Archive for the ‘startup lifestyle’ Category

Play button: One of the tricks to keep up with 183 down days in a startup year

Saturday, October 13th, 2012

The moment I step out of home, I’m cheerful, espousing enthusiasm and all those positive things. However, it wasn’t like that 30 minutes ago.

Usually, the day breaks pretty normal with cosmic energy being diffused from nature to the body. And then, within an hour of catching up on e-mail, skype and reflecting on the past days events around people, product and customers, it starts getting mellow. Inching, as the breakfast comes to the table, the mood has already nose-dived. It happens a good 50% of the days in a year! The dark side of running a startup, we don’t talk publicly–uncelebrated and gory.

Then the play button brings the mojo back!

I fire up one of the 50-60 action movies on the media player while eating breakfast. Bodhi, Bond, Beatrix / Bride, Bruce, Bourne, etc. maiming, killing, chasing, speed-racing and drawing blood in full 5.1 pumps up the testosterone and kicks the day to a cheerful start.

Here are some of the movies in no particular order. Most of them never get watched completely. They are left at a mark and get picked up again in future on some random day.

  1. Bourne Trilogy
  2. T1 & T2
  3. Star Wars (Some scenes are amazing in 5.1)
  4. Matrix (and Reloaded, Reloaded’s car chase is amazing!)
  5. Fight Club (I still watch it, comparably less action, though)
  6. Die Hard (All four of them)
  7. Lethal Weapon (1, 2 and 3)
  8. MI (1 & 2)
  9. Danny Craig as James Bond (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace)
  10. Taken
  11. 300
  12. Arnold (Commando, True Lies)
  13. Kill Bill (yeah Beatrix baby!)
  14. John Rambo (They are all good)
  15. Iron Man
  16. Under Siege
  17. Bruce Lee (Dragon, Game of Death)
  18. Indiana Jones (original Trilogy)
  19. The Mummy (1 & 2) — Thrillers based on archaeology / ancient era are fab!
  20. Con Air
  21. Ronin
  22. … and more!

Agent Smith in Matrix Reloaded:

FUCK, JUST SHOOT THAT FUCKER AND DRIVE HOT POCKETS DOWN THE ROAD, DAMNIT, IT’S PARTY TIME

Enjoy a clip from the car chase from Matrix Reloaded (I remember the days when it was being shot 30 miles from where I lived).

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Giving & Taking, it’s difficult to do in parallel

Monday, September 10th, 2012

Mukund writes a great post on why “giving” and “taking” has to run in parallel. One cannot wait to be “made” before starting to give back to the entrepreneurs who are seeking gyaan.

However, I think it’s very difficult to do both, if you are busy “taking”. A startup entrepreneur’s success / failure depends on external variables where he has zero control. He is a “taker” of things material and intangibles in a continuous repositioning of risk trajectories. He continuously requests connections from people, seeks advise on scaling, chases people for funds, etc.

As an entrepreneur, you are busy building and hence busy taking — it becomes impossible to “give” back. I have been guilty of not giving back (whatever little) in the last 18 months. I outright deny entrepreneurs that I’d be able to help them, barring 10-15 minutes of a random hallway conversation. There is so much volatility in my own personal space, that the frame of excitement takes some amount of swap-time before beginning to share.

I have been AWOL from my own duties. I have failed to show up on scheduled skype chats with entrepreneurs. It’s difficult to do both, when I continuously seek out “givers” to help me out.

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