and making them evangelist. It has served us well so far. I am also very naked, honest, unlike others in sales where you have to add lipstick, paint pictures for closing customers. I believe we are part of this journey where customers are our extended family. We are all building better ourselves together.

The same comes to marketing. We have made all our sales while being in stealth. Our customers connected us to a new set of users, we onboarded them on a few weeks trial and got them as paid users. I don’t see the point of going out, advertising or adding lipstick on my product and creating a wave of marketing.

I am not saying others who are into it or the business of marketing are flawed. It is that I do not believe in it.

There have been some instances where we let go of some customers or left money on the table for them.

I understand we are living in a startup world where everyone is hyper funded, growth business. I have all good wishes for them, most of my friends are doing it. It is just I don’t want to get into that treadmill.

call

How many times in our life does it happen that a close friend calls you after 5-6 years? I received A’s email after five years, our last conversation he was teaching at an engineering college in Hubli.

Fast forward now, he is a married man and on top of that a lawyer. I was happily surprised knowing about his career change. I can meet him at Tis Hazari on my next Delhi trip.

I have known A for the past 20 years. It seems like we grew up together and entered in our adulthood. Talking to A bought back our old memories, school, crush, bunking lectures, and overeating watery sabzi with paratha at our late night canteen. He was my roommate, also happened to be from Bihar and in Delhi for the 1st time of his life for seeking higher studies.

Talking to him was like we are still the same two crazy, confused, and innocent friends figuring out our journey, mapping our taste, likings. It felt like he is asking, teaching me about life from all his learning’s. What I should and I should not do. Lastly, we both laughed at knowing that I am running my own business. Like everyone else, he was also trying to set me with someone as I am getting too old and living alone.

How many such calls do we receive in our life that brings back 20 years past in front of us? It is like a movie watching movies in the background with you in it. These calls are no less than thrillers throwing memorable past full of happiness, failure, remorse, longings in front of your eye.

opportunity

I got lucky that someone trusted me, gave me the opportunity. I would not have reached this far in life without it. My mother was adamant seeing me go to Delhi for higher studies. Coming to Delhi, making great friends, and amazing teachers helped me to learn and grow.

As I grew in the profession, I got the opportunity to learn from my mistakes, pedigree, or ethnicity caused no harm.

I am less risk-averse and have allowed myself for more experiments. I am more open to working with the underdogs, experiment with life. My journey has made me think more about helping the underrepresented community and think in terms of gender diversity.

I feel society will progress ones the lens of caste, religion, pedigree gets thrown. We should start believing in our peers, youngsters, and give an assurance that I have got your back. It is okay to experiment, fail. Let us give all the backing and courage.

ownership

I understand ESOP is the hot cake in our industry. But is money the only indicator of ownership in an organization? What about responsibility, feeling on oneness, and belonging to the organization?

A company has to provide radical freedom and fearlessness to its team. That is when they will experiment, question, and come up with magical innovation.

Materialistic incentives are temporary, and they cannot bring the best of us. What requires for the magic is the attitude of fearlessness. The belief from the top management that goes try new things, even if you fail, we have your back.

sleep

I have not been sleeping enough. I felt groggy and blamed it on getting less sunlight. It affected my habit of reading and focus.

Last night I was in bed by 9 pm, had good 9 hours of sleep, and I am feeling all charged up. After so many days, I was able to spend some time reading and thinking. My knee pain has also subsided. I will be going for a run tomorrow.

I am also noticing that my quality of sleep, dreams are correlated with what I am consuming as in movies, reading, news, etc.

equality

I was in a conversation last week with my friend, who is running a successful business. She was in jobs while doing engineering, learning building her life, unlike most of us who were partying.

One thing which she told later was that even after all the hard work, setting up a successful venture, people are closed-minded and treat women differently. She has to work harder than their other competitors. She mentioned that the disparity is wider in lower-income, educated women.

While talking to my sister on Rakhi I asked the inequality, bias, and prejudice. She said women folks have to live with it unless society changes completely. It also makes her more powerful and pushes her to work harder.

I remember all the contributions my mother has in my life. She was adamant about having us get a good education. My sister stayed mostly in a hostel, and I moved to Delhi for higher education in 2000. My mom said education is a great equalizer, it will take help in equalizing. People will see you on your merit rather origin, color, race, or sex. I agree we have gotten a better life because of her initial push.

I also see millions of women, girl children fighting for equality, better treatment. It is getting better with education, but we are still far away. We have to change ourselves first, and society will change. We have to get away with a different set of rules books for our sons and daughter. What son can do and daughter cannot do mentality should be thrown away.

method

I keep reading tweets and hearing from others about how to build successful startups. The thing is most of these are someone’s experience or playbook from some university professors bestseller. These are unique and, 9/10 times will not fit with your journey.

One sentence we keep repeating ourselves among us is: nobody should die in our journey. Rest is all good, be it a timeline, release, sales.

Will this advice fit for a growth company or a founder dreaming for a unicorn? It won’t. So who am I to advise this to anyone? It is my journey, and limited knowledge of mine is fostering it.