- Who Is Doing The Learning At Your Startup? In a startup, instead of paying consultants to tell you what they learned you want to pay them to teach you how to learn. Roominate, one of my favourite Lean LaunchPad teams came out to the ranch last week for a strategy session. Alice and Bettina had taken an idea they had tested in the class – building toys for young girls to have fun […]
- What To Do When You Get Knocked Down I know what it feels like to get knocked down. By a business partner. By a friend. Every now and then, by a self-inflicted haymaker. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with getting knocked down, getting punched out, having someone better, bigger or luckier wipe the floor with you. There is nothing wrong […]
- Jim Norton And The Art Of Making People Laugh Jim Norton is the reason why I do podcasts. First, he’s a world-famous comedian, recently released a one hour special on Netflix, has been on shows like “Louie” and “Inside Amy Schumer” has written two New York Times bestselling books and has appeared on countless radio shows and podcasts. But just as interesting to me…we […]
- Why Reading This Article Won’t Help You Become A Better Entrepreneur I love that I have fans. I love that all of you consume my content and learn from me and get inspired. But the truth is, I don’t care about how many of you are subscribed to my YouTube channel or how many of you actually read these articles. That’s not the point of why […]
- MVP – When Build, Measure, Learn Isn’t Just Throwing Things Against The Wall I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.” Unfortunately the Build, Measure, Learn diagram is the cause of that confusion. At first glance it seems like a fire-ready-aim process. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we […]
- What Startups Can Teach Brands About Servicing Customers As an entrepreneur, I always admire big global brands. With recent events, including some shocking treatment of customers, I’m beginning to wonder if we “up-and-comers” have more to teach these huge companies about a friendlier approach to the customer experience than they can teach us. While recent incidents of “re-accommodating” customers are unfortunate, it is […]
- The MVP Is Not A Cheaper Product – It’s About Smarter Learning A minimum viable product (MVP) is not always a smaller/cheaper version of your final product. Defining the goal for a MVP can save you tonnes of time, money and grief. Drones Over The Heartland I ran into a small startup at Stanford who wants to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) with a Hyper-spectral camera over farm fields […]
- Why Having A Plan B Is Not Planning To Fail People who tell you that having a plan B is planning to fail are irresponsible, short-sighted, egotistical, and ridiculous. Always have a plan B. Always cap the downside. Always plan for the worst. That’s actually showing a lot of courage. If you don’t, you will be surprised and taken out by the vagaries and disasters […]
- What 5 Years Of Entrepreneurship Taught Me Since my MBA days, I had this strong urge of doing something of my own. Coming from a family of Kerala communists, it was natural that I had an initial urge to start something in the non-profit social sector. Thanks to the library at my first employer #DelphiTVS, I started reading business success stories and […]
- China-India Chronicles: What We Saw In China And What India can Learn From It The entire Blume team (with the exception of our CFO, Ashish, who stayed back for urgent work) visited China in the middle of March 2017. This was the first ever visit to mainland China for most of us, scheduled around an anchor of a China-India business conference in Beijing on March 15, 2017. We were […]
- India Versus China- A Qualitative Study On Similarities And Difference Fresh from a two-week long trip to China, after having interacted closely with various stakeholders in the Chinese startup ecosystem – investors, startups, BAT (-B) and Govternment officials, here’s the first post to capture the rich learnings. This post aims to explore the similarities and differences between the two countries on different levels from an […]
- The Pay-It-Forward Culture Of Silicon Valley Foreign visitors to Silicon Valley continually mention how willing we are to help, network and connect strangers. We take it so for granted we never even to bother to talk about it. It’s the “Pay-It-Forward” culture. The Chips Are Down In 1962, Walker’s Wagon Wheel Bar/Restaurant in Mountain View became the lunch hangout for employees […]