All posts by Mukund Mohan

My discipline will beat your intellect
Learning, Personal

A #contrarian’s field guide to New Year Resolutions

TLDR; This field guide helps you set new year resolutions and help you achieve them by using both a top-down and bottom-up approach towards managing your energy and hence managing your time better.

To achieve you new year’s resolutions, I propose 3 steps:

1. Top down prioritization.

2. Bottoms-up audit.

3. Planning and scheduling your energy.

You have to both do a top-down prioritization and a bottoms-up audit towards goal setting, because the top-down alone will tell you what you want to do, and the bottoms-up will tell you what you are doing right now. The planning will help you then figure out where you are wasting your time and energy and where you need to focus it instead.

Lets do the top-down first.

There are 9 categories of goals people have as individuals according to me.

1. Relationships: The need and desire to be connected as humans with friends, family and other people at large. Examples include, getting married, making new friends, or spending more time with your siblings for example.

2. Career and Work: When you are a student it will be around “what you want to be when you grow up”, but it is pretty much the same as an adult. Work goals include promotions, improving communication – public speaking for e.g. etc. Starting a new business falls into this bucket.

3. Intellectual: These are for you to learn. Many people like to learn new languages, read books and expand their mind as part of this category.

4. Health: Keeping your body fit enough and in shape to be able to achieve what you think you can. Losing weight is the most common goal in this category followed by promising to quit smoking.

5. Financial: Making enough wealth to be able to afford the things you’d like to have as part of your life. You might have other goals in this

6. Spiritual: The quest to find your inner self, and the meaning of life, the universe, god, etc. The most frequent goal in this category is to find your inner peace.

7. Interests & Hobbies: Travel, learning a musical instrument etc. fall into this category. Going to an exotic place for vacation is the most frequent goal in this category followed by learning a new musical instrument.

8. Giving back and Social Goodness: These are for individuals who want to give back and help the less privileged. Most people volunteer at charities or non-profits / NGO’s to help them in any way possible.

9. Self improvement: These are to better yourself as an individual, making time to grow as a person (not intellectually, but emotionally). E.g. I will not get angry with my kids, or will not blame someone else for my problems. The quest to be a better person drives this category of resolutions OR the willingness to correct a character flaw.

Now that we have a comprehensive category list, I suspect you can add your own resolution – such as “I will be a nicer person” or “I will meditate more”, which will fall into one of these buckets.

After you put your resolution into the bucket, write it down – both the resolution and your category.

P.S. here’s a contrarian tip – NEVER have more than one goal. More on that later.

The reason I think you should start with categories, is that it will help you focus on managing your energy not your time.

Then the second task is for you to do a time audit for a week. This is the bottom up approach. The best way to do this is to create a spreadsheet with 1/2 hour slots from the time you wake up to the time you sleep.

Then put what you are doing in that 1/2 hour slot for 1 week. This includes time to bathe, eat, work, etc.

The next step is to categorize the time audit items into your categories above as well.

It is okay to put sleeping into health category. If you listen to podcast or listen to music during your commute then put it in the health or interests or hobbies category.

Then take the categories you have and add up the time per category.

Plot the category and time spent on a pie chart.

Most people are absolutely shocked when they do this exercise at this point. They find that 25-35% of their time is truly “wasted” – they dont do anything else when the sleep – which is why many successful people apparently sleep less – god bless them, but I cant. Or they are spending time bathing or eating, etc.

So you have a top down priority and a bottom up use of your time.

Step 3, is planning and scheduling: The planning should help you find a way now to schedule time on your calendar for the one new year’s resolution or goal you set.

You can do the scheduling on your calendar by alternative or better time management.

If something is a priority for you, then you better spend more time on it than anything else.

My rule of thumb is that you need to spend at least 35% of your time on the one New Year’s resolution you set for yourself. If you are unable to do that, then prepare to fail.

If you find many other things taking up your time, deprioritize them and manage your calendar like a manic and NEVER let other things “creep” in.

Please let me know if this works for you, but remember you have to do the top-down and bottoms-up part (which might take you a week if you dont know your calendar yet.

Personal

How to avoid eating useless junk when you are bored? #CalorieStickerShock

There are 2-3 times in day when I get bored for about 15-30 minutes. Usually that’s in between my scheduled work. Mid morning at about 10 or 11 am and again at about 230 or 330 pm in the afternoon.

Since I had been eating much less than my usual intake, I’d get hungry pretty soon and was unable to determine if I was really hungry or just bored. Either ways I would end up eating junk food with many useless calories.

I dont think I really have a problem eating when I am truly hungry, but the “eating when you are bored”, really bothered me a lot.

There are a few tricks I adopted to avoid adding calories and prevent eating when I was bored.

First, I’d drink really warm water. Closer to hot water than warm. Initially I had to take some herbal tea with it, but after a few weeks, I avoided even the tea. The reason why warm or hot water works compared to cold was it would take me longer to drink, by which time I’d get distracted with something else. Cold water just went in really quickly and I was “hungry again” within minutes.

Second, I eliminated many foods from my diet, because I felt they were truly wreaking my system. These were cakes, chocolates, cookies and the like. Easy to eat, but really hard to avoid. The way to eliminate them is not to buy or stock them at all. I now keep granola (Kind, with no additives) or plain nuts (Almonds, Walnuts, Pecans, etc.)

Third, I scheduled meetings during my known “weakness zones”. Being engaged in a meeting let me focus on the work, or talk to someone, eliminating my “boredom eating”.

Fourth, I removed small change and avoided carrying cash. I found that I’d go to a vending machine (most dont accept credit cards thankfully) and grab something at least once or twice a week. Removing cash helped me go to the vending machine, but actually buy nothing.

Fifth, before I ate, I’d first check the calories that it would add on MyFitnessPal. Since I was in a friendly wager with 2 of my friends on who would be under the calorie goal for the most # of days, it was easy for me to get the “calorie sticker shock” from eating junk food and avoid it all together.

Sixth, I am known to be very competitive, so I enlisted 2 of my friends, to help message me during 11 am and 3 pm (We were on WhatsApp) to encourage me to stick to the plan. I did the same for them, and they were in a different time zone, so it worked out well. Erik’s lost over 15 pounds and he’s super fit now.

Seventh, I’d schedule my walking “to gain steps on FitBit” around the time away from my desk or from any food during that time. Since I carried no cash, I could not eat out anyway. The walking was a scheduled conference call with my direct reports or calls with entrepreneurs.This was another competitive thing I was doing, so I’d highly recommend that if you are into that sort of thing.

Eight, I’d sometimes chew gum. This was rare, because I dont like chewing gum, but on a few occasions it did help. I wont recommend it though.

I did not use all these techniques at the same time, but depending on the day and my sense for what would work, I’d use one or two of them.

The thing that worked best for me over time was “Calorie sticker shock”.

I am going to trademark that actually. If only everyone could see the # of calories that is in the junk food they eat, I believe most folks would make the right choice.

If eating a small bag of chips, plus on regular soda and one small cookie (Or one samosa, one masala chai and two biscuits in India, ) during your afternoon snack was known to add 500 calories of your 2000 calorie daily intake, I think most folks would avoid one or all three of those items.

Personal

What do I eat to manage an intake of less than 1500 calories daily

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As I mentioned, I lost over 50 lbs over 25 weeks last year. My primary strategy was to eat less. 1500 calories or less daily. That’s the #1 thing you need to do.

I am vegetarian and love food, so this was a lifestyle change for sure.

The first thing I figured out was there were many “useless” calories I was taking in purely for the acquired tastes I had developed.

If there’s one thing you really need to control about your diet and you don’t want to do anything else, then eliminate your intake of processed sugar foods.

That in itself will reduce your weight, with no other dramatic changes by 10-15% in 3-4 weeks.

To hit 1500 calories, with as “normal” a schedule as possible, i.e. 5 meals – breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner, you have to ensure no meal exceeds 300 calories.

That’s a good rule of thumb to follow.

1. Breakfast: I have largely eliminated many foods: processed orange juice, peanut butter, coconut chutney, muffins, jellies and jams, etc. from my diet already. Surprisingly I don’t miss them anymore. My breakfast was usually one of 7 items –

a) Old fashioned oatmeal – cooked in water with 1/4 cup of milk (preferably fat free or almond milk),

b) 3 egg whites (only whites either boiled or omelet stye),

c) 1 piece of toast no butter,

d) 1/2 cup of vegetable upma,

e) 2 pieces of idli with milaga podi,

f) 2 dosas (no masala),

g) one piece of fruit – any fruit, with the normal serving size,

and either fat-free milk or Almond milk (this has the least calories, all the nutrition of regular milk and still fills you up).

Some days I would eat cereal (any cereal with the recommended serving size – I eliminated ones with extra sugar), but they were limited to 1 day a week.

These items rarely contribute over 300 calories, unless you go over the serving size.

Since I had to manually update MyFitnessPal after every meal, I was happy to reduce my food options and stick to these 7 items.

2. Morning Snack: I stuck to either fruit (grapes, or apple were convenient for grab and go) or granola for my morning snack. Sometimes I would have another glass of milk. Sometimes I substituted nuts (almond or walnut, plain, not salted).

3. Lunch: My lunch in India was 1 chapatti, 1/4 cup of dal (any dal), 1/4 cup of any green vegetable – cooked, 1/4 cup of yogurt, 1/4 cup of rice and any amount of cucumber and carrots.

In the US, my lunch is the same every day – 4 cups of leafy greens – spinach, lettuce, arugula, etc. 1/4 cup of firm tofu, 1/4 cup of garbanzo beans, 2 Tbsp of dried, sweetened cranberries, 1 boiled egg white, 1/4 cup of red beets, 1/4 cup of cucumbers or green bell pepper, 2 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar – no other dressing or oil.

4. Afternoon snack – I would indulge in either nuts or I’d substitute a protein bar (290 calories max) – the ones I liked the most were Clif or Builders protein bar.

5. Dinner: This varied from one of 5 items:

a) Indian: 2 chapattis, 1/2 cup of any vegetable, 1/4 cup of any dal (rajma, channa, masur, toor, etc.) and 1/2 cup of yogurt. Some days I’d make some mixed rice (with vegetables or soy chunks). Once a month I’d eat a stuffed paratha.

b) Italian: 1/2 cup of pasta with more vegetables than pasta, OR 1 slides of pizza with limited cheese

c) Japanese: Vegetarian sushi 8 pieces and miso soup

d) Mexican: Taco salad, with no shell (lettuce, beans, salsa, etc), but I would not eat the taco or burrito.

e) Chinese: 1/2 cup of noodles, or 1/2 cup of stir-fried vegetables. Lettuce wraps were good as well, stuffed with Tofu or other vegetables.

This is pretty regimented. I know it wont work for all, but it worked for me.

I did have a nutritionist review my daily breakup of calories by food group (MyFitnessPal lets you do that) and she was pretty happy with the breakup of Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats.

Other

The only one thing you need to do to lose weight

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I lost about 50 pounds over 25 weeks last year (2014). There were 3 things I did – a) Track what I ate with MyFitnessPal, b) Started walking, then running about 13 miles daily, tracking on FitBit and c) Fasting every Thursday.

Since I am data junkie, I kept trying to optimize all these 3 aspects of my weight loss.

If there’s one thing you must do to reduce weight it is this – eat less.

Much, much less, than you even think you need.

I had a nutritionist and my podiatrist who helped me throughout this process. I went from eating about 2200 -2300 calories a day to 1500 calories a day or less.

I found that even if you don’t workout or fast, if you eat less, you will lose weight.

If you want to lose weight and be healthy, then workout daily.

If you want to lose weight and do it quickly (about 2 pounds per week), then add the fasting.

Personal

How I lost 50 lbs in 25 weeks with no special diet or gimmicks

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On June 23rd 2014, I weighed 174 lbs. On Dec 24th I weighed 125 lbs. It was a steady 2 lbs loss of weight each week, more or less.

I did not follow any special diet, like no carbohydrates, paleo, etc. There was no weight watchers or hitting the gym.

In fact I never once went to the gym the entire time except to check my weight on one occasion.

Moat folks who know me well, were not sure why I needed to lose any weight. I had a foot problem, though because of very poor footwear decisions which forced me to lose weight or stop playing sports. I chose to lose weight.

There’s one secret though. It was my discipline. Plain and simple.

I used two apps, recommended by my sister. One to measure my food intake and another to track my running.

First, I reduced my food intake from 2200 calories daily to 1500 calories daily over a 3 week period.

Second, I started running, starting at 1.5 miles daily to now consistently doing 13-15 miles daily.

Finally, I started to fast, all day on Thursdays. I only drank water. Starting with drinking only juices to milk and then over 4 weeks to nothing but water.

That’s it. I did not spend any money on diets, food, gym memberships or fancy weight loss programs.

Over 25 weeks of this helped me get down to 125lbs.

Personal

Enjoy tying the shoelaces. My new year’s resolution

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I met a billionaire acquaintance a few days ago. This was my 3rd discussion with a billionaire this year. I was really curious what made them mega successfully financially, versus others.

Surprisingly all 3 were very humble, and very different from what you’d think of when you hear about billionaires. One of them said:

“Compared to the other centi-millionaires and millionaires, I was just pure lucky”.

Another said that his pursuit was that of being very successful, but becoming a billionaire was “accidental”.

As the year comes to a close, I was taking a run yesterday and thought about what separates the “ultra successful” from the merely successful.

Defining success purely in financial terms is very narrow and un-enlightened. Many people believe that success should be along multiple dimensions – relationships (friends and family), financial, intellectual, work, spiritual, health and fame (celebrity-style).

Then there are those that believe you have to choose from 3 of these.

There’s one thing that I learned from all 3 of the billionaires.

They focused on one of them, not more than 1 during a period.

All three of them have seriously under-invested in other aspects of their life for any given “period”. That period has been days for some, weeks for another and many years for the 3rd person. I cant argue that it was a good thing or a bad thing, since they made the choices consciously.

All three of them now have families, with kids and the things that life brings.

But they choose to put work and their pursuit of it above all else.

There’s one thing they did tell me which caused me to think more.

“Enjoy what you do. More than do what you enjoy”.

Late, yesterday evening I was going for a run. I have a pair of shoes that are relatively new and so the laces untie often. I am pretty scheduled and regimented, so not hitting my distance milestone bothers me quite a bit.

I had to stop for 2 minutes to tie the shoe lace, which knew will delay my distance goal by 2 min, which then would delay when I slept and hence to make up the “wake up on time” schedule, I would have to sleep for 2 min less.

I dont like tying my shoelaces more than once for that reason. I hate wasting those 2 minutes.

That’s when it hit me.

If you cant do the things that you enjoy and love, for whatever the reason, you better enjoy and love the things you are doing.

So as 2014 comes to a close I realized all those cosmetic resolutions I made over the years were banal.

I am going to live every single moment. Even if it means “enjoying to tie my shoelaces” by thinking about the shoe or the knot or that many others cant tie their shoelaces at all.

I wish you all a very happy 2015. I hope to write more frequently this year compared to 2014 and hopefully closer to my 2013 productivity schedule for blog posts.

Entrepreneurship, Funding

Finally a way for H1B visa employees to realize their dream of #entrepreneurship – unshackled

I had the chance to talk to Nitin Pachisia today about his new venture fund, Unshackled. He and his cofounder have started the investment arm, which focuses on opportunities created by H1B (and other restrictive work visas) entrepreneurs. I have talked about this problem before, but did not realize that it could be a potentially lucrative segment to invest in.

The problem is this. If you are in the US on a work visa that’s restricted (Optional Practical Training or H1B as an example) then leaving the company that “sponsored” your visa is a tough call since your new startup can a) “not pay the salary” you need to get a new H1B or b) other legal restrictions prevent you from leaving your job (your visa sponsor) for your own startup.

Apparently there are 750K restricted work visa holders in the US (and I suspect most if not all are from India and China). Each year, students and professionals who come to the US increase the pool by a few thousand.

If you apply the basic math, then about 10% of these (likely) will be keen to start their own company – about 7500 and that’s the target segment for Unshackled. They are looking to fund about 25 companies via their fund.

The way Nitin and team help get this done (I am simplifying) is to be the company that sponsors the H1B (as Unshackled can) for the entrepreneur. After they raise their funds to be able to sponsor their own visa, then the entrepreneur can leave and “join” their startup they created.

I think it is niche enough and specific enough for most folks to remember what Unshacked does and what they stand for. Nitin mentioned that over 60 investors have already committed to their fund and they were over-subscribed for their current round.

I am personally still trying to figure out if this is a large enough talent pool to get the quality winners that any fund needs, but it is niche enough and specific.

I do remember being in 500 Startups (#500Strong) a year ago, when they had 4 companies from India – Trade Briefs, Instamojo, WalletKit and GazeMetrix were all started by entrepreneurs who were in the US for the 4 month accelerator program on a B1 visa, but had to return to India, because they did not have a visa option to stay in the US.

This would have been an ideal solution for any of those folks.

I think anyone who is on a restricted work visa and is keen to start a tech startup should seriously explore this fund as a great way to get started. Nitin and his co-founder are based in Palo Alto and have setup partnerships with many local funds, legal and accounting agencies and other startup support organizations.

Management

A comparison of business software review sites: Credii, ITCentral, G2Crowd, BestVendor and GetApp

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There are an estimated 5K to 10K SaaS and enterprise software companies that provide solutions for small, mid-sized and enterprise companies.

The large IT analyst companies such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, EMR and Burton Group have made a $billion business out of evaluating and ranking these vendors on a magic quadrant or waves.

Over the last few years a host of companies have tried to disrupt the evaluation, comparison, review and ranking portion of the business.

The companies, G2Crowd, Credii, ITCentralStation, BestVendor and GetApp all pretty much offer a similar service with a few twists. The ability for business users to review, evaluate and filter the software solution for the based on their custom need.

Given the explosion of startups (thanks to the lower cost of starting a company), there are tons of choices for any buyer of software and many deployment models as well – mobile app, mobile web, SaaS, etc.

I had a chance to look at all these companies, and the intent was to review them from the point of view of a buyer of technology. I was initially looking for the best Early stage private company database, and stumbled upon one of these websites and went to research and see if there were others as well providing Yelp-type reviews for startups in a “crowd sourced” way.

There are 3 different approaches taken by these companies. While G2Crowd, ITCentral station and Best Vendor are more crowdsourced platforms, where any user can write a review and rate the vendors, Credii is more like a “Analyst on Demand” or ” Analyst as a Service” solution. GetApp is a pure marketplace and seems to want to follow the App store model with some reviews, but more a listings website.

There were 3 things I was looking for when searching for a database of startups – first a good comprehensive listing of vendors, followed by analysis of their features and pricing, and finally reviews and recommendations by users like me.

Of the 5 solutions (none of who are comprehensive) I found Getapp to have the most listings – for other solutions than the one I was looking for. G2Crowd was a close second. The rest were pretty poor in the comprehensive nature of their coverage of a domain or the products within a domain.

In terms of analysis of features and pricing, company information, I found g2Crowd the best, but Credii very comprehensive. The limited nature of editorial reviews in the other sites, make them hard to take seriously.

Finally in terms of user reviews, getApp was the best by far with the most reviews. followed by G2Crowd. ItCentralStation was poor but definitely better than the other two.

If you are an SMB vendor with an interest in reviewing products and learning more about products before you start to shop, I’d be hard pressed to say an of them will truly meet your needs. They might be a starting point, but if you are expecting an Amazon like listing, with great reviews, multiple feature comparisons, you will be sadly disappointed.

P.S. I have been also informed (see the comments) about Capterra. Worth a look as well.

Entrepreneurship, Funding, Tips

A data driven approach to dispelling the myth that planning for #entrepreneurs is “old” school

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There is an ongoing meme that keeps popping up ever so often among tech entrepreneurs and gurus. That the “business plan” is dead and there is actually no sense in planning at all.

After all they say “Hands-on Entrepreneurial Action is all that is required to create a Business”.

I have enough curiosity to keep finding out which of these truisms are valid and which are not. Fortunately I also have a position that allows me to try these experiments given that I run an accelerator program.

TLDR: This is absolutely false. Poor or any planning is better than no plan at all for over 80% of startups. In fact, the earlier the stage of the startup, the more is the value of that planning.

Here is the data:

Over the last 3 years, I had the opportunity to identify, select, coach and help 87 entrepreneurs for over 4 months each. I spent about 1.3 hours per week with each entrepreneurial team. In the last 3 years, and in 6 cohorts, there have been a total of 4834 applications we have received and reviewed. Of these my team and I have talked to about 450+ (about 10%) and have met with (for atleast 15-30 min) about 250 of these entrepreneurial teams. A total of 87 of them made it into our accelerator and that’s the sample size. Of these, 89% were from India, and 11% from the US.

There are between 10-12 sprints we run at each of our 4 month acceleration programs. Customer development, technology, product management, design, go-to-market, sales, partnerships, and others. One of the sprints we also run is called the “Operating plan” sprint. I instituted this after the first cohort, when I learned that most investors did not care so much about the “demo day pitch” as much as what the company was going to do with their investment for the next 12-18 months.

So, I put together an operating plan template. Think of this as your blueprint for execution. It would spell out what you were going to do to hire, sell, develop, fund and grow your startup. I put together a template as well to help the companies think through the plan.

It stems from your top level goal first, which depending on your stage could be – get product shipped, get customers to use it, increase usage, drive sales, increase revenue, etc. The only constraint I put was to ensure that you had one goal only. Not 3 or 5, just one.

Then you want to tie in various parts of your company to achieve that one goal.

If you had to hire engineers to build product, then that needed to be spelled out. If that then requires funding, you need to spell that out as well and so on.

So each operating plan will end up having 7-9 sub “plans” for product, development, hiring, sales, marketing, funding, etc.

This planning cycle begins in the 3rd month of our program and lasts 2-3 weeks for the entrepreneurs. During this time, many entrepreneurs are busy trying to get funding and meet investors, which means they tend to have little time for “all this other planning stuff”.

Which makes for a perfect experiment with a control group and a treatment group.

In the last 5 cohorts, I have asked and then politely urged all the entrepreneurs to participate actively in the operating plan sprint. But 50% of the cohort would get another 30 min pep talk from me on its importance.

I’d urge them over a lunch or coffee the importance of doing the plan.

I would not discourage the others from doing it, but the other group I did not spend the 30 minutes with on taking the operating plan seriously. Some of them took it seriously without my urging and cajoling and most ignored it.

Now that I have the data for 3 years, I can confidently tell you that just the act of putting together an operating plan – however poor it is, increases your chances of funding and raises valuation.

I went back to the data to look for my own biases and see if the ones that I urged were “somehow better suited to raise funding and be successful regardless of my urging” anyway, and I think I have no way to really check that at all, but I am confident that the sampling error, if any, was minimal.

Of the companies that I did the extra selling to, 69% of them raised funding within 6 months of the accelerator, compared to 31% who did not.

Even the companies that took the operating plan seriously and put what I consider a poor plan, beat the ones that did not take the operating plan seriously at all by a margin of 20 basis points.

I totally understand that funding is a weak (and only one) measure of achievement (and not of success), but I also realize that it is the metric most entrepreneurs judge an accelerator by.

So, the bottom-line is this.

If you want to achieve any form of success, creating an operating (or business) plan, even if it is poor, is better than not having one at all.