There was a guy in my office, who has worked in the same company ever since he started working, let’s call him Ashok. This company was a startup and has been struggling to get on its feet for around five years now. The company has seen good times when it hired employees across all functions and pretty bad times too, when employees were asked to leave. But Ashok has survived it all. Ashok has been a part of this company since its inception and at one point of time he even managed a team of more than ten people. Read the rest of this entry »

Office party is one event where it is difficult to understand what kind of character you should display. Your boss is around so you can’t be too open but you are with your friends so you want to have a good time as well. Such conflicting situations in office parties tend to push people to really funny behavior. Here are some typical behaviors:

1. What happened to him (WHH) – There is a lone engineer who normally keeps to himself and speaks only when spoken to. In the office party you see him passing wise cracks and getting so excited that one would believe that he is going to date Gisele Bunchen. Read the rest of this entry »

CEOs in general have the innate ability to respond in such cryptic language that it leaves you wondering what the hell does it mean. Here is a quick list of typical CEO replies and also an explanation of what it actually means

Situation - Somebody, say an investor, points out to the CEO that he is trying to do too many things at the same time
CEO answer – We want to be a one stop solution in our domain
What does it really mean – Senior management has no idea what will eventually work so they want to try out a lot of different thing. Read the rest of this entry »

My brother works in a one of the top three IT companies in India as a engineer . He has a typical software engineer’s life. During weekdays he works late in the nights, gets up late in the morning and spends the majority of the weekends sleeping. Most of his waking hours are spent fiddling with his laptop or watching movies or just hanging out in the malls. Unlike some software engineers in his age group, 23 to 27 year old, he nurtures no ambitions of starting a company or working in a startup or making killer applications. He is happy with what he is currently doing and he just wants to stick to doing that. One would assume that since he is content with his professional life and does not plan to put any extra effort into it, he should move forward on the personal front like getting married, buying a house , etc. Read the rest of this entry »

I have come across a couple of people who have left their comfortable corporate jobs to start on their own. Though all of them had different personality traits but there were a couple of common traits as well. Here is the common minimal character set between all self appointed CEOs that I know.

Shameless at negotiations
In one of my earlier jobs I was trying to find a software vendor for an application we needed. In a short time I found the perfect software and ended up negotiating the asking price to get a discount of about 20%. When my entrepreneur boss / CEO saw the discounted price he asked for an additional 60% discount. I was shocked. I felt that it was not negotiation but stealing! However, my boss thought that it was his right to get this discount and he confidently argued with the vendor for about an hour to get this discount. That day I was truly amazed.

Energetic
Just try saying ‘Your business model has no substance’ to any entrepreneur and you will know what I mean by energetic. You will be bombarded with arguments, market data etc just to prove that the business has the potential to really kick a**. But you will get this reaction only if the entrepreneur in question considers you to be of any significance and thus tries to alter your opinion. Most likely you will end up getting either a shrug or a cold stare.

Perpetual optimism
You might doubt for a second whether earth really goes around the sun but under no circumstance a true entrepreneur doubts his business model, even for a second. Confidence in business model and never dying optimism are his second nature. The business may be suffering, employees may be leaving in hoards but an entrepreneur keeps a positive outlook. This helps to keep his and his employees’ morale high and, more importantly, investors’ confidence intact.