Excite


We need to ask what excites us and the team. Building anything is difficult. When you create something without a specific outcome, you need courage and belief. When we have a team excited and working together as one unit, all difficulties and challenges become easier to tackle.

Finding people who are excited about the cause trumps expertise and experience. Most get bored without direction or a light at the end of the tunnel.

You don’t need pessimists or sad-faced folks around you for salary, glory, or equity.

Plan

Many of us take very planned steps. We decide, define, and dedicate our actions accordingly. But life is very unpredictable. You can die at any moment, or all your joy can turn into pain.

What should we do? One thing for sure is living in equilibrium now. It is not easy to live grounded and humble in all situations. When we become successful, some get arrogant. I have “made it” kind of feeling.

We don’t know what is next for us, we can predict seeing horoscope or tarot cards or whatnot. But how far can this take us, can it make us equipped for the unnatural?

The best plan in life is to have no plan. It keeps us sane with reality and makes us dive to our best now.

Stories

The stories we make, the stories we tell to our subconscious mind, and the stories about ourselves we wish to project are all different. We are constantly in a loop where “self” is in the center of everything. We change it like a mask on all occasions.

We are in pain when our projected selves and stories are misaligned with our wishes. Our minds constantly seek our version of stories.

Questions

Question your decisions as a founder. It will keep you grounded. We live in a world where very few of our loved ones will give us honest feedback. The reason for this is that they don’t want to hurt us or affect the relationship with critical feedback. It can result in living as a frog in a well.

When you have people around questioning decisions, your steps: your blindspots get detected. It opens you up to thinking on those unthinkable sides.

chance

Life gives us opportunities to do our best for ourselves and others. It is on us to cease. It is easy to give up or become self-centered. What is required is thinking big and uplifting everyone around us.

We tend to focus on what we don’t have and what we could have done with some possessions or skills. It is essentially finding reasons not to give our best.

Our life is limited. I feel I have lived half of it. I have effectively 10000-15000 days left to make something impactful for the world. I am lucky to have everything, all the opportunities.

Wealth

Teach your kids how to behave, teach them virtues, and give them autonomy and freedom to think without bias or pressure. All the money you are collecting for your kids will be gone if they are not taught the right virtues.

Money is a means of living, but virtue goes a long way. It will empower your kids to make the right decisions and help them shape society.

We are so lost in the race of wealth accumulation that we find no time with ourselves, no time for our kids.

Default

Our brain has a switch that makes us wander. The switch makes us feel good or miserable. We have to keep the switch in “good” mode at all times. It is a difficult ask but not impossible.

I have been selling products alone for the last 7.5 years. My biggest learning has been navigating rejections. In the early days, I would feel sad and get angry. I have matured with time. I am not in a rush. My default is “good” mode.

As long as I am not dying and have enough customers to pay our bills and we have challenging problems, what else is needed?

Alpha

I sell software for a living to the venture capital sector. I meet many people regularly. Many of the successful firms seeking alpha returns have kept relationships above all.

A few founder friends reach out for background checks about the organization from which they are seeking funding. My advice: go to the ones who will stick with you thick and thin. Speak to other founders they have invested in.

A founder can come to an investor in multiple avatars. They might have failed now, but can come back again with a bigger vision and, greater product market fit. They can be successful angel investors sharing deals or co-investors.

The alpha return comes from a relationship as the venture capital industry is a decade-long journey.

devil

Some people in our lives are meant to be left alone. They are not bad people, but they are full of pessimism and jealousy. They can also be self-centered. They live in a bubble where they are judge and jury. Their worldview and actions will never come wrong to them. That constant itch of finding fault in others or why they are the best can make them a devil.

Your life should be around people who care for you and whom you both mutually respect. Also, you are no headmaster or mother fixing a troubled child. Please run away.

Maturity

A founder’s life juggles between insanity. What can save is having a responsible team. For that to happen, culture should embed maturity as a virtue. As a leader, if you do not ask questions and make people take responsibility, you will get nothing in output.

A founder cannot run around like a headless chicken in every aspect of the company. It is their responsibility to hire a mature team and let them lead. If the founder gets into micromanagement, the culture will rot, and inner fighting and groupism will creep in.