Increasing profits under limited resources
TL;DR decreasing expenses by even slight margin can increase profits exponentially as opposed to increasing price. At times it gets very expensive or hard to grow due to multiple restrictions. Example could be running a hotel which has limited number of rooms. There are 2 very obvious ways to increase profits #1 Increase the revenues #2 Decrease expenses Mostly people will prefer to go with #1 to grown profits. #1 looks like an easy option where you just increase the rents by [...]
Don’t look at the wrong Score Card to define Growth
It is easy to be trapped into the illusion of growth by looking at the wrong score card. Growing burn rate doesn't correlate to customers. While spending money is easy, getting it is far difficult. Here is a simple formula to calculate growth CCA - Cost of customer acquisition = X LTV - Life time value of customer = Y COG - Cost of delivering value to customer over Y period = Z* Here are the two goals to achieve growth #1 Make this happen [...]
What investor is looking for ?
When investors are evaluating a pitch, here is the order of how investors get interested. 1 - Is this a big problem ( Opportunity ) 2 - Is this the right solution/approach ( Solution ) 3 - Is this the right team ( Execution ) It is hard to excite them on a bad idea or a small opportunity, even though the team is amazing and have an excellent way to solve a problem. When it comes to investing, the order changes 1 [...]
Finding best remote worker / freelancer
All of us have tried to outsource our work at some point. It is a very difficult process to communicate your requirements and get the work of your choice in such situations. There are multiple reasons to fail but mainly it is poor communication & lack of commitment from both ends. It is very hard to initiate and maintain long distance relations. Here is one technique that I use while picking the right remote worker/freelancer. - Write a job description that you would [...]
Innovate or Sell first ?
We innovate to solve a problem in a better way in a way that it is lucrative for your customer to change their habits & start using your product Without innovation, it is hard to distinguish yourself once you launch a product due to lack of incentive. Common belief is that a product need to be 10x better than the existing alternative. Now this 10X term is somewhat exaggeration but to explain how better a product should be, because it is very hard to [...]
Don’t Mix Email & Telephone Calls
TL;DR Use Verbal/Written communication appropriately. Have a purpose for every communication and based on that choose the appropriate medium. Thoughts : Communication is one of the most important aspect of our everyday life. We communicate to understand, assist, or help each other. Here is a random order, in which I think we started communication - Hand Signals - Drawing the hand signals - Drawing and sending those hand signals - Invented some sounds to replace the hand signals - Standardized these sounds - [...]
60 Minutes Sprint to achieve Inbox Zero
I get a lot of emails/tweets and other messages per day which are not urgent nor important, however they take away my momentum and attention. They constantly feel like something I am obliged to read or respond resulting in low productivity. PG have an excellent lecture on it. It’s like a to-do list that is created by others for you. It’s however rude not to respond to emails. I respond to every email that is sent to me even if it was a [...]
Technical Debt on Companies
Debt in any form is a redflag. A lot of startups start with a vision but no clear direction. We code as per the final requirements to make sure it works once we reach the million userbase. There is nothing wrong however changes happen all the times and it’s hard to predict the final product resulting in discarding lot of code. Even worse, if the code stays, it affects the entire infrastructure badly. It’s like carrying diesel in your car trunk while you [...]
Delegation or Passing off your work ?
there is a major difference between letting other people do you work and delegation. Passing off your work means you are not responsible of it anymore. Delegation means that you are now more responsible for the work. Doing things your self is easy and teaching is difficult. Delegation brings the best of your self, because whenever you are teaching you are more concerned about the quality than ever before. Want to try ? Teach some one driving 😉 During delegating, you have to [...]
Types of fear with any opportunity !
Whenever there is an opportunity, it comes with a risk. There is a time limit in which you have to take a decision to spend specific amount of resources to achieve desirable result. Flip side is your result might not be desirable or not even close to that resulting in wastage of resources and possibly other damages that could not be predicted while taking risk. In addition there are some intangible losses and gains. These include but not limited to emotional & morale [...]