I’m currently taking the Start-Up school course. It’s not a huge time commitment, because it’s efficient. The instructors are successful founders who teach the essentials without any fluff.  One particular nugget that intrigued me during this course so far is doing things that don’t scale. For example, in the early days, the Airbnb team would […]

Great leaders see the future and then make a plan to take advantage of the incoming change. For example, Ford successfully implemented assembly lines and Apple tablets. Behind these achievements were leaders who didn’t waiver, took the insults, and allowed their results to speak for themselves. Ironically enough, I remember reading an article mocking the […]

We are all seeing way too much division these days. Take something as simple as news. I can’t just read what happened. First, I have to pick whether I want to get news from a liberal or conservative lens, for example, CNN or Fox News, and then I get corresponding facts. The vantage points rarely overlap […]

As my birthday approached this year, I had a conversation with my wife, which made me realize that I used to dread my birthdays. Why? I felt the pressure to show myself that with each increasing year on this planet, I had an increase in status to prove I’m on the right track. So, for […]

Most of us learn to compete at a very young age. Sports, school, clubs, to name a few. While some healthy competition is a great teacher, too much makes us go into the rivalry mode by default. I’ve been guilty. For example, sometimes I would say things not to advance the conversation but to show […]

We have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option. In fact, in the book I’m reading, “Nudge” writes about how whatever the default choices are, many people stick with them. How can we harness this power for good? Interestingly enough, what comes to my mind is Toastmasters. For those […]

Our minds need a target. For when we don’t have a target, we aim mindlessly. Quite literally. Let me give you an example. An airport had a problem with men peeing too much on the floor and not enough into a urinal. The authorities made a correct assumption that the mess wasn’t intentional and a […]

This week I dropped out of the Founder’s Institue program, and I wanted to take a bit of time to digest the lessons learned. First of all, the program was great, but it was also very fast-paced. I have a good idea, but my heart wasn’t ready to go into execution mode. At least not […]

The other day I was scrolling through LinkedIn, and I came across an HBR article that talked about how people who accomplished the extraordinary did it by seeing opportunities everyone else misses regularly. A good example is a guy who invented the Velcro. Instead of just shaking off the burrs that stuck to his clothing, he […]

As part of the Founder’s Institute, I’m learning to get feedback. I knew that you want to know ahead of time if the customer wants to buy your product, but I missed the importance of understanding the problem you’re solving. Sometimes you think you know the problem, but is it the main problem? Is it […]