Category: General Thinking

  • What is an MVP?

    MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. If you wish to setup a website that is going to do something, as you pore over the things that the site can do, you will certainly think up a hundred things. Obviously it is not possible to implement all of these in the first version. It is also…

  • Partnering for Demo Day

    We work with several partners for the annual event which we organise under Startups Club, in order to make the day possible. Since our objective is to work and reach out to early stage startups we try to work with those who specialise in this segment. I would like to talk about three of those partners…

  • Sensibility, Intuition and Good Judgement

    There is a expression that I simply hate: counter-intuitive. Counter-intuitive implies that something is contrary to intuition, but in most cases people describe things that are counter-sensibility as counter-intuitive. When someone says something is counter-intuitive, I just assume that they have no clue what intuition is. Read my previous blog about ‘Intuition‘ if you wish…

  • Intuition

    Steve Jobs famously said ‘let intuition be your guide’. Most people seem to think that there are people who are just genuinely intuitive and others who are not. What is intuition and where does it come from? Is it some kind of talent? Is there some way to inculcate it? All of us have intuition…

  • Secrets about Sales

    In the startup journey one of the hardest and by far the most critical things is to get sales for the company.  Sales is what finally drives the engine and brings the income that is required to prove that the business being pursued, is worth being pursued. When a startup embarks on sales, it is…

  • ‘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…

  • 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…

  • 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…