Every day is a new life to a wise man
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say:
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.

From the Book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" by  Dale Carnegie

I am a bootstrapper. I have initiative and insight and guts, but not much money. I will succeed because my efforts and my focus will defeat bigger and better-funded competitors. I am fearless. I keep my focus on growing the business—not on other wasteful distractions.

I will leverage my skills to become the key to every department of my company, yet realize that hiring experts can be the secret to my success. I will be a fervent and intelligent user of technology, to conserve my two most precious assets: time and money.

This is last eve of this year.

Let all our fears, sorrows, negative and cluttered thoughts wash away.  Instead of dwelling on the past, let us hope for the new beginning.  When you keep trying and stay focused you will see a silver lining in the cloud.

I would like to share 5 simple lessons I've learnt this year.

1) Forget about the past or future. Focus on the "Now" - This moment that matters.

2) Let us focus on the excellence instead of results. This is the basis of Karma Yoga.  

3)  Don't take your life seriously. Have fun and sense of humor.

4)  Don't focus on the destination. The journey and how you experience it, that matters.

5) Change is only constant thing in this universe. Remember things will change in due course of time. Embrace it.

Let there be a peace and harmony everywhere. 

Let us begin the new year afresh – leaving behind our fears, sorrows, setbacks etc.... that people face commonly.

Wish You all a Happy New Year.

Entrepreneurship is really an exciting and adventurous journey and being a novice entrepreneur, I've learnt so many things which I would like to summarize in this article. 

1) No what matter what others will think about you, just follow your heart

I often tell my friends, we can't stick to lean startup practices 100%, sometimes we've to go off track and need to make decisions from our heart.

2) Time Management

Time management is very important for any task. We need to split large goals into smaller ones and prioritize them. Frankly, I've messed up with this several times, still I am working hard to improve my time management skills and try to put the first things first. So give importance to time management. 

3) Get the heck outside the building

As Steve Blank said, "There are no facts inside the building." For me, being a founder of a web startup Everscoop.com,  initially I had a strong belief in my idea which really forced me to stay inside the building. What happened really was, nearly after 4 months from our product launch I came to know that understanding people's needs and problems were the most important priority over our belief. Validating our hypothesis was yet another important task.  For conducting problem interviews, Steve Blank's "The Startups Owner's Manual" and Ash Maurya's "Running Lean" helped me a lot and   especially "How to conduct  customer interviews and nail them to get better insights". Finally, we went outside the building, met interesting people and  in my case bloggers are our primary users and they gave us interesting insights.

4) Have patience and perseverance

Building a great product and getting users can't be done overnight. We need to have a strong passion, commitment and patience. Everyone wants his/her startup to be popular like Instagram but, the real story behind Instagram was a well planned and validated effort. In our case still we are working hard to reach the right audience. The most difficult thing to handle is when friends or parents ask for the present status of our company. So,regardless of others comments or carping criticism about you or your product go ahead with your faith and have enough perseverance. Also learn to "Correct and continue".

Every cloud has a silver lining.


5) Universe will always conspire in your favor  

When you really want something universe (Six Lessons we can learn from the book, “The Alchemist”) will conspire in your favor, You gotta believe this when you made up your mind your universe will automatically bring in  a lot of opportunities at your doorstep. You should choose the right  opportunities and use them. For me it had happened several times. The moment I decided to start the company, a lot of opportunities were available to me. One being, Right now I am doing an executive management program at IFMR,Chennai. But I had a serious plan to do M.Tech in Computer Science Engg. One day my parents asked me, "Why can't you join part time management program so that you can gain some knowledge in management related subjects". Then I applied for IFMR one among the best B-Schools in India especially for finance. After joining I found few elective courses like Marketing Management, Statistics, Consumer behavior, Running lean, Brand management and Microeconomics  these subjects and respective professors helped me a lot and it had improved our business model/ideas too.

Being an entrepreneur is like jumping off the plane without a chute on and trying to build them in the mid air.

So, leverage each and every opportunity around you. Have a strong belief in your product, karma and team. 

1. When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor.
2. Learn to make your own decision.
3. The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world and never to deviate from your goals and purpose. There must be a perfect balance between your concentration (goals, etc…) and observation (things around you).
4. Courage is the most essential quality to pursue your dreams.
5. Listen to your heart and choose a right approach is very essential.
6. Any journey in life, be it professional or entrepreneurial is not that easy, it is beset with challenges, one should know how to judge the challenges ahead of you, in order to do that you should have strong heart and belief.

You cannot expect a man to cross the Bad Lands of South Dakota using prairie schooner