Quick Link: Ex-Tally President Shoaib Ahmed's interview on B2B Software Sales with Ideaspring Capital

Ideaspring Capital MD Naganand Doraswamy has put out a very engaging and useful Podcast interview on "Sales for B2B Product Startups" with Shoaib Ahmed, the former President and 11 year veteran at legendary accounting software maker Tally Solutions.

Quick Link: Jason Fried of Basecamp interview by Tim Ferriss

Another great episode of the Tim Ferriss show.

I really loved the part [1:18:16] where Jason describe why and how Basecamp filters new hires by their clarity in written communication  - especially since so much of today's both intra-company and also customer communications is text based. Tim adds that Wordpress.com actually interviews candidates over chat!

Other hiring related highlights:

• Jason digs a little deeper into his unique process for hiring designers that ignores portfolios of past accomplishments. [1:22:37]
• What questions does Jason ask potential hirees about their creative process that lets him know whether or not they’re someone with whom he can work? [1:28:52]
• What having everyone in a company work customer service on a rotating basis accomplishes. [1:32:07]

Other Highlights:

• "Joy of Missing Out (JOMO)" and Jason’s case for reading newspapers over online journalism. [28:24]
• How negative visualization can be used to make plans and alleviate what might otherwise be constant anxiety. [36:56]

"Prioritization is the Foundational Skill for Startup Founders"

In the inaugural edition of its Podcast series, Accel India's Enterprise Technology focused partner Shekhar Kirani provides interesting insights on the patterns & dynamics he has observed among both successful (including, of course, Freshworks) and failed startup founding teams.

Especially interesting is Shekhar's emphasis on the discernment that founders need to have on what to focus on and when (~minute 25.51 in the audio).

Everyday there will be 100s of things you want to do. (Startup CEOs/Founders) need to prioritize which of the problems they need to solve This Quarter, This Month, Today and Now.

Also, to break a large problem into smaller problems and set up experimentation to validate whether it is a problem worth solving and/or how to go about it.

Other highlights:

• Importance of "Learn-ability" for founders" (~23.15 minutes)
• Why "Story Telling" is a key attribute that a Startup CEO should have (to attract employees, investors and customers) 

Link to Audio: Here via SoundCloud

Quick Link: Talk by Amy Chang of Accompany

Interesting Stanford E-Comer talk by Ex-Googler Amy Chang who has cofounded Accompany which is leveraging AI to take on LinkedIn.

Highlights: Making Time to Network (while in college) and at work (including why she prefers in  person meeting over coffee and walks over conferences, etc - which is part of the Q&A at the end of the talk), Pushing One's Comfort Zone and thoughts on Hiring and Women Executives.

Quick Link: Who will bell the AI cat?

Interesting Stanford E-Corner talk. titled "Making Technology Less Manipulative" by Tristan Harris,  Founder of Time Well Spent, an NGO that aims to prevent technology from hijacking us.

The 10 Commandments of Startup Success

Tim Ferriss has a great compilation from the "Masters of Scale" podcast titled "The 10 Commandments of Startup Success with Reid Hoffman". Here are the commandments themselves (along with the audio time stamps) including some quotes and extracts from the audio that I found especially interesting (in italics).

1: Expect rejection. [09:14]

2: Hire like your life depends on it. It does. [19:26]

“A combination of Persistence and Curiosity (what you care about) is a great indicator of future success of a knowledge worker” - Eric Schmidt

“For sales, we hire Olympian and football players, because it indicates the level of discipline they have developed at an early age.” - Eric Schmidt

“Are your people self confident enough to have people stronger than them around them. You should never hire someone to work for you who you would not like to work for (in an alternate universe”)” -  Mark Zuckerberg 

3: In order to scale, you have to do things that don’t scale. [25:37]

4: Raise more money than you think you need — potentially a lot more. [36:18]

"Take the money whenever and wherever it becomes available. You never know when funding might become unavailable." -Reid Hoffman

5: Release your products early enough that they can still embarrass you. Imperfect is perfect. [44:45]

6: Decide. Decide. Decide. [1:00:16]

“The fighter pilot who has the faster OODA loop wins. The other one dies.” - Silicon Valley saying (OODA = Military origin decision cycle of Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.).

Commandment 7: Be prepared to both make and break plans. [1:03:13]

“Figure out what your systems are going to be later (when you become a larger company) and do it now” - Sheryl Sandberg. (She provides the “not so silly” example of how there was resentment among employees when Facebook - since it had become large so quickly - had to take back its practice of celebrating everyone’s birthday.)

8: Don’t tell your employees how to innovate. [1:07:21]

9: To create a winning company culture, make sure every employee owns it. [01:12:32]

Netflix compares themselves to sport teams (which is about performance) and not family (since the latter implies unconditional love).

10: Have grit and stick with your hero’s journey. [1:23:22]

11: Pay it forward. Use the momentum of your own success to move the success of others. [1:26:03]

How to Avoid the Time Sinks called Meetings

A great episode of Seeking Wisdom points out why and how any company that is serious about productivity, should minimize its number of meetings. If at all, these Necessary Evils need to happen, the accompanying blog post provides some "guardrails". Extracts:

• Please try to minimize the number of meetings we have. Try hard to get it done without a meeting.
• When you do have a meeting please keep them small and focused on a clear agenda. Unless the meeting is a 1:1 there should be clear questions we are trying to answer during the meeting.
• No Sidebars — please don’t have side conversations during a meeting.
• No Laptops / Phones. Unless you’re presenting please leave your laptop/phone behind.
• Participate or excuse yourself — if you’re not adding value or could spend your time better please politely excuse yourself from the meeting. One exception, all-hands meetings.

Martin Reeves: How to build a business that lasts 100 years

In this TED Talk, Martin Reeves offers an inter-disciplinary approach on how entrepreneurs can build long lasting companies with ideas from Biology.

Sattvik Mishra: Experimenting with content

In this Ink Talk, Sattvik Mishra, Scoop Whoop shares his lessons and the thinking that drives stories at ScoopWhoop.

Here is the Startup Journey's take on the highlights of the talk.

The Best Video on Blockchain (Maybe)

In a TED video, Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) lucidly explains Blockchain, the technology underlying Bitcoin and how it can be used in other areas including securing land ownership rights, cheaper remittances, protect private data and make self enforcing contracts for music and financial instruments. The talk includes how Blockchain overcomes the problem of "Double Spend Problem" faced in the Internet of Information in order to create an Internet of Value.

Quick Link: Jason Friede of 37Signals/Basecamp on Startup Grind

Off Topic: How exactly does corruption money find its way to Swiss Banks & NY Apartments?

NPR's Planet Money has a fascinating account of how the son of Taiwan's (now former) President routed bribery money from suitcases full of cash to a Swiss Bank and from there (via 3 layers of shell companies) used it to buy an high-end apartment in New York.

Marc Andressen with Tim Ferriss

Click Here for this good interview with the founder of pioneering web software firm browser Netscape and disruptive VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Parts I liked best:

Difference & Similarity between VCs and Value Investors [42:25]

"Anything Warren Buffet is willing to invest in, we run screaming in the other direction. He invests in Heinz Ketchup since people have been using it for over a 100 years and therefore it's a good guess that they will continue to do so for the next 100. Basically, he's betting against change and we are betting for change. When he makes a mistake, it's because something changes that he doesn't expect; we make a mistake when something doesn't change.

But what both schools have in common is Original Thinking and the willingness to look at things as they are ("the core of the business") as opposed to what somebody says about them or it's believed to be. Also, Value Investing is the only place in the market where there's Long Term investing."

Importance of inculcating a Culture of "Building Things" [44:50]

"Smart People Should Build Things" (based on a book title) and "Be So Good that they can't Ignore You" (from the book Born Standing Up by Steve Martin)

Importance of Reading Biographies: "Technology changes; people don’t." [22:28]

"While following contemporary stuff is good, I find it more useful to go further back and read (well written) Biographies about Edison, Disney, Ford, Rockefeller, etc."

How he deals with FOMO (fear of missing out) when it comes to investing [38:47]

Why he does not believe AI is going to either kill jobs or people . [48:01]

Why & How to Harness Young Men: The Sebastian Junger Interview (by Tim Ferriss)

Awesome Awesome Interview with the Author and War Correspondent.  Huge insights into human behaviour - especially into what makes young men tick and why some kind of national service must be made compulsory. Once you listen, you would also understand exactly what Winston Churchill meant when "Never let a good crisis go to waste".

My Favorite segments:

• On striving for political correctness in gender [43:59]
• PTSD, the C-Train, and returning to New York City after being at war [1:08:14]
• On the lonely nature of society [1:12:01]
• On the role of journalists:
• “The point of journalism is to tell the truth. It is not to improve society. There are facts and truths that feel regressive, but that doesn’t matter. The point of journalism isn’t to make everything better; it’s to give people accurate information about how things are.”

Quick Link: Seth Godin with Tim Ferriss

Fun & Thoughtful interview.

Highlights include:

How Seth Godin processes email [51:44]

What would Seth do to educate children [1:34:22]

Quick Link: Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Ventures

From Stanford E-Corner.

Highlights: Thesis Driven Investing

Quick Link: Scott Cook of Intuit

From Stanford E-Corner.

Highlights: How he validated the idea for Quicken, People Management, Need for having a Coach

Quick Link: All About Acquisitions

Jeff Seibert, a techie who founded one company while still a student at Stanford and sold it to Box and then founded and sold another company to Twitter (where he still works), describes - in this returning to campus talk (at Stanford eCorner)  - "what went well and what didn't during the acquisition of his earlier startups by big-name technology companies, stressing the importance of culture fit, maintaining your team's trust throughout, and continued investment in growth after being acquired. Seibert also explains how an acquisition isn't always the best exit strategy for a promising startup.

Quick Link: Rami Essaid of Distil Networks on Startup Grind

The downloadable and streaming audio is here, the video is here.

Highlights:

• Worrying about Competition Copying Ideas: The Unique Way in which you Execute Is Everything.
• Equity split among founders who are full time and moonlighters who will join only post funding. He was the only one doing it full time, so he had a majority stake while the moonlighting co-founders split the  rest.
• Starting without tech co-founders is an up hill battle. If you can't sell your vision for the product  to a techie, it would be difficult to sell it to investors.

Quick Link: John McAfee with James Altucher

The interview is titled "John Mcafee: The Most Interesting Man In The Universe. And, given the sheer colorfulness of his life - from selling his anti-virus company for Billions (to Intel), to becoming a fugitive in Belize, to his views on cyber threats and  now running for President - he almost lives up to the hyperbolic claim.