Business Strategy

I recently watched an excellent episode of Fareed Zakaria GPS on the topic 'What makes a good leader' that was sitting on my DVR since months. He had some of the biggest leaders in business and politics (Lou Gerstner, Tony Blair, Admiral Mike Mullen and others) talk about their take on Leadership. I thought I would summarize what were the biggest tasks that a Leader should accomplish: Set up a …

We were recently discussing a new feature for my new startup TheIceBreak that involves building functionality that has never been done before. In order to design it, we relied on a few assumptions that are difficult to validate without actually building the product. This reminded me of the fundamental differences between dogfood-style (bottom-up) vs vision driven (top-down) product development, …

While pitching my startup to investors, or listening pitches from founders for their startups, the topic of Exit Strategy often shows up. In general, there are 2 kinds of startups: Startups built to stay independent Startups built to be acquired I think both of them are valid exit strategies, but entrepreneurs who build them with the goal to get acquired are thinking very small. 

Pivot is one of the most overused terms in the startup world in 2010. The general thinking is that Pivoting is a good thing and founders are very proud to say that they have ‘pivoted’ X number of times for their current startup. I have seen funding pitches which even contain a slide on ‘possible pivots’, where the founders talk about how its easy for them to change their vision. Having ‘pivoted’ …