The Wisdom Wall

“as per me, sweet spot is if you're able to find, let's say one or two direct competitors with some customers, That validates the problem exists, but also validates that it's just very nascent where the, if the whole market grows, your company will grow with it also. So I would ask, don't build it if you have zero…”

“for second time entrepreneurs, um, it is difficult in a different way, wherein I think they, because more often than not, they are financially free. So they paint a very idealistic picture of what they want to build. Uh, almost like MBA, this is a large market opportunity, will, they would have a long plan, step one,…”

“diversity of experiences is very valuable. So if everyone comes with a different history of what they know, then obviously as a team, you know, a lot more than what you would know individually, but a diversity of value system, uh, very early on in startup, uh, is, is, um, not important, uh, not, not important. I mean,…”

“Diversity value systems are great for democracy if you're running a country, but if you're running a startup like a democracy, you'll never end up making any decision with a fast enough speed that a startup requires.”

“So what not to build is really to not to build the, um, Things that you feel very passionate about, unless you're very, very super sure that that passion is shared by a wider community.”

“So right thing would be to hire someone in the outbound, even if it's an outbound STR, but probably report that outbound STR directly to you as a founder, as a CEO. Because new functions do require that, um, hundred percent attention and focus for them to initially bloom enough to show any results.”

“Startups are perfect for commercializing what knowledge exists, and that, that's what it should do. But fundamental research, of course, companies like SpaceX exist. But, uh, I don't think startups should pursue that.”

“Uncertainty is actually a moat for startups. Um, and I would differentiate uncertainty from risk. Risk is something that you can model on an Excel file. Risk is what you can say. I have a five percent chance of failure and so on. And if you're able to quantify risk, then big companies are able to pursue projects.”

“I think I would say it's more to do with uncertainty. Wherein, if someone is doing something which nobody expects to work out, that person is an entrepreneur for me. But it's very clear that A will lead to B and will lead to C. It's not an entrepreneur. So trade, people who do trading, they're not entrepreneurs by this…”

“You can be terribly happy, but you're perennially dissatisfied by the state of the world. I think that's a good state to be in, where, ah, you dealing these two things, you're completely happy on day to day world, ah, day to day sense, but you're not really given up on any change. You want to change things around, you…”

“In fact, you'll be a terrible entrepreneur if you're unhappy. You'll just give up too soon. It's just so hard. Unless you are enjoying your job day to day, you'll just give up in the first instance of a barrier, and you'll say, I don't like this.”

“missions of companies are good stories. Um, but they always take a backseat when it comes to companies being in the marketplace, because Almost always the economic considerations takes the forefront. So Google's don't be evil, Apple's think different, whatever mission statements, they are great for you to believe that…”

“You know, it's so hard to raise money for, like, a deep tech company, and the reason for that is, The expected returns are so much lower versus building, let's say, a B to B company. Like, as an investor, if you're purely going by your, like, returns logic, you would never fund a very, very risky scientific bet.”

“And ultimately, I think in startups, if you keep trying, one of them would crack. So, um, and I'm reasonably, reasonably confident saying that I would have achieved financial independence. Maybe the age would have differed. But that's because startups are a great wealth creator. And if you keep trying to do startups…”

“I'm saying what you need to exclude if you're financially, uh, free is, uh, an expectation of getting paid back. Because a lot of other people are willing to do that job. I'm saying there is only certain roles in society that financially independent people can play. And probably it makes sense to Do that.”

“It's not all selfless. If it were selfless, we'll not see names on buildings. Charities would be anonymous. So, there is a large extent of status also being involved in the mix, but I think it's a good trade-off if others get balanced and you have a name on your building.”

“I mean, if you are a 25 year old, uh, you're absolutely doing a mistake unless you have a majority of your money in, um, uh, equities because power of compounding is so that by the time you retire, the difference between keeping money in FDs where the tax rate is higher and interest rate is lower versus, uh, equities…”

“the amount of, uh, debt that by debt, I mean, you know, fixed deposits or even mutual funds for debts and so on and so forth, or liquid funds, the amount of debt in portfolio should be a function of your annual expenses again. So I see some people do, you know, 20% equity, 80% debt. I think that's the wrong way to…”

“unless you are committed to doing it full time and doing it professionally, uh, uh, almost always you are setting up for giving your money to more professional people than you.”

“My default meeting time is 20 minutes and I felt whatever can be discussed in one hour can be discussed in 20 minutes.”

“I think indexing on these, um, uh, outliers is, is also very risky for entrepreneurs. In our head, the stories of Google, Facebook dominates, but in reality, what would happen is, uh, you will end up making the median, uh, B to C app or the median SAS company.”

“a lot of repeat founders, not a lot of, but some repeat founders end up Over indexing on their particular story in the first, uh, startup or first product they did. But by the time they do second, the world has changed. Uh, the expectations have changed. Everything has changed.”

“Lack of trust, and I feel also lack of clarity, where a lot of times people who micromanage, they themselves don't know what they're expecting out of a task, and, uh, they end up, um, micromanaging because they're learning what the task should be about and what they're expecting as the person is doing it.”

“as a founder, you need to do prompt engineering with your team, wherein don't let, uh, anything be ambiguous, uh, because otherwise ambiguity is where this micromanagement comes, right? Where, uh, you, if you are not clear what's to be done, how can you expect your teammates to deliver exactly what you wanted?”

“writing is, to me, it's just equivalent to thinking. So if you're not writing, you're probably not thinking enough about the problem. Because I just, working memory is limited. How many things can you keep in your head versus how many things can you keep in a Word document or a, uh, or a notebook? It's just orders of…”

“Ultimately companies end up shipping their organization chart.”

“And similarly, if you put, um, someone who's responsible for quality assurance under someone who's responsible for shipping regularly, The quality assurance will go for a nose dive, right?”

“every stage of the company, let's say you get to zero to 10 to get to 10 to 50, you need to be, uh, entrepreneurial again, because you need new sources of revenue. We need to expand the market. And then at 50 to 500, again, you need to be an entrepreneur again from 500 to five billion, you need to be an entrepreneur…”

“all things that become big eventually look like silly little things. You name a product that has become big and on the very first phases of it, it just looked like a glued together project, uh, that, uh, couldn't possibly be big.”

“Those laws do not give you a recipe to create a successful startup, but if you go against those laws, then failure is guaranteed. So being aware of these laws, I mean, I'm calling laws their mental models and principles, like in my book, you need to be aware of them because, um, if you aren't consistent with them, then…”

“if you are too attached to a project, you end up being, uh, you don't end up being objective about whether something is working or not, right? If your identity is attached with your startup and your measure, you feel that your measure of life or personal worth is attached to whether your startup will succeed or not,…”

“a best way to have a sense of self-worth is to diversify it, just like your portfolio. So that anything that doesn't go well, there are other things that, um, help you out.”

“I think evolutionally speaking, happiness is sort of like a signal that things are going well for you. So by this definition, no single thing can be a source of happiness. Because as soon as you try to over optimize it, you know, it just comes at a cost of neglecting something else. So, it just means that, that healthy…”

“I wouldn't say entrepreneurship problems or product problems are hard problems, uh, in the sense of intellectually hard, but I think they're hard in the sense of being so multidimensional. That the answer is not obvious in the first go.”

“I, I think it's not the amount of money, but it's amount of money relative to your needs.”

“I think as an entrepreneur, you have to realize that the company that you're working on is the biggest contributor to your future net worth. Because whatever else you invest in, maybe you invest in equity, you may invest in real estate. Uh, you don't have as much control on the value appreciation of those assets as you…”

“If something is fundamentally broken, if you've not figured out product market fit, if you're, you know, say, Uh, customer acquisition channels are unprofitable. Just throwing money at it is wasting money. So you have to be like a thinking like an investor first, if it makes sense to invest in the company invested, if…”

“I think investing should be the most boring thing that you should be doing. If you're trying to derive joy from investing, I think, uh, that is speculation and we should call it speculation and it's okay to speculate, but, uh, don't call it investing.”

“I think, uh, one should look at their monthly investment target and if possible, and to whatever extent possible, adjust their expenses around it. Uh, I think a lot of people do it the reverse way. They spend whatever they can and invest whatever that's left. But I feel it should be other way out because there's no…”

“the more complex something sounds, the riskier it is.”

“And I think it's not like, um, like how your friends with your school friends or college friends, I think there is a healthy mix of professional respect. So, um, so in that sense, it's a different kind of friendship than How would you hang out with, let's say, a school friend, where it's just totally about, say, let's…”