ugichapla

I mean that s**t. You may or may not! For me it has been a roller coaster ride. Cash burn is a real thing and with time it is growing! Cash burn and runway are the two terms that largely determine the viability of a startup based on the cash flow it has to sustain the business.

That thing applies to an individual too. The more cushion you have for money, more ambitious you become with time. The ambition can be to go indie, to fetch more materialistic pleasure, to get more higher paying job, to find a partner and what not (You can name a few).

But with ambitions comes risk and I feel it is better to be somewhat fearful of present!

All my corporate work experiences have come with a tinge of bull*** work involved. This post is a tale of all the bull**** that I have done, going all out on this. The post has low distribution, hence this ordeal!

The first company that I landed in, was a vendor based job. The work culture was meant to be toxic by the book. We were not allowed to take smartphones inside the premises because there was reportedly and incident ice ages back when a third party employee fetched the data using the USB cable through the desktops.

WE used to use those button operated phone and smartphones were to be deposited with a token in exchange. There was a security guard apart from the receptionist employed for it at the office. The overheads were kept high for keeping that sh** in order!!

Worked there for one year and one month and thankfully, I am saying thankfully I lost that job during covid. I was unemployed for 11 months and that was highest amount of mental peace, productivities and learning curves that I went through.

Then I joined as an associate editor for a trade media company, in which my work was focused on converting technical information for military vehicles – army, navy and air force. It was a niche content writing and organizing job. Loved the process oriented work there but the reviewer who reviewed the work was most nagging one! I too made grammar mistakes and all at times, but he was, I don’t know, felt bitter! I like discussing people at times, because at times I want to be a shallow person!!

Between this job and the next one I applied for came a major twist, a revelation, that paved the way for the famous Naval anecdote -

you put me in a hitherto place with an internet and ask me to reach from 0 to 1, I can do it now!!

That turning point was when I wrote a marketing based article for a startup called Wint Wealth and published it on Substack. Just after that, I posted the link to it on Twitter and tagged the founders and the product page in it! And I asked for a job to them! Yes I did. Niralajjam sada sukhi!

To my utter and happy surprise, one of the founders wrote below the thread, DM’ming you and that gave me a different confidence altogether!! But again, my mediocrity and greed took over and I tried to get another offer from another company because wanted something around Pune (don’t love that place much, honestly). Got some hike and a job there and doing it for 10 months now.

Came across to interact with the coolest manager, get to sell myself high, the work was more than mediocre, the job was of a shadow asset, worked there remotely, currently serving notice period. The danger of job losses is glooming and I am trying to change a job in that market, fingers crossed! Parr I am also trying hard to build distribution by virtue of content! That is what I am trying to build across platforms.

That is my happy space, money is another. There is nothing like work satisfaction that exists in a day job, just that you and your parents at mental peace in between those moments. if you are able to do what you want to do on days apart from weekend along with your day job, then you are happy for sure!!

Keep working, hustle or not, your choice!!

Cheers

Abhishek

The title is a bit confusing one right? Here’s what it is. Yesterday was scrolling through Instagram as most millennials and whatever Gen-Z are going through. (I’m former, by the definition that I believe I know.)

I came across a creator who ranted in her story about casting directors asking about the followers the audition goers have on instagram as a filter for getting an entry in to the audition. Yep, that was not that hard to read for me as a third party. But to imagine that pain that one goes through to reach all the way to a hitherto place in Mumbai and then hop onto the day that controls you in a city like Mumbai is very tiresome to imagine to begin with.

if you low key check the SEOs on the most blog content websites most content recommendations have some kind of number winning in it. For example follow this strategy using which I gained 17,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Every fourth comment on a verified account handle’s post is of some 1000s of followers at some hundreds of rupees and this is becoming more and more rampant with time. That day is imminent when Instagram will have high redundancy (both in colloquial and engineering terms) and AI will control content plunging on the platform.

Most Indian content on demand platforms have a tremendous recommendation engine that these Instagram like US based platforms don’t. Some day the creators will understand the value of those systems. Until then let me know your follower count on the public account!!

Cheers.

We family members celebrated my brother's birthday yesterday at a nearby dine in. The food was good. Vibe was good. These moments are to be treasured. I try to keep them in my deepest pockets of my heart and mind, two copies! Also next week marks the last week at my native. I have been doing remote work since past few years!! 🧗

I never participate in “what should be your workplace like?!” debates👀.

The food was good. Tomato soup is the default soup that we prefer, because it is good appetizer at that place. Also some folks would disagree with soup 🍲 being an appetizer.

Follow me on Twitter anyways!!

The starter we ordered is called Dum ka tikka.

Dad loves dum ka tikka!!

It is basically Paneer, marinated in signature tikka masala and put in a handi. The handi is wrapped with tandoori roti's dough. This arrangement is put in a tandoor so that the paneer and the tandoor roti both get cooked. The tandoor roti getting fulaoed might be a marker that paneer has gotten cooked too!! See, I love food, yet I'm a socialist at food!!

My brother too is a socialist at food. He loves food, everybody does actually, but not that cheesy and choosy way!!

He left for Pune yesterday on 25th November for his work obligations. There's a lot of debate 💬 around about it, which I want to touch on emotional front only.

Deep down my heart, I would seldom want to leave my native. Now after a lot of self analysis a.k.a overthinking, I have finally come to a wild conclusion. Most of us, belonging to lower middle class families rely highly on brain 🧠 and its power is oversimplified to us. This complicates things further.

One big takeaway that I took from my first job in 2019 was doing a day job is not the end goal, you are doing it just to keep that chool on the gas in the kitchen burning.

Rest of it is just figuring out until life happens!🐧

There is this guy called Manu Joseph. Saw his appearance on a podcast for his new web series called Decoupled. His political ideology is not what most people would like. Nobody should like it actually. Even I don't like anybody's political ideology. Everybody's political ideology should be like their DNA. Atleast a slight mismatch.

But this guy has an opinion about the economic class and class barriers that exist in economic highest and just below the highest-ones and how those are counterintuitive.

He had a pod with two different people. One is a terrific 24 yo Faridabad guy called Vinamre Kasana and other is with a 32+ yo Kunal Kamra. Both are equally appaling and interesting at the same time. He talks about open receipt and giveaway of malice and praises and what not. If you type in their names you'd get the episodes.

He was once a contemporary journalist belonging to Barkha Dutt's time, when she just got the fame, in her career at NDTV era. I'm stating this with excess confidence which he should dissapprove with same force! He writes those liberal, outwardly frantic nonfiction and virtually fictional novels.

I don't know why I wrote this here. Maybe I'll delete this first thing in the morning tomorrow and move to my blog. Till then, let this be here. (Yep I moved this here from a Facebook post I wrote in the night!)

#ugichapla #ManuJoseph #Decoupled

I get that false sense of productivity when I keep listening to podcasts. Human brain if coaxed once to do things that copybooks say are productive, that activity becomes immensely addictive.

There are only the counter-productive statements IN the discussion that may inspire you to get out of that addiction. Listening to podcasts is always goood, I'd stick to that.

With this schitload of prelude, I listened to a 🦄 startup guy speaking to a prim and proper millenial YT influencer talking about the retail petroleum prices.

He believes that the stress should be on increasing the per capita income and not hue and cry about subsidised refined petroleum oil prices. Governance is a wholesome schitz. It has its labyrinth.

What my frugal brain didn't comprehend was in a country where most startups are becoming unicorns out of external funding and are still in debt, where the job losses were on tremendous rise in CoVid period, bare minimum is what most countrymen are expecting, dumbing down rising retail prices and emphasizing on something infinitely long term as per capita income was truly startling for me. I am someone who is trying to find a product market fit, with me being the product!!

Are you??

I know, I know, I know!! I am getting intoxicated by Ben Horowitz!! And I am happy that I discovered him, thanks to the internet!

We always want to be liked, liked by the people around us! In order to do that the simple way is to say things that these people would love to hear!

Simple, isn’t it? In long run these things fail to stand out! Time is an infinite entity and it, often than not demands authenticity.

In order to do that and to be a leader in true sense we must take our time to manifest things that WE believe in. These things are to be manifested first and propounded next! Many a times the people who would cheer for you when you say likeable things would not be happier when you say these things. They may advise you to go for a safer alternative! These values that initially feel foolish combined with conviction may give long term value!

Ben explained a catch in these ideas. That catch is ‘uniqueness’. Everyone can have ideas. There is high chance that two or more people can have the same ideas. No idea is less capable. The idea that is unique, with future potential, that one which is first in line, gets the most traction by investors.

With all this in backdrop I will be dropping one more blog on this tagline because I loved it personally. We would be discussing why Ben says not to follow passion and what is the other side to this, what is the solution to ‘not following passion’?

#ComicRant #1

Hey there!

How are you all? I hope you have been reading what I scribble here for some time. Hope you're in good health. I don't know what exactly is happening around my being. Hence posting this rant.

Sometimes do you feel concerned about future and letting in people/habits in a space that is endearing to you/that has been endearing to you?

I have been heavily against gym and activities that go in there. Things that go around there are completely worrisome for me. I'm a guy who wants to lose weight but at lesser or no capital cost. And I know that is doable.

Mind is playing crooked games with me. Hence I needed to resort to this bad capitalist space called the gym. Feeling like I've lost the self inspiration I had for longest amount of time to wake up at 6.30 am. (Not that hard, aye!)

These thoughts are just a day after joining the gym. I know I'm a cynical p***k.

But I couldn't resist. I used to exercise at home and my parents are of course worried about me being grossly obese/overweight with a high potential of carrying allied diseases.

But I'm trying. The biggest downside of these crooked thoughts is food based depression. This is a tailor made term by me😂. It simply means I eat a lot when I get stressed. I get stressed for things that are out of my control. And I eat a lot of sugary/sweet foods that I want to overcome, just those thoughts badly.

I have succumbed to this bad capitalism activity just for the heck of it.

I don't know how many days this will go on. Trying to keep the wheels moving for days I could do it.

Wish me luck. Consider this my daily diary entries in public!!

#100DaysToOffload #ugichapla #DepressedEating

Hey there!!

I don’t know how many parts of Ben’s invaluable words would come in future the form these blog posts. There are many things that I am afraid that I’ll miss even if I cover most of them!

Please do subscribe to our daily updates by punching it your email!

Now getting onto the point,

It is easy to teach an innovator to be a CEO than a CEO to be an innovator. That, in other words, means it is good to have ‘always a student’ approach while learning new things.

The most undervalued part is the network. If a founder finds a ready network in a VC firm he/she is hugely psyched to get onboard. A readily available network implies ready pool of users and ready marketing!

Ben mentions in brief about his journey running the VC fund. They started up in 2009 with a pool of $300 million and as of 2014 they were $4.7 billion in capital pool, as of today they would be more solid in terms of numbers.

What I believe is, more than the numbers the underlying values and aims that an individual has stood upon to reach a particular upward milestone.

If you found this post of value, do subscribe to our newsletter. Cheers.

If you wish to give a read to the first part, please click/tap here.

The title is a powerful phrase, I would urge you to re-read it. It is effective in every context of the work that we do and the play that we love to do.

For example,

Being creative outside your day job,

Being creative outside your company,

Being creative outside your startup for that matter!

Being creative outside your VC fund!

Being creative while starting something of one’s own, i.e., being one’s own CEO, has two attributes when it comes to making decisions.

Andy Grove has a great book called “Only The Paranoids Survive“.

Ben mentions about the book by Andy Grove called “Only the Paranoids Survive“. The book mentions about the decisions that Andy took while converting ‘Intel‘ from memory business to CPU business.

Ben sums up those decisions as ‘war-time’ decisions. The other counterpart of these decisions is called the ‘peace-time’ decisions.

#ugichapla #100DaysToOffload #VentureCapital #BenHorowitz #a16z

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The title of the blog is the title of an interview of Ben Horowitz in conversation with Professor Tom Byers.

When you come out of school, you know some things but there are a whole lot of things you don’t know.

The opening of the talk is with an interesting management skill called the people’s skills. Most technical skills are highly appreciated if one has them. That what may go highly underestimated is the art to manage people.

What people’s skills means exactly beyond delegation of work is knowing what other people who are working with you/want to work with you. This knowledge about the people is in terms of knowing what their motivations are.

This analysis is equally important for the people with whom you are talking to and also whom you are not talking to.

On asking about the nitty-gritties, Ben has mentioned in his best seller book The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Tom asked a question about what made him write the book?

Ben replied with an interesting answer. Most management books are written with here’s how cannot screw your company. The real solution lies in knowing what to do post the screw up.

Most management related books are for peace time CEOs

Most venture capitalists tell the CEOs a secret sauce of hiring the A-players/employees which in reality may not be a secret.

If you like this short burst of knowledge and feel like I have added some value to your read, do subscribe to my newsletter by typing in your email below.

Thanks!

#ugichapla #100DaysToOffload #BenHorowitz