Great article by Mark Suster:

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/12/07/why-id-rather-err-on-the-side-of-direct-feedback-than-pleasantries/?utm_medium=bothsid.es-facebook-share&awesm=bothsid.es_q3D&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=awesm-publisher&utm_campaign=

My personal view is that feedback is good if it is directed at an object (presentation, company, pitch) but almost always useless if it directed at a person (you should to be more understanding, you should not be so lazy etc). Unless the person is willing to receive it, you can try all you want, the other person might even nod in agreement but it will be forgotten. People need a strong trigger to change and feedback is a lousy trigger.

A lot of times we have a feeling that something is wrong (with ourselves or with the group), but we cannot pinpoint what it is. 

The first step is ofcourse to recognize that feeling and make sure you dont ignore it. I ve found that my instincts are generally right on these things.. and very often things have blwon up because I didnt listen to these feelings.

Now I notice it more, and dont ignore, but if I cannot pinpoint what exactly is causing it, what do you do?

We were thinking of new names for our company because .com is taken for doctree and that doesn’t bode well for our global domination plans. WE have been sitting on this for a while, and I was suggesting a string of different names to promote discussion. They werent particularly good (I was Ok a couple of them but them I am generally less picky than the average person), and my cofounder was rightly rejecting them. But I was little miffed that he wasnt offering any suggestions either. That’s when I came across this article

I was reading the book “How will you measure your life” by Clayton Christensen, and he suggested a very neat model to what a person / company would make decisions.

The idea is that we have resources (money, skills, labour) and we use processes to convert them into products / solutions according to the priorities ingrained in us. To refer back to my post last week, processes and priorities are what maketh the company blueprint. 

A friend shared this quote with me and I thought it was quite profound!

Fact is, most of the world wont be able to see you if you stand on top of the tallest mountain in the world. Maybe noone will be able to see you. But if you look carefully, you can definitely see more of the world than you have ever seen before.

It was something that stuck to my head from the early days of jfdi. And i ve felt a need to remind myself of this every once in a while as It’s something easily forgotten in the rush to build a product and release it.

A company is a group of 3 or more people. The job scope of an entrepreneur is to build a framework or a blueprint which guides this company of people to run a business. And if the framework is built right, the company becomes scalable.

I have just started reading the Innovator’s Solution - and this was one of my big learnings from the first 3 chapters.

Taking the example of a cafe serving chocolate milkshake - the authors illustrate how focusing on the situation (When job does the chocolate milkshake product do for people and how can it do this job better?) rather than the customer (Who buys chocolate milkshake and what kind of milkshake do they like?) can make a big difference in how you target the product.

You must have heard of infinite scroll (http://pinterest.com/ , Google is a good example. See how there is no pagination). I always thought pagination was stupid when you could do something as cool as in infinite scroll.

Looks like Etsy did an A/B testing on infinite scroll.. So how it works is they roll out infinite scroll to a section of the users and stick to the old pagination for the rest of the users. And then they collect all kinds of relevant data like clicks, purchases etc of each user group and compare statistics to see if there is any significant difference in usage pattern.

Firstly, Spoiler Alert. If you havent watched the movie / read the book, please do. It is worth it!

Secondly, thank you Rohan for pushing me into penning this down.

So I have been thinking about realism ever since I saw that movie.. It was one of those moments when all the chatter in your head gets silenced for a bit and you feel  liberated afterwards.. similar to when I watched Forrest Gump. I think it is pretty close to the feeling of “elevation” that  Jonathan Haidt mentions in the Happiness Hypothesis.

And put a lot of effort into finding out where you can add value.

Gives you a negotiating edge and lets you tailor your pitch accordingly. 

Seems quite obvious eh? As I learnt recently, it tends to slip our mind when we get too caught up in trying to get our idea across.. which we tend to do when we are really passionate about something.

So when you are really passionate about something and want another person to join you, make sure you actively slot in some “listening time”. (Not so obvious now perhaps? :) )