My Life System #64: Connections – 1

Many years ago, my friend Atanu discussed the book “Connections” by James Burke. It is about the flow of history and events – how seemingly small developments had a big impact, how one thing led to another in ways completely unexpected. As Burke writes:

In some way or other, each one of us affects the course of history. Because of the extraordinarily serendipitous way change happens, something you do during the course of today may eventually change the world.

As you will see in this book, ordinary people have often made the difference. A self-educated Scottish mechanic once made a minor adjustment to a steam pump and triggered the whole Industrial Revolution. A nineteenth-century weatherman developed a cloud-making device that just happened to reveal to Ernest Rutherford, a physicist he knew, that the atom could be split. Thanks to a guy working on hydraulic pressure in Italian Renaissance water gardens we have the combustion engine. So you don’t have to be Einstein to make your mark on events. We all contribute.

This is because there’s no grand design to the way history goes. The process does not fall neatly into categories such as those we are taught in school. For example, most of the elements contributing to the historical development of transportation had nothing to do with vehicles. So there are no rules for how to become an influential participant on the web of change. There is no right way. Equally, there is no way to guarantee that your great project meant to alter the course of history will ever succeed.

… This book looks at the forces at work in making the connections that brought into existence some of the most powerful tools and systems that drive the world today: the computer, spacecraft, the production line, television, atomic weapons, plastics, telecommunications, and aircraft. Each of these innovations emerged as the result of a closely linked sequence of events taking place on the great web of history that links us all to each other, to the past, and (in the way that each of us triggers change) to the future.

While Burke writes about the connections that lead technological innovations, the same principle also applies in our life. A chance meeting, a passage in a book, a presentation at a conference – anything can have an impact on the course of our lives. There is a connectedness that at times we don’t see or recognise, but when we look back, we can trace the origins of our ideas and therefore our actions. This is much more than luck – it’s the sequence of events that take place and guide us along; we remember the last one or two, but rarely do we trace the chain back to the origin.

When I was at a low point in life after multiple business failures, I picked up a book, “Competing for the Future” by CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel. As I read it, the business plan for what became IndiaWorld fell in place – leading to a monumental transformation of my future. A few years later, a random conversation with Bhavana in a car journey from Nakoda ji to Jodhpur led to the creation of multiple Indian-named websites. A blog post read by a person I did not know connected me to Atanu who mentioned the Burke book which made me think about the connections in our lives and which is the subject of this post!

Thinks 866

Evan Armstrong: “You probably shouldn’t work at a startup. It’s overrated—both financially and emotionally…There is a romantic vision of startup employment that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. Business model risk is extreme and the financial opportunity cost is significant. Typically we assume that a startup is a better overall employment experience, this probably isn’t true for most people. There are some circumstances where working at a startup makes sense! But it is important to go in with open eyes.”

Max Gunther: It is essential to take risks. Examine the life of any lucky man or woman, and you are all but certain to find that he or she was willing, at some point, to take a risk. Without that willingness, hardly anything interesting is likely to happen to you. [via Shane Parrish]

Economist obit on Michael Lipton: “Much of his life’s work was dedicated to devising laws and processes to promote “land reform”. The goal of such measures was to reduce poverty by increasing the proportion of farmland controlled by the poor. Most of Mr Lipton’s fieldwork, and the biggest successes for his approach, were in Asia. His main insight was as powerful as it was simple. In poor countries the neediest people are nearly always in the countryside, and often underserved by public policy due to an “urban bias”. Attending to their needs through well-conceived land reforms brings greater reductions in poverty and inequality than any other approach, including the “green revolution”, which boosted fertilisers and new crop strains to raise yields. In most places, merely having a clear claim to a bit of land is the best guarantee not only against destitution but of possible advancement. Over the past century, Mr Lipton wrote, “land reform has played a massive, central role in the time-paths of rural and national poverty, progress, freedom, conflict and suffering.””

Karen Dillon and Rob Cross: “There’s a common but little-understood reason for that exhaustion. We call it “microstress”—brief, frequent moments of everyday tension that accumulate and impede us even though we don’t register them. Unlike stress triggered by a notable anxiety-producing event (a sharp conflict with a friend or colleague, a health scare), microstress is hard to spot because it is baked into our daily lives. And often it arrives through the people closest to us, making it more difficult to either admit or avoid…What does microstress look like? At work, it can stem from a disagreement in a meeting that you sense but remains unspoken, a colleague who routinely drives incremental work back to you, or frequently shifting expectations from your boss. At home, it could come from hearing about a family member habitually forgetting to take their medicine or a text from your child about a problem that turns out to be momentary.”

My Life System #63: Vacations

For the past many years, I have looked forward to June – because that is when Bhavana, Abhishek and I go on our vacations. Before Abhishek was born, our vacations were whenever we wanted. But once he started school, we had to adhere to his calendar. For me, vacations were the time I got to spend much more time with Abhishek – without the overhang of work.

Our favourite vacation destination is New York. Every third year or so, it has been the place where we will spend 10-12 days. We don’t go around much – at best, day trips to places like Boston, Washington or Philadelphia. NY is a city I know well from my days at Columbia. I don’t drive; so that’s a constraint on where we can go. Jain food is not a problem in New York. And all three of us have something to do. For me, it’s just the joy of walking around the avenues and taking in the sights of the city. In the past few vacations, Abhishek and I took the subway to faraway destinations – especially those lines which travel overground.

Among other cities, Singapore is another favourite and repeat destination. We always stay at the Shangri-La Apartments – they have a nice kitchenette, another requirement given our food constraints. Its proximity to Orchard Road is also good; Kinokuniya, one of the largest bookstores I have seen, is just a few minutes walk. Among other vacation spots: Hong Kong, Bangkok, London, Dubai, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney. Common to all of them: they are all big cities! We are not much for the rural, countryside feel. A vacation we did a few years was Tokyo. While I had been to Tokyo a couple times on work before, this time around we spent time seeing the city. We also took the bullet train on a day trip to the other end of Japan to Kanazawa, a beautiful ride from the east to the west (and back).

Many of our India vacations tend to be around religious spots with the extended family. Jain temples abound, and are architectural marvels also. These tend to be shorter trips. When Abhishek was younger, we had also done a few Club Mahindra vacations – while the properties were great, the access roads from the nearest airport was always a challenge. I think this situation has probably improved a lot in the past decade.

Before Abhishek was born, Bhavana and I vacationed a lot in Bangkok. A few hours by flight, and we were in a city like Mumbai but with a lot more shopping options! It wasn’t expensive to travel, stay or shop. We liked visiting the various markets and huge malls. This was in the late 1990s and early 2000s – when the shopping options in Mumbai or even India were quite limited.

For me, vacations with family are all about ensuring that they have a good time; it is about planning and anticipating. (My ‘vacations’ are when I travel on work!) From the choice of hotel to the itinerary, my focus is to ensure happy memories with the adequate surprises. Some of my best moments have been with Abhishek, answering his never-ending stream of questions.

With Abhishek grown-up and off to university in the US soon, maybe the next vacations will be more diverse for Bhavana and me – so much of the world yet to see, absorb and learn from.

Thinks 865

Economist: “ChatGPT embodies more knowledge than any human has ever known. It can converse cogently about mineral extraction in Papua New Guinea, or about TSMC, a Taiwanese semiconductor firm that finds itself in the geopolitical crosshairs. GPT-4, the artificial neural network which powers ChatGPT, has aced exams that serve as gateways for people to enter careers in law and medicine in America. It can generate songs, poems and essays. Other “generative AI” models can churn out digital photos, drawings and animations. Running alongside this excitement is deep concern, inside the tech industry and beyond, that generative AI models are being developed too quickly. GPT-4 is a type of generative AI called a large language model (LLM).”

David Perell: “We’ve lost touch with the ultimate purpose of education: to transform our being and improve our character. A century ago, the purpose of education was so widely accepted that it wouldn’t have been worth mentioning. But today, it’s controversial. In the 1970s, three-quarters of freshmen said college was essential to developing a meaningful philosophy of life. Only one-third said it was essential to financial well-being. Today, those fractions have flipped. Runaway student debt and high tuition costs may be to blame. Regardless, American universities have been reduced to farm teams for the corporate big leagues. They assume that you have to accumulate wealth before you can cultivate goodness — as if you can only focus on bettering yourself once you’re financially secure…The treasures of the liberal arts lie not in financial riches, but rather in the wealth that comes with depth and wisdom — the stuff of a life well-lived.”

Brian Chen: “Social media is, in many ways, becoming less social. The kinds of posts where people update friends and family about their lives have become harder to see over the years as the biggest sites have become increasingly “corporatized.” Instead of seeing messages and photos from friends and relatives about their holidays or fancy dinners, users of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat now often view professionalized content from brands, influencers and others that pay for placement. The change has implications for large social networking companies and how people interact with one another digitally. But it also raises questions about a core idea: the online platform. For years, the notion of a platform — an all-in-one, public-facing site where people spent most of their time — reigned supreme. But as big social networks made connecting people with brands a priority over connecting them with other people, some users have started seeking community-oriented sites and apps devoted to specific hobbies and issues.”

FT: “India’s expanding workforce is envied by greying nations. Forty per cent of its population are under 25, and roughly 1 in 5 of the world’s under 25-year olds live there. Its median age of 28 contrasts favourably with 38 in the US, and 39 in China. But this huge and youthful pool will only be a blessing for their country if they can find jobs. India has a burgeoning middle class and is a global leader in IT, making it well-positioned to win investment from companies seeking to diversify away from China. But the jump to high-end manufacturing, which propelled countries like Taiwan and South Korea to prosperity, has so far been elusive in a nation where almost half the workforce still works on the land, and 46 per cent of adults over 25 didn’t finish primary school.”

My Life System #62: Numbers

Nothing irritates me more than seeing a slide filled with decimals. How does it matter whether an open rate of emails was 11.43% — instead of just 11? Does it really make a difference if growth is 23.71% — why not just say 24%? And yet, the world seems to have decided that every unit – before or after a decimal point is equally important and must be shown. Watch a slide with 50 digits and not a single one of them becomes memorable. The mental effort to read 76.53 is so much more than just 76, and yet few get it – because Excel or a calculator can provide an endless flow of decimals, the belief is that every fractional unit matters.

While the decimals don’t matter, the commas do! So many times I see a string like 3456321 and I have to then look closely and mentally insert the commas to get a sense of the largeness. And in India, where to put the comma is also a lingering question – lakhs and crores or millions and billions. I keep telling my colleagues to show the most significant digits and then round off. Does it matter if we sent 19,761,891,123 emails – when there is the simpler alternative of 20 billion (and not even 19.7)?

We have too many numbers all around us – punctuated by decimals and commas, numbers which we glaze over, which we see for a fleeting moment because there is another string next to it competing for our attention! It is time for “Making Numbers Count”, as a recent book by Chip Heath and Karla Starr suggests. Each of us needs a lesson in numeracy, As the authors write: “we lose information when we don’t translate numbers into instinctive human experience. We do hard, often painstaking work to generate the right numbers to help make a good decision—but all that work is wasted if those numbers never take root in the minds of the decision makers. As lovers of numbers, we find this tragic. The work that is being done to understand the most meaningful things in the world—ending poverty, fighting disease, conveying the scale of the universe, telling a heartbroken teen how many other times they will fall in love—is being lost because of the lack of translation.”

Some of the book’s recommendations are a good place to begin:

  • Simpler Is Better: Round with Enthusiasm.
  • Concrete Is Better: Use Whole Numbers to Describe Whole Objects, Not Decimals, Fractions, or Percentages.
  • Follow the Rules But Defer to Expertise. Rules 1 and 2 May be Trumped by Expert Knowledge.
  • Recast Your Number in Different Dimensions: Try Time, Space, Distance, Money, and Pringles.

In life and in business, understanding the importance of numbers and communicating them in a way which makes it easier for others to remember matters. In Netcore, with our multiple business lines, there are plenty of numbers in our periodic reviews. What we have done is aligned everyone around a single number, the North Star Metric. For us, that is the exit MRR (monthly recurring revenue) of our Platform business.

I am reminded of a headline in a business paper which said, “XXX profit up 300%.” Read the fine print, and what the company had done was grow its profit from 1 crore to 4 crore, an almost insignificant and irrelevant increase given the revenue base of a few thousand crores!

Make it a mission to simplify the numbers around us – and communicate what matters.

Thinks 864

Ray Dalio: “There is little doubt in my mind that the existing world order is changing rapidly in challenging ways and that people who are living on the assumption that things will work in the orderly ways that they have gotten used to will be shocked and hurt by these changes to come. In summary, 1) the world is certainly changing and will certainly change dramatically and 2) how well this goes will depend on how well the changes are managed. If the people who have their hands on the levers of power rise above their tendencies to focus on fighting to maximize their own benefits and instead focus on working together to do what is best for the whole and divide the pie well, the financial/economic, domestic political, and international geopolitical orders can change in peaceful ways to create a better world order for most people. Presumably we want that, so we should be strongly against war and in favor of bipartisan pursuit of what is best for most people. However, some will argue that that perspective is too idealistic and that we should be more realistic about what is likely and plan accordingly. I agree that history has shown that the pursuit of self-interest has proven to be a more powerful force than the pursuit of collective interests and that there is a good chance that movement to higher-level thinking and better outcomes is unlikely, so we also should be prepared for the worst. If we are prepared for the worst, we will be fine.”

Viral Acharya: “ I lay out my take on where India stands right now. I acknowledge the contradictions that have arisen given the divergent growth path of urban, formal or (stock-market) listed India relative to rural, informal or unlisted India. I also focus on the country’s immense opportunities in expanding the digital footprint of finance to last-mile borrowers. I argue that while China+1 global pivot has put India at crossroads of a potential manufacturing breakthrough, to navigate it well Indian policy must focus on sound industrial and macroeconomic balance.”

Nathan Baschez: “Just as cloud computing and open source unlocked “lean startups” in the 2010s, it’s likely that AI will unlock a new kind of organization in the 2020s. Like lean startups, startups born in the AI era will start small. They will use open source and cloud computing to get off the ground quickly and iterate. But thanks to AI, they will stay smaller for much longer, and the most successful of them will achieve staggering scale with only a handful of employees. Stories like Instagram (13 employees, acquired for $1B) and WhatsApp (35 engineers supported 450 million users at the time of its $16B acquisition) will become more common. Perhaps we’ll even see companies with fewer than 100 employees go public. More importantly, this new type of organization will be able to try out new kinds of ideas.”

Noah Smith: “My basic story of development…starts with a 2021 paper by Patel, Sandefur, and Subramanian. Basic economic theory says that poor countries should grow faster than rich ones, but up through 1990 this didn’t seem to be happening — the rich countries kept staying ahead or even pulling away. Exceptions like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore were few and far between. But around 1990, Patel et al. find that things flipped — suddenly, there was a negative correlation between a country’s income and its growth rate, just like economic theory says there should be. The poor countries were finally catching up. This shift is definitely not just China. Each data point in these regressions is a single country, so China is just one data point among many. On average, poor countries started catching up to rich ones over the last three decades.”

My Life System #61: Mumbai

Except for the few years that I spent in the US, Mumbai has been home. From education (school, college and undergrad) to 30+ years of entrepreneurship (and building two proficorns) – Mumbai has been with me through all my ups and downs. I have lived in the same neighbourhood in South Mumbai for the past 50 years – with one change of apartment. The name changed along the way from Bombay, but the city did not (in a positive way). It is what has given me my happiest moments and best memories. It is, as has been variously said, the city of dreams, the city that never sleeps. Much like the only other city where I have spent maximum time – New York. Yes, the traffic moves slowly, the trains are always crowded, the construction all around seems to have shrunk the roads – all gets taken in one’s stride as this is a city of motion, constant movement, and a propelling energy. Mumbai has imparted its own character to me – like it does to most others who make it their home.

I grew up with the centrality of the BEST bus in my life. Every commute was by bus. The train became a part of life when I went for my IIT Agrawal classes to Dadar, and then during IIT days where I had a decision to make each time – Western (via Andheri) or Central (via Kanjur Marg or Vikhroli). When I started working, it was the roads and the car. The bus and train became joyrides after Abhishek was born; they were the ‘best’ way for him to show the city I loved and which was now his.

The theatres and now the multiplexes swept me away into different worlds. The restaurants whose menus I have memorised are the much-needed weekly diversions – Swati to Status, New Yorker to Cream Centre, Quattro to Spice Klub, Soam to Govinda. The 5-stars of Taj, Trident and Oberoi are where I have done innumerable meetings. The malls enchant – Atria for a short time with their food court, and then Phoenix. The never-far-away sea adds to the beauty. The airports and their various avatars through the years were the start and end points of journeys, each with a mission filled with hope and optimism. And of course, the bookstores – Strand and then Kitab Khana. On the occasional afternoon when Abhishek and I walk around the Fountain area, I am transported back to my IndiaWorld days – every street brings up a past of meetings and customers. Those were the days before Zoom and mass mobiles and inboxes; appointments had to be taken on phone and deals had to be struck in person. Mumbai gave me my first breaks.

For the past two decades, work has been at Lower Parel – what used to be the mills area of Mumbai, ripped apart by strikes. Today, it is a crowded, happening place – yet another testimony at the constant reinvention that the city undergoes. The various infra projects now will once again transform, connecting points which earlier seemed distant – just like the flyovers and the Sea Link did. It is a city of change – and even as it changes, it also changes each one of us who cannot imagine life anywhere else. Mumbai was, is, and will be part of my ‘life system’.

Thinks 863

NYTimes: “Yoga, which originated in India more than 5,000 years ago, has become a staple of American fitness for many reasons. It requires little to no equipment and can be made accessible to nearly everyone. It has also been linked to a growing number of health benefits, including stress relief, better sleep, improved cognition‌ ‌and reduced back pain. Research also suggests that, at least for otherwise sedentary people, yoga improves balance, strength‌ and flexibility as much as many stretching and strengthening exercises do. One possible reason for yoga’s many benefits: It is an intentional practice that requires focus from both the mind and the body.”

Morgan Housel: “I recently heard a phrase I love: Mental liquidity. It’s the ability to quickly abandon previous beliefs when the world changes or when you come across new information. It shouldn’t be controversial. But mental liquidity is so rare. Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake.”

7investing CEO Simon Erickson recently spoke with Pulak Prasad. “Pulak is the CEO of Nalanda Capital, a Singapore-based investment firm who manages nearly $5 billion and invests primarily in Indian-based companies. He is also the author of What I Learned About Investing From Darwin. Simon and Pulak began the conversation by discussing what traditional investment managers are doing wrong. As a whole, active managers typically underperform the broader market — and for a variety of reasons. Similar to 7investing’s seven principles, Nalanda follows three pillars to guide its investing process: 1) Avoid big risks, 2) Demand a fair price, and 3) Don’t sell. By abiding by these straightforward rules, they’ve identified and invested in several of India’s best-in-class companies.”

PTI: “A new book provides depth to our understanding of the institutions that underlie modern India, how they work, why they often fail, and how change is as much the job of citizens as it is of reformists within government. In “Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government is Holding Indians Back”, economist Subhashish Bhadra attempts to cut through different political ideologies to focus on issues that really matter. “Contrary to the popular narrative, GenZ and millennials are more politically engaged than previous generations. However, they hesitate to express themselves publicly because of how polarized our politics has become,” says Bhadra. According to him, “Caged Tiger” is an attempt to avoid the trap of personality politics and instead adopt a new lens of looking at our most intractable problems. “As a young stakeholder in our democratic process, I believe that the future of India is inextricably linked to the quality of its public institutions,” he says.” An excerpt from the book.

My Life System #60: Second Mountain

A few years ago, I came across a book by David Brooks, “The Second Mountain.” The title and description grabbed my attention: “Are you on your first or second mountain? Is life about you – or others? About success – or something deeper? The world tells us that we should pursue our self-interest: career wins, high status, nice things. These are the goals of our first mountain. But at some point in our lives we might find that we’re not interested in what other people tell us to want. We want the things that are truly worth wanting. This is the second mountain. What does it mean to look beyond yourself and find a moral cause? To forget about independence and discover dependence – to be utterly enmeshed in a web of warm relationships? What does it mean to value intimacy, devotion, responsibility and commitment above individual freedom? In The Second Mountain David Brooks explores the meaning and possibilities that scaling a second mountain offer us and the four commitments that most commonly move us there: family, vocation, philosophy and community. Inspiring, personal and full of joy, this book will help you discover why you were really put on this earth.”

I have started thinking much more about the next phase of life. In August, Abhishek will go to the US for his undergrad education. After 18 years of having him as part of our daily life at home, things will be different. It will be back to how it was in the years before he was born. It won’t be easy to adjust and several friends have warned me about the “empty nest” syndrome. It is in this context that the “second mountain” idea that David Brooks talks about comes in. What do I do with the rest of the years that I have? (I will be 56 in August.)

There are some obvious answers. Netcore’s continuing growth is my top priority. In no business can one rest on past laurels; any single mistake could be fatal and consign one to the “living dead.” There is a lot to do – new markets to conquer (US and Europe), new problems to solve (AdWaste), new products to add (by ourselves or via acquisitions), and new paths to chart (going public). The journey to building an enduring, great company is a continuing one, and I can still contribute a lot to Netcore as we go onward from $100 million ARR to much greater heights. So, Netcore still remains as the first mountain – my life as a serial technology entrepreneur.

A few years ago, I had thought of creating a foundation for freedom and prosperity as the second mountain. While Nayi Disha failed and the political path is now closed, the core ideas have stayed with me. It is something I will think about more in the coming years: how can we change people’s minds so they demand more freedom and less government intervention? As I wrote, “Freedom is the bedrock of prosperity. With every new leader in power, liberty has been diminishing and government control over the economy has been increasing. Since the leaders in power are unlikely to increase freedom and reverse the anti-prosperity measures that are still widespread, it is up to the people to lead a political and economic revolution if we are to make Indians rich.” Maybe there are ways to bring about change outside of the political sphere – this is something I need to think about more. India needs institutions for generations yet to come – something US entrepreneurs and philanthropists have done so well. Somewhere out there is my second mountain to find to climb.