Wish you a year of change and a great decade ahead!

Replace change with happiness. In my experience, change means happiness. Some of the major changes I did to me in the past 2 years:

• Planted more than 500 trees with the help of a lot of well-wishers (and had to stop doing this too!).
• Started a business with 2 friends and failed in that (learnt a lot of lessons in the process).
• Started another business with same friends and seeing a lot of hope in this (understood the importance of persistence).
• Started networking with people (something in which I was really bad at).
• Started teaching occasionally at a school to 7th standard kids (learning that education systems really need reforms).
• Started blogging.

Each one of them has been a life changing experience. Each one of them was a really tough thing to start. Change is always like that. I hope this year would bring more such changes; to me and to you. I’d really want more people to come out of their comfort levels and make a change to themselves and in the process, to the world too.

The more I think about that question, the more I get the feeling that I should record my past 25 years in paper.  Probably, 25 years is  too short a time to actually have that many varied experiences. If that is the case, then this autobiography should at least help me create more such experiences in my future life.

I think I will do something worth being on the same stage as the speakers at TED in the next 20-25 years. And when that happens, this book would definitely be worth the effort as I do not have that much belief on my memory.

Hmm, that was an extremely optimistic post! Hope!

PS: Personal deadline for finishing this book – 30th Jan 2010.

Update(29th Jan 2010): No easy job. This requires one more year!

1. Is there really something called a breakthrough event in business or is it just a series of incremental improvements?
2. Does a startup become successful only if we keep fighting against all odds? Or, is it better to stop the battle, prepare with better arms and then come back? I remember the quote by Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe“. The catch however is that, in the case of a startup, you don’t even know what to chop until you have started.
3. How much of a toll does starting your own company take on your family?
4. Once you start a company, you start to live in a different world. You start being more optimistic about things. You start living on hope. A hope that, even if something fails, that will lead to something even better. Does this feeling exist only during the startup phase? Or does it the change you forever?

Is this emotional roller coaster really worth it? My feeling is that, it is worth if you are after the journey and not necessarily the destination.

Getting into a relatively new business is like the formation stages of a queue in front of railway ticket counter (in India). When a ticket counter opens, people rush to be the first person at the queue. The ones who are smartest (by guessing which is the first to open) always have an eye on the counter even when it is closed. Just when it is about to open, they make the run for it. Most don’t make it to the front, yet there is fierce competition. Example: IT industry in the 1980s, Renewable energy now.

Getting into an existing business is like joining the existing queues. You can still move forward but the excitement is missing. Example: IT industry now, Renewable energy 10 years from now.