We launched the private beta of our new product today at 12:43 pm. It’s a great feeling. I can’t disclose much right now since the product is still under wraps. We’ve invited a select number of users to test-drive it.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m so excited !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The IHT of March 5 published a really interesting article titled ‘How to grow a super athlete’. Questioning why Russia produces so many world class women tennis players and South Korea women golfers, the article combined anecdotes, a field visit to a top tennis academy in Russia and neuro-biological research.
The result: a combination of nature and nurture. Top athletes tend to have more myelin in their brains and they are also amazingly hard workers.
The article is worth a reading by anyone interested in what it takes to succeed, whether in sports or at the workplace. I can’t change the amount of myelin I was born with, but I can certainly work harder. This isn’t a blanket call to work harder though. All of us need to first find what we love to do, and then work really really hard at it.
I’ve uploaded the article on my webhost. It can be downloaded here.
Dick Costolo, the founder of Feedburner, has a great post on starting a company. Notably, he says:
The key is to just get on the bike, and the key to getting on the bike is not the confidence in knowing you will be successful if you do x,y,z. The key to getting on the bike is to stop thinking about “there are a bunch of reasons i might fall off” and just hop on and peddle the damned thing. You can pick up a map, a tire pump, and better footwear along the way.
It’s a validation of what an instinctive, gut-feeling driven entrepreneur like me feels about running a business. Business plans and market research only takes you so far. What takes you all the way is perseverance, nimbleness and bottle or two of Captain Morgan’s rum. I hope I’m not wrong.
Personally I find TOI to be the crappiest of India’s major english newspapers. Incidently, TOI has the largest circulation of all english dailies which is not too surprising — increasingly, in all aspects of media, there is a correlation between more scale and dumbing down of the audience.
So, for once, I was even more surprised to find a thoughtful editorial in TOI. It’s a theme that I agree with — we, in India, think the world of ourselves, whether it be our aspiring superpower status or technologocal achievements or culture. We love in indulge in self-congratulations.
The fact is that India, the country, is a piece of crap. The country is creaking, chaotic and people here take the act of survival of the self in the worst possible way by thinking that they can get ahead only by pushing back someone else. The win-win mentality doesn’t exist here.
Don’t take me for an India-hater. I’m Indian, and after living abroad for many years, I’m back here because I’m excited about working here and exploring new opportunities. But the smugness of people and the media here drives me nuts.
Back to the TOI article, while the Indian media is gloating over being “the fastest growing telecom market in the world,” the article says:
‘ While India grapples with 2G, dropping quality standards, calling 256 Kb/second speed as broadband and 3G Spectrum, the world has moved on. In UK, British Telecom is already offering 8 Mb/second speeds to household users. More importantly, closer home, China has tested its own 4G technology for mobile telephones.
Strangely the Indian media and everybody else took just a cursory note of the Chinese announcement, for the China story is the real story in the long run. ‘
This article is worth reading. It’s not just another one of those statistical comparsion articles but provides a thoughtful critique of Indian bombast.
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