A few of us were discussing startups, and the point/purpose of a designation arose, and what it actually meant in a startup. So far in life I have been a Founder, Co-founder, CEO, CTO, Vice president, Chief product Officer, Chief of Business Strategy,Executive Vice president, Director, Founding member, Advisor, Board Advisor, and a few other […]

Motley fool did a write up on Rediff. The interesting items to me were Users – 53.6 million Revenues: $30MM annually ARPU annual : 0.56 cents. 10 advertisers accounted for 55% of revenues. Maybe all revenues were not advertising related. If say Rediff has 10% ( wild guess) of all online ad media spend then […]

This post builds on the Dhando Investor post which with 20 comments was getting a bit cumbersome. Deepak Nadiger made an interesting comment and I wanted to respond and decided to do it with a fresh post. The hurdle rate discussion is an opportunity to be innovative and delight customers. In the businesses I have […]

I just finished reading “The Dhandho Investor” by Mohnish Pabrai ( the man behind Dakshana). I enjoyed it and it stimulated some new thinking. I also looked at my investing in India over the last two years. On a portfolio with 85% exposure to equities I managed a 45% CAGR(cumulative annual growth rate). I guess […]

I was impressed with what I saw at an Amity school in Noida. In the Maths area there were some excellent and fun brain teasers and puzzles put together by the teachers and kids quite a few of which stumped a “late 40 to early fifties ” bunch of IIT folks ( I was one […]

This is a pet theory of mine and I happily acknowledge it could be wrong. A difference I noticed in how I was raised and how I think kids in USA are raised was that for me it was always ” If you do not do xyz then pqr will happen” Xyz was like drinking […]

On Friday, 27 April 2007 5 PM, I will be conducting a small tour of interesting places to go and things to do in the virtual world of Second Life, for anyone who is interested. In case you are a member, please IM me and I’ll send you a TP link. To those who have […]

Just saw this article from Avnish, Matrix Partners. Avnish, I know you are around somewhere on venturewoods, so please do participate in this friendly discussion! A followup would be unnecessary if I agreed with this statement. However, I must say that I myself do believe that the “kids hanging out” variety of social networks are […]

The site is up. Still a work in progress. It is nice that atleast for some people if they have the merit means will not be a problem. The idea of having a lifelong relationship with scholars is also interesting and may induce some of them to give back. anyone with ideas/suggestions please contact the […]

Kota has established itself as a center of excellence for IIT coaching. Students after class X spend two years in Kota which costs them around 2.5 lacs. I met a value investor from the US , yesterday who has done very well and has set up a foundation in India so that students who do […]

In the US the point of inflexion with the internet was probably 1998/1999 and a lot of the big money was made in the 1998 – 2002 period. Prior to 1998 there were many attempts that were slow to take off. China the inflexion point was probably later. Do not know too much about when […]