All posts by Mukund Mohan

My discipline will beat your intellect
Mobile, Personal

Why I published a personal social network app

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I started blogging in 2006. It has taken me over 7 years to build an audience of 60K. When I started, I believed that the best content always won. Now I know that the best content with the best distribution wins.

In 2006-7 the prevalent method to distribute my posts was RSS feeds. I focused a lot of effort to get RSS subscribers. Then FeedBurner got acquired by Google and I noticed that my subscriber base was dropping slowly from 2000+ to under 1000.

I realized that SEO was another mechanism to get new readers to read my posts, but I was not going to do anything unnatural to optimize my content to be “search” friendly.

I focused my efforts on Facebook to distribute my content between 2007-2009. I grew my readership from over about friends and readers to over 4000 in 2 years.

I realized late in 2009 that the Facebook feed algorithm was being changed constantly. This meant fewer friend had a chance to see my posts on their news feed. From an average of 25% of my friends who would read my posts via FB, it started dropping to < 10%.

From 2009 to 2011 I got focused on getting more users on twitter to follow and read my blog posts. I have over 10K followers and about 10-20% of the users come to read when I post.

Some of my friends were in the US, others in India. To optimize time and delivery I created 2 accounts. On one, I’d post at the local US time and at local India time for the other. This was to ensure a better chance of delivery on their twitter feed.

In 2012 I noticed many of my friends and readers from twitter coming to my blog also started to drop. Turned out that most folks were following multiple people and unless you timed it right for that person, it was near impossible for them to see it on twitter.

From 2012 to 2013 I put a lot of efforts into building my email subscriber list. Which has helped me go to about 60K+ readers. Then Google tabs happened and my email open rates dropped from 25% to ~18%. Many of my friends asked me when I stopped blogging. Turns out my blog posts were going into their social or promotions tab in their Gmail. There were not seeing my blog posts at all thanks to the new Gmail tabs.

It was frustrating to see the effort I put into building a channel go waste in 2 years. The more frustrating part was that in all these cases I was not in control.

During the last 7 years I have been constantly posting my thoughts and have not significantly increased or decreased the # of posts per year. I still average 120+ posts a year or about 2-3 a week.

The other part I wanted to clarify was if the quality of my posts dropped, which may have been the reason my readership rose (expectation) and fell (reality).

I think there might be some truth to that, but  engagement with my posts has constantly risen throughout this period. I measure engagement by time spent on my blog, average number of posts per visit, the number of comments and the # of Retweets / Likes on Facebook.

By all measures except Retweets my engagement has steadily risen over the last 5 years.

Over the last 6 months I noticed that more users were reading my posts on their mobile phone than PC or tablet. I also wanted to create a deeper sense of engagement with my friends and readers, and since I like to build a deeper connection I thought the best way to do this was to build a mobile application.

It is available on Apple app store and the Google play store. The Windows phone version will be out soon.

The apps are going to be my primary means of engaging with my friends and folks in the startup community. I am giving up on email and slowly paring down from facebook. It’s lack of immediacy in a real time world bothers me a lot.

There are 3 primary features I wanted in the app:

1. Ability to post items and get feedback / learn from my friends.

2. Find ways to meet friends and readers when I am “close” to their location.

3. Create a close network of friends who can help each other.

The beta version is out now and I’d love for you to give it a spin and connect with me there.

Other

2014: A look ahead for tech #startups and #investors in #India

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During the month of December, I had a chance to meet 10-15 investors, about 100+ entrepreneurs and many startup evangelists across the country from Mumbai (NASSCOM event), Hyderabad (TIE) and Delhi (multiple events) and Pune (iSpirt event).

There’s one theme for 2014 that emerged across all my conversations.

Consolidation.

I dont know how I feel about that. Mixed. Some good, but more not so good.

Over 80% of the folks will be looking inward this year. Most investors are taking a long hard look at their portfolios and trying to make sense of them. Which ones to cull, which ones to double down on and which companies to tread water with.

That does not mean no new investments into new companies and ideas, but it does mean, the bar will be much higher in 2014 than in 2012 or 2013.

I think what it means is that you will see more Series A and Series B happening – follow on rounds for existing companies.

75% of the transactions you will see in 2014 and maybe 80% of the investment will not be the first check in a company.

At the early stage when I talk to Mumbai Angels, Indian Angel network, Blume ventures and Kae Capital, this year is one of putting more money into what you have already put money in.

In the series A stage, I spoke with Accel, Sequoia, Helion and Seed Fund. While they will continue to invest in new opportunities, their focus this year (70%) will be on the investments they have already made.

You will see the same among accelerators and incubators. They will spend a lot of time on their portfolios and see how they can help the entrepreneurs they have already invested in.

Which is why there’s an opportunity ripe for an early stage investor to put seed or pre-seed investments to work in 2014, which will bear fruit in 2015.

That also means if you are an entrepreneur with some funding and are looking to raise in 2014, talk early and often to your existing investors and be on their radar. Give them traction numbers, metrics and keep them updated.

Entrepreneurship, Marketing

The transition year of 2014 – from developers to customer acquisition specialists #startups

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Here’s a prediction for the year 2014 based on talking to over 1400 startup entrepreneurs in 2013.

2014 is going to be the every entrepreneur will start to focus on hiring a “customer acquisition” specialist. This could be someone who can be called a hustler, a growth hacker, a marketing developer or any other title.

What I have realized after looking at over 2800 applications at the Microsoft accelerator and interviewing over 300 entrepreneurs is that they have little idea about how to acquire customers that pay for their solution.

They can do the first 10 customers, but after that, it is a slog or a stall.

They dont have a way to scale their customer growth.

Many developers who stall in their careers will take up growth hacking courses and classes. The reason they will do well is because developers will make the best digital marketers in the next decade.

The #1, #2 and #3 questions I get from entrepreneurs, is trying to find a way to get paying customers.

The #1 question last 2 years was around funding.

That has dropped dramatically this year.

The years prior to 2011 I got most questions around hiring good quality engineers and finding and hiring good engineering talent for startups.

Maybe it is the maturity of the ecosystem, but this is the transition I am seeing.

Entrepreneurship, Hiring, Management, Tips

Tip on being a good manager – Saying the same thing differently #startup #entrepreneur

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One of the things I have figured out that I am not good at is being a great manager. I am largely bad at managing people. People that work for me like “hanging out with me” as a friend or a colleague, or even working on projects with me. Most people like working with me, but working for me as a direct report is a pain. I go between the two extremes of being a micro-manager to completely hands-off.

This is an extension of my personality. I am a known control freak, I prefer to be direct and am less of a consensus builder. I really value high intellect and have little patience (that’s is the biggest drawback in India as a manager) for people that dont articulate well or speak up. I do listen, (I am told) but I rarely acknowledge that I have listened.

This works in specific situations (running a sales team) or being a product manager (when the engineers report to another person), but works very little elsewhere.

I realize that most entrepreneurs with a technical and product background face a fairly similar situation. Not have too much experience in being a “manager” hurts your in retaining good people. Here is a rule of thumb if you will that I was taught early in my career at Cisco and then at HP, that have shaped my management “style” Ed. It is a joke I call it management style, when there’s no real style at all.

You have to adapt your communication style to the different people in your team. This was the biggest problem for me. I dont like the effort it takes to change my communication style. I am very direct, brutally honest and dont mince words. That does not work for most people. You cant change as a person much (I think) so you have to work hard at communicating the same thing differently to different people in your team. Let me give you an example.

In 2009, after 4 months of working on our product and getting feedback from customers that the product was not quite there, we knew we had to pivot. Communicating that pivot to the team was a bigger challenge.

One of the folks in my team is very numbers driven and a “give me the facts, so I can form my own opinions” . For her, I had to give the basic facts of our user engagement and customer feedback before I could convince her to pivot.

The tech lead was a young developer (with about 3+ years of experience) and had worked on the product from the start. He was a lot more emotional about the product being “his baby”. Giving him the facts only made him defensive. So the approach I had to take with him was to get him on a trip to meet 13 customers in 5 days to listen to the feedback for himself. More expensive, but worth it.

There was yet another person on our team who tended to be the group’s excitement barometer. When she was in a good mood, everyone’s spirits lifted and when she was cross, most people wont answer even the most basic of questions. It was pretty surprising given that she had no one reporting to her, but she was the team mascot. With her we had to make her feel “involved” with the process and the decision.

For her I had to take a dramatically different approach. I knew if we communicated the pivot incorrectly, there would be a week of unproductive nonsense at the office. Done right, I knew we could get a superhuman effort from the team.

To involve her, we put her in charge gathering feedback from all our customers. She had to put together the survey, let customers know, collate the responses and then come up with her recommendations to communicate to the team. Worked like a charm. She suggested that we “pivot” but did not use that word.

As an entrepreneur, one of the big challenges you will face is hiring people. The next big challenge is to keep them motivated and focused.

Communicating differently to each of your direct reports is one way to do that effectively.

Angel investing, Entrepreneurship, Funding, India

Are there too few seed/angel investors in India or is too much money chasing too few great companies?

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This is a debate that I keep having with entrepreneurs and investors alike. When you talk to entrepreneurs they correctly point out the # of angel and seed deals done in India are very few. If you remove accelerators, the number of angel funded tech companies in India is about 60 (2013) and the number of Venture deals, which are about 50. Add the accelerators, which add another 60 companies and we have about 150 startups getting funded each year.

Given the number of entities that get started is about 1000 (2013), that seems like a small number. Entrepreneurs also point out the very investor friendly terms (drag along, liquidation preferences) that are given by angels in India and the fact that most angel funded companies give between 20 and 30% of their equity at the seed / angel round, which are common among technology startups.

On the other side, Venture and angel investors point out the relatively few exits (fewer than 10 in the technology sector) and the amount of time it takes to grow companies in India (over 10 years). They believe there is enough money for the right opportunities. I can point to 2 examples of companies we are trying to fund which have 3 competing term sheets at the angel investment stage to confirm that it happens, but is rare.

Which brings me to accelerators such as ours. There are about 30+ accelerators in India, but I am going to focus on the top 5. In discussions with other accelerators, the constant theme I get from most folks is the intense focus on the part of entrepreneurs to “get funded”. First the angel round, then the sapling round and then the series A. I know in our own case that is true.

So let me talk about our case in particular, although I have mentioned it before. We dont want to focus on funding. If that’s the biggest need of entrepreneurs then they should go elsewhere.

Unlike other accelerators which are not a corporate program, the key value to Microsoft from our program is startup engagement. We take pride in engaging with the startups and are extremely happy if they are successful, but the financial return from our investment is going to be largely negligible to us. Even if 1 of the 11 startups “makes it big” and we owned 6-10% of the company when it went IPO or got acquired, it would not be a significant dent to Microsoft by any means.

We had a chance to review about 800+ applicants this batch 4 for our accelerator. There were many great entrepreneurs and companies, but we could only support 10 – 15. If we were running a fund, similar to a venture investor, we would only select 2 or maybe 3. That’s consistent with our previous batches.

That we believe is a great disservice to the entrepreneur ecosystem. Many more companies could be small, non angel / VC funded businesses, and still do well. I do not like the term “lifestyle” businesses, but these companies do not warrant the money required by rapid growth, quick to scale companies.

So we do not put a lot of emphasis on our companies getting funded. We do help them get connected with angel investors and venture capitalists, but that’s it. In many cases we have worked behind the scenes to push investors we know to get deals done faster and at better terms, but that’s largely behind the scene. Our emphasis is to open doors and opportunities that help them get in front of other entrepreneurs, potential customers and partners and help them understand the discipline that it takes to be a great entrepreneur.

A few of our previous company entrepreneurs dont like that, and we don’t have a problem with that. Our goal is to help the ecosystem grow and allow more entrepreneurs to experience the journey. If they only wish to focus on funding, they are better off going elsewhere.

So, back to the question: Are is there too little risk capital in technology or too much money chasing too few deals?

Unfortunately the answer is clear only from the perspective that you are coming from. Neither entrepreneurs nor investors will be able to see the challenges the other side faces very easily so it is a question that quite possibly has no clear answer.

The best is to keep at the problem and have different parts of the puzzle try and fit themselves as they progress instead of force fitting more funding into companies or the other way around.

The other part of the question comes from the seed fund that we have as part of Microsoft Ventures. We have not invested in any company, in India, so far, but we have 2 in the pipeline. We get questions on why we dont fund all the companies from the accelerator.

The answer is fairly straightforward but very hard for entrepreneurs to swallow in India.

Microsoft Ventures fund is global. Which means we look at opportunities in the US, Israel, China and other locations. We have some fairly standard criteria for our funding – including, but not limited to the following:

1. We only have the authority to put money in a US or UK entity.

2. We can only use a convertible note instrument.

3. We need to have the company’s product’s well aligned with internal Microsoft teams / products and goals.

The accelerator, however, does not have the strict guidelines associated with these 3 criteria.

Finally since we fund all companies globally, the investment committee looks at all companies across multiple geographies and “looks” for traction, differentiation and other metrics and our companies are just not as strong as those in Israel or the US. They seem to need a lot more time, same amount of money, with potentially smaller exits. While that’s the nature of the maturity of our startups in India, that’s not a bad thing overall. We will get there eventually is my perspective.

Until then we have to fight battles on why we should fund a company from India, when the comparable company in the US is much further along.

The argument for China is simple – a US company just does not do as well in China as a Chinese company.

The arguments for a Israeli company are great as well – most of their companies are Delaware entities, have extremely strong technology (which is aided by government) and they have at least 100% more traction (customers, revenue) than comparable Indian companies.

What do you think? I’d love your perspective on what I am missing.

India, Personal

The future of all education is hyper-personalized

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As part of my looking ahead series, I will publish a few blog posts on what I see as the future of certain areas that I am really passionate about. These pieces may also appear in other media, so I will let you know if they are cross-posted.

Across the world, nearly 4.9% of our GDP is spent on education. In countries such as USA and UK, the % is much higher and in countries such as ours, much lower. As we look into the future to get our citizens more educated and informed, we find that the biggest change will be the end of the “one size fits all model”. The future of education will be hyper-personalized, catering to individual students needs and focused on learning outcomes that enable one to do something meaningful with their learning.

At the heart & center of the education, we tend to sometimes forget, is the student.

What would be the ideal learning environment for the student? From Kindergarten to 12th grade, higher education through graduate programs and finally ongoing learning for skills refreshment, what helps the student learn better?

If you ask a student, they’d like to a) be inspired to learn, by having the subject brought to life with examples and experiences, b) learn at their own pace and enjoy the subject and c) learn so they can apply it towards a task they want to perform.

Teaching can be broken into 3 elements – “instruction”, “application” and “review”.

“Instruction” is the explanation of the theory and concept with a few examples. Most of the sciences & math are taught this way already. The social sciences are largely taught this way as well, but the examples are replaced by stories in history, locations in geography and local government examples in civics. For languages the theory is replaced with a large dose of rules. Most are arcane and require rote memorization. Teachers, tend to force students to learn every concept at the same time, regardless of the student’s ability to learn. Inexpensive tablets and applications on those will replace the blackboard based teaching in the next 10 years. Currently instruction is also done in a linear fashion and uses the same tools and techniques for everyone. I know in my own personal case this is meaningless. My son, a 9 year old, prefers if I explain it to him using stories, but my daughter wants to watch videos about history.

“Application” is currently performed by repetition and practice. Instead of applying the learning concepts to a project (in some private schools they are given projects), students are asked to do the same “problems” and answer the same questions multiple times. The expectation is that repetition will ensure you will remember it. The future of application will be based on science kits, drama renditions of historical facts and real-world recreation of circumstances where you would use math. The student is more likely to remember a drama they participated in about the Mughal Empire than the multiple chapters devoted to them in the history textbook. This will also help counter the folks who claim that computing is making students “insular”. The fact that you are doing a project (or a drama) requires teamwork and cooperation.

Finally, “Review” is done by tedious and stress-inducing exams, with emphasis on how well you learned to “learn”, instead of learned to “apply the learning”.  Computing is already replacing the paper-based exams in the higher classes, and they will continue to do so even in the lower grades. Reviews might also get replaced by multiple “demo days” at the end of a semester – with the emphasis on “show me what you learned”.

The future, will feature personalized applications based on experiences with inexpensive tablets and mobile phones replacing the text and images of the 2D text book with voice, video, interaction and text.

While teachers won’t be replaced, the tablet will enhance the teacher’s ability to be a facilitator instead of setting the pace. While some favor setting the pace approach, research has proven that most students are motivated to learn certain subjects faster than others.

The teacher’s role will change to be a curator of great material and a person that understands the unique needs of each student. This obviously means, that not all students in a class will be at the same “level” during the class. Some might surge ahead in Math, others in Literature and still others in Art. Which is a good thing. It will help the students excel in “something”, rather than be ordinary at “everything”.

The future of all student education will be hyper-personalized. From Kindergarten to elementary, middle school to high and from undergraduate programs to post graduate and beyond, each student will focus on having their “own” teacher, their “own” curriculum and their “own” books.

Lastly I want to highlight the differences between hyper-personalized, customized and individualized. They are not the same.

Customized means take a curriculum, tweak it somewhat to the local “needs” of the school and then teach all students the same thing. This is followed by most of the private schools in India. They follow ICSE or IGCSE and “custom” tailor the curriculum for the entire class.

Individualized is what home-schooling is. The focus is on what the tutor (in most cases the parent) feels is best for the child. Individualized programs will work for kids with special-needs in the future, and those with learning disabilities. It requires in many cases, a therapist or instructor who understands how the child learns and only focuses on teaching that material in that particular way. In most cases they use the same curriculum as the mainstream programs, but tend to use the same techniques over and over again.

Other

The lack of diversity in the Indian investor ecosystem is leading to groupthink

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There are 2 women in over 200 General partners at 49 Venture Capital firms in India. (Vani Kola – Kalaari and Bharati Jacob – Seed Fund).

That’s it. 2 out of 200+.

Everyone else is male, between 30 and 50, with a technical education at the undergraduate level (53% are from IIT) and likely a MBA from a top program.

There are 7 women among 400+ associates, vice presidents and investment professionals.

So, why are we surprised that every VC invested in eCommerce companies in 2010?

Why are we shocked that less than 2% of tech entrepreneurs are women?

Why do we not hold ourselves to a higher standard?

This causes GroupThink.

We have a serious problem folks. We need to address this or we will keep rejecting folks or marginalizing those that are more deserving.

It hurts entrepreneurs in the short term. It hurts us as investors in the medium term. It hurts the entire ecosytem in the long term.

Now, I dont think the solution is to just hire a bunch of women as associates to window dress.

We have to find a way to support women & marginalized sections of our community, to be investors, and help raise a fund and participate.

Else we will all lose.

Entrepreneurship, Funding, India

The toughest choice for an entrepreneur – Slow and committed vs. Fast and apathetic

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Another day, another debate. This time it was Ravi Gururaj, Raj Chinai and Rajan Anandan vs. yours truly.

Lets have a twitter debate copying @rajananandan and @ravigururaj as well on your thoughts.

The debate is about the type of investors that entrepreneurs need now. I believe in the last 18 months, the Indian entrepreneur has changed dramatically. They now prefer a slow, but committed investor as opposed to a fast but apathetic investor. If they could have the best of both worlds, they’d like a fast and committed investor, but that’s as rare as a blue moon. Ravi is of the opinion that speed is the need of the hour.

Here’s the background:

Startups that are getting funded by accelerators are largely (there are exceptions) getting a better shot at getting funded that those that are not. Coming out of an accelerator, most startups get a few angel investor to put anywhere between 50L (or $100K) to 2 CR (or about $400K). This is their seed round. In the US, nearly 27% of companies raise the series A after this angel round of funding. That ends up being a $2 Million to $5 Million round. In India for 2013 that is < 5%

In India, because customer acquisition is slow and laborious, the next round after a seed round, is actually a sapling round (or bridge round) during which the entrepreneur raises anywhere from $500K to $1.5 Million. After this round is when most startups raise their series A in India.

So compared to the US startup, Indian startups have given up 7% on average to the accelerator, 25% to seed investors and another 30% to sapling round investors. In the US most startups go from 7% for the accelerator and 20% for seed investors before their series A.

The “sapling round” is very critical. The reason is that VC’s look for market, team, traction, space and competition before they invest in the series A. Most companies (over 90%) in India are clearly not ready after their seed round, with a complete management team, enough traction (aka revenue) and sufficient product differentiation to support a $2 Million round at a valuation of $4-$5 Million.

Say you are an entrepreneur and you want to raise a seed round and are given 2 choices:

1. An investor willing to move quickly and give you 50L in less than 6 weeks, but not commit to helping you fund the next round, either because they assume you will have enough to raise a series A, or because their investment thesis only allows them to put 50L per company and not more.

2. An investor wanting to take 2-3 months to make a decision (to get to know you, or because they are busy, or because of any number of useless reasons) but committing to give you 50L now and earmarking another 1 Cr to 2 Cr for 20% of the companies they invest in for a future sapling round.

Which one would you prefer?

Most entrepreneurs 18 months ago believed that a fast investor was better than a slow one. But I believe that’s changed now.

Why?

The time to raise a round is increasing, not decreasing. Most entrepreneurs are hearing stories of how some Venture investors are taking over 6 months before making a decision since they have enough good quality deals to pursue. They are also seeing their peers raise a bridge round of financing 12 months after their seed funding raise and realizing that a committed investor is better than one that is apathetic to a 50L investment.

I wish there were fast and committed investors, but that is just not possible.

Why?

The time taken to make an investment increases with the amount of capital involved. It is that simple.

For a Venture investor, $250K investments are quick, but $5 Million take more time. Similarly for an angel investor, $100K investments are quick, but $500K take more time, because you better be sure.

The reason for the $500K is that they will put $100K first, then commit to putting another $200K to $400K as needed in 12-18 months. They are committed to seeing you through a series A if they believe in your company.

Angel investors in India are realizing as well, that most (over 90%) of their investments need more money than they put in at the seed stage before they are ready for a series A. Given that 30-50% of their portfolios will fail, close or shut-down, due to any number of reasons, it is important to let the winners “win”. So they need to support their “winners” with more cash.

I’d love your opinion on this topic. Please let us a comment or lets debate on twitter. I am @mukund. Copy @ravigururaj and @rajananandan as well.

Entrepreneurship

Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer is redefining the future of tech careers: #startups #entrepreneurs

20 Comments

I think of careers as a set of 3 phases of 12-15 years each. From 21 to 36 you are in the rapid learning phase, from 36 to 51 you are directing and from 51 to 66 you are guiding. These are broad brushstrokes. I am going to focus on the first “trimester” of your career in this post.

Why 12-15 years? Generally speaking, it takes most people 2 years to get a handle on anything meaningful (build a network, understand how things work), then two years to master it, and a year to start being in “the zone”. Boredom hits usually at the end of the “zone” when the juices just dont flow doing the same thing for 5 years. I am going to call this 5 year period as “doing a (one) job”.

Then most people tweak their role or go for a dramatic change in their “job” after 5 years. During the younger years most people I know are eager to learn, discover and grow their knowledge. So, they go through 3 sets of 5 year periods or “jobs”.

For most people the age of 35 (or in other cases 40) typically becomes a “mid-life crisis” point. 15 years of working can do this to anyone. That’s when a “career” change is explored.

I get about 5-7 emails and requests for calls / discussions with mid-career executives each week who want to brainstorm and get my thoughts on their career.

After the obligatory, landscape review, many realize there are few options for those who have achieved a lot by 35 – they are VP’s, Directors, Managing directors and suddenly they realize it is going to be one long haul after this.

Most folks fall into 3 buckets at this point.

1. Some decide they like “mentoring” younger people and continue to find a challenge to help others within their company grow and thrive. These folks have made enough money but not enough to leave the luxuries that their position offers.

2. Others decide they need a hobby (or want to follow their “true passion”) that will keep them occupied because work tends to be on cruise control. Many take up teaching as a side profession since they believe they have learned enough to share.

3. Still others want to venture out on their own. Having heard about entrepreneurship and always having a “bug” to startup, they usually come to seek my help on the choices and get some advice on their idea.

This is when the fun part starts.

When I present the stark reality of entrepreneurship (it is very hard, they will likely fail, though they will enjoy the ride and to build something awesome will take them over 5 years), there are 2 reactions.

The first person had not thought about it in this context and ends up understanding that they are not ready to take the risk and goes back to one of the two previous options before. They will usually say “I always wanted to start, but I kept pushing it out, since I was getting promotions, got married, had kids, school, mortgage, etc. Now it looks like it is too late”.

The second person realizes this, and understands that it is “now or never”.  The overwhelming dissatisfaction with their job pushes them to leave their high-paying, easy job to the unpredictable world of entrepreneurship. They end up taking a LOT more risk later in their career, which they can ill afford it, than when they are younger.

If you are an Indian or have many Indian friends, you will know a term that parents use (typically after they graduate) – “Settle down”.

I absolutely loathe that term.

“Settle down”.

What does that even mean? Actually I know what that means, but I guess I detest it so much, that when folks mention it, I get upset and “forget” the meaning.

Settling down is for ground coffee. You ask hyperactive kids, who have had a candy binge to, “settle down”.

Settle down to a 21-30 year old strikes me as the worst advice you can give.

[Side note: To my american friends, settle down means, get a steady job, buy a house, get married, have kids immediately, buy a car and go for Art of Living classes – all within the span of 10 years].

Why would anyone wish that on their children?

Here is what I think will happen in the next few decades.

Thanks to rapid “softwareization of work”, most people wont get a simple “middle class job” which pays well enough to “get married, buy a house and a car and have kids” all within 10 years.

Instead I think parents will have to start telling their college grads to take risks early. Jump into entrepreneurship right after college.

Why?

Simple.  Most roles at large companies will start to resemble small entrepreneurial team roles. We are already starting to see that in larger software companies and I think the pioneer of that model is –

Yahoo!

Yes, Yahoo!

That’s the future of careers and hiring. Check out their buying binge since Ms, Mayer has been the CEO.

I am positive that the impact Marissa Mayer will have is more on careers, hiring and the future of entrepreneurship than on advertising technology which is Yahoo’s business,

To all the CEO’s sitting on piles of cash and need to hire awesome teams – here is the playbook.

[Ed. That they have not produced any meaningful new products at Yahoo is not lost on me. Give them time. Innovation is never linear.]

So what does this have to do with careers?

Most parents for the next 10 years are better off telling their kids to start a company, be an entrepreneur and get acquired by someone like Yahoo. Here’s why:

Option 1: Be awesome at school, take on a $30K -$50K student loan when you graduate, then get a job – at Yahoo! – to get paid $60K / year as a starting salary.

Option 2: Start a company. If you succeed, sell it to a Yahoo-like company for $ Millions. If you fail, get acqui-hired by someone like Yahoo for $hundreds of thousands. If you fail miserably, get hired for at least 25% more than your peers who took option 1 straight out of school. Voila! You are ahead anyway.

Either way, option 2 is worth the risk.

Tell your kids to be an entrepreneur.

Settling down is for old geezers. By that time – the risk is clearly not worth it.

India, Learning

A most poignant story of why the world is round and not flat

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This story made me cry. Not tears of sorrow, but tears of goodness. There is a lot of that in this world.

I want to tell this story, because I want more people to know about the way the world works and why you have to pay it forward. I have asked all 3 of the folks who are part of this story to see if I could share their real names and organizations. Have not heard back yet.

A few years ago, a young man, about 21-22 years of age, from the not-so-upscale, Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, wanted to do something. Not anything in particular, but something. Inspired by a story he read online about the lack of education resources for the poorest of the poor, in India, he thought about making a trip here to find out how he could help.

His sister (older, married) and family were understandably apprehensive. India is not the most comfortable place for a young person. Still, they supported his trip to India to “find out what’s going on”.

Upon his arrival, the young man met lots of people, hung out at the not-so-desirable parts of Delhi and learned first-hand, about the children of migrant workers, day laborers & the underemployed and their inability to have a basic education. Knowing how poorly staffed government school were, these parents chose to have their kids with them during the day. Most of the kids ended up “helping” the parents at work.

He decided to start a low-cost school to educate them.

Think about that. A low-cost school in Delhi taught and run by a young man from San Francisco.

Fast-forward a couple of years, the school’s running, growing, albeit slowly and our young man matures into a school administrator, and runs his non-profit in India, making few trips to San Francisco during holidays and life moments. During this time, our young man, has grown a staff of 12, trained a few local teachers and helped make a difference in over 200 children’s lives.

One of the teachers, a rather exceptional young woman herself, after a year and a half of being at the school, leaves after she’s married and our protagonist does not end up keeping in touch with her after that.

Last year, his sister’s daughter was diagnosed with Autism.

Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and verbal and non-verbal communication, and by restricted, repetitive or stereotyped.

Autistic kids are expensive to educate in the US. They need a personal trainer, coach and therapist (or one of them) to help grow the child’s confidence.

Our young man’s sister was unable to afford the resources to put her daughter in therapy, but US laws for learning disabilities (I dont know the details, but have been told this) ensure that if your child has a disability and wants help to learn, a good amount of money will be provided to help the child do so.

Unable to afford a therapist, she apparently put an ad on craigslist seeking help. She gets no response for weeks. Our protagonist meets her and the family on one of his trips to San Francisco and posts his anguish on a social networking site.

After 3 days, the young woman he helped, become a teacher in Delhi, calls him (after 3+ years of not being in touch at all) in San Francisco. She offers to meet him for coffee and suggests she could find a way to help. She also just “wanted to catch up” and explain the mysterious lack of communication.

Turns out this young woman, married wrong, went through a divorce and was picking up the pieces. She had a job to keep food on the table, but that was it.

She offered to tutor and be the child’s therapist – for free. She has been doing that for 6 months now.

So there you have it. A young man, from San Francisco, making a difference in Delhi. And a young woman from Delhi, making a difference in San Francisco.

I met the young man at an entrepreneur event a few weeks ago and then upon his insistence, met the woman in San Francisco a few weeks ago as well.

They are both normal, young, 23-25 year old kids. They are though, a lot wiser and more awesome than I will ever be.

The world is round. It is not flat, Mr. Friedman. What goes around, comes around, twice as much and twice as fast.

Among the Indian elite (and I am as much a part of of the elite), the world remains full of opportunities thanks to “globalization”. The rest of the world depends on these two and other such young minds to uplift us.

The world is round, Mr. Friedman. It is round.