All posts by haikvr

Musings

I Can Run!

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This post is to brag on a mini milestone achievement – I can now complete the upcoming Whitefield Mid Night Marathon ( only the baby 4.2 Kms )!

Of the last 3 runs I have been consistently covering 4.2 kms plus.

Here are a few steps (woohoo managed to squeeze in a pun ) I took :

1. Shunned the iPod. The ear hurts after a while, the buds keep falling off, the wire keeps coming in the way – and the podcast / songs might get boring and I lose interest in running. So ditched the iPod and I can now run just with my thoughts.

2. Psyche myself on Diabetes. Genetically South Indians are programmed with this disease and shipped into the world. I sit and work 12 plus hours – almost 7 days a week. Office is just on the 1st floor. ( ahemm home is on 3rd floor but I am lazy ). Only way to beat diabetes is to exercise – no other way out.

3. Psyche myself on Personal Victory. This one is from Stephen Covey’s 7 habit book. You should first win personal victories before you can win public victories. This one statement makes me spring up from the bed and keeps me going till I reach the goal I had set – 4.2 Kms.

4. Enjoying the zone / the rhythm. It took a long time before I could find the rhythm. Now when I get over the initial few minutes of heart pounding – I start to glide – it is a beautiful feeling – and I do not notice the minutes that go by.

5. Ignore the knees will give away scare. It will be another ( hopefully ) 2 decades when my knee problem surfaces. I am betting on knee technology to improve – and there will be a magic pill very much like the Taj Mahal pill – which will rebuild the knee !

My next goal is the half marathon ( 21 Kms ) and then a full marathon ( 42 Kms ).

PS : A special thanks to @diduPublish Postknow, @nilakanta who I follow on twitter – their tweets used to make me feel guilty and now their tweets inspire me.

PSS : See Twitter is much more healthier than facebook. All I do in facebooks is view and share youtube links and talk politics. My eyes and head are getting corrupted 🙂

books

Thoughts on Goal

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Last month I was in Justbooks around the time they were closing so just picked 2 books as directed by my subconscious. Once I started reading I realised that I heard about this book  first in the 2007 Ooty Thoughtworks Awayday. Apparently the subconscious mind remembered about this book when I was going to randomly pick 2 books – amazing how neurons work
Goal was written by Dr.Eliyahu M.Goldratt as a marketing ploy to sell their software which did some scheduling. No one knows about the software – but the book became a roaring success – after rejects by 20 publishers. 
The book brings out some interesting concepts – even though it revolves around a manufacturing plant – it soon becomes apparent that the concepts can be applied against any industry or business.
What is the Goal? 
Alex is the head of a production plant. Orders are always delayed and is a loss making plant. His boss gives him 3 months to turn it around or close the plant. Alex meets his high school physics teacher who mentors him into finding the right path – and the first question he asks is – what is the Goal of your production plant.
Is it quality, productivity – no – the goal is to make money now and in the future. This very realization sets a whole chain of interesting concepts.
Herbie the fat kid 
This is a must read part of the book – they bring out the concept of bottleneck in a brilliant manner. Some 20 boy scouts go on a 8 mile trek led by Alex. As per common sense the fastest kid is put on the front of the trial – so he will set a fast pace and they can cover the distance quickly.
They stop for lunch ( mid day ) and realize that they have not covered even 2 miles of the 8 miles. At this pace it will be quite dark by the time they reach the destination.
Soon Alex finds out that Herbie – the fat kid – is in the middle of the trial and he is slowing people down behind him.  So he moves him to the end of the trial. Even this does not work and the pace does not improve.
Then he moves Herbie to the front of the line and also take some load off his back – so Herbie can walk a bit faster. Wonder of wonders – the pace improves drastically and they reach the destination on time.
The reasoning is brilliant – you go read the book – I wont spoil it for you 🙂
In any system – identifying Herbie – or the bottle neck is of utmost importance. Once identified you can either move it to the front of the chain ( will not be possible in most of the cases ), or add more resources and optimize the bottle neck.
There are lots of advantages of the bottle neck :
1. Bottleneck determines the throughput of the system
2. This helps in scheduling things around it – so the quantity and delivery time can be predicted accurately.
3. The inventory can be planned more smartly with this information – hence reducing the warehouse costs
Herbies are the weakest link, or the slowest part of the system. They determine the strength of the whole chain.
And the bottleneck will keep moving as the Herbie gets identified and gets optimized. Other Herbies will start springing up – and have to be dealt with. 
Theory of Constraints
This brings us to a brilliant deduction :
The Rate of achieving a goal is limited by atleast one constraining process.Only by increasing flow through this constraint the overall throughput can be increased.
Simple, common sense – but we totally miss this.
5 Focussing Steps  
  1. Identify the constraint (the resource or policy that prevents the organization from obtaining more of the goal)
  2. Decide how to exploit the constraint (get the most capacity out of the constrained process)
  3. Subordinate all other processes to above decision (align the whole system or organization to support the decision made above)
  4. Elevate the constraint (make other major changes needed to break the constraint.
  5. If, as a result of these steps, the constraint has moved, return to Step 1. Don’t let inertia become the constraint. 

 That is all there is – and this philosophy can be applied to any system.

Musings

BootStrapping and VCs

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Last week I attended the Nasscom Product Conclave.  Lots of take aways.

Bootstrapping

I am reading Goal now ( a dedicated post is needed for the book ) and it taught me a new life lesson. Constraints are not a bad thing – they are the best thing that can ever happen to you. A few sessions reflected this thought process and brought some clarity.
For a Bootstrapped Startup – Cashflow / Money is the constraint. It shapes the way we think and act. Every Rupee that is spent is well thought out. Wastage is out of question. No unwanted feature creeps into the product – keeping the product spiffy and on its toes. The code / server is optimized to extract every ounce of performance as infrastructure is expensive and eats into the bottomline. 
I can keep adding lot other things – I appreciate the constraint bootstrapping provides – it is actually creating the character of the future company that has started shaping up.
VCs
This brings me to the other side of the coin. I felt bad for VCs – they got bashed up in this mela. Almost every session had something or the other against VCs. Yes, VCs are bad for early stage startups which are not capital intensive. Actually money works to the detriment. 
There is a place for VCs when the Orbits have to be shifted – sadly none of the VC bashers spoke about it. This also reflects how nascent this industry still is. The startups are just starting to take off. Only a few are feeling the need for VC funding. 
Also Dr.Wadhwa gave enough statistics to prove how the VC industry is imploding in Silicon Valley. This will definitely make it harder for our startups and VCs in the near future. Perhaps the model is not right – perhaps it was not done right – we will never know.
books, startup

Viral Loop

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It has been a while since I finished reading Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg – which traces the story of Internet companies right from Netscape to Facebook and Twitter.

The book is sinking in slowly. Being in the .com business it was exciting and scary to read the history of various startups.

The book covers the journey of the following startups.

Netscape
Hotmail
Ebay
Paypal
Amazon
Hot or not
MySpace
Flickr
Bebo
Ning
Twitter
Facebook

And there is a recurring pattern in all of them

1. The founder is invariably a developer


All these are essentially Web applications – and having the founder-developer part of the nucleus is ideal . Things change at the speed of light – and the founder being at the helm can immediately sense the course corrections that are needed – and correct them himself – instead of having outsourced the core work, or giving instructions to a team of techies and waiting for them to create magic.

3 Cheers to Developers – we are the makers of the world!

Free Tip Warning 🙂 :  If you are a developer and evaluating whether to take a Project Management position – turn it down if you have startup aspirations – instead  focus on becoming a better developer – some day you can run your own startup.

2. Scaling


Finding the right idea is not enough; finding customers to come to your site is not enough – the site has to scale. This is the single biggest problem faced by all of the above startups. This is a good problem to have – and you should be happy when scaling pains hit you.

It is a tough decision. Should you spend enough resources and build a complex architecture that can scale  VS build your product as fast as possible and handle scaling when the time comes.  Honestly I do not know the answer. There are pros and cons for both.

The universal answer “Depends” is, as always, the right answer 🙂

3. Viral co-efficient


And they have formed a mathematical equation to explain the Viral phenomenon – why some ideas spread like wild fire. The magic is in the viral co-efficient. As long as it is above a certain number the idea will succeed. This is what Malcolm Gladwell calls it as the Tipping Point.

The book is full of interesting anecdotes. Ebay bought Bill Point and tried to kill Paypal ( which refused to be bought out by Ebay ). In order to promote Bill Point, Ebay made its banner big, had a easy sign up process. Whereas for Paypal – Ebay had a 2 step signup – and made Paypal’s banner smaller and towards the bottom of the page. The community revolted and brought back Paypal.

Once an idea catches up – the community will make sure it stays on the right track.

On the downside – this book glorifies Ning. Perhaps it was written before the downward spiral started for Ning.

Ning had rounds of funding ( Mr.Sharad Sharma joked in one of his speeches that Ning has got more funding than what it took Chandrayaan to be sent to the moon  ) – and still Ning is struggling. They recently turned off their free communities and made the entire site a paid one. As an idea Ning is great – but as a business model – they could not sustain. It will be interesting to watch if Ning can turn things around.

We are exactly in the middle of a huge flux. So many questions are yet to  be answered :

What is a successful business model for a Web product?
Is Freemium the right model?
Is Banner Ad-Revenue sustainable in the long run?
Is 37 signals / DHH philosophy the right one for a Web Startup?

Perhaps a few years down the lane we will know better. Till then let us keep guessing and keep updating our status and tweeting inane things!

android, apple, galaxy s

Breaking the Reality Distortion Field!

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I did it !

I broke the Reality distortion field cobweb of Steveji and joined the Android Brigade! It has been more than a week since I bought my first smart phone – a Samsung Galaxy S ( on the left – yes it does look very iPhoneish ) and it is Enthiranistic ( hehe 🙂 )

It was a tectonic mind shift for me. I love Apple products – my first laptop was an iBook. Then I bought iMac, iPods. When the 1st gen iPhone came I wanted it badly – but as a rule I never buy 1st Gen Apple products ( can’t afford the Apple Tax ).

Recently I decided ( the power above approved rather 🙂 ) to go for a smartphone and my obvious choice was an iPhone. Despite the attenagate I wanted to buy the iPhone 4. However I started reading more and more on the iPhone vs Android wars and found how closed Apple had become.

In the iconic 1984 Super Bowl Ad when Apple introduced PCs to the IBM masses – a lady with a hammer hurls it on the Big (Blue) Brother who preaches :
“Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.”

How ironic. You can now replace the Big Brother with Steve Jobs and the words still apply. You might own the hardware, but you cannot install any applications that you want to. You cannot hack your machine –  you will void the warranty. Want to transfer files – you have to do it with iTunes and nothing else.

And more importantly – Apple for some reason – hates India. The iPhone4 release date could as well be in 2011. iPhone 3 got released exactly after a year it got released in USA. Also Apple’s prices are illogically high in India.

Anyway – here are the things I liked on the Galaxy.

Swype – I am as fast as the Chinese Teenage kids when it comes to texting now.

Google Apps Integration – Whenever I want to add a contact and if I am near a computer, I add it in my Google Contacts – and it magically appears on the phone.

No Brainer Syncing – Since I am on linux I do not have iTunes -in fact my iPod is yet to be updated with Enthiran songs. However with Galaxy S I just dragged and droped the media files.

Internet Tethering – Worked out of the box – on Ubuntu. I did not expect that.

I am not sure how this phone pits against the Retina Display of iPhone. And this phone does not have a flash – which is a bummer.

One parting advice for Steve Jobs – just let it go. You have the best product in the universe. Why create gates and windows?

startup

Release elsewhere vs Release in a Startup

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In August we had 4 Major Releases and 8 Minor releases. I was  thinking how the Releases were in my previous life ( few in a year ) and how it is now ( few in a month ).

Things are much more demanding in a startup – the developer’s job is not done by just pushing things to Prod and making sure things are fine. He has to do lot of follow up work. Looks like lot of fun isn’t it! 🙂

philosophy

The One vs The Many Heroes

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I started reading a Sci Fi novel – Dune by Frank Herbert. I have not even crossed 30 pages and already the characters in the book are analyzing if the hero ( a kid as of now ) is the one? It kind of put me off a bit..but I will persist with the book. Curious to know if he is the one 😉

Coming from an eastern civilization where there is really no “one hero” it does sound a bit funny initially. There are 1+ million Gods, in Mahabharata there are 5 heros, and there is a hero who is part of the dark side too ( Karna ), in Ramayana actually the bad guy is projected to be on the good side ( Rama – who else.. haha 😉 he plots the downfall of one of the monkey kings, suspects poor Deepika…better known as Sita and burns her etc. ).

Switch to the Western world – there is Matrix. After snazzy graphics, exploding cars and trucks, and 3 parts – it is determined that Neo is the One. In Lord of the rings the ring chooses a sad looking Elijah Woods as the One. In the latest movie too, Avatar, there is some legend among the Pandorites and our hero happens to be – not surprisingly – the One.

Its fun – being part of both worlds. I grew up fascinated with the Mahabaratha, and Ramayana – it  helped me identify shades of grey in the world, and that there is not one, but many heroes – and they are on both sides.

Then Hollywood movies and American politics showed how things are really not as complicated as we Easterners think – but it is quite simple – as either a red or blue pill/vote and how there can be “the One”.

I can sense there is something deep here – but I am a superficial blogger so I won’t bother digging deep. Like the Inception ending, I will let you draw your own conclusions on what impresses you the most – The One vs Many heroes concept.
common cold

Cure for the Common Cold

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“If you take medicine the cold will go away in 7 days, if you do not it will go away in 1 week” – My 12th Std Biology teacher. That was the only time I smiled in his class, rest of the time I would be sleeping or keeping myself awake dreaming of college just a few months away and how liberating it would be.

Anyway this post is about my cold. It always hits me when I least want ( as if anyone will want to get cold ). A big release, an important interview, a vacation, a family get together – it is always there to give me company.  I have tinnitus ( like everyone’s hero Guy Kawasaki ) and it gets worse during cold – meaning – 1.5 of my hearing will be out of service for this period.

I have tried all things. Pranayama, Running, Walking, Japanese shower, Orange juice, Nuts, Fruits, quit smoking ( even though I don’t smoke 😉 ) – and also doing none of these – still the cold gives me a visit without fail. I have been fighting this battle since my earliest memory – still no respite.

I have decided what legacy I want to leave behind to this world. You would have guessed it by now. I will create this wonder drug. I have even named it : HAWT ( hawt always work terrifically – recursive name 😉 ). However it will not fight cold – it is useless to fight cold. It is like writing a software to replace Excel.

Instead, HAWT will fight all the symptoms cold brings – headache, loss of apetite, stuffy nose, runny nose, itchy nose, mild cough, dry cough, teary eyes, sore throat, mild fever. HAWT is designed to do precisely drugs are not supposed to do : that is to just take care of the symptom.

So where do I download cold APIs – want to start working on my legacy.

philosophy

IQ, EQ, CQ, PQ

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After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book – Outliers – I have started looking at things with a different perspective. Here is my hypothesis on the elements that can make one successful in life. 
IQ
Whenever we see someone who has “arrived in life” we presume they have a high IQ – but this is not the only criteria. Having cart loads of IQ is good to have, but it does not guarantee success if the below 3 are not present in good measure
EQ 
Emotional Quotient :  The person who laughs at the face of danger; the one who lost badly but has the courage to try once again, or take a different path; the go-to guy at work when the experts give up and report sick on crisis situations; this is the guy every project manager wants in his team. EQ is a must have – not just a good to have. 
CQ
Creative Quotient :  The guys with a high CQ spruce up dull meetings; their emails are all a joy to read; their stand-up updates are fun – and the team tries hard to match him – and the whole team bonds & has fun day in and day out. When our man does not turn up for work – the project feels like a funeral home ( ok I am over stretching a bit here 🙂 ) – but I guess you get the picture.

PQ

Political Quotient : Bite your lower lip & accept the fact – you have to play the game ( there is a better term for this – hehe). In large organizations – PQ determines if you get a cubicle near the window or a seat next to your boss’s boss – it is a hard life and it gets harder for the ones with zero PQ.

In startups politics is non existent – who has time for such games anyway – however having a good PQ is essential for customer relationship management – and also to see the team through during some tough times.

In summary – the schooling taught and measured our IQ – post schooling – the real world expects EQ, CQ & PQ – in some combination or the other – and this will decide how far one can go in life.

Success = a(IQ) + b(EQ) + c(CQ) + d(PQ)

And the above formula is open sourced under GPL – use it freely, improve the a, b, c & ds  and enjoy sweet success. You are welcome 🙂

[Img courtesy : http://malefis.u-strasbg.fr/site/images/homer-brain.jpg ]