I did not know Aaron Swartz, unless you count having copies of a person's entire digital life on your forensics server as knowing him. I did once meet his father, an intelligent and dedicated man who was clearly pouring his life into defending his son. My deepest condolences go out to him and the rest of Aaron's family during what must be the hardest time of their lives.
Posted in Uncategorized
In past of couple of months, I attended quite a few industry events/meetups. Apparently the development of startup ecosystem in India has gone a long way. Bangalore remains the epicenter of Indian startups. The number of startup related groups has increased, although few remain relevant. The strength of many of these groups has increased manyfold as new entrepreneurs are born and added to the fleet.
The other major change that has happened over last year or two is on the investment side. There has been a flood of not just (so-called) early stage investment firms but also incubators and accelerators. Some of the newly born Seed/Angel funds that I have met/come across – Ventrue nursery, GSF accelerator, TLabs. Vinod Khosla seems tempted by Indian growth story and seems now mulling investments beyond the silicon valley. Khosla labs has already setup a lab in India although no word on investing in India yet but I would expect that pretty soon. One of the most promising incubators that I’m looking forward to is the Startup village, Kochi. It is quite an ambitious project with a 100,000 sq.ft. campus. Kris Gopalakrishnan is the chief mentor at the 100 crore public-private project. Microsoft started its first batch of accelerator program in India this year. Microsoft does not invest any money in companies and neither takes any equity stake. The program is medium of promoting its Azure cloud platform and other products. One of the most significant developments in investments is the entry of 500 startups in India- a US based early stage seed fund. In the first year of its existence in India, it has already invested in about whopping 10 companies. That just goes to show the promise that India holds. In one of his presenations, Paul Singh of 500 startups emphasizes just this point.
Apparently the rise of incubators and accelerators is not restricted to India but happening all over the world. Interestingly, I met several foreign nationals who have landed up in India (including Valerie of ZipDial, one of the companies which got funded by 500 startups) to setup businesses. So not just the investors but the founders too seem tremendously bullish on the scale that India offers. It just remains to be seen how best Indians themselves are able to exploit the opportunity of the homeland. On the non-IT side, Tata Elxsi has launched an incubator this year. That is a very bold move and I’d say, first of its kind in India but exactly the need of the hour.
A significant departure with respect to previous decade or so that seems to have happened is the rise of technology product companies. This is not just the result of the availability of investments and resources. This can be attributed to a whole new generation of entrepreneurs trying to replicate the success of the valley. The success of dozens of startups who have been able to build truly global product companies from India have boosted the growth. I came across several such startups and it is just phenomenal what they have been able to achieve in just over a couple of years. It would be unfair to name just a few. Although services remain a significant bulk of Indian software industry. This, in addition to the fact that many of the early stage investors including 500 startups invest only in product companies.
Although the point that is emphasized again and again is that now money is chasing the startups and its the investors who need to find and chase promising founders, the fact remains that early stage funding is no easy task especially in India. From all of this buzz, it is important to understand that it is not the investments and incubations that make this scene exciting, it the scale and opportunities. And founders would be better-off focusing on that.
I am standing at Richmond Circle watching a girl pass by. She is talking very loudly on her phone in agitated manner. Oh, I shouldn’t be staring at her, she might get scared. After all, its pitch dark and there is no one on the road… Wait a sec.. what? How did I get here? Ah.. this is a dream again. I turn back and start running to get back to wherever I was before the dream. I smiled at the thought of someone getting scared of me, although in a dream. Wait, what am I doing? I don’t have to run to get to anywhere in a dream. I just have to wish.
I am standing in an elevator. Hmm, this is a strange kind of elevator. It doesn’t have any buttons. How do I go to another floor? I do see some kind of levers, lets try one. Bang!! The lift starts falling down as if its been cut. I frantically put the lever back in place and save it from falling. Heck. I’m stumped. What is this thing? How did I get here? Think, think, think. Hmm, I vaguely remember sneaking into the building for some secret job which I finished and now I need to escape. It looks like I’m standing in the elevator duct on top of the actual elevator. So this is just another dream where I get to play Bond. Nice. I don’t need to be scared, this is just a dream. But why does it feel so real and why am I still so scared? Whatever! I just need to get out of here. Fast. Think, think, think. What’s the popular movie trick to get one out of the building which he entered secretly? Think, think, think……. 
The fire alarm goes off with a shrill ear-shattering noise and the stairways are filled with people trying to escape. Good thinking. Now what? Do I lose myself in the crowd and go along with them or try some other route? A heart-wrenching shriek fills the atmosphere all of a sudden. Every one stops dead in their tracks and start looking for the source of the voice. It seemed like a girl’s scream. Before I think about it any further, I wake up.
Phew!!! Its always such a relief to wake up from nightmares. But the scream is still echoing in my ears. Looks like the scream was real and loud enough to wake me up. I hear some voices in the distance. Shit! Did something really bad happen? Perhaps it was one of the PG girls who stay opposite to us. Oh, my roommate is also standing near me probably also awakened by the scream. “Hey, I heard a girl scream. Let’s checkout what’s happening out there.” I say to him. “Shut up and go to sleep.” “What? But I heard someone scream. Don’t you want to checkout what’s happening there in the middle of the night?”.
“I heard the scream and nothing is happening. Just go back to sleep.”
“What do you mean? Tell me what’s happening.”
“You talk in sleep. Now, you’ve started walking around in sleep. Someone must have seen you from window walking like a zombie and screamed.”
“What nonsense? I don’t talk and walk in sleep. You’re lying.”
“Then how do you think you woke up standing in the kitchen at this hour?”
I look around, surprised.
I am sleeping in my bed. I hear my roommate’s distant voice. I look around with half closed eyes and try to say something but am unable to. I need to wake up. Heck! I hate this dream-trap thing. I am unable to get out of the sleep when I really want to. My mind is in a funny state. It is fully awake but the body isn’t. The mind knows that it is trapped in a dream and making every effort to wake up the body but it seems like it is unable to regain control of the body and the body refuses to respond to the mind. Come on! Try to move your hands. Any body part. Very slowly, I start to move my hands. Not much use. With great effort I manage to get out of the bed. Better. I start moving around. What? My eyelids are so heavy that I’m unable to fully open them. I’m walking with my eyes closed! No, I am not awake yet. WTF but I’m walking around, I must be fully awake by now. No, I’m still asleep and dreaming. The mind is trying really hard to move the body, but it can’t. The force of the mind only creates a dreamy illusion of moving the body. But the mind recognizes its inability to do so and hence the sluggish movements and closed eyes.
“It’s not easy. Getting out of a dream is a skill. Didn’t you watch Inception? The whole dream within a dream within a dream thing?”, my roomie says to me. ”Bullshit! There is no such thing as a dream within a dream within a dream. This is just A dream and I’m going to wake up from it.”
“Well, how do you propose to do that?”
“I’m going to sleep.”
“But you’re already in a dream.”
“Well, what else can I do?” I lie down in my bed and try to sleep.
I wake up. Its 2:00 am. I recall that I went to sleep at 1:20 am. Gosh! what a freaky nightmare. The forty minutes seemed like eternity. There is no way I am going back to sleep tonight. Maybe I should sit and write a blog about the world’s most freaky nightmare. The funny thing is everyone will think I’m just a good fiction writer
Posted in Uncategorized
A while back, I wrote a post about Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook. I am not sure if I was able to convey my exact feelings effectively enough. There was hardly anything special about the occasion- a giant tech company buying a 2 year old startup whose single product went viral. Something that happens twice a day in the valley. Well, except for the money involved in the transaction which raised quite a few eyebrows. But I am dumbstruck that strangely this did not raise enough questions in the tech world about what we’ve come to define as “technology innovation”. Maybe because the tech-world-intelligentsia are too busy in the headless-chicken frenzy. It feels like the tech world is in a state of fast-decay.
If it seems unfair that I keep referring to Instagram, let me clarify that it is only for the sake of naming something. I can name a dozen other. Besides, Instagram set a dazzling example of the current state-of-affairs. I spend quite a lot of time every day reading tech magazines and blogs and frankly, sometimes I just feel repulsed by what I get to read.
I was drawn back to the stream of thoughts by an article I read today. It was good to see atleast one sensible person to speak my mind. Google is indeed sitting on a huge cash pile and doesn’t have much clue where it is going to invest it. And that’s true of others of the league. I’m overlooking a lot of exceptions to the theory and painting too black a picture here but the bottomline is that innovation has largely stunted. Interestingly, the conference at which Peter Theil made above comments was about discussing whether technology has improved our lives over the past 30 years.
It is disturbing to know how much the paradigms of technology innovation and being a genius inventor have changed over a few decades. I am about to finish reading a book I should have read in high school, may before that – “SURELY YOU’RE JOKING MR. FEYNMAN!”. The book has enlightened me of my dumb ideas about technology and innovation beyond words. It was refreshing to remember what true genius means and what does invention mean. The way the mind of a scientist works just blew me away. His ability to think in a peculiar way and the things that he is adept at seems to be a born-talent.
I used to feel lucky to be born in the age of information. But I think I would be rather happier if I was to be born five decades ago. There is nothing to beat if you were fortunate enough to see Einstein himself in flesh and blood. To live in the times when William Shockley invented the first transistor – the very building block on which today’s supercomputers are built. To witness Max Planck and Niels Bohr, the Gods of quantum mechanics, unravel the mysteries of atomic structure. It was Renaissance. Mark Zuckerberg is smart alright, but he’s no genuis. It doesn’t take a genius to build a facebook. You don’t need a Ph.D. in a niche subject and years of experimenting and understanding to put up a website or an app to share photos or videos or tweets.
And with this, I also realize a fact. The true genius usually aren’t really those who you hear about in news or whose photos you see in the journals. The true genius sit quietly in the dark corners of their labs/basements working hard, largely oblivious to the outside world.
When I let my mind play with the ideas of starting up, these absolute dumb things unfolding in the tech world did have their (un)desired effect on me and I tried hard to think of yet-another-stupid-app that I can launch my startup with. And who can blame ? It’s all about build-fast, get-huge-PR-fast, get-acquired-fast. Mainly the second. Real fast money. A real-world-problem to solve? Product? business model? REVENUE? Never mind that. But eventually I did come to my senses and decided not to follow just a mindless bandwagon, no matter how big is the promise of riches and how easily replicable the path. It just doesn’t make sense. I set out to make a difference, as Jobs put it -to make a dent in the universe, and that’s what I will do. I hope the tech-world and the so-called tech-giants of the world get to their senses in the earnest as well. Else very soon we will have to start giving away Noble prizes for making cool games app.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Eric Schmidt, Google, Innovation, Instagram, Peter Theil
I always wondered what was it like to quit a lucrative, much-coveted, jazzy corporate job for some moronic infatuation of following your dream and go on to become a destitute with the meekest prospects of being able to manage your basic needs in foreseeable future. Hmm Now I Know.
That’s right. I’ve quit my job (once again) and this time I’m not heading for a new one (Well, but I’m not becoming a destitute anytime soon). So what do I plan to do? Well, for starters, I’m going to savor the sweet sweet taste of freedom (It doesn’t last long, since its just an illusion). I always wondered if I could ever break out of a life whose routine was written as a set of commandments by Moses and handed over to me directly. It was like finding yourself in a place you hardly remember how you landed up into. But you don’t question such things. You’re only allowed to shrug. I think standing in the pantry several times, I imagined myself breaking the glass, jumping out of the window, running across the street, tearing my clothes apart, screaming my throat out. I’m not sure what does that psychological fantasy signify but I’m sure even that act would give immense sense of freedom….maybe later.
Meanwhile, there are some ideas rusting on my shelf, I’ve always wanted to test out so I’m gonna finally give them a shot. Give more time to myself for thinking (not that I gave less before). Indulge in lots of reading. Putting my physique in shape will finally take preference over my work.
I can attest that quitting your job to become unemployed is not something to be attempted by the faint-hearted. Many think of doing it everyday but courage fails. Compromises made, dreams rest in peace, life goes on. But a lot of factors need be in your favor before you even think of something like that. Although age is not always a barrier but your chances of doing something crazy and outlandish diminish with your age. More so when you’re earning fat paycheck, are used to a particular lifestyle and have EMI clinging on your back. You can afford to be a little more whimsical when you’re young. In India, there exists a complex correlation between your perceived social stature and your job. So it doesn’t matter if you’re doing fine working as a part of a music band, but since you don’t have a proper ‘naukri’, probably your parents consider you useless. You carry a stamp of ‘berozgar’ and no parents, in their sane minds are going to offer ‘apni beti ka haath’ to you. Ahh.. the humanity!
More often people are not confident enough of doing something on their own. I think if only, people tried to push their limits and tested themselves on the edge, they’d be surprised to find what they’re capable of. I believe if I am not confident of my capability to earn my bread, then I ought to starve. If I can’t garner the skill of making money, I ought to go broke. Let the fittest survive.
If you’re one of those who has the odds in his favor and waiting for the right time, this might help you. After all, you have only one life and you can be forgiven for wanting to do something crazy. As Isabel Allende tells, nice people with common-sense do not make interesting characters.
What I learnt from my corporate experience
My relatively small stint with the corporate world has been long enough to learn a lot about almost every aspect of how corporations work.
A few other things I’v learnt, Alex Gaynor nails in his post,-
Never be threatened: When people are threatened or scared, it affects their decision making. My solution to this has been to try to make myself unthreatenable. For example, I got through school by knowing that I was good enough at what I did that I could get a job without it, I avoid being threatened financially by saving effectively. I’ve found that this is more or less a necessary condition to being happy.
Be willing to walk away: This is probably an extension of the first one, but if you’re anything like me you make mistakes, a lot of them, with varying degrees of badness. The only way not to get bogged down by them is to be willing to walk away from them. This is not to advocate abandoning something or someone, but rather that there is no hole too deep, no sunk cost too great, to not be worth leaving.
The people are all that matter: I remember after a school trip a friend once told me that that he’d really loved where we’d been, and that he couldn’t wait to go back. And I remember telling him, “No, this place was boring as hell, but we went with our entire class, all our really good friends, of course it was awesome”. Just about everything worth doing is defined by the people you do it with, pick good ones.
The future
This is tricky. Being foolhardy doesn’t automatically guarantee success. But losers are not those who fought and lost but those who never fought for the fear of losing. I will continue to experiment. Keep throwing away things I built and start from scratch just to test that I am still capable of building something. If I had fun trying to solve interesting problems, worked with awesomest people, travelled the world and did everything I wanted to, I will consider myself successful even if I end up broke.
That was really long. Lets end this rant with one of my favourites -Raga Tilak Kamod
Posted in Uncategorized
“Hey Yo!! hows it going dude? Gee!!! don’t you ever stop playing with that….. thing of your’s??”
“Its not a THING. Its called iPhone. And No! I never stop playing with it. coz its so cool man!! But what the heck you know Mr. old-school?”
“Ya sure. So what are you doing?”
“Uploading some pics on Instagram.”
“Instant……. What?”
“You gotta be kidding me! You haven’t heard about Instagram?”
“Nope. What’s that?”
“Its this cool company man……. that’s been making so much buzz…… and everyone is talking about it……and Facebook just bought it for frigging one billion dollars maaan!!! Isn’t it cool?”
“Hmm…..I see. What do they make?”
“They don’t make anything.”
“……OK. What do they sell?”
“They don’t sell anything.”
“…..OK. So how do they make money?”
“They don’t make money.”
“……….OK………. So what do they do?”
“They don’t…… Ugggh!! Gosh, you’re so old-fashioned and soooo out of touch with the tech world !! Dude, you don’t have to sell anything to be cool.”
“……..I see…….. So what do they do?”
“Its a…….its an app. Its an iPhone app. You know, you can take pictures with your phone and then …. make them look fancy and all …. and then you share it with everyone!! Isn’t it cool?”
“Sounds like I’ve heard that somewhere before………… Sounds like I’ve heard that ten times before.”
“Isn’t it cool?”
“That, I’ve heard ten times before. What was it? A billion dollars did you say?”
“Yeah!!! Frigging awesome rit?”
“So let me get this straight……Someone just bought a ……company….app…. which lets you share photos, for a billion dollars??”
“Dude your brain is sinking down your coffee. That’s exactly what I just told you!! And its not just someone who bought it. Its FACEBOOK who bought it!!”
“Facebook? the website where you watch pretty cat pictures and funny videos, rit?”
“Its not…. Ugh… forget it!”
“and thats the latest buzz in the tech world huh?”
“Yeah!!”
“I see….For a billion dollars, I just imagined they found a cure for cancer or something……or found another inhabitable planet to make some space over here or something………or found a cheap way to convert solar power to electricity or something……”
“But you can share photos with it. Isn’t it cool?”
“I don’t know if its cool but if you say that one more time, you’ll find a strange red mark on your face which will hurt badly. Anyways, I’m thrilled to know that the most cutting edge stuff happening in tech world today is ….. sharing photos.”
“Isn’t it……Ahem. You know, you should also read their blog of how these two guys had to struggle so much to build this amazing app. You know, it took them a whole two years of slogging and a whole bunch of 13 people to build that billion dollar company.”
“The last time I heard, it took decades of slogging to build a billion dollar company. Hmm…. but I imagine it wouldn’t take decades to write a stu.. amazing … phone app. Its like a………You started playing with it again.”
“I’m searching for some cool apps at the Appstore man. Hey look, this new app warns you when you’re about to fart in public. Isn’t it cool? I’m downloading it.”
“………..I’m gonna take a leak.”
Recently, I watched a very obscure, old cult film. A weird nostalgic feeling creeped through me, although the film was from time when I was just 4. It was particularly interesting because the screenplay was written by Arundhati Roy and the 29-year-old herself had acted in the film. Also featured was a very small appearance of the yet-unborn-king, Shahrukh Khan.
I was in junior college when I first read her popular novel “The God of small things”. I think I was too young back then to understand it completely. I have not been a huge fan of Arundhati Roy. Very few are. Her controversial statements and writings have not helped her popularity either. Listening to her interviews, one might get an impression that the lady has had to face multiple crisis in her personal life, which have had such profound effect on her psychology that she finds it utterly difficult to integrate herself with the mainstream society and make her peace with the world. Maybe not in the usual sense of the term, but some might even call her “anti-social”.
Her love of the Maoists and Naxalites, her resentment of the concept of Indian democracy, her abhorrence of the middle class, even her questioning of the Anna-Hazare movement; all seem very strange and she seems to be intent on getting herself on the wrong foot on every matter.
Not that I have not sympathized with her on any of the issues in the past, but after watching the film, I think I have a better understanding of her and where is she coming from when she says all those weird things. The film was inspired by her real life experiences during her time at the Architectural College, Delhi. She portrays a typical rebel adolescent, carrying a head full of radical thoughts, ready to change the world . It is as good as actually watching her when she was in college. Reckless and bizarre, young and radical, had I met her in college 30 years back, I think I would have probably married her. Her radical thoughts then, I must confess, are not much different from the way I think now. She seemed pained and moved by the prevalent social order, horrifying economic disparities and the cost paid by a large section of the underprivileged to make a comfortable lifestyle affordable for a fortunate few.
Its easy to think radically when you’re young. But there are very few who actually pursue their ideas, try to do their bit to change the world. And those are the ones I respect and admire. After her college, Arundhati never pursued her career in architecture. She gave it up to become a writer instead. The sad part is, in my opinion, over three decades she did little to change the situation, which had touched her so much, other than writing about it. By supporting open contempt for the middle class, she only served to widen the gap between the isolated sections and the society, instead of bridging it. By rejecting the current Indian democratic system completely instead of proposing to rectify its fallacies, she has failed to answer it with any alternate political order. She has turned herself into a fanatic and extremist. A fanatic cannot see clearly because he cannot think clearly. I have not heard her say it, but I think she certainly would favor a Proletariat dictatorship given her contempt for all the bourgeoisie of the world.
The appalling conditions of the underprivileged continue to remain as they were many decades ago. So do the horrifying economic and social disparities of the country. The isolated factions are very different and delicate problem. I plan to do my bit to change the world. Transform my ideas for the better. A writer I may become. But a fanatic? Probably not.
