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Earn the Right to Advise
In 1994, when India's ex-PM Narasimha Rao addressed the US Congress, he told this story about Mahatma Gandhi: Once a lady came to Gandhiji and asked him to tell her son to stop eating sugar. Instead of doing what she asked, Gandhiji asked her to...
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Give your people the attention they deserve
Long ago, I was attending a conference on drug addiction, where they honored an Australian guy who had dedicated his life to helping people caught...
There are no ‘others’, there is only ‘us’
Living in a country like the US, you come across people of every nationality. And one very interesting thing you find is that they all look...
Perversion of incentives
A year ago, a startup announced a revenue of Rs 10 crore. And profit? Actually, it lost more than 150 crores! If you are wondering, “In which...
Building mental models
All learning boils down primarily to one thing -- building mental models. During my electrical engineering undergraduate program, we were...
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Don’t hide from rejection
There are no books on Amazon with a perfect 5-star rating. There are no products that everyone likes. There is no piece of art or music that is universally loved -- in fact, Beethoven's symphonies were widely panned in the day. You can't please...
Don’t forget the real luxuries
The biggest luxury is not Mercedes Maybach. Nor is it holidaying in the $30k-a-night suite in Burj Khalifa. These are just expensive toys and frills. Real luxury is being fit enough to run a few miles without breaking much of a sweat. It is being...
Shark Tank vs. Real Investing
Often, I see people getting worked up about Shark Tank. Remember -- it is a reality show. And a reality show is primarily a show, not reality. What you see on Shark Tank is not the way investment deals are really done. In the world of investing,...
Meaning of life
If you have been looking for life's meaning, you probably haven’t found it. And it is not because you are not looking hard enough but because by itself, life has no meaning. If you take a purely materialistic/scientific view, life is just a series...