Tag: Perseverance

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General Thinking

What I learnt from Beats

beats_by_dre_logo

Beats, the company that is famous for their headphones and who also have a fledgling music business recently got acquired by Apple. I have been absorbing all of the commentary surrounding this right from the time that the deal was still a rumour. I really do not know if this acquisition is a good thing for Apple or not. But I do have a few thought about Beats which might be useful for most people to keep in mind.

These thoughts came to me while I was having a recent conversation about career planning and job-hunting, but the same applies for any startup that is looking to develop themselves.

 

Be Focussed – First and foremost; the eventual goal that you wish to achieve through what you are doing is extremely important.  Our performance is extremely dependent on the degree of focus that we maintain on the goal that we seek to achieve. If you are focussed on achieving a goal, all of your efforts, all of the connections that you make are towards ensuring the goal is achieved. Find the one goal that you wish to achieve and chase it.

Persevere – Success does not come easy to all. Also, you never know when success arrives at your door. If you believe in something and have the passion to pursue it, you need to persevere. It is important not to give up the moment challenges seem insurmountable. If you lack the knowledge, learn; if you lack the ability, prepare; keep cracking at the problem.

Keep seeking opportunity – While you focus and persevere, keep looking for opportunities. Keep seeking ways by which you can get in the track you want to drive on. If you wis to get into a particular industry or if you are seeking out a particular kind of partner, keep your eyes open at all times. Keep meeting people, keep asking for opinions, keep seeking.

Don’t stop doing what you are good at – While doing all this, it is very easy to think; ‘Let me finish learning and them I will get to work on this’. When it comes to focus, perseverance or seeking opportunity; there is no finish line. It is a life long job of an entrepreneurs to do these things. If you have a skill or a passion, pursue it even though you may be learning, preparing or seeking out opportunities. There is never a better time to do what you love, that time is now!

 

Categories
General Thinking

Ramblings on Perseverance

SJ
Steve Jobs is considered one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our times. He was involved in three ventures, Apple, Next and Pixar; of which two can be considered bonafide successes. Next was more of an acqui-hire and we really do not know if it would have been a hit, stand-alone.
But if we were to consider the other two enterprises; Pixar was eventually acquired by Disney making Steve Jobs the largest shareholders in Disney. Apple, well I do not think that I need to detail that out.
Pixar was one of the biggest bets which Steve Jobs made post Apple. For those who love to study pivoting, Pixar made the mother of all pivots going from being a high end computer maker to being a animated movie studio. The value that they were able to unlock through the pivot was extraordinary.
Roll back to 1994, all of the three ventures that I have mentioned above seemed to be on the verge of failure. Apple had not delivered a single hit in a long time (agreed Steve himself was not a part of the company). Pixar had successfully chewed through $50 Million and there was little to show expect for a Disney deal to distribute the movies it made, and it is said that Steve Jobs himself was looking to sell the venture. Next had faced failure upon failure and the entire tech world was certain that the latest operating system which the company had been developing was not going to be any match to Windows.
It was sheer perseverance which pulled these ventures out of the abyss that they had got themselves into. The patience to wait and see through the release of Toy Story in 1995 changed the fortunes of Pixar. Next was bought by Apple and Steve Jobs embarked on a slow an painful march towards revitalising Apple and putting out products that the consumers would love to use and admire.
I write about Steve Jobs because I have read plenty about him; although the same argument can be made for some of the biggest successes in business including Richard Branson, Thomas Edison, Sam Walton, Bill Marriott, and many more… More than anything else, it is pure perseverance that has resulted in these successes.
I feel creating a business is like preparing a dish whose recipe you do not know. So if you add a thought like “Fail Fast” to the mix what is going to be the likely outcome? The idea is to iterate with the absolute minimum ingredients to be able to realise whether a model works or not; ‘Fail Fast’ is by far the worst term coined to describe this. ‘Iterate fast and learn from failure’ should be the actual term that should be used.
Persevere.
Don’t put everything that you have at risk, the first time around.
Develop a business on the basis of firmly grounded insights.
Don’t give up if you fail. If you had to give up, might as well have not started in the first place.
It is not wrong to fall, it is wrong to not get up after the fall. It breaks the human spirit.
Categories
Entrepreneurship

Finding your Co-founder

Last week we had a great Startups Club meet at Chennai. The topic of the meeting was ‘Finding your Co-founder’. We had a discussions about the importance of a co-founder, after which, we arrived at the customary game. As a part of the game, all of the individuals who were present in the room were divided into two groups. Each was handed a slip which contained the name of an animal.
The participants were suppose to act like the animal mentioned on the slip and find their pair in the other team. As soon as the activity began, people started finding their pairs. It all happened really fast!
Once most of the members had found their pair, we got down to understand what we had learnt from the entire exercise:
Don’t be afraid to be who you are – In the context of the game, individuals were forced to act like a monkey, a dog, etc. Those who were not afraid of being what they were, were the first to find their counterpart. In life as well it is important to be who you are to find your right match. Pretending to be a person who you are not might get you a co-founder, but in the long run it will end in disaster.
Be around the kind of people who you are looking for – If you are seeking a technical person, there is no point in going to startup meets and looking for them. Go to places which such people frequent. Go to ‘Developers Conferences’ where you are certain to find people who have a technical background. hang out where you are certain they would!
When you find an opportunity don’t judge it and embrace it – We all have a view of ourselves. The way the world views us might not be the same as the way we view ourselves. Therefore, it is important to stop judging, when seeking a co-founder. You might be mighty surprised with what you find. Don’t stereotype people on the basis of how they look, talk, walk, etc. be open to everyone, you might be surprised how smart a ragged looking guy might turn out to be.
Keep moving forward – One of the member who did not find his corresponding partner, found out at the end of the game that the person next to him was the one! An entrepreneurs life is filled with challenges and difficulties. Just because a couple of attempts do not work out for you, does not mean nothing would. If you stop moving forward, you move backwards.
Perseverance
Never give up as an entrepreneurs, you might just be about to strike gold!
Categories
General Thinking

Knowledge Vs Success

The Intuitively Assumed Knowledge Success Curve

Knowledgecurve

It is often assumed that as your knowledge increases, you become more successful. If there is a particular subject about which you have greater and greater knowledge, you would assume that you would be more accomplished in that area and hence more successful as well. Let us say you played cricket and the more you learn about the game (I am assuming knowledge increases through practice), the more you would expect to be successful in the game, is it not?

The actual Knowledge Success curve

Knowledgecureve real

In reality, the success that you achieve grows exponentially after you reach a certain critical mass. Therefore, many times you feel that you are ploughing away at a problem continuously without getting much in terms of success or breakthroughs. It is important to reach the inflection point, when things start changing for you. When you reach that point, you always end up thinking; “Why didn’t I do that before?”

As an entrepreneur it is important to keep scraping away at the problem, keep working on it continuously and relentlessly. You will never know where the inflection point lies but perseverance invariably pays off.