Alibaba’s world!

I spent time reading the book title: Alibaba’s world, written by an early employee, ex-pat. The scale at which Alibaba operates is phenomenal. Its contribution to China’s economy is noteworthy.

What fascinated me most about Alibaba is connecting the villages, small-time creators sell goods while staying and working at their remote hometown. The work and economic activity are not limited to a few cities but across the country. As a small business owner, you can manage your living standard while working from your native instead of becoming an alien in a metro.

Another part I liked about is Jack Ma’s leadership, believing in people above pedigree. Having self-belief and fostering it across the organization and, listening to customers, working closely with them aligning with solving there pain point.

We don’t get to hear about eBay’s disaster in China or Yahoo China acquisition by Alibaba much in western media.

The last chapter accumulates 40 such learning. I am adding the simple ones I could resonate with:

On chasing a dream

  • Dream Big.
  • Never underestimate yourself.
  • Never overestimate your competitor.
  • Build a company to last.
  • The bigger the problem, the greater the opportunity.
  • Today is tough but the day after tomorrow is beautiful.

On strategy

  • Focus on the customer and the rest will follow.
  • Learn from your competitors but never copy them
  • Be fast as a rabbit but patient as a turtle.
  • It is more important to be the best than to be fast.
  • Free is sometimes a business model.
  • Find opportunities in the crisis.
  • Use your competitor’s strength against it.

On entrepreneurship

  • Do not complain about problems, solve them.
  • Don’t dwell on mistakes.
  • Embrace, do not skip taking tough decisions.
  • Have the team work for the goal, not the boss.
  • Don’t let it get personal.

On Team

  • Assemble a team, not a collection of all-stars.
  • Spread the wealth.
  • Action speaks louder than words.
  • Honor and respect the work of people who came before you.

On Chinese Government

  • Love the government but don’t marry it.

purpose

Why are we doing this? Is this something I can end my career? Is this the purpose of my life? Am I all geared up for walking up every morning and working on it?

Finding purpose is like finding the meaning, true north, or guiding star in life. We get lost to externals. Our end knocks us.

The fancy shiny externals have so much for us to accumulate that self takes a backseat. We keep chasing one thing after another, comparing ourselves to others, or blindly becoming a disciple of some cult.

What we need it purpose, which will come from the inside. Once we have that, nothing external will matter. We will be masters of our destiny and king of our hut. We will be happier and live a meaningful life.

raising

Running a startup is like a marriage. It is like working with a family: team, customers, and believers. It could get overwhelming at times. There would be an itch, making a better product, winning new customers, and keeping everyone on the same page.

It is crazy, fun-filled, and full of uncertainties & excitement. It is like raising a child. Clarity, openness, and aligning an individual’s vision with an organization’s journey keeps things sane.

limit

Can we do everything? Like they sell you in the bestseller 10000 hours to mastery? Or is it more about how we approach a task? Is it our mindset and, how we see a challenge exciting or painful limits us?

Is all our achievements in life, the limits created by our brain? Are we so scared of failing and victimized by others? Have we created an artificial safely net calling your limit?

I am not rejecting the circle of competence or status quo but, are we limiting ourselves hiding behind it? What about the billions going on brain science and Neuroplasticity?

luck

I keep hearing from folks that we make our own luck. I feel luck has some part to play with our life.

I still remember going to a cyber cafe and searching for How to become a hacker and getting Eric S Raymonds book in yahoo search(there was no google then). Time and again I think of the incident, what would I or my career has turned out if I had not gotten to know about Open Source movement.

My entire career, connection, and conviction got wings because of it. I don’t have a degree from the Ivy leagues of the world. All I had was these community folks from the Linux user group and later on Drupal, Ubuntu, OpenStack, Minio. They helped me grow, become better with the journey of life. I am in touch with most of these folks, some laugh and feel good seeing me how I have shaped in short gotten more mature.

Why do people downplay luck? Has luck not helped you one or another way in finding someone or achieving something?

Luck is like the ladder; you have to climb all by yourself to become successful. Luck plus hard work is magic.

ways

There are multiple ways of seeing an issue. Sometimes those are not issues but improvement advice. It is too easy to get carried away and get on to the argument and screw up a friendship.

Our mind acts like a magic box and; how we react to a problem. The situation shows us the way forward.

Being open-minded and understanding the other side helps. Every adversity comes with ways to tackle it. We have to keep type one brain or monkey mind while handling it.

Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer was a crazy philosopher in all sense. His writings were blunt, brute, and to the point. He wants us to think within, focus on our consciousness. Our life is as we see the world around us. The bumper sticker, achievements, medals are of no use apart from shoving the ego.

Who is happier? A healthy poor or a sick king?

Pain and boredom come with social structure. A poor has pain while rich is bored, which prompts him/her refuge of anything from creativity to vice.

Schopenhauer also talks about the importance of health in our life. He stresses on daily exercise: physical and mental.

Reading him bought back every other philosopher in front of me from Diogenes to Socrates to Epicurus to Epictetus.

I read the Aeon article followed by The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer

journey

The more I think about life, it feels like a destination less train journey full of surprise. We are on a ride. It can be good, bad, or ugly. In sum total a mixed bag. That true north, that made in heaven things are not real. It is sold to us by the materialistic marketers.

The sooner we realize that the journey is dull, painful the better we will have our mindset in place.

Murakami in his book said: Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. I feel the same about life, journey. It reminds me of stoic philosopher Epictetus: things in our control and things not in our. Most externals are not in our control, how we react to it is what we have in our hand.

What can help in leading this journey is knowing that it is painful and our aids can help us in minimizing it. This aid can be our friends, believers, parents, and mentors.

We single day is a surprise, things will break, people will not respond as expected. But this is not the end of life. The journey must go on. It is like our life has every piece of philosophers teaching from Epicureans to Stoics to Schopenhauer or Nietzsche.

fast

We are living in a fast-paced world. New-age companies like tinder, Amazon, Slack, Uber has it in their DNA. Pace is the mantra for Gig-economy. At the same time, delivery agents and warehouse workers are turning into slaves.

Build fast and break things are the new age startup, growth strategy. Hire and fire are the new norms, humans are mere resources. We want to ship a new product, add 50 developers, and deliver it ASAP. Everything is just on paper and numbers, be it growth, income, or market share. We care more about marketing, buzz, and vanity metrics rather than solving real customers’ pain.

I understand everyone wants to be the first mover and reap its benefits. It is the new ways companies are built-in the modern era. But my limited learning suggests this practice has resulted in toxicity. We have become hyper-competitive and forgotten the virtue of empathy, love, care for each other. We are robots and, the only distant goal of success is a material wealth of bumper sticker in the business card. I have been part of the same rat race for over five years.

In my current life, I am living my life at a slow pace. As a team we are happy and so are our paying customers, it is just they know about us and, we are giving them discounts for their cooperation. Developing a product or an organization is not like building a house by adding bricks. Apart from vision, mission, and philosophy, it is a human relationship that matters, love, empathy, care, and belief in every stakeholder. From customers, team members, cook, the cleaner: all have to be on the same page. It is okay to let go of some customers, opportunities in the short run for collective consciousness, and overall well being. Our believers will stick with us for eternity and, we will grow with them.

Chauthi Chand

Growing up with parents and grandparents in a Hindu family, celebrating festivals has special meaning. It is not about prayers, bowing to the gods alone. It was also about the grand feast and meeting relatives, cousins.

Mother and Grandmom will be on fast. I think not even having water. They would prepare lots of prasad items, mostly made with ghee, flour, and sugar. I would out be out shopping with my father: fruits, sweets, and flowers.

Sometime in the evening, we will get fresh, wear new clothes and sit in the pooja room. Mom would smear forehead with Chandan and sindur. The central part of Chauthi Chand is a moon god. In the evening, we all gather on our rooftop or aangan, and with fruits and flowers look up and pray to him. There were some years when moon god would play hide and seek with us. Thanks to monsoons and clouds. Every year it would rain. I remember the sadness grandma or mother would have because of it. They would wait for hours hoping that someway, they would get to pray the moon.

After the pooja, the whole family will join the grand feast, that would be the time when mother and grandma would touch salt. Our plates would be full of poori, sabzi, kheer, and sweets. My favorites: aloo poori, daal poori, and spicy sabzi and kheer in the end.

I had a call with my mother and promised her from next year; I will be with her. I think I am missing them all today.

Our country is so unique. We have so many gods in Hinduism that while one part of us celebrates Lord Ganesha today, others celebrate the nature, creator, and powerful moon.

I was out yesterday to bring back some old-time memories in the market.

Sometime I wonder who runs our economy, we humans or gods.