Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • ‘Fail Fast’ is about decisiveness

    Fail fast is one of the worst expressions coined and even worse understood terminologies. Most startups I speak to, seem to think that ‘Fail Fast’ means start in a hurry, fail in a hurry, shut down and leave. Lower Opportunity Cost! If this is the philosophy that a startup is following, then failure is inevitable. Every…

  • Belief is the most valuable currency for a startup

    If the owner of a pharmaceutical company that produces Vitamin tablets; says that he believes that Vitamin tablets are a very important source of nutrients for the body and he eats the tablets everyday. Do you think, he really believes it? He may or he may not, you can’t tell. His beliefs are within him. But do YOU…

  • Taking the Small Steps

    Large market size is important; but a startup invariably starts niche and then grows. When I try to explain this to entrepreneurs, I find that most people walking down the path of entrepreneurship find it very hard to understand the need to start niche. Everyone can use this product is the usual answer I get. Most entrepreneurs…

  • Why Starting up is like Cooking

    I have always maintained that starting a startup is like cooking a dish, whose recipe you do not know. (I have described in greater detail in my earlier posts why the recipe is not known here and here.) It takes great ingredients to make a great dish. In business, these ingredients come in the form of…

  • Hello Tomorrow

    If, in the year 1411, you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would probably have been most impressed by the quality of life in Oriental civilizations. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing, while work had begun on reopening and improving the Grand Canal; in the Near East, the Ottomans were…

  • Why drop-outs succeed in business

    Our entire existence in this world hinges on survival. As we survive, we learn. We pass on what we have learned, in the form of education. Our education system is structured in a manner where we need to pass tests to prove our proficiency. Unfortunately, it is fairly simple to game the system. In a…

  • What makes a business, a ‘Startup’?

    All too often I come across young entrepreneurs, who are just starting a business through which they intend to hawk their skills. Starting a business does not necessarily make it a startup. It makes you an entrepreneur certainly, but not a startup. Anybody, who engages in any kind of business is an entrepreneur but only a…

  • Apps will become the orifice for all payments

    With the launch of Apple Pay, there is much excitement about mobile becoming the source of payment processing going forward. The fact that Apple Pay has not come to India has not left Mobile payments too far behind in India. Several companies like OlaCabs and Taxiforsure have been creating mobile wallets of their own on…

  • ‘Windowing’ Music – Monetise music better for artists

    The sales of CDs and records has been falling for years. When iTunes arrived and online sales of music took off; for a brief period of time it seemed as if a messiah had arrived who would put an end to the troubles of the music industry. It was not to be. The troubles for…

  • Apple showed me how it cares

    Today, I had to transfer the contents on my old laptop to a new one. Fortunately both the laptops were Macs. About 5 years, back when all of my computing was still being done on windows; if such a situation had arisen, I would get a sinking feeling in my stomach because I was near…

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