I am hoping to make this a weekly affair, curate and links to content that i have enjoyed consuming. I am going to try and have themes – entrepreneurs, development, education, movies, and the rest.  It also means a certain kind of discipline to write (and to read) 😀

Warning : IT will be random. But, so are my interests 🙂 Also, some of this may be older content, and i have just come across it.

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This week, in my travels and trawls through the digital space, these are the most interesting things i read on businesses, entrepreneurship and start ups.

• The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2015 – a fabulously well researched and insightful piece from First Round. Each of the 30 pieces of advice is worth its’ weight in gold. The one’s that stood out for me :
  • Practice radical candor. or how to be blunt, at times brutal, without being an obnoxious piece of shit. I have seen a lot of the latter. I have tried, always, to practice the former.  It also works best when you are adept at giving praise when praise is due. The stand out line : “”I would argue that criticizing your employees when Let go of efficiency to accelerate your company.they screw up is not just your job, it’s actually your moral obligation.””
  • Give Away your Legos : you always need to be able to give up control of parts of what you are doing, to other people. And, remember all the time, they are not your clones. They are going to do things differently. You need to look at it being freed up to do new(er) things.
  • Replace Policies with Principles : Again, so required. There is a fundamental glue that binds organisations. That glue is trust. If you don’t trust people, you set your self up for failure. You can’t deliver, if you have created systems to cope with distrust. Plus, you are going to spend valuable time doing the most idiotic paperwork.
  • Let go of efficiency to accelerate your company. This is a scary one. And, the key here is, when efficiency tanks, don’t panic 🙂
  • Keep your company small while still scaling your product. I see so many new companies burn money on wasteful, and bloated hires. The laws of physics hold in business too – the greater the mass, the greater the intertia.
  • Land your “Tent Pole People.”- who are the people who will attract other talent, and stakeholders. Vital. Yup, and look at point two again, while you are at it.
• Should you look for funding, and what will it cost you – good article to read. Most of start up because we want to work for ourselves. Investors will come in with strings attached (lots of strings). Do not expect a fairy god mother to give you money, and disappear from your life, while you grow your business, your way.
• Who should get what share of the business – most of the time we all go with, let us see later, or how does it matter. HBR has a good piece on why this must be crystal clear upfront. You shouldn’t fall out with friends and co-founders, on something as basic as this. in both my first set of ventures, and the current ones – this is clarified right upfront. You discuss, debate and close this. Don’t let this come and bite you when you least expect it.

(small trader, #Mumbai, Vileparle. More of my photographs here.)