Union

Startups survive because of the grit and perseverance of their founders and the culture they foster. Running a startup is like sailing through a tide. Sometimes, the journey becomes difficult, and near-death experiences become everyday occurrences.

Half a dozen companies closed because they grew too fast or founders could not run on frugality. The culture from day one was to build fast and break things. The capital was unlimited.

It was more of a transactional journey that resulted in many of their employees going jobless overnight as market dynamics changed and fundraising started being tough.

After running our company for the last 8 years, this high and low market does not deter us from what we are building because, from day one, we have been frugal, and our culture is about going against the odds. In short, “Go where no man has gone before,” aka Star Trek.

Bad

We put labels of good or bad on everyone around us. In reality, we are all different, and due to constraints and limitations while growing up we behave in a certain manner.

I give you three examples below:

  1. A child growing up in poverty or deprivation is not going to talk about giving or contributing. Their life has been about survival throughout their life, which is embedded into their brain.
  2. A child growing up under domestic violence and where treatment of women is BAD. Will he grow up and believe in equality between males and females? 
  3. How will a child gain confidence when constantly they have been bullied and looked down upon for their looks, and inability to perform well in school? When they grow up, they will only hide away from the world and feel miserable. 

hunger

Building a startup with limited resources requires hunger in you and your team. That is one key tool to take on your established competitors. Many founders relate hunger to money, and they end up chasing investors. In reality, hunger boils down to having a singular focus for the entire organization. It’s about operating under constraint and self-belief of making big.

As a leader, it becomes more important to be radically open, optimistic, and true to the cause of the organization.

willingness

What will intelligence do if you have no willingness to work? There are millions of such people letting their knowledge rust. The reasons for their non-willingness can be many, from their laziness to aspiration mismatch. Success came to those who made efforts to cease it. Success comes in small bursts after putting in all your efforts, not as the media portrays rags to rich stories overnight.

If you end up working for such intelligent folks, you are doomed because you will end up becoming their crutch.

aspire

We Indians are simple people. We are poor. We have aspirations to see offspring living a better life than ours. Our single goal becomes seeing our offspring succeed after their inception. My parents are no different. From early on, my sister was sent to boarding school because my mother was unsure of a better education in my hometown. I was out in the hostel in later years. I stayed longer home because I was homesick.

I visit my hometown, and I see the same cycle, my friends who are doing business out there have the same aspiration of sending kids out of town for higher education and having them build their lives.

Pattern

Once you have lived enough or your job involves meeting humans, you subconsciously develop a pattern about people. In short, you start realizing what you don’t need in people. It can backfire at times but mostly keeps you sane. You will not waste your time in negotiation or making others happy.

Our lives are lived from moment to moment. The sooner we realize that the people around us play a major role in our lives, the wiser we will become with our interactions.

Our pattern detection is like a bullshit meter.

Noise

AI and social media have taken noise to the next level. We are more focused on showing the world than on self-satisfaction. We want to become celebrities and have fans on all the mediums. In a recent report, YouTube discusses the money it distributed to content creators. It means a new generation instead of building, working on groundwork, research, and technology wastes time making reels.

things

It was fun growing up, like waiting for the monsoon to go fishing and swimming and watching stars with naked eyes, asking for details about various constellations. These little things had their meaning and joy.

During the summer holidays, wandering for hours at mango orchids and lychee bagaans. We had competitions on eating mangoes or entering sugarcane fields, picking and chewing them for hours.

Our life is a collection of these little moments and small things.

I spent last night stargazing for a few hours from the roof. It was a clear sky.

outrage

We are living in an outrage era. The advancement of social media as a loudspeaker or moral check machine has resulted in redefining freedom of speech. I wonder if our progress and advancement have made us dumber. We are more mechanical and connected via apps than with heart.

time

We live in a time when all the media shows us about the pain the world is in. There is war, poverty, and diseases all around. We humans have no life left to live. It feels scary watching the news. The doomsday is near every minute. A good amount of the population afterward wastes time in discussion, putting their opinion.

There are a small bunch of others who, despite all the negativity, work day in and out providing the population with services and jobs. They have a singular focus which is the betterment of the people around them and making the world a better place. They don’t complain or give expert opinions.