Status message of the week ( 3rd week of March 2010)

"Be less of a judge and you will be surprised that when you become a witness and you don't judge yourself, you stop judging others too. And that makes you more human, more compassionate, more understanding."

Status message of the week ( 2nd week of March 2010)

"A little foolishness, enough to enjoy life, and a little wisdom to avoid the errors, that will do."

Status message of the week ( 1st week of March 2010)

"The heart knows nothing of the past, nothing of the future; it knows only of the present. The heart has no time concept."

Status message of the week (4th week of Feb 2010)

"Only people who carry the opinions of others need the support of others."

Status message of the week (3rd week of Feb 2010)

"To be alone in the only real revolution.To accept that you are alone is the greatest transformation that can happen to you."

Status message of the week (2nd week of Feb 2010)

"If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against."

Start-ups in 13 Sentences

One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?

When I made the list there turned out to be 13:

1. Pick good cofounders.

Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.

2. Launch fast.

The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you're wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users.

3. Let your idea evolve.

This is the second half of launching fast. Launch fast and iterate. It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.

4. Understand your users.

You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives. [2] The second dimension is the one you have most control over. And indeed, the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second. As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.

5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.

Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. And perhaps more importantly, it's harder to lie to yourself. If you think you're 85% of the way to a great product, how do you know it's not 70%? Or 10%? Whereas it's easy to know how many users you have.

6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.

Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good . Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.

7. You make what you measure.

I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.

8. Spend little.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is for a startup to be cheap. Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly. [4] But it's more than that. A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.

9. Get ramen profitable.

"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It's also great for morale.

10. Avoid distractions.

Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.

11. Don't get demoralized.

Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company is run by stupid people (which can't be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized. Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it, just as you'd be careful to bend at the knees when picking up a heavy box.

12. Don't give up.

Even if you get demoralized, don't give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. There are a lot of people who couldn't become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. But startups aren't like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.

13. Deals fall through.

One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.

Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only keep one.

Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.

Understanding your users is part of half the principles in this list. That's the reason to launch early, to understand your users. Evolving your idea is the embodiment of understanding your users. Understanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy. The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users. And understanding your users will even ensure your morale, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going.





Notes

[1] Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time machine.

[2] In practice it's more like a ragged comb

[3] Joe thinks one of the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but he doesn't remember which.

[4] They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still. Since they don't, working twice as fast is better than having twice as much time.

Courtesy: http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

Investment Banking

Exterior Street
Frantic footsteps / worn out boots / woman running / then walking / then pausing to light a smoke / gently wiping a stray tear from her flushed cheek.
Back to frantic footsteps / sprinting / jumping over imaginary hurdles.

It was a hot day in Bombay that day. So hot that each train of thought collided with another leaving behind sweaty, enraged passengers; cussing, swearing, mutilating.

At the chemist…
she: bhaisaab aapke paas woh home pregnancy test hai?
He looks at her a couple times labeling her as a ‘loose goose’ and hands her ‘the kit.’
“Thank you.”
He ignores her.

Running footsteps lead her straight into the bathroom at the nearest restaurant. The instructions say best to check with morning urine, she cannot wait.

A positive sign flashes in front of her face as she stands in front of the mirror rubbing her belly.

She smiles / without emotion. Yup an act she had mastered!
And breaks down completely..
“there is never a good reason to kill someone so why start now?”
she squeals laughing crying screaming……
hush little baby…don’t you cry…everything’s gonna be alright..”


Interior Doctor’s Office
3 pregnant women stared at her intently. Her chaos had their bellies kicking. She sat patiently / fiddling with her pack of cigarettes. She could feel the stares now. Pregnant women need to relax a bit sometimes. The sight of a nicotine pack had their waters breaking.
She is patient. As patient as a patient is expected to be. She notices one of the pregnant chicks caressing her belly.

She smiles / without emotion.

she: doc….im pregnant…
doc: when was the last time you had your period?.
she: dunno…2 months ago…I just did a home pregnancy test and it said positive.
doc: we’ll do a urine test as well to be sure. Congratulations…you’ve wanted a baby for a while.
she (blushing): I know…but I think I’m gonna have an abortion…my husband and I just broke up.
doc: you sure???? You’ve had 2 abortions and a miscarriage in the past. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
she: instead of having a surgical procedure, can you prescribe me pills that will abort the child at home.
doc: I can do that, but its quite painful.
she: I think I can handle it…

Early morning
Interior her room

She lights a candle and takes the pill.
Shots of her naked in front of the mirror, in bed, on her desk, in the kitchen…prancing…rubbing her belly…
She falls to the floor when the crams hit and howls out loud.
Half an hour later…the deed is done.

It’s done.

Time passes.

Frantic footsteps…worn out boots….running….

Interiors Doctors office:
she: doc, how does a sperm bank work?
doc: you just had an abortion four months ago.
she: I know, but I feel I’m ready….i wanna have a child…I wanna have one with no strings attached…
doc: you sure? This is not a game.
she: I know, I know…So tell me, can I see the pictures of the donors and pick who I like.
doc: no you can’t do that. But you can tell me your qualifications and ill try to match as many as possible.
she: just like that….i mean … I make a list and you find me a father…
Doc: you said no strings attached…right?

She smiles / without emotion.

Frantic footsteps….run out of the office…running / prancing / walking / strutting / making a mental list..
black
white
spanish
blue eyes green eyes
brown eyes
tall scientist
Musician lean artist
Banker
shoe designer rich

The footsteps stop…..confused…

It was important for her to see the face. Call her old fashioned, but she could not relate to a list.

Facebook Status:
She is “looking for the perfect sperm. No strings attached. Interested donors inbox me.” Ps…this is not an invitation to have sex...random guys trying to pick me up…don’t bother!

Hello she,
I would love to impregnate you baby….blah blah blah

Dear she,
I am an engineer making decent money. I own my flat and live with my parents and 3 siblings. I would love to make love to you and give you a baby…..

Baby….
Lets go…

Frantic footsteps sprinted all the way to the sperm bank.
handsome 25 27 35 31
Father.

A Math Romance

They integrated from the very point of origin. Her curves were continuous, and even though he was odd, he was a real number. The day their lines first intersected, they became an ordered pair. From then on it was a continuous function. They were both in their prime, so in next to no time they were horizontal and parallel. She was awed by the magnitude of his perpendicular line, and he was amazed by her conical projections. "Bisect my angle!" she postulated each time she reached her local maximum. He taught her the chain rule as she implicitly defined the amplitude of his simple harmonic motion. They underwent multiple rotations of their axes, until at last they reached the vertex, the critical point, their finite limit. After that they slept like logs. Later she found him taking a right-handed limit, that was a problem, because it was an improper form. He meanwhile had realized that she was irrational, not to mention square. She approached her ex, so they diverged.

Stop Stop Stop!!

No I didn't trust him
But he rushed me to feel
Tried to mesmerize me and was
All sex appeal

Told me everything
That I was longing to hear
Shiny and handsome
My souvenir

And then all of a sudden
I have fallen in love
He would put me down
But I'd still place him above

Tired of searching for the love
That still lives in him
Giving my everything
Like a souvenir

Given up my heart
In the name of a memory
Fallen down like rain
He could feel every drop

Now I know I have
Have the courage to tell him
Tell him to stop stop stop

Given up my heart
In the name of a memory
Fallen down like rain
He could taste every drop

Now I know I have
Have the courage to tell him
Tell him to stop stop stop

I've become invisible
I melt away at night
Dreaming once so colourful
Becomes black and white

Loving once so wonderful
Is no longer here
So I'll keep this feeling
Like a souvenir

Given up my heart
In the name of a memory
Fallen down like rain
He could feel every drop

Now I know I have
Have the courage to tell him
Tell him to stop stop stop

Given up my heart
In the name of a memory
Fallen down like rain
He could taste every drop

Now I know I have
Have the courage to tell him
Tell him to stop stop stop

I'm only happy when it rains

I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains
You know I love it when the news is bad
Why it feels so good to feel so sad
I'm only happy when it rains

Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me

I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains
You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains

Pour your misery down...pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me...pour your misery down
Pour your misery down...pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me...pour your misery down
Pour your misery down...pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me...pour your misery down
Pour your misery down...pour
You can keep me company
As long as you don't care

I'm only happy when it rains
You want to hear about my new obsession
I'm riding high upon a deep depression
I'm only happy when it rains...pour some misery down on me
I'm only happy when it rains....pour some misery down on me
I'm only happy when it rains...pour some misery down on me
I'm only happy when it rains...pour some misery down on me
I'm only happy when it rains...pour some misery down on me...pour some misery down on me...pour some misery down on me...pour some misery down on me

Losing Virginity Later Linked to Sexual Problems

While past research has linked early sexual activity to health problems, a new study suggests that waiting too long to start having sex carries risks of its own.

Those who lose their virginity at a later age -- around 21 to 23 years of age -- tend to be more likely to experience sexual dysfunction problems later, say researchers at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute's HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.

The study will appear in the January 2008 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Men who lose their virginity in their 20s, in particular, seemed to be more likely to experience sexual problems that include difficulty becoming sexually aroused and reaching orgasm.

The increase in sexual problems was also seen in those who had a comparably earlier sexual debut. And the researchers were quick to point out that there isn't enough evidence to say for sure whether waiting to have sex necessarily leads to sexual dysfunction down the road.

"Our results do not allow for causal interpretations," the study authors write.

Rather, they note in the study, there may be factors common to both the delay of sexual activity and the onset of sexual dysfunction -- for example, they write, "[M]en with sexual problems may avoid sexual interactions and consequently start later."

The researchers, who looked at data from the 1996 National Sexual Health Survey, conducted by the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at the University of California, San Francisco, also found that men and women who begin having sex in their early teens had their share of problems. They were more likely to have risky sexual partners, to contract a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and to have sex while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

While sexuality experts not affiliated with the study agree that it is too early to draw a direct causal link about those who have sex later in life, they say the research offers some interesting new avenues for learning more about certain sexual problems that may be devastating to long-term relationships.

"Clinically, we see many individuals who marry late and who have had little or no sexual experience have great difficulty with developing a rich and satisfying sexual experience within their relationship," said Eli Coleman, academic chair in sexual health at the University of Minnesota Medical School Program in Human Sexuality.

Even though the research stops short of indicating a causal relationship between the age at which one loses his or her virginity and sexual problems they may experience later, Coleman said a number of possible factors could contribute to both of these things.

"From a clinical standpoint, there are often dynamics other than the desire to be abstinent until marriage, such as fear of intimacy, body image problems, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual dysfunction," he said. He adds that these factors "might influence the delay of sexual debut as a means of avoiding sexual issues."

Conditioning that results in shame over sexual expression may also be a factor, said Gina Ogden, a Boston-based sexuality expert and author of "The Heart and Soul of Sex."

"In my sex therapy office I see countless women and men who have received messages about sex that shame them about their sexual feelings and also terrify them about their sexual behavior."

These messages, she said, can differ between men and women.

For women, she said, the message that "good girls" should not engage in or enjoy sex may cause women to shut down sexually, leading to dysfunction.

"One of the many dysfunctions that arises is that women never develop the ability to ask for what they want, which leaves them open for life-long disappointment, desire disorders, orgasmic dysfunction, and worse -- they're ripe for abuse and violence," she said.

For men, the opposite message -- that "real men score" -- may lead to negative mindsets both among those who lose their virginity early and those who become sexually active only later -- mindsets that impact their ability to perform sexually.

Because of the intimate link between the psyche and sexual performance, some sexuality experts say the results of these conditions most likely bring about sexual dysfunction through their psychological impacts.

"There are mostly, if not exclusively, psychological factors at play here, based on poor sexual skills that lead to a poor sexual debut, with lasting negative effects," said Patti Britton, president of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists and Los Angeles-based author of books including "The Art of Sex Coaching."

Coleman, however, said that biological factors may also be involved.

"There are probably both biological and psychological factors at play -- which cannot be elucidated from this study -- but suggests that further research needs to be conducted to explore those factors," he said.

The Role of Abstinence-Only Education

The researchers say this preliminary evidence may point up detrimental effects of abstinence-only education.

The authors write that the study "lends credence to research showing that abstinence-only education may actually increase health risks," adding that other approaches may better equip young people to avoid both short- and long-term sexual health consequences.

Many sexuality experts agree.

"In my view as a sexuality therapist since the 1970s, the abstinence-only approach is a public health hazard," Ogden said. "Sexual relationship is complex, and the moment of marriage is not a magic marker.

"Instead of making young people pledge 'no' until marriage, we need to be encouraging them to understand their own sexual responses and orientations, learn how to engage in sexual practices that are safe, and acquire intimacy skills that will lead them into caring relationships."

Said Coleman, "While abstinence only programs seem to be helpful in delaying onset of sexual activity, there have been suggestions that this approach could cause more problems when sexual debut takes place due to insufficient preparation and knowledge of responsible sexual behavior.

"This study is interesting because it suggests that sexual experimentation is a normal developmental process, and when this process is inhibited or not guided, there can be poor sexual health outcomes."

are we DIFFERENT???

WE are the same, yet we are different

Oh why can't you see, our hearts that both beat, rhythmically.

We have one body to hold it with,

to nurture our soul, and life's precious gift.

We have two legs, for our heart to travel

With two feet to strike along the path of dirt and gravel.

We have two arms to spread wide or hold,

we have two hands to make our statement bold.

We have one head, two eyes and a mouth.

to see to speak to experience others

that travel north or transverse south.

"Ah my friend, you see only the same

But it's difference that must be explained."

"To true, " Says I, "For I only see,

one difference, only one difference that matters to me.

We each hold a difference, that does ring to true

My difference is not the same as it is for you.

For I think for my self. My life, my dreams.

Hopes and happiness, and enjoying things

That is what is different, that is what is important for me

and it's with that thought that I hold the key.

to the principle we call

- EQUALITY

Hand-graffiti