An event in my personal history seemed like a curse - as though it were the end of the road.
16 years later, when I recounted that event for #TEDxKCCollege, I realized that the dead-end just put me on the path
Our brain plays fantastic tricks with our memories. Events in our history that seemed earth-shattering at the time get forgotten or completely distorted. While one might think of an event as a curse, but years later, when one thinks about it, the curse may have turned out to be a blessing!
However, we rarely get the time to jog our memories to find links that started from a challenging event and find links to how it got us to where we are today. Then an event like TEDxKCCollege forces one to take a relook at their lives. It reopens a long-forgotten wound only to realize that the intense pain was temporary, but it got me to where I am today.
For me, that event was a bombing my freshman year at Austin College. It was also when I realized that I was in the wrong field of study. I loved technology, but I was a terrible techie on the days that I was doing my best programming work. The commotion around my terrible academic performance may have buried my memory of holding a 1.0 GPA transcript someplace deep in folds of the brain.
But thanks to the persistent students of KC College that got assigned to record my talk, I could not only vividly recollected this event – I can proudly wear my 1.0 GPA transcript as a badge of honor.
On our last working day of the decade, i.e., the 27th of December 2019, I asked the Artha team to congregate in our conference room. At 5 pm, 24 Artha team members stuffed themselves into a space built for 8,
On our last working day of the decade, i.e., the 27th of December 2019, I asked the Artha team to congregate in our conference room. At 5 pm, 24 Artha team members stuffed themselves into a space built for 8, and another 6 joined in from Ahmedabad on Zoom.
First, I enquired how many attendees had written down their resolution for 2020 – it was less than 10%. From that sliver, I picked on the newest hire, to share her resolution for 2020. Along expected lines, the newbie said, “I want to be fit.”
Thanking her for sharing their personal goal, and I also made a solemn promise that unless she changed how she worded her resolution, she was going to fail. She was shocked, but my reasoning was straightforward.
Her resolution was so generic that even a 100g drop in her body weight would mean that she had achieved her goal. Instead of pointing the finger at their colleague, I asked the team to utilize her example and replace their resolution setting or list of “to-dos” with plans to deliver outcomes that they wanted to achieve.
To help them understand the outcome setting concept, I showed a Tony Robbins video on the Rapid Planning Method (RPM).
As Tony says in the video, it takes a bit of effort to retrain oneself so that we make plans for outcomes, not activities. The good news is that the brain adapts quickly to the new system and starts to deliver fantastic results! I utilize the RPM method for planning and for my weekly reviews with team members that directly report to me. It takes some effort at the start, but I am amazed at the tremendous ability of the mind to find new ways and energy to deliver an outcome. It should not be a surprise that I am a big proponent of this planning method.
I even had a clear outcome for conducting this training. I wanted my team to internalize the message and put the outcome planning into action. Therefore I tasked each team member to share 3 outcomes that they wanted to achieve in 2020. The had to find 3 outcomes for the personal, professional, and social/charitable spheres of their lives in the next 4 days and share it on the company-wide group on Microsoft Teams.
Why share the outcomes publicly?
If writing the outcomes is half the battle, publicly committing to those outcomes is the other half – the winning half!
Because my team (obviously) includes me I, too, wrote down my 2020 outcomes. But in addition to sharing it with my teammates, I am sharing them publicly, today. I had done a similar but unfocussed exercise in 2018. Overall, it delivered fantastic results because of the pressure it put on me. Why then, I thought to myself, should I change something that is working!
So without further ado, here is my list of outcomes. Professional
Increase Artha’s assets under management to over Rs. 300 crores+ ($40 million+)
Invest in 25+ new start-ups
When I achieve this goal, I will complete a century of start-up investments!
Pay-out bonuses of 60 lakhs+ ($85k) to deserving team members
Personal
Go to Tony Robbin’s Unleash the Power Within with a family member and an Artha team member
Besides, go for Tony’s Date with Destiny and Business Mastery workshops
Author a book
Complete 50 scuba dives
Social/Charitable
Support a crowdfunding project every week (#FundingFriday)
Set aside 2 hours a week to mentor a child (@mentormeindia)
Build or Upgrade ONE school along with the Artha team
That’s the list for you to track and me to deliver, let’s roll…
I wish you a happy new year full of achieving outcomes!
1/2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mw63YmTlRE
Hey founders, today I’m going to address a
crucial topic: When to update your investors with bad news. If you’re an
entrepreneur and running a business, you will have to give bad news at some
point.
There are many ways to give bad
Hey founders, today I’m going to address a
crucial topic: When to update your investors with bad news. If you’re an
entrepreneur and running a business, you will have to give bad news at some
point.
There are many ways to give bad news. One
of them is not to give any news at all, let everything go down, and then
explain why you have only ruins and not a building on fire. This method isn’t
recommended, but some people choose it – I don’t.
There are minor issues or bad news that can
be managed in your monthly and quarterly updates. Like missing your quarterly
numbers by 3-4%, or if you’re having a tough time recruiting people, or if a
particular distributor who was contributing a large part of the business
dropped you for reasons unknown or customer complaints. These are the kinds of
things you can manage in your monthly and quarterly updates.
However, certain kinds of news shouldn’t be
neglected. These should be communicated to the investors immediately. If a
co-founder has left, or one of the co-founders has been diagnosed with severe
disease and will not be available for the next 6-8 months, or your fundraising
efforts are falling through, or a significant client that contributes a substantial
chunk of the profit has left. These are the kinds of situations that need to be
communicated to the investors immediately, preferably not on e-mail.
What I recommend is organizing a conference
call or an in-person meeting. Explain what is going on to the investors face to
face, in a way that is direct with no sugar coating. Be humble about the fact
that things have gone wrong. Don’t try to play up things to avoid the investors
being angry at you. If the situation is terrible, investors have a right to be
irritated and will point out things that could have gone better. You should
take criticism in your stride as you’re expected to execute successfully. Take
responsibility, be direct, and you’ll find that investors will probably come
back with solutions for you to manage the mess.
In adverse situations, you should have a
turnaround plan. I would recommend having one if you’re going to have a face to
face meeting. If you don’t have one, let the investors know and get back to
them in a few days or a few weeks. There may be some questions the investors
have, for which you may not have the answers. I would recommend not making up turnaround
plans on the spot. If you don’t have the answers, tell them. Mention that you’re
going to get back to them in 5, 7 or 10 days (or whatever number of days you
believe you need) but ensure that you keep those promises.
Delivering bad news should not be
difficult. It’s only tricky when you don’t want to give bad news, and you feel
hiding is the best way forward. But it doesn’t solve anything. In fact, it only
leads to the problem of getting bigger. If hypothetically, the company shuts
down, and investors find out that you knew in advance, you could find yourself
in a hot legal soup.
I’ll leave you with that, and I would love
to know how some of you guys have shared bad news in the past. Also, if you
have tips for other entrepreneurs, do share them in the comments.
A few days ago, I saw a Facebook live interview of Confirmtkt's founders, Dinesh & Sripad. Early on, I had led a round of investment into Confirmtkt and also sat on their board for a few years along with Pravin
A few days ago, I saw a Facebook live interview of Confirmtkt’s founders, Dinesh & Sripad. Early on, I had led a round of investment into Confirmtkt and also sat on their board for a few years along with Pravin Agarwalla.
Back then, we both went through a very tough phase with the founders (and the venture), which the founders recount as something that gave them “sleepless nights” in this interview. While I quit the board last year, my eyes were full while watching the two of them. I’d credit the interviewer, Vishal Krishna for bringing out this story so well.
Vishal’s interviewing style is awesome. He is extremely
well read and well-prepared with questions for the people whose venture he is interviewing. This thorough preparation helps him delve into the deeper
delicate, intricate details with the interviewee that would
otherwise have been
missed out. I can vouch for this because he has
interviewed me before and dug out some details that even I had long forgotten.
The video focuses on Dinesh and Sripad’s journey
of becoming responsible and established leaders who grew Confirmtkt into a category
leader and a sustainable enterprise. This is what makes it my video of the week
as well as the inspiration for my blog post tomorrow.
This week’s video was recommended by Karishma so a big thank you to her!
Fyre is the ultimate tool for entrepreneurs to learn that scaling before having a miniaturized working model is akin to gambling with the business. It should
This week’s video was recommended by Karishma so a big thank you to her!
Fyre is the ultimate tool for entrepreneurs to learn that scaling before having a miniaturized working model is akin to gambling with the business. It should open the eyes of investors, entrepreneurs, managers and employees that scaling is the easiest part of building a venture. The billion-dollar question that needs to be answered is – can your business deliver consistently and profitability at scale?
Fyre also answers the question of how doing too many things can eventually lead to doing nothing or (in this case) land you and your business in legal hot water. I believe that Fyre’s founder, William “Billy” McFarland may not have intended to defraud his customers (unlike his investors, who he definitely did). It seemed as though he wanted to do everything that his marketing campaigns had promised but just could not control the monster that he built. Eventually, he went against the advice of his key team members and kept up a charade that transformed him from a boy genius to Mr. Evil.
I
am enamoured by video content, so I have decided to restart the “Video of the
Week” section which highlights the video that made the most impact on me in that
week.
This video was uploaded by Y Combinator on the 9th of
I
am enamoured by video content, so I have decided to restart the “Video of the
Week” section which highlights the video that made the most impact on me in that
week.
This video was uploaded by Y Combinator on the 9th of January, but it popped up yesterday in my twitter feed.
This YCombinator Vinod Khosla interview is pure gold.. lots of hard hitting startup #lifelessons
– “A startup becomes the people it hires, not the plan it makes” – “90% investors add no value, 70% add -ve value”
There
is a lot to learn from this video for budding entrepreneurs that are at various
points in their entrepreneurial journey. Khosla’s observation that a venture’s
journey is not linear but zig & zag
and his analogy comparing it to climbing Mount Everest was very impactful.
Another
important point was at the end when Khosla says, the investor is like an
“employee that you cannot fire” therefore founders should choose their
investors wisely.
The point that was most hard-hitting, however, was when he talked about whether the entrepreneur is building a “zero-million” or a “zero-billion” dollar company and the clearly visible difference in each one’s approach towards building their venture.
Yesterday, Aditya Ghadge sent me a link to a recording of the panel I had participated on with Siddharth Ladsariya, Abhijeet Pai, Aniket Bharadia and Sandeep Jethwani (he played moderator) on Inside Perspectives from the Next Generation Business Leaders at the AIWMI’s Family Office 2018 Summit. I
Yesterday, Aditya Ghadge sent me a link to a recording of the panel I had participated on with Siddharth Ladsariya, Abhijeet Pai, Aniket Bharadia and Sandeep Jethwani (he played moderator) on Inside Perspectives from the Next Generation Business Leaders at the AIWMI’s Family Office 2018 Summit. I thoroughly enjoyed this interaction because each panelist came from a different vantage point. Sandeep investigated each person’s viewpoint deeply as is expected from the Head of IIFL’s Wealth Advisory Group. I really enjoyed this view and I hope you do too!
Since I missed out on the video of the week last Saturday I am also sharing the interview of Atul Nishar that took place right before the panel above. It was an awesome opportunity for me to hear a successful entrepreneur like Mr Nishar candidly take me through his journey, the ups and downs, the exits and how the entrepreneur in him is kept alive by backing start-ups. This interaction is pure gold!
Today, exactly 10 years ago a 157-year-old institution, Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt. The reasons behind the Lehman fiasco are well known but this DW documentary focuses its lens on the ripple effects that the unbridled enthusiasm & greed of a
Today, exactly 10 years ago a 157-year-old institution, Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt. The reasons behind the Lehman fiasco are well known but this DW documentary focuses its lens on the ripple effects that the unbridled enthusiasm & greed of a few people on Wall Street had on 10,000+ Singaporean small investors.
This documentary is an important reminder that optimism is good but unchecked optimism is a sure-shot recipe for disaster.
There is a historic irony with the 15th September as in 1940 a severely handicapped British RAF turned the tide in the Battle for Britain halting Hitler’s plan for European domination. On that momentous occasion, British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill had famously said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”
Unfortunately, Winston Churchill could not have imagined that just over half-a-century later so few would owe so much to so many.
90/2018
I must be honest that I was not a big fan of Akshay Kumar through most of my teens. His movies centred around his martial arts abilities and he had typecast himself into a brand of cinema which I did
I must be honest that I was not a big fan of Akshay Kumar through most of my teens. His movies centred around his martial arts abilities and he had typecast himself into a brand of cinema which I did not identify with. Then something happened 10 years ago that altered the actor’s career and this transformation & success formula should be a case study at the top management & entrepreneurial schools in India as it pole-vaulted him to highest paid Bollywood actor (7th highest in the world).
Akshay has been a vocal critic of movie schedules that can take 300-400 days and he adopted a simple success formula which I found is on the lines of the lean start-up mentality.
Akshay completes his movie schedules in 60 days (Housefull 3 was done in 38 days!) which significantly reduces the carrying cost of the movie i.e. the path to profitability is significantly reduced.
He releases 4 movies a year, therefore, increasing the number of shots he has at delivering a hit. Compare that to the competition that does 1-2 movies a year, therefore, has to maintain a near perfect record.
The more releases per year also means that Akshay gets to read the audiences’ pulse regularly and he can adjust/alter/update his next product iteration thereby catering to his customer’s (read: audience) preferences much faster.
The inspiration to do this research came from two videos wherein the actor provide an insight into his journey, both are must watch videos!
The first one is in Hindi
The awesome team of Jasmeet Thind, Mahima Kaul and Vinit Jain have been making serious progress at Coutloot, a C2C fashion re-commerce platform.
This is a recently started online video ad campaign that alludes to the simplicity of selling on Coutloot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-0DPb7hHYM
I'll
The awesome team of Jasmeet Thind, Mahima Kaul and Vinit Jain have been making serious progress at Coutloot, a C2C fashion re-commerce platform.
This is a recently started online video ad campaign that alludes to the simplicity of selling on Coutloot.
