Subhash C Thakur

Co-Founder at Lokawiz, Entrepreneur and Technologist.

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

Business is brutal.
If you prioritize being congenial over being logical, you will be butchered without mercy.

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Naval Ravikant on the importance of hiring high-agency people

Naval defines agency as:

“People who just solve problems without even being asked to solve the problem—they identify the problem, they go solve it, they don’t even necessarily have to update you every step of the way, they’re not asking silly questions, and they’re just coming up with solutions.”

He believes this is important because “building a startup is an infinite set of problems that are being thrown at you.” And there comes a day where you can’t even look at every problem your company is facing—let alone solve every one of them.

He cites the Vinod Khosla aphorism:

"The team you build is the company you build, not the plan you make.”

And your ability to solve problems is based entirely on how many problem-solvers you have at your company. As Naval puts it:

“If you have somebody who takes 10% of your time and management to solve problems, you can only have 10 of those people working with you. But if somebody takes 5%, you can have 20 of those people.”

When building Airchat and AngelList, he thought of each team as a Navy Seal team:

“Everyone is just really good at what they do. They know their job. They do it. They don’t complain. They’re not egotistical about it. And if they have to constantly be corrected, led around by the nose, you have to clean up after them, or you question their judgement, it’s not going to work out.”

Source: @AngelList (Dec 2023)

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

Of the two possibilities,
1. You're first with real good idea
2. You are crazy
The first one also means that you're crazy. 😀 I don't see how it could be possible otherwise.
So, there is only one possibility. That is, 'you are crazy' 🤠

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Larry Ellison: You won't be successful doing the same thing everyone else is doing

“My standard advice to entrepreneurs is you can’t be successful as a small company doing the same thing everyone else is doing… If you’re an entrepreneur, you have to find errors in conventional wisdom.”

When you tell people your startup idea, most of them should say, “None’s doing that. You’re crazy!”

Ellison continues:

“When you hear that, there are two possibilities: One is you’re first with a really good idea. Unfortunately, the other is that you’re crazy.”

Video source: @shinkeiren (2014)

[Naval @naval]

A few geniuses solve problems and automate solutions for the rest of society.

Any society that can overcome envy to maximize the number and output of geniuses will thrive.

[Naval @naval]

The leader is not the one who eats first.

The leader is the one who has the power to eat first but chooses to eat last.

[David Senra @davidsenra]

“My marketing people said if you make it cheaper you’ll sell a lot more. That was the last time in my life I listened to them.”

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

Commitment and Focus! 🙏

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

A year ago, I became our Chief Scientist. My R&D team and I have been working hard to reinvent ourselves. We have made very good progress but we still have more work to do.

With recent developments on the AI front, the task has become much more urgent.

I will have to decline all other priorities outside of this work. In particular, I cannot travel for various events. I apologise in advance🙏

[Farnam Street @farnamstreet]

To win, you have to avoid losing.

The first thing chess masters do after an opponent makes a move isn’t to think about strategy or winning but rather to ask themselves: what’s the threat?

Avoid stupidity before seeking brilliance.

[anand mahindra @anandmahindra]

More evidence of the benefits of “Making haste slowly.”

When the noise subsides, two natural partners will come together…

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

Pragmatic!

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Paul Graham explains why you shouldn’t try to be a visionary

“Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with small things and grow them bigger. Want to dominate microcomputer software for decades? Start by writing a basic interpreter for a machine with a couple thousand users. Want to make the universal website and a giant vacuum for people’s time? Start by building a website where Harvard undergrads can stalk one another.”

Paul Graham continues:

“Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg knew how big their companies were going to get. All they knew was that they were onto something… Maybe it’s a bad idea to have really big ambitions initially, because the bigger your ambitions, the longer they’re going to take to realize and the long you’re projecting into the future, the more likely you’re going to be wrong.”

PG suggests starting with something small that works instead.

“I think the best way to do these big ideas is not to try and identify a precise point in the future and say, How do I get from here to there? Like the popular image of a visionary. I think a better model is Columbus who thought there was something to the West—I’ll sail westward. Start with something that works, that you know works, that’s small, and then when the opportunity comes to move, move westward. The popular image of a visionary is someone with a very precise view of the future, but empirically it’s probably better to have a blurry one.”

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Ben Horowitz explains the biggest mistake founders make pitching VCs

“The big mistake people make is they try to appeal too much to the venture capitalists. That’ll drive us crazy because it’s a little bit of a sign of anti-courage.”

Ben shares an example of being pitched by founders who are conservative in their estimates because they know ‘VCs like conservatism.’ However, what VCs want to hear is what you actually believe — not what you think they want to hear.

“Anything that shows a lack of conviction or courage or belief in what you’re doing is what always ends up worrying me. Either you believe it or you don’t. Either you’re committed or you’re not. Either you have the courage to build the company or you don’t.”

Importantly though, as Ben points out, courage doesn’t mean that you don’t feel fear. He recalls the quote from boxing coach Cus D’Amato:

“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.”

Video source: @kevinrose (2012)

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

"You can't outperform your attitude.

What you believe about the work shows up in how you do the work, and how you do the work determines your results.

Fix the attitude first. Everything else follows."

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Naval Ravikant on the “single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success”

Naval admits it’s very difficult to predict which startups will work—only 1 out of 10 of his angel investments succeed—but he has noticed a common trait among many of the great companies:

“The founders are in it for the long haul. And the way you see that evidence very early on. They are extremely deliberate about all kinds of small decisions. Stuff you might think that doesn’t matter… And what you realize is is it’s their nature to obsess over these things because they feel like like they’re laying the bricks and the foundation of a skyscraper.”

He contrasts this to entrepreneurs are more careless early on:

“The people who are flippant about things… they’re often signaling to you that they’ll sell the company the first chance they get, or the moment that it looks like they’re gonna run out of cash, they’ll shut down.”

He continues:

“So I think that long-term mentality is probably the single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success. But it’s by no means the only thing. It’s a very competitive environment. Most startups fail. And so you just gotta stick with it.”

Video source: @StartupGrind (2013)

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Peter Thiel on what he would look for if he was joining a startup

Wharton professor Adam Grant asks Peter Thiel what he would look for if he was joining an early-stage startup. Thiel gives a simple response:

“Do you like the people? Do you think you could become good friends with these people? That’s such a critical part for getting these things to work.”

He recalls interviewing with a law firm in New York early in his career and one partner telling him:

“It’s a place where everybody hates everybody else, but we all make lots of money.”

The partner viewed it as an illustration of how incredibly “professional” the firm was. But Thiel argues that we need more than just “professional” at work.

Thiel elaborates more on this idea in his book Zero to One:

“Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.”

Video source: @Wharton (2014)

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

"If you are honest, truthful, and transparent, people trust you. If people trust you, you have no grounds for fear, suspicion, or jealousy."
- The Dalai Lama

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

Happy Republic Day!

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Steve Jobs: The difference between good people and great people is 50-to-1

“I’ve always considered part of my job was to keep the quality level of people in the organizations I work with very high. I mean that’s what I consider one of the few things I can contribute individually myself — versus the team that work with — is to really try to instill in the organization the goal of having only A players.”

Steve argues this is especially important in technology where there’s a huge range between the best person and the worst person:

“In a lot of fields, the difference between, say, the worst taxicab driver and the best taxicab driver to get you across town in Manhattan might be 2-to-1. The best one will get you there in 15 minutes, the worst one will get you there in half an hour… Or the best cook and the worst cook, maybe it’s 3-to-1… But in the field that I’m in. In software in particular. The difference between the best person and the worst person is about 100-to-1 or more.”

He continues:

“The difference between a good software person and a great software person is probably 50-to-1 or 25-to-1. Huge dynamic range. And therefore, I have found — and not just in software but in almost everything I’ve done — it really pays to go after the best people in the world.”

But as Steve points out, this isn’t always easy:

“It’s very painful when you have some people that are not the best people in the world, and you have to get rid of them. But I’ve found that my job has sometimes been exactly that, to get rid of some of the people that didn’t measure up. And I’ve always tried to do it in a humane way, but nonetheless it has to be done and it’s not ever fun.”

[Subhash C Thakur @subhT21]

That's sinister! 🧐

[Paul Graham @paulg]

It's exhausting to be lied to. I think some of the most accomplished liars even take advantage of this fact. Their lies then serve a double purpose: (a) whatever purpose each specific lie serves and (b) to exhaust their audience and thereby batter them into submission.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Elon Musk: “My last words would be: I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future. For quality of life, it’s better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right.”

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Jeff Bezos on what founders need to understand about brands

“I think our most important piece of intellectual property is our brand name,” Jeff Bezos says of Amazon. “And I think this is very important for anybody who is going to start a company or market an invention to understand — brands for companies are like reputations for people. Reputations are hard earned and easily lost.”

Jeff continues:

“We’ve worked very hard to earn trust. You can’t ask for trust. You have to do it the hard way, one step at a time. You make a promise, and then you fulfill that promise. You say ‘We’ll deliver this to you tomorrow,’ and then you actually deliver it tomorrow. And if you do that over and over again, then ultimately you can instill your company’s name with a reputation. Sometimes people talk about brands in this very amorphous way, but for me, I like to think of it as a person — what is the reputation that that person has and how have they earned that reputation?”